The Path to the Tower

4.1: The Billionaire Playboy

Tony was dying. Which quite frankly sucked considering it had only just felt like he'd started living his own life. Not to mention, he finally had this woman right in his reach that he really thought he could honestly love. Maybe he did already. It was a little hard to isolate that particular emotion for him. He knew he loved Rhodey. That was pretty clear early on and if the guy wasn't painfully straight, maybe he could have really stuck it to dad by bringing home his black boyfriend. Then as soon as gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts they could have hopped on a jet and maybe right now, he would actually be happy and he wouldn't have been tortured because he wouldn't have felt like punishing Rhodey that day.

Those weren't the cards he was dealt though. Instead, here he was just turning his life around and the very thing he'd created to save his life was slowly killing him. The Russian who came to kill him was a nice little distraction really. Something to keep his mind on literally everything else that was falling apart around him.

So, the positives were. Stark Industries was in good hands. He didn't have to worry about that anymore. Pepper wouldn't let them go back to weapons manufacturing. He knew that. His legacy was safe with her.

And... that was it. That was the positive. The list of negatives was longer.

He didn't have the girl. Not really. It wasn't like he hadn't tried to tell her. It's just that even though he could talk and talk and talk and talk. When there were important words they wouldn't come and no one seemed to be able to read him. So they were dancing around each other and never actually doing anything about it. She still thought he was a fuck up. Which okay, maybe there was truth to that but he was trying to get it together. What was the point though when you were getting rapidly poisoned by something you needed to survive?

His whole fucking life was built on some lie and it turned out good old dad was stealing ideas from some Russian and now his son was out to destroy him.

Justin Hammer of all people was being a royal pain in the ass. Not a major concern sure, but he just seemed to always be there at the moment like a fly buzzing around your head.

Rhodey seemed to think he should hand over the Iron Man technology to the military. He just couldn't. He couldn't. It was him. It was part of who he was now. More than that though. He didn't trust them. Not after he had seen his own name written on devices that had been sent to kill him and worse, actual innocent people. They couldn't have it. They could pry it from his cold dead hands.

Which would be happening much sooner than he liked to be honest. The way it was going he wasn't making it to the end of the year. Not by a long shot.

Now the question was; is losing someone you love worse or was it better if you just thought they were an asshole? Being an asshole wasn't exactly hard for him. He could easily just slip back into that. It wasn't as if he deserved to have them around anyway.

He straightened his tie. Well, it was his birthday. Not too many people knew they were about to have their last birthday. So that was a positive too he guessed. He picked up the glass of whiskey on the dresser and drained it, relishing the strong burn as it went down and headed out into the party.