"I don't know," Tony replied, a little peevish, too quickly to have given it any thought at all. Because he didn't need to, of course; he knew why most people would say Barton (or one of any number of people) was a more effective communicator than he was. It wasn't complicated. He said the wrong things - he said what he was thinking. (Which was, of course, what he'd been taking Rogers to task for all night, but, naturally, that was different.) "Because I don't scratch people behind the ears and tell them what they want to hear?"
He didn't meet his eyes, though, preferring instead to survey the remains of the anti-climax that had been dinner, the entirely wasted preparation - no one had enjoyed it, that was for sure. He knew where he wanted to put the blame, and knew, too, that arguing about whether it was being fairly distributed would only send him into another thicket of offense and misunderstanding he wouldn't extricate himself from without a verbal machete. With Jarvis it was better than with most - he didn't have to worry about being fundamentally misconstrued, or setting off any knock-down, drag-out rows - but he'd had his fill of getting hauled in front of his own mistakes, tonight. He didn't want anymore. Like he'd tried to tell Rogers: I don't want to talk about this.
And so, as he usually did when he was in danger of being forced to confront a point of weakness, he turned the conversation around on his partner. "You can't think he'll last long. The way he acts - he has to grow up. We did." There was some amount of a genuine sense of injustice in there, despite the breathtaking hypocrisy of a man who'd gotten up at three in the afternoon telling anyone to act like an adult - it was probably the closest he'd come so far to putting his finger on his real complaint. He set his glass on the table in front of him, and leaned both elbows on the back of the chair. Quirking an eyebrow at him, he reached for one of the pieces of fruit that had been sitting in the centerpiece for ... a while. "You can't tell me you think he's not acting like he's got shit for brains."