A concept: Rhodey is forced to room with Tony their first semester at MIT and he’s really not feeling the idea of being a babysitter for the Stark Heir so he’s kind of resentful.
Then one morning he wakes up with a splitting headache and Tony leaning over him wearing a look like Mama Rhodes usually does when she’s disappointed in him. “You went out to party instead of doing your homework and you’re late for class! I did your calculus for you. I’ll go over the answers for you later. Here’s a smoothie. It’s got stuff to help with your hangover. I packed a lunch for you and it’s stuff that should be okay for your upset tummy. I hope you’re not allergic to almond butter.” Rhodey stumbles out of the door to Tony shooing him off like a mother hen. He thinks maybe he judged Tony too harshly. Maybe he’s way more mature than Rhodey thought.
Then he sees Tony making doe-eyes at the hot TA in their shared chemistry course and the hot TA smirking back at him and he figures he really does need to take care of this kid. “He’s fourteen. You’re a decade older than him. I will end you if you touch him,” Rhodey hisses, and he’s only a few years older than Tony but the TA goes white. He buys a pint of Cherry Garcia on his way back to the dorm.
And when Tony cries because he thought the TA was really interested in him and now the TA won’t give him the time of day he shoves it into Tony’s hands. “Show me what I missed in Calculus and forget about that asshole.” “Okay,” Tony sobs around a mouthful of ice-cream.
Whoops, my hand slipped. I wrote a thing…like 2k of a thing.
Housing@mit.edu was less than kind when they emailed him back and denied him room reassignment. So, one James Rhodes, ROTC recruit, first-year mechanical engineering major, was more than grumpy to say the least as he trudged down the hallway towards his room.
“Give him a chance,” his mother said as she hugged him goodbye. “He might just surprise you.”
“‘Give him a chance,’ she says,” James muttered under his breath, too low for anyone around him to hear. “She’s not the one who has to take care a fifteen year old child.” James inserted his key into the keyhole and turned it, not bothering to hide his unimpressed look when he stepped through the door.
One Anthony Stark was in his–their room now, sitting on the right bunk, and his face looked glum. His head jerked up when he saw James walk through the door, and he quickly shoved whatever was in his hands behind him. He jumped down (God, he’s so small, James thought) and approached the taller boy, giving him a wide grin.
“Anthony Stark,” James said.
Tony shook his head, lifting his hand towards James. “That’s only when I’m in trouble. Call me Tony instead.”
“Tony then,” James corrected, shaking Tony’s hand. “James. James Rhodes, but you already know that.”
Tony nodded. “Hope we get along this year,” Tony said. His voice sounded hopeful and unsure, like he’s sure that James would reject him. For a moment, James felt sorry for the kid, but then he remembered that he would probably have to babysit the kid, and he tamped down the feeling again.
James waited a beat too long to reply to Tony’s comment, and Tony’s smile wilted. “Sure, yea, of course,” James hastily said, trying to cover up his stumble.
But the damage was already done. Tony took a step back, and while his smile was back on his face, it looked fake. “Nice to meet you, James,” Tony mumbled, pushing past him and out the door.
James felt slightly bad, but he was sure that Tony would be fine.
After that initial meeting, James found out that Tony was in two of his engineering classes, and his chemistry. Basically, Tony was in all his classes but calculus, and James looked up in exasperation. Was this karma? James thought, subtly glaring at Tony when he saw him walk through the door.
James saw the way Tony glanced around quickly, sizing up his classmates, before he settled his eyes on James. His eyes brightened, and James’s stomach sank. At this rate, he wasn’t going to find friends because he had a fifteen year old attached to him. Tony bounced over and sat in the desk beside him.
“Hey James,” Tony mumbled. “Funny how most of my classes are with you.”
James nodded absently before he did a double-take. “Most?” James asked in shock.
“Yea, I’m also taking an electrical engineering class and linear algebra.” Tony shrugged nonchalantly.
“Wait.” James was flabbergasted. “You’re taking five classes.”
“Yea. I’m a double major. I kinda do have to take more classes if I want to graduate in four years. Besides, the lower div classes are easy.”
“Huh.” James said, but he was stalled from saying more because the professor began his lesson.
Needless to say, while he was awed by Tony’s intellect, he could care less about the way Tony followed him to the cafeteria like a lost puppy.
James lost sight of him for a moment while he went through the salad line, but he quickly came bouncing back with two slices of pizza on his platter. James looked at Tony’s platter critically, but he didn’t say anything. Tony followed him while James walked past the crowd of students.
“James?” Tony asked. James looked down at him. Bolstered by his attention, Tony continued, “Do you want to work together for lab?”
James contemplated it. It…was actually not a bad idea, what with Tony being the Stark heir and all. At least he could ensure that he would get a decently high grade in his labs at least.
“Okay,” James finally said. The ensuing grin that Tony gave him was genuine, and James couldn’t help but grin back.
“Thanks,” Tony said, as if James was doing him a great favor. And the longer James thought about it, it could be true: Tony, as one of the youngest students at MIT, would have a hard time finding friends, despite him being tagged as the next Stark heir and one of the smartest in their class. James trudged through the crowd before he finally saw a familiar face in the crowded hall and he picked out a seat next to one of the other ROTC recruits he met during orientation.
“Hey,” James greeted. The other boy smiled.
“Hey yourself! Who’s the kid behind you?”
“Scott, this is Tony. Tony, Scott,” James introduced. He sat down, and Tony took a seat next to him. Scott was looking at Tony weirdly.
“How old are you?” Scott inquired.
Tony frowned slightly. “Not that it’s really any of your business, but I’m fourteen.”
The fork that James held in his hand missed his mouth by a wide margin, bouncing off his cheek and sending the cucumber scattering to the floor. “You’re fourteen?” James raised his voice in surprise.
Tony’s eyes became guarded. “You got a problem with that, James?”
James shook his head hastily. “No, no problem.”
Jesus. He needed a drink. Screw ROTC rules and the law.
For seven weeks, James and Tony tiptoed around each other with thinly-veiled politeness. They still saw each other more often than not, and the ROTC guys more or less accepted the fact that they had adopted a kid into their table, but Tony didn’t really talk all that much.
It was week eight which changed everything.
James woke up Thursday morning with a splitting headache from Wednesday’s night post-midterm party, regretting all of his life’s choices.
“James,” Tony said, shaking him. James groaned, and the sound amplified in his head. It took all of his willpower not to throw up.
When the feeling settled, he cracked an eye open. “What,” James snarled. Tony’s face was a mere five inches away, and he looked disappointed. It didn’t look unlike the face his mother had when she was disappointed.
“You went out to party instead of doing your homework and you’re late for class!” Tony scolded. James sat up abruptly when he heard that.
“Shit.” He had to fight hard not to throw up on his blanket. Tony shoved his trash can under his nose and he threw up into it. He looked up at him, grateful for the save, and he tumbled out of bed. Tony handed him a cup of water, and he took it, running to the bathroom to freshen up quickly.
James rushed to put on the nearest pants from the floor, and Tony shoved him his backpack when he finished tossing on his nearest shirt. James instinctively grabbed it before it could fall to the floor. “I did your calculus for you. I’ll go over the answers with you later.”
“Also, here’s a smoothie; it should help you with your hangover.” James held onto the bottle, and then Tony passed him a brown paper bag. “I packed a lunch for you and it’s stuff you should be okay for your upset tummy. I hope you’re not allergic to almond butter.”
It was all so fast that James stumbled out of their dorm door wondering what just happened. Tony shoved him gently, and James took a couple more steps forward instinctively.
“Go on, go to class!” Tony said before he closed the door. James looked back at the shut door, bemused.
Perhaps he underestimated him.
James saw Tony in a new light during the next two weeks, and he respected him a lot more now too: not only was Tony brilliantly smart, he was also generous and kind. He also talked a lot more, now that James gave him the time of day, and it was filled with amusing commentary and rants about how the other kids in his class were idiots and how his electrical engineering professor was making calculations based on faulty assumptions.
“I don’t know why he’s still teaching!” Tony moaned, throwing his hands up in the air. James looked on with amusement.
“Your thesis could be proving him wrong then,” James quipped back.
Tony’s eyes lit up, and he grinned. “That’s it! I’ll do that!”
James rolled his eyes, but he smirked behind his fork before tuning back into the ROTC conversation about mechanical engineering. The other kids began to respect Tony more too, once they saw James including Tony into their conversation, and when they realized Tony had valuable advice to say, they invited him over much more than just dinner table conversations. Tony was now part of three study groups and tutoring two more kids from their little group.
Tony was happier, James noticed. And now that James was paying more attention to Tony as a friend instead of a kid, he noticed a lot more about his surroundings.
“Tony,” Rhodey said absently as he carefully measured out the cupric oxide on the scale. “Can you measure out the water?”
When no answer was forthcoming, he looked up in confusion. Beside him, Tony was enraptured by…James looked over, following Tony’s eyesight.
He was making doe-eyes at their TA, and the TA was smirking back at him. James frowned, and he elbowed Tony, breaking him out of the trance. “Water. Two hundred milliliters please.”
“Yea, okay,” Tony replies. James looked at him sharply as Tony took one last glance at the TA before he turned back to their lab.
“I’m going to go get the solution,” James said. Tony nodded. James made his way towards the front of the room. He leaned over the TA’s shoulder.
“He’s fourteen. You’re a decade older than him,” James hissed. He grabbed the solution from the counter. “I will end you if you touch him.” When James straightened up again, the TA’s eyes widened in fear and he turned a chalky white at his threat.
Mission accomplished, James turned around, and he smirked. He carried the solution to his table, where Tony was working on mixing the sodium oxide with the water in the beaker.
“Got the solution?” Tony asked. James placed it on the table.
“Yea.”
As the lab continued, James noted that Tony looked up towards the front of the room several times more, but this time, the TA looked away. Tony’s smile gradually grew smaller and smaller as the lab continued, but James found that he wasn’t sorry at all for threatening her.
When the lab was finished, Tony packed his bag glumly and left. With that face, James just knew that they weren’t going to have dinner at the cafeteria today. So instead, James headed to the store instead, and he bought a pint of Cherry Garcia before making his way back to the dorm.
This time, James trudged up the steps (the dorm’s elevator was broken, and they haven’t fixed it for a month), and he inserted his key into the hole.
Tony was sitting on his bunk, crying.
“Tony?” James asked. Tony looked at him with big tears in his eyes.
“I thought he liked me!” Tony said thickly. James still didn’t feel bad. It was better to protect his virtue from preying souls. He was a mature kid, yes, but he was still a kid, and he needed a big brother to help protect him.
Mama Rhodes was right. Tony did surprise him.
So James shoved the ice cream into his hands. Tony looked down at the carton before he opened the lid, and James passed him a spoon. “Show me what I missed in Calculus and forget about that asshole.”
“Okay,” Tony sobbed, his mouth full of ice-cream.
James gave Tony a hug. It was actually nice, nice to have a kid brother to take care of. And he would take care of this kid.
This is beautiful and I love it and I love you
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