Baby Underoos Chapter 5

If you asked Colonel James Rhodes about his best friend Tony Stark, you'd very rarely get any response other than "he's a great man," and, "that Tony Stark eh." For if there was anything the military man understood, it was the intrinsically private nature of Tony's true personality beneath the public persona, and so he would never speak of anything without his explicit permission to do so.

If you were privileged enough to be within his inner circle of friends or at least with a high enough security clearance, you would hear Rhodes speaking about Tony with a hint of warm pride in his voice, tempered often by a note of fond frustration at his most recent antic. The two had met at university when the much younger billionaire heir had been assigned to him as a roommate, and his damned soft heart had immediately become attached to the gangly, out of place kid who was suddenly a fixture in his life. It wasn't even a difficult process, taking the other boy under his wing had been as natural as breathing, the kid was bubbly and snarky, enjoying a good time, and yet could be polite and charming when it suited him. His mom had been taken by Tony from the first moment she met him, and he smiled his bright, dimpled grin while kissing the back of her hand, he had an open-ended invitation to the Rhodes household whenever he wanted it.

What really cemented Tony's place as his brother, however, was the sensitive side that he only rarely allowed to the surface in the privacy of their dorm room. One evening when Rhodey had called it a night quite early to do some revision for a maths exam that he really didn't want to fail, he had pushed the door to their shared room open to find the younger boy curled up in the cramped space beneath the bed, sobbing soundlessly. It had taken him almost an hour to coax him out, and another besides for him to cry himself out leaning against Rhodey's shoulder. In the comforting silence of the middle of the night they shared their life stories, their deepest secrets and innermost thoughts, and Tony unburdened himself of the unholy pressures of the Stark family name.

And, as they say, the rest is history.

Now over the years, they both had grown into men who enjoyed a good time, who liked a lavish party and to indulge in alcohol, Tony more so. It was not unusual to find one or the other of them passed out on the nearest available flat surface in various states of undress, nor to receive a call from the other when they were two sheets to the wind, asking for the other to bail them out of trouble or come drive them home.

So it wasn't exactly unusual for him to receive a call from Tony at just past midday on a Tuesday, but ever since taking up the mantle of Iron Man, and more particularly since he took Spiderman under his wing, he had gotten a handle on his drinking and binges and hadn't needed his help for quite a few years.

It was therefore with a ball of concern sitting heavy in his gut that Rhodey answered the familiar tones of Back in Black blaring from his phone, well-practiced taunt on the tip of his tongue as he greeted his old friend.

"What's up Tones? Got your ass in a spot of bother and need me to sort it out again?" he jibed, clamping the phone between his ear and shoulder while he leant down to tug his boots on.

"Not my ass this time honey bear, but you've got the right idea. We're having a spot of bother with the kid right now, and I could really use my bestie for moral support."

Even through the slightly sketchy phone line, Rhodey could hear the exhaustion in Tony's hoarse voice and could almost see him scraping a hand across his facial hair as he spoke, tucked into the nearest corner for privacy.

"Is Peter okay?" Rhodey asked, he had only met the teenager once or twice, but the kid had such an infectious smile and his stammering hero worship was quite frankly adorable. Both times he had peppered him with questions about the War Machine suit and how his day had been, and the thousand-watt grin he had received when he presented him with a Lego set had made his decision for him. Peter was officially his honorary nephew, and he was counting down the days until their newly scheduled movie night, where he was going to introduce the kid to the masterpiece that was the Back to the Future trilogy and then thrash him at Trivial Pursuit, so it was concerning that the kid was in trouble. Then the second half of Tony's sentence filtered through and a frown took over his face, "now you only ask for my moral support in very certain circumstances, and I'm really not in the mood for shopping right now!"

"It's shopping for the kid! And you know I wouldn't ask you to do the very thing you hate if I didn't really need your help."

"Fine, fine. But you owe me big time for this, and I'm talking ice cream sundae big Tones."

"Thank you Rhodey, see you in twenty."

The sheer relief in Tony's exhalation was enough to tell him that he'd made the right decision in choosing to acquiesce to his friend's demands, and to forgive him for hanging up on him. Luckily he had been stumbling around the house while on the phone, narrowly avoiding toppling over every single piece of furniture he owned trying to pull on his jacket, so to leave the house all he needed to do was grab his car keys and pull the door shut behind him to be on his way, otherwise he would never meet Tony's twenty minute time limit.