Later that day ...
Well. That had blown up quickly.
The strange thing was, he hadn't expected it - he almost never expected the precipitous descent into flaming wreckage that characterized about seventy-five percent (on a good day) of his social interactions, not until they were stalling out and he was too annoyed, flustered, or indifferent to salvage them. He wasn't always surprised, exactly, because despite all evidence to the contrary he'd managed to acquire some small measure of self-awareness over the years; but he didn't often set out to do it. ... Not very often. At any rate, in this particular case, he'd actually set out to impress. The fact that he'd set his sights on someone who quite clearly loathed him should have given him the necessary heads-up that his efforts were unlikely to succeed. It had not. Failure wasn't an outcome he ever genuinely considered, notwithstanding his abysmal success rate.
Which was probably why he was so awful at taking it in stride. That, and the fact that he was always right.
First thing after Rogers' departure, Tony stormed off, his shoulders locked up in an attitude that couldn't have more clearly expressed I don't want to hear it if the words had been printed on his back. In his stormier moods, he often spent hours shut away in the workshop-cum-laboratory he'd shoved into one of the spare rooms several years ago, working through his vexation, frustration, or exasperation of the moment by steadfastly ignoring it until his brain purged itself of the offending chemical buildup (often with the aid of alternative, preferable chemical additives). Tonight, he spent all of eight minutes trying to immerse himself - before bursting back out into the living room and marching over to the bar. Again.
"What the fuck is that guy's problem?" He started pushing through the bottles standing at the back - not that he couldn't find what he wanted. He just had absolutely no idea.