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Rhodey is already halfway across the living room to where Tony is sitting on the couch, desperately saying, “Tones, I need your help,” before their apartment door has even shut behind him.
Tony, conditioned by a lifetime of living with Howard, automatically says, “No,” only to wince when his brain finally catches up with him. “Sorry.” He’s been trying to be better about his responses to help requests.
Rhodey smiles warmly at him for a moment, aware of how much work Tony’s put in to unlearning the habits growing up in the Stark household taught him. Then he goes right back to whatever’s got him so spun up and repeats, “Your help. I need it.”
“Yoda, we are,” Tony shoots back at him.
Rhodey shoves him into the couch cushions.
Once Tony’s managed to extract himself from their ridiculously plushy couch, he asks, “So what’s up?”
“Alright, so I know you don’t like hearing about my ROTC stuff—”
Not entirely true. Tony doesn’t like hearing about anything that means Rhodey’s going to be fighting overseas where he could possibly die, but he hasn’t told him that.
“But after Senator Mouthbreather—”
“What a dick,” Tony chimes in, knowing that Rhodey has a particular distaste for this guy and his faux-liberal politics. Tony doesn’t like him either, but that’s mostly cause he doesn’t like any guy who makes his wife cry at every party they attend. He gets enough of that at home.
“Yeah, what a dick,” Rhodey agrees. “You know, I heard he pays his aides jack squat? Asswipe sits there and talks about a fair and equal wage for all and then he turns around and—"
“You’re getting off topic there, honeybear,” Tony cuts in amusedly. Not that he minds listening to Rhodey rant about the various politicians he hates—Reagan currently tops the list—but something tells him that Rhodey isn’t actually upset over Senator Mouthbreather’s hypocrisy.
“Right, after what he said about ROTC just picking jobs for cadets instead of giving them a choice, which isn’t true! Anyway, the brass decided to bring in some speakers to talk about what they do for the Air Force, you know, in case any of us wanted to change our careers.” He snorts. “Like that’ll happen at MIT, of all places.”
“And this has to do with me… how?”
“Cause last night, they had the most amazing test pilot.”
Tony starts to grin. He thinks he sees where this is going. “Yeah? What was her name?”
Rhodey glares at him for a long time before reluctantly admitting, “Lieutenant Carol Danvers.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Rhodey thunks his head against the back of the couch. “We’re supposed to be throwing her a mixer so we can get a chance to talk to her, but I overheard her on the phone earlier.”
“Rhodey, you dog! Are you stalking the probably-lovely Lieutenant Carol Danvers?”
“No,” Rhodey tries to insist, but Tony’s on to him now. And after all that talk about how Tony shouldn’t join that physics class last semester just so he could have an excuse to talk to Rumiko Fujikawa too! “We just happened to pass each other on the green. She was on the phone with someone, and she said she was gonna skip out and go to a bar or something.”
“My kind of woman,” Tony says approvingly.
“No,” Rhodey says flatly. “You’re underage.”
“You’re not much better,” Tony points out. “Lieutenant, that puts her—what—four, five years older than you?”
“I’m not going to ask her her age,” Rhodey says primly. “And that’s not why I want to talk to her anyway.”
“That’s because you’re boring.”
Rhodey ignores him. “Look, I just want an introduction. That’s it. That’s all I need from you, Tony, please. It’s not even about being attracted to her. I mean, I am, but I know she’s way out of my league. I just want to get the chance to talk to her about this project that she’s working on. You know I think it’s cool as hell that the military’s letting women be test pilots, even if they won’t let them fly in combat yet.”
“Which is bullshit,” Tony says, a refrain that’s just as old as Rhodey’s complaints about Senator Mouthbreather. “What, they won’t let them die by way of an explosion from an enemy missile, but they’ve got no problem letting them die by way of an explosion from an experimental engine? Sure, that makes sense.”
Rhodey snickers. “Please,” he says again. “You know I want to be a pilot, and what the lieutenant was talking about with the planes she was flying, it sounded like my kind of job.”
“So, what? You’re gonna become a test pilot now?”
“No, but it sounded a lot like the kind of stuff that SI is putting out, the kind of stuff that I want to fly eventually, and I thought it might be good to get a firsthand account of what flying those planes is like.”
“And what about my finals? I’m supposed to be studying tonight.”
“Like you don’t already know all the material,” Rhodey says, waving a dismissive hand. “I can make it up to you later. I’ll quiz you, sound good?”
“Fine, but you’ll also ask Mama Rhodes to make that blackberry pie for my graduation,” Tony counters.
“Done.”
Wow, Rhodey must really like this test pilot. Normally, it takes hours of negotiating to get him to agree to asking his mom to make Tony’s favorite pies whenever they drive to Philadelphia for the holidays.
He sighs and says goodbye to his studying for the night. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”
Seeing what he can do mostly just involves putting in a phone call to his Aunt Peggy. He refuses, just on principle, to talk to his dad, even though Howard is more likely to have the right contacts in the Air Force to put him in touch with Danvers, so Aunt Peggy it is. She still heads up SHIELD, though she’s been thinking about retiring sometime in the next few years; she should still have a few contacts or at least know who he should talk to instead.
Fortunately, though, when he calls her, she knows exactly who he’s talking about, and after she spends thirty minutes making sure that Tony isn’t trying to track her down so either he or Rhodey can ask her out (he thinks Rhodey might have wanted to if he were a little older, but his honeybear keeps insisting that it’s all a professional interest), is more than willing to put together a dinner for the three of them—“You will not meet her at a bar, darling,” she says sternly. Lieutenant Danvers, it turns out, is working on a joint project between the Air Force and SHIELD called Pegasus. Tony wonders what she could possibly be working on that requires a collaboration like that, but he knows better than to ask, and ever since Aunt Peggy found him using her pass to hack into the files on Captain America back when he was twelve, SHIELD has kept all of their files as paper copies, so there’ll be no more hacking for him. Looks like whatever SHIELD and the Air Force are up to will remain a mystery.
“But if she says no, you’ll accept that, Tony,” Aunt Peggy insists. “No more trying to track her down. We women don’t like it when men don’t take no for an answer.”
And, huh, Tony hadn’t even thought about it like that. “Agreed,” he says immediately. He doesn’t want to be creepy. “And—” He glances over at Rhodey, who’s been listening in. Rhodey picks up on what he’s thinking and nods. “Tell her it’s not a date or anything. We really just want to learn more about the jets.”
She calls back about an hour later with the news that Danvers has agreed to meet them for dinner. He relays the good news to Rhodey, who immediately freaks out about it like it was a date as though Tony won’t even be there. Tony finds it pretty funny, all things considering, since it isn’t, for one thing, and Rhodey is definitely too young for Danvers, but he keeps his mouth shut. This is one of those Good Bro times, and he’s a Good Bro, which means supporting his best friend through his hero worship and very impossible crush.
They wind up running a little late to dinner since Tony is always late to everything, including, as his mother and Jarvis frequently remind him, his own birth. Rhodey bitches to him the entire way there, complaining that it’ll be Tony’s fault if Danvers is gone by the time they get there. Tony keeps his mouth shut, knowing after three years of living together that when Rhodey gets in this mood, it’s pointless to try to point out the facts, which are that Tony is a Stark and no ambitious pilot would ever walk out on a dinner with a Stark (he also sets aside the fact that this is almost certainly a habit that Rhodey picked up from him, who can also be… slightly irrational when he’s worried about something).
Lieutenant Danvers, however, is still waiting for them outside the little bar and grill that Aunt Peggy had made reservations at. She’s out of uniform in a white t-shirt and jeans, blonde princess curls falling around her shoulders, and Tony can easily see why Rhodey would find her attractive. She looks just a little too much like what Tony’s baby cousin, Sharon, will grow up to look like though for him to share Rhodey’s attraction.
“Lieutenant Danvers, hi!” he says, getting out of the car. Polite, he reminds himself. Not abrasive. Rhodey might actually kill him this time if Tony fucks up his chances again. “I’m Tony.”
“Call me Carol,” she replies, shaking his hand.
Tony waits for Rhodey to introduce himself, but Rhodey seems to be starstruck by her. He rolls his eyes and jerks his thumb at him. “This is—”
“Cadet Rhodes,” Carol says smoothly. “I remember you from yesterday. Nice to meet you both.”
“Rhodey wanted the chance to talk to you some more about the joint collaboration you’re working on—I wouldn’t mind hearing more about it too since all I could find about Project Pegasus was a shitty piece of code that said ‘Stay out, Tony.’ It’s like they don’t trust me or something.”
Carol laughs. “Well, sorry to say, I don’t know much about the project itself, and even if I did, there’s only so much I can tell you before it all becomes classified. I just fly the planes. If you want to know about Pegasus, you’ll have to talk to the research head, Dr. Lawson.”
Tony gapes at her. “You mean Dr. Wendy Lawson?” he squeaks.
“Sounds like you’re familiar.”
“She’s amazing,” Tony breathes reverently. They’d met at a gala a few years ago, and Tony had definitely walked away starstruck. The work she’s doing on interstellar travel is absolutely incredible. Tony would kill people for the chance to work with her.
By the time they’re seated, Rhodey has fortunately found his voice again, saluted Carol (and promptly been reminded that they’re both out of uniform, and she doesn’t stand for that kind of fuss anyway), and struck up a conversation with her about the jets she flies as part of Project Pegasus. Stark Industries doesn’t do a lot with planes, other than arming them, and Tony had been too busy with studying for his exam tomorrow to read up on them. But that’s okay because tonight isn’t about him anyway (it had taken Rhodey a good year to get that hammered through his head), so he contents himself with knowing that Rhodey’s made a friend and tries to make eyes at the guy standing by the bar.
He's gorgeous, all dark hair and grey eyes and a frankly stunning prosthetic that Tony very badly wants to get his hands on, but he’s also more interested in staring at a family eating dinner halfway across the restaurant. Tony doesn’t know what’s so interesting about them, other than that one of them is the president of MIT, but maybe there’s some sort of torrid affair going on between Gorgeous Eyes and the president’s wife—or even the president himself, Tony isn’t judgy.
…Much.
Eventually, he gives up trying to catch Hottie McDreamy’s attention and tunes back in to Carol and Rhodey’s conversation, just in time for Rhodey to bring up Dum-E. Tony lights up. The bot really is an idiot, but he’s Tony’s idiot and Tony loves him.
He pulls a picture out of his wallet to show Carol, who goes wide-eyed. Apparently, she hadn’t believed they were serious about Dum-E, which is fine. Most people don’t believe that something like Dum-E is possible now and not twenty years down the line.
“Wow,” she remarks as Tony’s settling the bill. “All I’ve got is my boss’s pet. Goose doesn’t like anyone else on the base.”
“Cat?” Rhodey guesses, drawing a laugh from her.
“How did you know?” she teases. “Yeah, little orange thing. Eats just about everything. One time, the remote went missing, and I swear that Goose ate it, I just can’t prove it.”
Rhodey laughs harder than the joke deserved, but Carol seems fondly amused by it, so Tony counts it as a win for his buddy.
As they’re stepping outside, Carol remarks, “You know, this was nice. When Director Carter told me she’d lined up a dinner for me, I thought it was going to be all business.” She shudders as she heads over to a sleek motorcycle that Tony would love to take a ride on. “But you two are alright. You remind me of me and my best friend.”
Rhodey gives Tony one of those looks that he can read so well after three years of living in each other’s pockets. He steps further back, turning away to squint up at the night sky. He can hear Carol and Rhodey murmuring to each other by the bike, but they’re not loud enough for him to make out any words.
After a few minutes, he hears the roar of the motorcycle. When he turns back around, Carol is long gone, and Rhodey is touching a hand to his cheek, a stunned expression on his face.
“Went that well then, huh?” Tony asks cheerfully, slinging an arm around Rhodey’s shoulders. That’s his honeybear!
“She kissed me,” Rhodey says softly, rubbing his cheek. “Said I was a little young for her, but cute, and told me to look her up once I’ve made first lieutenant.”
Tony’s heart leaps in his chest. “That’s awesome!” he says enthusiastically. “Five years, right?”
“Yeah,” Rhodey says, a grin spreading across his face. “She’s pretty amazing.”
“You’re pretty amazing,” Tony says. “No forgetting it. She’s lucky to have you.”
“Thanks, Tones,” Rhodey says, shoving Tony away companionably and then darting back to the car before Tony can do more than stumble. Shouting, Tony gives chase, laughing as he follows his brother.