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The first time is something of a joke. Tony is doing that rambling thing like always, hands moving around rapidly and coming dangerously close to smacking passersby in the face. He gets more than a few dirty looks for it, but he doesn’t seem to be noticing. Rhodey isn’t even sure what he’s ranting about anymore. Maybe one of his professors, or that annoying guy in his physics class. All he does know is that he wants to get to the cafeteria before they run out of pizza and Tony walks slow when he’s talking. So Rhodey grabs him by the wrist when his hand flies in front of him again, spinning him around and planting his lips firmly against Tony’s for just a moment. It does the job of stunning him into silence, but it also makes him freeze completely on the sidewalk. Rhodey keeps walking, and Tony has to run to catch back up.
“What was that for?” Tony asks, eyes wide.
Rhodey shrugs, “Had to shut you up somehow.”
Tony makes an offended squawking sound, hitting Rhodey with the too long sleeve of his sweatshirt. Rhodey’s sweatshirt, technically.
“That’s rude,” Tony says. “You’re getting me ice cream to make it up to me.”
Rhodey laughs, slinging his arm over Tony’s shoulders to pull him along. “Whatever you want, Tones.”
______________
If the first was a joke, the second is just the repeat performance. Between Rhodey’s basic training and Tony’s recent and sudden rise to CEO, it’s been almost three months since the last time they’ve seen each other. Basic has him questioning everything and feeling like a bit of failure. He should have been able to handle it better. The homesickness, the pressure, the constant grind of work. It’s been the dream for so long that he doesn’t know what to do with the feeling he has now.
“Maybe I should quit.”
Tony snorts inelegantly, “Pretty sure that’s called deserting and it’s a crime.”
“So I’ll go on the run,” Rhodey argues, like it’s a perfectly reasonable response. “I’ll move to Tahiti or Fiji or one of those other islands. Wait, you have a private island, right? I could go there, and if anyone comes for me, I’ll just take a rowboat out to sea, and they won’t have any jurisdiction on the water to arrest me. I’m pretty sure that’s a thing. Right? It’s -”
Tony’s lips are a little sticky from the beer he’s been drinking, and his hands are warm where they cup Rhodey’s cheeks. He doesn’t understand what’s happening or why, and at first he can’t think enough to react. When he can think again he can’t decide whether to push him off or kiss him back, and he still hasn’t reached a conclusion when Tony pulls away. He doesn’t know if it lasted two seconds or two minutes, and it’s confusing to realize that he isn’t sure which he would prefer.
“Wow, that is effective,” Tony grins. “Thought maybe it was just me it works on, but I should try that on board members sometime if it’s that good.”
Rhodey gapes at him when he connects the pieces. “Seriously, Tony? That happened two years ago, and I’m in the middle of a crisis right now.”
"No, you were spiraling and now you’re not," Tony says simply. "Situation resolved by not talking about it."
"That's not how that works."
"Of course it is. How do you think most fires get put out? By putting a lid on them until they die."
"Alright, ignoring that that's not even true, what the hell does it even mean?"
"It's very true, and what it means is that I have put a lid on this irrational fire, so it doesn't have the chance to spread and ignite the rest of your life. Containment, honeybear. It's about containment."
"That's a terrible analogy," Rhodey says, and Tony tosses his hands in the air.
"What do you want from me on the spot?"
They spend most of the night trying to come up with something better, laughing and drinking the rest of the beer in Tony's fridge, until Rhodey forgets that he was ever stressed in the first place.
______________
Their third kiss is an accident. It happens somewhere in between Rhodey deciding that he hates Tony's new boyfriend and him realizing exactly why that is.
He comes back from six months overseas, and it's a few days ahead of what he was expecting. He told Tony Thursday, but his plane touches down in California on Tuesday morning, and he gives the taxi driver Tony's address without a second thought. Tony likes surprises, and he has no reason to think this might be a bad one.
He uses his key to let himself in, fully knowing that Tony won't be awake yet to answer the door. The first traces of sun are just starting to filter in through the windows, and Rhodey sets his duffle bag down near the door before moving into the kitchen. Tony's refrigerator is nearly barren, but there are a few eggs and a green pepper that would be rotten by tomorrow that he can make due with. He finds an onion, too, and falls into a rhythm while dicing vegetables.
It's this kind of thing that he misses when he's away. He misses having a kitchen and making what he wants in it, even if this isn't his kitchen or his first choice of food. But he misses the simplicity of it all. Life on the base seems alternate between too fast and too slow, but this is all his own pace.
He hears footsteps on the stairs a little after the eggs hit the pan, and he glances over his shoulder to watch Tony shuffle into the room while rubbing his tired eyes. If he had stayed turned around a little longer, their third kiss wouldn't have happened at all. By the time Tony opens his eyes, Rhodey's back is to him again.
Instead of instantly reacting, Tony slowly wanders over and puts his hand on Rhodey's shoulder. The words are mumbled when he says, "You're up way too early," and Rhodey doesn't have time to process how strange the sentence is, because he's being kissed the second his head turns. Not the shut up kind of kiss or even that sort of friendly peck he's seen people do sometimes. It's the kind where Tony's tongue is slipping between his lips, and his hand is wandering lower. The kind that friends don't share, but lovers definitely do.
Rhodey falls into it without question.
The spatula clatters to the floor from his hand, and Tony laughs into the kiss before pulling back. There's a grin and a joke on his lips that's quickly replaced by dawning horror.
"Rhodey?" Tony squeaks out. His hand flies up to cover his mouth, and through it Rhodey hears, "Oh, shit." He looks down at the complete lack of space between their bodies, dropping the hand to raise them both in front of himself like a defense as he backs away a couple of steps. "Fuck, I'm so fucking sorry. I thought - you weren't supposed to be here yet. Thursday. That's - you said Thursday. Didn't you?"
It's like ice water with how quickly the warmth of that kiss leaves his body.
Rhodey raises an eyebrow and plays at unaffected. "I did, yeah. Seems like you should attack an intruder instead of kissing them, though."
Tony's cheeks turn a vibrant shade of red, and he runs a still shaky hand through his hair.
"I thought you were someone else," he sheepishly admits. "It's just that from behind you, um, well you look a lot like Ryan, and he wasn't in bed still when I got up, so I came down here, and, uh, I guess you know the rest of that story."
Ryan, Rhodey's mind bitterly repeats. The guy Tony's spent the last three months talking about on the phone and in his letters. It's always about him in some way. He told me the funniest story yesterday, Rhodey or Isn't he so romantic, platypus? But Tony seems happy, so he fakes a laugh at a story that definitely isn't funny retold and agrees that string quartets are romantic instead of horribly cliché. He helps him plan dates when it's Tony's turn, because apparently that's yet another adorable thing they do together.
He just barely suppresses the sigh before saying, "Don't worry about it, Tones. It's all good."
Tony looks relieved, and after an awkward minute or two they fall back into their normal conversation like it never happened. They talk about the missions Rhodey has flown for and the designs Tony has been working on between bites of burned eggs and coffee.
Neither of them ever mention that Rhodey kissed him back.
______________
Tony and Rhodey are both drunk for the fourth. The music is loud at the club, and the air is a smoky haze. It's someone's birthday, he thinks, but he can't really remember anymore by the fifth shot of tequila.
He leans back against the bar on his elbows, watching in drunken amusement while Tony tries to put the moves on someone to hold up his end of the bet. The guy looks like he isn’t quite sure what’s happening, and Rhodey laughs into the rim of his glass. All he needs is one kiss, and Rhodey will be out the contents of his wallet. He isn't even sure what those contents are, and Tony wouldn't let him check before the handshake. It could be anywhere from a nickel to fifty bucks, he figures, which is worth it to watch this complete trainwreck.
It takes another ten minutes of flirting before Tony finally gives up and comes back over to the bar.
“Loser,” Rhodey teases. “What happened to having ‘game so good a straight man would fall to his knees?’”
Tony flips him off and steals the glass from his hand. “He has a girlfriend, which is the only reason it didn’t happen.”
“He didn’t even realize that you were flirting with him, did he?” Rhodey laughs, and Tony pouts pitifully.
“The no touching rule wasn’t fair.”
“A good bet doesn’t involve actual harassment,” Rhodey reasons, just like he did earlier in the night. “If you can’t get them to kiss you by flirting with just words, they wouldn’t want you touching them in the first place. It’s called consent.”
Tony rolls his eyes, “I do not need to be taught about consent. I am the king of consent. Enthusiastic, resounding consent, even.” He pauses, and there’s a dangerous look in his eyes when he narrows them at Rhodey. “Okay, I know that this about to go against everything I just said, but it’s you, and we don’t have rules, right?”
“What?”
“Just say yes.”
“Yes to what?”
Tony leans in with enough time that if Rhodey really wanted to, he could pull away. He could put his hand over Tony’s mouth or step to the side or simply tell him no and Tony wouldn’t do it.
But he doesn’t do any of those things.
He lets Tony cup the back of his neck to tilt his head to the right angle, and he threads his hand into Tony’s hair in return. His lips taste like the vodka and cranberry juice from the stolen glass, until Rhodey has kissed him so thoroughly that he can’t taste it anymore.
“There,” Tony says, grinning proudly like he’s just done something exceptionally smart. His breath is coming quickly, and Rhodey’s head is spinning with the thought that he’s the one that did that to him. “I got a straight man to kiss me. Pay up.”
Rhodey laughs, full-bodied with his head tilted back. “No, man. You definitely didn’t.”
Tony’s still a little too drunk to fully understand what he means by that, and he takes it as if Rhodey’s saying that he stole the kiss, rather than earned it. He spends most of the night after that trying to get him to kiss him again on his own accord, but Rhodey doesn’t want another one like that. He wants Tony’s soft-eyed gaze on him, and his body held tight in his arms. He wants to hear him say the same words he’s saying right now, but to have him actually mean it when he says the word please. Like he won’t be able to live for another second without Rhodey’s lips on his.
He doesn’t want the joke anymore, but he knows he won’t ever get to have the real thing.
______________
Rhodey is half asleep for kiss number five, and he isn’t even quite sure that it actually happens. He’s lying in a hospital bed somewhere in Germany, he thinks, and machines are beeping all around him. He can’t really remember what brought him here as he drifts in and out. There was some kind of fight - that much is obvious. He sees flashes of bullets in the sky, flames, and a rapidly plummeting altitude reading. Was it a mission gone wrong? An attack they weren’t expecting? One of the machines ticks a little faster when he tries to clear his head enough to think about it, and then darkness takes over again.
When he partially wakes the next time, there’s something warm and solid in his hand. It shifts a little, brushing lightly in circles over his skin, and it takes him a longer amount of time than it should to realize that it’s another hand. But when he does, he knows without a doubt who it belongs to, and the thought sends him back into sleep with a warm feeling in his chest.
He finds out later that he was unconscious for three days, and Tony hardly leaves his side for a minute of it. Rhodey doesn’t want to say how that makes him feel, so he falls back on what he does know how to say.
“You should really at least go back to the hotel to take a shower. You’re starting to smell, man,” he says after the doctor leaves the room.
Tony gives him a weak laugh, running his hand through his hair and grimacing at the oily texture. "Maybe in a little bit. You just woke up."
Rhodey shifts against the pillows, tilting his head to get a good look at him. His clothes might be the same ones he showed up here in, all wrinkled with a coffee stain on one of his sleeves. The circles under his eyes are darker than he's ever quite seen them before, and he looks too pale.
Tony isn't supposed to look like that.
He's supposed to be sunlight embodied, all tanned skin and bright eyes and fluid motion. But this Tony is slumped over in his chair, small and fragile looking like the wrong word could destroy him completely. This Tony offers him a brave face and a delicate smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and Rhodey can't stand it. Can't stand that it's his own fault he looks like that.
Stretching his arm out, he turns over his hand to open his palm. The movement tugs at his injured shoulder, but he grits his teeth to hide the pain and it's worth it to have Tony's hand back in his where it belongs. He squeezes gently, and Tony squeezes back.
"You almost died," Tony whispers. "You're not allowed to die."
"I won't do it again," Rhodey says, even though they both know he can't make that promise.
Tony nods, and for now that can be enough. He switches the topic to something else so they don't have to talk about it anymore. So Tony doesn't have to say what the last three days felt like, and Rhodey doesn't have to admit that his last thought before the plane went down was regret that he'd never get to have this again.
Tony makes him laugh until his battered ribs are aching with it, until they've talked about everything and nothing and sleep is pulling at Rhodey again. It's hard to keep his eyes open, and he fights it until he can't any longer.
A hand runs over his hair, and down the side of his face to linger on his cheek. Rhodey leans into the touch with closed eyes as Tony murmurs, "I'll come back tomorrow. Don't you dare do anything stupid like dying while I'm gone."
He feels the warmth of Tony's breath on his skin the moment before Tony kisses him. It's a barely there, wisp of a thing, right on the corner of his mouth. There one instant, then gone the next. It's the last thing he feels before slipping into sleep again.
______________
“I’m so old,” Tony groans, flopping down on the beach chair next to Rhodey’s. “Ancient. Decrepit. On death’s door.”
“You’re thirty,” Rhodey says, and he laughs at the pout on Tony’s face. “I’m a year older than you. What does that make me then?”
“A senior citizen, just like me.”
Rhodey lifts his beer from where the bottle was balancing in the sand and clinks it with the bottle in Tony’s hand. “Welcome to the club then. We’re happy to have you.”
Tony kicks off his shoes and tucks his feet under his thighs as he settles back in the chair. It’s quiet out here on the beach, away from the crowds and noise from the party. The crashing of the waves and the distant thrum of music are the only sounds, and they watch the water in the still of the night for a while.
“Don’t you want to get back to the party?” Rhodey asks softly, unwilling to break their bubble of peace. “It’s for you.”
Tony shakes his head. “I like it better out here.”
“Want me to kick everyone out for you?”
Tony looks over his shoulder at the house, filled to the brim and lights flashing from every window. He leans over the inch between their chairs and rests his head on Rhodey’s shoulder. “No, they can have their fun in there, and I can have mine here.”
Rhodey cards his hand through Tony’s hair, feeling warm despite the cool breeze. “This is fun for you, huh? Sitting in silence?”
“It’s always good with you,” Tony murmurs, so quiet that Rhodey almost loses it to the ocean. He’ll always be thankful that he didn’t.
He lets his hand go lower, slipping from his hair to run his thumb along Tony’s jaw, and it would be so easy, he thinks, to kiss him right now. To tilt Tony’s chin up and turn his head to the side just a little. To brush their lips together, slowly at first, then steadily growing more desperate as he gives in to everything he’s wanted for so long. He thinks of the way Tony would sound, if he would sigh or moan or whimper under his mouth. Tony would be sticky sweet from the buttercream on the cupcakes from earlier, and Rhodey would taste sugar on his tongue.
“Rhodey,” Tony whispers, looking up at him. The moon is reflected in the deep brown of his eyes, and Rhodey wants to keep this image of him in his mind forever. “Can I tell you what I wished for?”
“Won’t come true if you do,” Rhodey whispers back.
“I think it’s the only way it might,” Tony answers, and he seems even closer than he was before.
“What did you wish for?”
Tony’s cheeks are flushed, and Rhodey thinks for a moment that he’s going to lose his nerve to say whatever it is. He’s ready for the joke instead, but it never comes.
“For you to kiss me,” Tony says with an unsteady breath. “For it to mean something when you do.”
Rhodey slides his hand a little higher, and he strokes across Tony’s cheekbone. He doesn’t miss the way that Tony’s eyes flicker down to his lips. “And what do you want it to mean?”
“Everything.”
“Everything,” Rhodey repeats, and Tony smiles, soft and unsure. “I think I can manage that.”
______________
Years later, Tony still likes to tease Rhodey about their first kiss, except now it's become their thing. The interrupted sentences sometimes get finished after and sometimes don't because kissing Tony is more important than whatever it was that he had to say in the first place.
He loses count of what number they’re on. One thousand or one million, it could never be enough. They have all kinds of kisses now. Early morning, sleep-hazed kisses, and quick, little pecks on the way out the door. Good night kisses that turn passionate and desperate as often as they stay innocent and sweet. Reluctant ones when Tony is mad at him for something silly, lingering ones in apology.
Each one still means everything.