quigonejinn

Five months into being friends, Tony decides that he and Rhodey should be friends with benefits.

...

Here's how the friends part happens: MIT will let Tony skip Intro to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. A guy who builds his own circuit boards by the time most kids can sit through an episode of Sesame Street, who writes code for distributed computing over multiple DARPA mainframes when most kids are still trying to navigate the mysteries of middle school lockers, does not need to be sitting around, learning about difference equations. Nevertheless, he needs a little grounding in hard theory before he moves onto the specialized seminars, and really, who throws a fourteen year old kid in with seniors?

What happens after that is the basis of Tony Stark at MIT, Legend #14.

Tony takes Advanced, which has a midterm, and does no studying. He finishes the exam in fifteen minutes, having written only fourteen words, and walks out. The professor gives him a C-. Tony had all the right answers, every last one, but they were the only thing he wrote down. There isn't any work on the page, and when the professor talks to Tony about it after class, Tony shrugs and says there isn't any scratch paper he can show the prof. He did it in his head, OK? Whatever, but the coda that doesn't quite make it into the Tony Stark at MIT, Legend #14 text is what comes afterwards: the professor dispatches his brightest TA to talk to Tony. Out of pure instinct and a certain shared memory of having been ridiculously bright when young, the TA hits on the quickest, surest way to make Tony Stark change the way he acts: Obadiah knew it, and Yinsen guessed it. Obadiah used it to get Tony to wean himself off a serious recreational coke habit; Yinsen used it to save Tony's life in a cave in the mountains in Afghanistan.

Engage Tony's pride. The rest of his emotions follow, and Jim Rhodes tells Tony that if he's going to be such a goddamn tiny prick, he needs to have the grades to back it up. And oh, by the way, Jim Rhodes ended the class with a 96 average and did well enough as a freshman to get hired to TA to juniors. And, you know. Tony Stark.

Slowly, slowly, Tony looks up from the surface of the desk. Rhodey grins and tucks his thumbs under the straps of his bookbag.

In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have worked if Tony hadn't been so young, or if Tony had been even a little less lonely and hungry for social contact after two months of living by himself off-campus, eating meals from the microwave and slowly realizing that he's about six times more isolated than he'd ever been in his whole life, but it's a magic moment or something. It works. Jim gets through.

...

Here are reasons why Jim Rhodes believes that being Friends with Benefits with Tony Stark is a really fucking bad idea.

1. He's Tony Stark.
2. Who knows what kinds of diseases he's caught?
3. Tony Stark, by the way, is fifteen. Fourteen the first time he asks Rhodey to fuck him.

...

"Look, it makes total sense. This way, you won't have to feel weird when I use your toothbrush."

"You use my toothbrush?"

"Well, just hypothetically. If that freaks you out, hey, I can afford to buy an extra one. Or dozen. Or thousand. And keep it at your place. I just don't get what your fucking problem is."

Though Jim knows he should be thankful for small things. Tony propositions him the first time on the roof of the house his parents rented out for him, doesn't just casually lean over and start making out or palming Jim's dick through his jeans. Instead, it's almost kind of romantic. It's a cool spring day. The sun is setting over the river, and they've got beer. (Jim can't believe that Tony drinks. Or dates. Or lives by himself. Or doesn't know what the capital of Nebraska is because Tony Stark skipped the part of elementary school where you had to learn the capitals of all fifty states since Tony Stark never went to elementary school and just hung out at Columbia a lot. There are a lot of things about Tony Stark that Jim can't believe.) They're sort of lying on the roof shingles after climbing out the second floor window, and Tony rolls over onto his stomach and asks Rhodey whether he wants a handjob.

Jim spits his beer out over the azaleas. Did he just fail to notice when he fell into the alternate universe where fourteen year old kids offer casual handjobs to people six years older than them? What the --

He looks over, and Tony raises his eyebrows.

And Jim realizes that Tony actually expects him to say yes.

...

Tony ups the offer. "Look, are you just not in a handjob mood? I'll blow you if you want, and you don't have to blow me back. Is that your problem? First time for free."

Jim stares at him. "Dude, what are you -- "

"I'm good. I swallow."

"Tony."

...

"Look, Rhodey, are you going to ignore me all night just because I offered to blow you? I mean, Christ, it's not exactly a secret you go both ways, right?"

...

Here's why Jim is pretty confident that Tony has slept around: there are girls. There are a lot of girls. Tony apparently doesn't quite realize or understand that MIT girls aren't the only girls on the Boston market, so to speak, and it takes Jim to inform of this fact. It fascinates him. One time, they're riding the T into Boston because Tony has been in Cambridge for four months, but hasn't been to Faneuil Hall or done any of the stupid tourist shit, and a cluster of what look like BC girls down at the end of the car giggle and wave at Tony. Tony grins and waves, then leans over and informs Rhodey that he's had sex with three of them.

...

Eventually, Tony gets pissed off and stalks off the roof, beer still in hand. Jim sits out there for a little while, then decides that he can't exactly swing down from the gutter and land in the rosebushes, so he goes back in and -- it's Tony's bedroom, which is uncomfortable for a second, but Tony isn't there. He isn't downstairs in the kitchen, either. Or on the porch. Or in the garage with the 1966 Pontiac GTO that he's still four years from being able to drive legally down the street and is in the middle of taking apart so that he can rebuild it for the second time that year.

"I'm gonna go, Tony."

Jim feels like a dumbass talking in the dark hallway, but what do you say?

He picks up his bookbag. "I'll see you tomorrow in class, OK?"

The house doesn't answer him back, and Rhodey walks back to campus. He doesn't see Tony in class -- any of the classes they have together, in fact -- for three days. And then Tony pops up in Complex Variables with Applications, dropping into the seat next to Jim and doodling on his fingers through the whole lecture, like nothing happened.

...

"Jesus, Tony, I can't believe you'd just skip out on the lecture like that. He was telling us questions for the midterm, man. I mean, where were you?"

"I don't have to tell that to somebody who won't take a free blowjob."

"Tony -- "

"You want some of these fries? Sorry, I don't share fries with somebody who's too stupid won't even take a blowjob. Did I mention it was free?"

"What part of you're fourteen years old do you fail to understand?"

There's a moment of silence, and Jim thinks he's finally won the argument, but five hours later, they're eating dinner together and Tony colors up and blurts out over his second slice of pizza, "The fuck, Rhodey. Can't you just pretend or something?"

Jim reaches into his wallet, throws down ten dollars -- which, OK, is his beer money for the rest of the week -- and walks out of the place.

Tony skips the next week of class.

...

For a kid so profoundly and obviously lacking in parental guidance, Tony actually talks to his parents a lot. Back when Jim trusts himself to study at Tony's, once or twice a week, he'd end up studying while Tony sat on the kitchen counter with Introduction to Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Propulsion in his lap, chatting about mortar timers or HE-1's or the latest iteration of gremlin to hit production of the Longstrike helicopter engines. Jim is pretty sure he shouldn't be hearing this kind of stuff, but Tony never tells him to go, and one time, he even holds the phone up for Jim to say hi to his father.

Howard Stark has a voice that actually sounds a lot like an older version of Tony's -- a little darker, mostly. And the words don't come out as fast, at least as far as Jim can tell from a single, patient, "Hi, Jim, how're you doing?"

Pretty regularly, Tony gets blueprints run up from New York for him to look over. Courier-delivered to the door along with some pizza, and one night, they're studying in Jim's dorm room; yeah, his roommate is out for the weekend, visiting his girlfriend in Worcester, but Jim is careful to keep the door open. He's a popular guy. People come by all the time to chat and see, and yeah Jim is pretty goddamn careful to keep the door open and to sit facing it, and he tells himself it's a good idea, in principle, for Tony to meet some new people.

At eight-twenty, Tony looks up from his reading and says, "Hey, there's no way I'm gonna make it back to my place in time. Can I use your phone to call my Dad? I'll pay you back."

Jim is lost in thinking about laminar flow and sort of waves his hand, but he pulls out of the daze when he hears Tony say, "Hey, Lisa. Is Dad around?"

Later, Jim figures out that Lisa is Howard's secretary. Also, sometimes-girlfriend.

"I know they used to mess around when she was younger, but I don't know if they still do."

...

Here are reasons why Jim Rhodes believes that being Friends with Benefits with Tony Stark is a really fucking bad idea.

1. He's Tony Stark.
2. Who knows what kinds of diseases he's caught?
3. Tony Stark turns fifteen in the course of his freshman year. He's only fourteen the first time he asks Rhodey to fuck him.

New addition number four: the sex would be pretty fucking great.

...

For Tony's fifteenth birthday, his parents, thank God, do not actually send up alcohol. The chauffeur does bring up cake and balloons, a couple wrapped boxes that Tony doesn't care about because they have nothing but clothes in them. A family friend sends up a couple books, but what Tony is really interested in is the binder of test results for the S-19 bunkerbuster.

...

Jim's professor, the one he TA's for, invites him to a spring get-together at his house in honor of a friend who's in town to give a physics lecture. Wine. Pasta salad and baked chicken out on a picnic table. The professor extends an invitation to all his TA's, and Jim does his laundry just for this and worries that his shoes aren't nice enough, agonizes and worries and wonders whether it's OK for him to drink some of the wine, and then, Tony shows up unexpectedly; it turns out that he knows a couple of the other profs because they were fucking grad students with some of the Columbia professors he knew as a kid. He knows more people there than Jim does; one of them laughs and says he's glad Tony could make it and introduces his wife. Tony grins and tells her that he knew he should have stayed at Columbia.

She thinks he's adorable.

"And this is a son of a bi -- guy that I did post-doc with, Tony," he says and introduces somebody that Jim has never seen before.

For illumination, the professor and his wife strung up Christmas lights all over the yard, and watching Tony navigate the crowd, be the life of the party with a jam glass of red wine in his right hand, it's hard to think about him sitting in the library until the janitors come because he doesn't want to be alone in his house. Jim hears him casually discuss NIH funding cycles, and it doesn't sound like somebody who thinks blowjobs are a perfectly appropriate way to keep his half-assed tutor around now that he has his average up to a 91.

Except Tony disappears halfway through the night.

So does the son of a bitch.

...

Tony at fifteen is pretty short. He only comes up a little past Jim's chin, so Jim would guess 5'3? Maybe 5'4. Dark hair. Lean and skinny, but wiry. Strong hands. He's got burns and nicks on the forearms and fingers as a result of fucking around with with tools heavier than his age.

...

"You don't mind when I fuck around with girls."

Rhodey doesn't know how to answer this, so he keeps quiet. Tony takes this as an encouraging sign, and he scootches his chair over.

"You don't mind when I fuck around with girls," Tony says. He's really close to Jim's elbow. "In fact, you positively encourage me to pick up girls."

"That's -- "

"About the same age as that guy. At least the grad students."

Tony says this with implacable logic. They're in his house. Jim is pretty sure he shouldn't be here, but it's a freakishly hot May. They're studying; it's a month and a half until finals, and Tony's place has air conditioning. Tony has New York pizza, a sixpack of beer -- who sells beer to a fifteen year old boy who can only halfway see over the counter? He has them waiting on the table when Jim shows up; the beer is sweating into the table, and yeah, Jim has to go get a mixing bowl out of the cupboard and put the beer into it, so wood table doesn't get ruined. He leans up to get the mixing bowl -- the house came fully furnished and usually houses a visiting professor, and yeah, he's pretty sure that Tony is checking his ass and watching his shirt ride up over his stomach.

He comes back to the table, and Tony isn't even pretending to read the course packet in his lap in his lap. Those big, dark eyes are staring right at him, and Jim is pretty sure that if he so much so much as breathed the word, Tony would stand up, lazily unbutton and unzip the front of his jeans, then bend over the table and let Jim pull them down as far as he fucking wanted, do whatever he fucking wanted. Right there. In the kitchen. Next to the beer, on top of all their textbooks.

And yeah, Jim is pretty sure this is what passes for hospitality and friendship in Tony Stark's world. And yeah, Jim ignores his pretty inappropriate hardon.

...

"I've been working for my dad since I was four, Jim. Seriously. When I was six, as a joke, they made me the company-wide employee of the month. My name is on a plaque outside my dad's office, OK? Ocotober 1978."

...

"Is it my dad? Are you worried what he'd do if he found out? Because Jesus Christ, Rhodey, he really doesn't care. I promise."

...

It's not all bad. It's not all Tony propositioning Jim and Jim knowing that if he so much gives Tony an inch, he's going to end up buried so deep inside Tony that Tony would tas --

Jim isn't going to think about that. Baseball season starts, and they get the shitty, shitty seats when the Indians come to town. Tony isn't a big baseball fan, but they eat hot dogs and cotton candy, and much to the amusement of their entire section, the beer vendor won't sell Tony a drop of anything. He suggests root beer. Jim howls with laughter; Tony rolls his eyes and sulks until Jim gives him some of his, and watching Tony wipe the beer-stache off on his shoulder, it occurs to Jim that Tony is at least doing him the courtesy of not jumping him. He asks. He nags. But it's words. He respects both of them enough to ask before getting down on his knees, which Jim supposes counts as progress when you're dealing with Tony. They talk about lunar landings, girls, what they think of the new prof in Complex Variables.

When Jim's parents come to town for a conference that his dad is going to down in Hartford, the four of them go out to dinner at Red Lobster.

Red Lobster. Tony behaves himself. Jim doesn't even threaten him more than once with posters on the Wellesley campus announcing Tony's true age.

...

"Why're you like that?"

"Why did I destroy you in Donkey Kong just now?"

It's not what Jim means, though, and Tony knows it. Tony later tells a story about fucking one of the Newhouse girls on the pool deck at the house in the Hamptons, and Jim doesn't even ask how old Tony was.

...

"Where're you living next year?"

Jim looks up from the sample questions that the professor passed out. He has a pencil in hand. "East Campus. We picked back in February."

"East Campus?" Tony sounds disgusted. "East Campus is a dump. You could live here. It's closer to your classes. I'd -- "

He cuts himself off, but Jim is pretty sure the words came after would have been I'd fuck your brains out every night. Or I'd let you come down my throat in the bathroom every morning until you got hard every time somebody turned on a faucet. Or.

But Tony bites the words off and just looks at Jim across the kitchen table. It's getting towards the end of May, finals time, and the best way to get Tony to change how he acts has always been to engage his pride.

...

Tony is pretty much better at Rhodey at everything: he's smarter. He makes friends with professors better. He impresses people who need to be impressed better, and he picks up girls more easily. He does math better. The combined master's and bachelor's deegree he's going to be earning is just gravy; he'll never need it to work for his dad, and Jim swears, swears, that if Tony weren't such an asshole, it would be kind of easy to fall a little in love with him.

...

It's June. They're standing in the foyer of Tony's house; Tony only grabbed a bag with a week's worth of clothes. Packing up consisted of clearing all the dishes out of the dishwasher and making sure everything was locked. The GTO will be fine in the garage; it's waited twenty-plus years to be put back together. Tony will be back in it in the fall, and all the lights are off. The chauffeur is waiting outside with the Rolls -- other kids take a flight or pack a car or take the Greyhound home; Tony Stark's parents send a Rolls, complete with a driver and a phone in the back -- to take him down to New York, though his parents aren't going to be back there until Congress lets out, so his parents are going to be there until the end of the month.

Tony looks at Jim, and Jim is about to say something about how they probably shouldn't keep the driver waiting. Tony takes a step forward, and Jim, instinctively, puts his hands up between them.

"Jesus," Tony says, softly. It's dark, and he's still shorter than Jim. "Just let me kiss you once, OK? I'll never try anything again. I swear."

Jim closes his eyes, but doesn't lower his hands. When Tony steps closer, Jim's palms brush against his chest.

...

The kiss is slow and good, but there's no promise in it. Tony knows better now, and he wants this one chance to learn the inside of Jim's mouth. There's no grinding or arching or rubbing. Just Tony's tongue touching behind Jim's teeth, the bottom back of his mouth, and right at the end, Tony sucking Jim's tongue into his mouth so that he knows what that feels like, too. When it's over, Tony wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and they walk out onto the porch. Tony locks the door, and Jim waves goodbye while the Rolls goes down the street. All summer long, he never regrets having kept it to that.

In fact, he never regrets it at all until Tony goes missing in Afghanistan.

The toothbrush bit is entirely stolen from