"Tony --- and I'd say you'd learn quicker. High stakes can be really focusing.” He pulled the handle to move his line of little red plastic men into position and rested the “legs” of one piece against the ball to keep it from moving.
Tony wondered to himself when the last time was that his life seemed to have a tether. Almost immediately he struck on the answer: Pepper. He’d cut that line himself. For a while, after she’d left he’d misdirected the anger he’d had with himself onto her. Tony had tried to justify all the false promises and the strain he’d put on her by telling himself that if he did things for other people for the right reasons, or because others needed his help then she couldn’t be angry. But he understood better than that now. And not only because Rogers had taught him a bitter lesson about action versus intent -- Pepper had never signed on for the life that he’d ended up offering her. It wasn’t her fault for wanting something different. He shouldn’t have kept acting like someone who wanted her to watch him die, without expecting her to walk away when she’d had enough.
“I don’t know if it helps you learn the right way or the best way, though, just a way.” Besides the usual heaviness to Tony’s dark eyes, his expression revealed none of this thoughts, so it was barely noticeable when he turned more of his attention back outwards. He appraised Poe, trying to decide who it was that Dameron reminded him of but not being able to place his energy quite yet. Maybe it was Rhodes, but maybe that was just a foosball association.
He spun his handle, sending the little ball skipping down the table until it bounced hard off the wall next to Poe’s goal and rolled back towards the centre. “That’s my fault though, I should have clarified that you need to get the ball in the opponent’s net.”