For very specific definitions of the phrase, which ignored the bulk of current events and his own pending post-Mandarin Air Force investigation, James was having a good evening.

He'd put some Roberta Flack on his in-home stereo system - which still, to Tony's chagrin, required CDs. He had a nice glass of a mid-price red mix, not too sweet and not too dry. He'd propped his feet up on his ottoman and begun reading the newest book from a poet that a friend's wife had recommended.

Everything felt beautifully calm. He could go to bed early, too. James smiled, leaned back in his chair, and took another sip of wine.

"Oh my God," said a nasal voice from the doorway. "Rhodey. You got old."

The voice was Tony's, even if it lived in a register James hadn't heard in decades. He closed his eyes very briefly, then turned around.

"Tony. What a pleasant surprise."

"Ha, you're still a bad liar." Tony threw his head back to laugh, highlighting the pimples covering his chin. "Guess what, Rhodes! I found the singularity!"

-

It transpired that Tony hadn't "found" the singularity, so much as he'd taken advantage of a very brief moment - "A blip," Jane Foster said, "barely anything, I had nothing to do with causing it, I swear!" - when time had gotten a little more malleable than usual. And now he was here.

As for James' Tony - the adult, pain-in-his-ass, Iron Man Tony -

"We'll get him back," Jane said. "I'm fully confident of that."

Right.

In the meantime, James was stuck with a seventeen-year-old Tony, zitty and really overly eager to try to break into James's liquor cabinet.

"This is crazy," he said for what felt like the millionth time. "You're telling me I'm a superhero? And the tactile holograph prototype turned into this?" He gestured to the setup in James' living room: three translucent screens, all of which currently held a preponderance of news about Tony Stark's Iron Man suit on them.

"I'm not sure how much I can tell you."

"Where's a biography of me? I don't care about the paradox. My old man would, though, I should go look him up, right? Start a fight for old time's sake."

Damn it. How had he forgotten - or maybe he'd been hoping it wouldn't come up. "Tony," James said, as gently as he knew how. "Your father - your parents, actually - they're not here anymore."

Tony went very still and very, very pale.

And then, of course, he asked the question James had expected. "How did it happen?"

Jane hadn't known what would happen when - when, not if - they got Tony back to his own timeline. Adult Tony might remember this moment when James saw him again.

Maybe this time he'd forgive the incomplete information. "Car accident," James said, and didn't elaborate.

He watched Tony go pale, swallow, try to act unaffected. Of course, he failed at it. James had forgotten what Tony had been like those first few years, so fucking fragile and unguarded that he'd worried about him all the time, even when he was completely unbearable to be around. Tears welled in Tony's eyes, and he scrunched his face and said, "That's fine. I'd rather know now."

It was an obvious lie that James let pass. "You haven't seen modern movies," he said. "You ready?"

He watched as the ghost of his best friend pushed his upset down and pasted a smile on. "Hell yeah, I'm ready!"

This was how it happened, James wanted to tell him. You aren't ready now, you won't be when I start losing you to booze, and you won't be when you get kidnapped.

He couldn't bring himself to say it. What did it matter? He'd be sending this Tony back anyway, to a world full of people who'd give him whatever he wanted and who'd never tell him the truth. There was no point trying to play hero to this kid.

He showed him Independence Day instead. When Tony fell asleep just past midnight with his mouth mashed into James' shoulder, James put a blanket over him and made his escape.

-

"Rhodey. Rhoooooodey."

James groaned and rolled over. Oh, he was awake enough; being career military would do that to a guy. But that didn't mean he wanted to deal with his long-term babysitting charge.

"Nice morning wood, man."

"Tony!" James yanked his covers up. "You're -"

"Nubile," Tony said.

"Obnoxious, and trespassing," James said. "Get out of here."

"I have a question first," Tony said. His eyes flicked over James, clearly trying to make out what was under the covers. He probably thought he was being subtle. He always had, James thought with a flash of unwelcome memory. His fraternity brothers had mocked him for having a skinny, white, underaged shadow.

He blinked and realized that Tony was still waiting. "Spit it out."

"Obie," Tony said. "I fired him?"

"Ousted him," James said. "He was trading weapons illegally. He tried to kill you."

He didn't have the energy to try to soften the blow, nor did he think Tony would appreciate it if he'd tried. It still hurt to watch Tony's face fall.

"The future sucks," Tony said. Right then, James felt inclined to agree.

-

James took Tony to Avengers Tower that day, figuring he'd be safer surrounded by friends, or future friends. People he knew, anyway, and people who could roll with the weirdness of teenage Tony Stark in 2016.

Then Tony met Natasha. "Hey, who's the hottie?"

"No one's ever called me a hottie before," Natasha said. "No one left living, anyway."

She was joking; that was obvious to all the adults at the table. Tony alone paled, looking terrified. "I'm sorry. It's a compliment."

"Not everything you mean to be complimentary is." Natasha smiled, a knife-edge curl of her lips. "I won't use you for target practice, though. This time." She slid off her stool and left the kitchen.

Tony was silent for long enough that James started to wonder if he should worry about permanent scarring. Then he said, "Please tell me I get to land that piece."

"She's not normally like that," James said. "She's nicer, for one. But she'd make your life miserable if you called her 'that piece' to her face."

"Or behind it," the intercom said in Natasha's voice.

James laughed as Tony leaped into the air and yelled.

They spent the rest of the day playing video games. It took Tony an hour and a half to get the hang of the PS4, and then he was off. He had no taste, of course, and James got bored watching him soon enough. He wound up reading while Tony shot shit on the screen and occasionally said something uncomfortably sexual about the graphics quality of the game room's TV.

Eventually he fell asleep, and James, who knew a good thing when he saw it, went and found the guest room Tony reserved for him. As he settled into bed, he could almost hear his Tony's annoyed voice: "It's not a guest room, sweetie pie, it's your room. Do I need to get you a solid gold faceplate? Tell Jarvis to shoot anyone who's not you if they enter?"

Tony hated when someone ignored him doing something nice almost as much as he hated when they thanked him for it. He was an annoying fuck, and James missed him so damn much.

He wasn't going to worry that Tony wouldn't come back. Hell, no. But it took him a long time to fall asleep, and all his mind gave him once he got there were dreams of Tony.

To his immense surprise, Tony waited until after breakfast the next morning to start bugging him. "So what happens to you?"

"I told you -"

"I told you I don't care about the paradox. We're clearly still friends, but that's all I know. You don't even have a Wakipedia page."

"Wiki," James said. "It's a whole slang term."

Tony glared. "What. Happens. To. You."

"There's decades of history, Tony. What -"

"I can give you a biography of Colonel James Rhodes if you'd like, sir," Jarvis said.

Tony didn't realize how unusual it was for Jarvis to interrupt someone. While Rhodey scowled in a direction he assumed contained a house camera, Tony whooped in victory.

"Unless, of course," Jarvis added, "the colonel would like to supply his own details."

"Ha! My robot just kicked your ass, Rhodes." Tony turned an expectant expression on him. "Tell me!"

"When I get adult Tony back, I'm kicking his ass." James shook his head. "I'm career military, I've dated -"

"Women?"

"Both," James said, giving Tony a stern look. "I own a house in PG County down in Maryland. You're still a pain in my ass. Anything else?"

"What's the house like?"

"Small. Quiet." Unlike all of this.

"So you're super boring and super old." Tony sighed. "I can't believe I'm the only awesome person in the future."

James had some choice words to respond to that with - but as he opened his mouth, Jarvis said, "Sir, Dr. Foster is here to speak with you."

"She knows the way in," James said.

Jane did indeed. She skittered to a halt a few feet in front of him a bare minute later, breathless and looking like she hadn't slept since before opening the - whatever it was. "So," she said. "I figured it out."

"Great." James looked around. "And Tony's...?"

"Not here yet," Jane said. "But it's definitely possible to get him back. Likely, even."

"Noooo," Tony said from behind her. "The modern world's awesome, the past is bogus, but he's probably fine in the past, right, I'm old now. He's old now."

"Don't even think about it," James said, at the same time Jane said, "He's fighting an army of Asgardians in the ether, actually."

James stopped. Then he blinked. Then he said, very slowly and deliberately, "What."

"Fighting might be a strong word." She made a face. "Arguing with? They're trying to help him. He's not in a particularly trusting mood."

And of course, then James saw why she'd come to him. "Lead the way," he said. "I'll try to talk some sense into him." He jerked his head at Tony. "Come with us."

Tony's "noooooo"s lasted all the way down to the first floor.

-

"If you're really Thor, you'd put this thong on."

"I would, but you would simply present me with another childish task. Several people want you to come home, Tony."

"Name them."

"...several people," Thor said. James, rounding a corner to Dr. Foster's observation room, saw the tail end of a grimace pass over his face.

"You could've said you," Tony said. "But you didn't. Probably because, in reality, you're not you, just some other space joker."

And that was his cue to enter. "Tony, shut up," James said, walking up to stand next to Thor.

In spite of himself, his heart flipped over when he saw Tony, standing in front of the electro-whatever field Jane had rigged. It looked like the world's shittiest mirror, all sickly green bolts of light and wavering image.

But the image was definitely Tony. He went pale when he saw James. "Rhodey. Holy shit."

"Are you going to accuse me of being a shapeshifter, too?"

"You can't trust anyone out here," he said absently. "It's a madhouse. Who else is here? Pepper?"

"She's on her way," Dr. Foster said.

"If you come out of there, you can see her when she gets here," James said.

"I know you love being cordial with your exes, but some of us prefer some distance."

"She runs your company."

"And thus is kept too busy to send me weepy, drunk 3AM texts, begging me to take her back."

One person in the room believed that might ever happen: Tony the younger, standing off to one side and gaping at his future self.

"If you don't come out of there, I'm going to come in there and get you." James crossed his arms. "If Pepper were here, she'd already have you out. Step over the barrier, Tony."

"If I get spliced -"

"You won't be spliced!" Jane said. "The gravitational field is stable, I've tested it very thoroughly."

"If I get spliced," Tony said through gritted teeth, "you have to go in a suspension tank till mini-me over there gets old enough to date you."

Everyone in the room gaped at that statement. Tony stepped through the barrier. His younger self yelped and disappeared, and Tony said, "Ha, told you it was a bad idea," and passed out in James' arms.

-

The unconsciousness, according to Jane, would last about eight hours, as long as it took for the stasis field to wear off. Well, she utilized an explanation that involved talking about background radiation and non-quantum particles, but James had gotten good at understanding theoretical physics babble.

Pepper arrived at hour 0.5. She didn't seem surprised to see Tony on a table, passed out cold. She kissed his forehead and said to James, "I'm sorry I left you with the other one."

"Mini-Tony? He was fine."

"I came in kind of late," she said. "After he'd already started being -"

"A douche."

"- difficult." Pepper smiled. "But you've been here the whole time."

James shifted in sudden discomfort. "Sure. Well. It's my job."

"Sometimes. You should talk to him when he wakes up."

Her gaze was too knowing for the statement to have a benign meaning - or for James to pretend not to know what she was talking about. "Maybe," he said. "That's as good as I can do."

She nodded and smoothed Tony's hair, then turned the conversation to Stark Industries' non-profit portfolio. When she left after forty-five minutes, James felt almost calm.

Almost.

He had seven hours. He ought to take Tony back to Avengers tower, tuck him into bed, and then find a way to be on the other side of New York, or maybe even the country, when he woke up. Instead, he used one of Tony's cards to hire a car to take them to Maryland.

His house was as he'd left it: small and comfortable. Not in need of a larger-than-life billionaire, which had kind of been the point. But when he lugged Tony inside and got him into bed, he didn't see a billionaire, for once in his damn life. He just saw his friend.

Then he smelled his friend. And then he slept on the couch.

-

"Morning, sunshine."

James opened his eyes to see a plate of eggs and bacon wiggling beneath him. He rolled onto his back, then sat up, and Tony handed him the food. "I thought you were going to sleep the day away," he said, taking a huge bite of bread.

"What time is it?"

"Six-ish." Tony grabbed the remote and turned his TV on.

From anyone else, that might qualify as normal behavior. But James had never known Tony to resist a chance to try to talk James into wiring his house up with Jarvis and auto-everything. "Tony."

"Everything's fine," Tony said. He clicked through each channel. "Thanks for taking my shoes off, by the way. Very considerate."

God. God, he was unbearable. And yet, James had missed him so much that having him back felt like the first A he'd gotten in ochem, like everything was sliding into place.

James kissed him. Of course he did. They hadn't kissed in almost thirty years, but somehow it felt familiar anyway, like the logical conclusion to everything.

Tony pulled away first, but he didn't look surprised. He lifted a hand and brushed rough fingertips against James' face. His eyes were wide, his breath uneven. He looked tender.

"I jerked off on your sheets," he said. "So, if we're going to get busy, we should do it here."

And damn it, James had been broken for almost thirty years, apparently, because that made him laugh, his own answering wave of feeling rising inside him. "You asshole," he said, and shoved Tony's shoulder, going back to his eggs.

They did get busy on the couch, though. And the floor. And, eventually, after he'd taught Tony how to put on a fitted sheet, the bed.