#pepperhony

Rhodey exits his armor similarly to how Tony had, stepping out of the way as it takes off to follow the Iron Man armor back home. Then he walks over to Tony and pulls out his wallet, giving him two quarters for the Skee-Ball machine.

“Thanks,” Tony says, dropping the coins into the slot.

“I’ll put it on your tab,” Rhodey says wryly, then tucks his hands into his pockets and watches Tony fail miserably at Skee-Ball.

“It’s all rigged,” Tony complains afterwards, pouting.

Rhodey shrugs. “It’s just Skee-Ball.”

“It’s easy enough when you get the hang of it,” Pepper agrees.

Tony stares expectantly at both of them, until Pepper sighs and looks around for a machine to break a dollar into quarters. She hands two quarters to Rhodey, then the two of them play their own round of Skee-Ball.

Pepper beats Rhodey by 50 points, and they eye each other warily as their scores flash on the digital scoreboard.

“That was a fluke,” Rhodey says with zero inflection.

“Whac-A-Mole?” Pepper suggests calmly.

Which is how Tony ends up following Pepper and Rhodey down the boardwalk as they take turns at every game. Rhodey wins at Whac-A-Mole and the water gun race, while Pepper clinches two different ring toss games. Whenever a win nets one of them a prize they hand it off to Tony and continue to the next game, until eventually Tony is trailing after them with his arms full of cheap prizes.

“Guys?” he says cautiously, balancing a stuffed cat in a banana costume on top of the pile of prizes he’s carrying. “This wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Rhodey and Pepper turn back to him before they can pay the attendant at the milk bottle toss booth. It seems to break them out of whatever competitive trance they had both fallen into, and Pepper looks down at the money in her hand like it’s a wild animal about to bite her.

“Jeez, Tones,” Rhodey says in surprise at the amount of stuff Tony’s carrying.

“Yeah, jeez,” Tony repeats with a laugh. “I think you’ve proven yourselves, you can stop now.”

“Okay, but who got the most prizes?” Rhodey asks, which makes Pepper roll her eyes.

“Me, obviously. Weren’t you counting?”

They both look expectantly at Tony, who stares back at them and says, “Uhh…”

Pepper sighs and shakes her head. “This is silly. We’ll call it a tie.”

Rhodey glances back at her. “This time.”

Pepper gives him one of her ‘are you really challenging me?’ smiles she normally reserves for business meetings, and Tony just sighs. Why did he get stuck with not one but two surprisingly competitive partners?

“What should we do with these?” he asks, trying to distract them from what he assumes will become a lifelong quest to agonize him specifically.

“You don’t want to keep them?” Rhodey teases. He spots a family with two kids walking by and he grabs two of the stuffed animals from the top of the pile. “Hey-- Want a toy from Iron Man?”

They pass out the prizes to kids on the boardwalk until there’s only one left, a keychain hamburger with big cartoon eyes. Rhodey grins and holds it back out to Tony.

“Here, this one’s for you,” he says.

Tony snorts and takes the keychain. “I’ll attach it to the keys to the suit.”

“That’s a good idea,” Rhodey says seriously, managing to keep a completely straight face. “Don’t want to lose those.”

Pepper swears under her breath and the two of them turn around to find her looking at her phone.

“We’re going to be late now,” she says with a huff. “How could we get so distracted?”

Tony laughs and loops his arm around her elbow, giving her a squeeze. “Don’t act like you’re blameless. I was the innocent party here.”

“And don’t you complain, you got a hamburger keychain out of it,” Rhodey reminds him.

“Do I sound like I’m complaining?”