"You are so very welcome," Tony said, his enthusiasm inversely proportional to the weight of that request, as he turned to flip over a highball, pack it with ice and a cucumber for good measure, and fill it with water from a decanter that clearly wasn't meant to dispense more than a splash at a time. "You change your mind, let me know. I make a mean glass of milk."
It hadn't really entered his mind that Rogers' straight-and-narrow comportment wasn't an affectation. That straight face, those flat clothes, his well-known inability to suffer through more than the first quarter of a party, water will be fine, thank you - it was, whatever its other shortcomings, a very clearly communicated message. Simple, coherent, distinctive. They were all playing this long game, building themselves up and amplifying certain traits until they were cartoonishly prominent, burying others until they were snuffed out for lack of air. Rogers played it better than most, spicing up his drab angle with just the right amount of danger: because insufficient delight in the Capitol's splendor was, of course, dangerous.
Tony might have envied him his schtick - it really was unique - if it hadn't required so much austerity. He handed Rogers his water, clicked the base of his own glass against it, and drank. After a day of cloying drinks that had been little more than vehicles for obligatory calories, the purity of it almost made him sigh - little more than a sharp herbal volatility, like dry spring pinyon shade, so clean its viscosity was only attributable to the chill. No, he could never have pulled off a Steve Rogers. There were things he loved entirely too much.
"I wanted to catch you before you ran home," he said, heading for the table that ran parallel to the broad, high windows. "You're always haring off the first chance you get. What's the draw, anyway?" Some romance, or the chance to be a big fish in a small pond, would have seemed the most likely answer with almost anyone. With him ... "Or are we just that intolerable?" He asked with a look of exaggerated hurt that was meant to be manifestly teasing, but in his mind it was actually a pretty perilous question.