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Tony insisted on fanfare on his first day of school.
He'd driven to school in a bright red Lamborghini - one of many luxury cars that his dad refused to buy him, but which one of his many rich friends owned, and had no qualms about lending because it was "just taking up space anyway."
He'd cajoled his dad's business partner Obadiah Stane into letting Stark Industries sponsor a welcome party for incoming freshmen in his dorm, even if that was strictly against dorm rules (and he had an entire room all to himself, of course, even if that was against dorm rules, too).
He'd even arranged for an up-and-coming indie band to perform at the freshman orientation (not against the rules, for the record, though irregular and certainly ostentatious), just to cause a stir. And it wasn't a coincidence that he got that specific band...
He got it because he loved that band.
And so did Stephen Strange.
That was the point. Somewhere in this prestigious tech campus was Stephen Strange, breaker of rules and social media darling, golden boy of robotics and AI - developer of the Strange Algorithm, a versatile code that could hack every existing digital safeguard on the planet within seconds...which had landed him in hot water with the FBI, until he agreed to keep the code to himself, and to give the FBI a proprietary "guardian angel" code that instantly disabled his first creation, in case it ever manifested elsewhere in the world in some form.
Strange, who already had two engineering degrees by the age of 20, and was starting on advanced studies. Strange, who was but three years older than Tony Stark, 18 - who only had a summa cum laude from MIT to his name, so far.
Strange, who was Tony's personal hero.
All the peacocking that Tony did was to say "I'm here for Stephen Strange" - in code that he hoped that the older boy would be smart enough to notice.
He would be, of course. Tony was sure of that.
He was literally the smartest person in the world.
At least in Tony's world.
But three days after his grand entrance, there was still no correspondence from Stephen Strange.
Tony Stark, used to getting his way, right away, began to get impatient.
However, Tony's attempts at tracking down Stephen yielded nothing. He was puzzled. In the past, Stephen was very visible. He even had livestreams of the parties he attended, the rich scions of tech industry families with whom he shot the breeze, his many brilliant thoughts on the future of scientific R&D.
All of that disappeared as soon as Tony stepped foot on campus. The videos, the writeups, all of it - gone from Stephen’s official spaces.
Rumors flew, of course, but Tony had his own theories. Was Stephen sanctioned? Working on something confidential? Had he heard that genius billionaire playboy freshman Tony Stark was in the house, and was lying low because he was afraid of a little competition?
Was he even still on campus?
Whatever - it just made him a bit harder to track. Tony just had to be discreet, non-stalkery. He would get what he wanted, eventually.
A full week later...nothing.
He didn't realize he had been looking in all the wrong places.
He eventually did, when he finally decided to ask someone outright.
"Oh, Stephen?" Second-year Mechanical Engineering student James "Rhodey" Rhodes was the natural choice: he and Tony just clicked off the bat. (Besides, most other upperclassmen found Tony annoying, so it was better to avoid pestering them and earning himself a possible black eye.) "He transferred colleges last year. Following the accident."
"Transferred?" Tony's eyes were wide as saucers. "To where? Why? What accident?"
"Hey, whoa." Rhodey threw his hands up. "Know what, you and he are a lot alike. Slow down and let us hapless peons catch up!"
The flattering comparison calmed him down some, and Tony tried to do as instructed. He needed answers. Rhodey obliged by giving them to him.
Apparently, Stephen Strange had been out driving late one night...and coming back to his dorm, his car hit something and lost control. He was hospitalized for months. When he got out, he simply and silently transferred out of Engineering, though he stayed in the same university.
"Rumor is," Rhodey continued, "the accident changed him."
"Changed him how?"
Rhodey shrugged. "He's been keeping more to himself. He's been more quiet, too, I hear. No longer hangs with his old pals. People just don't know what's going on with him anymore."
"Where did he transfer to?"
"Music. Specializing in violin, I think."
Tony couldn't believe his ears.
...MUSIC?!
...music.
Tony stood in front of the conservatory, unsure of what he was doing there, exactly.
What was he expecting to find?
Rhodey had no reason to lie to him; he was fun company, but not the prankster type.
Rhodey had no way of understanding how devastating the news was to Tony, either - his admiration of Stephen Strange had been a private thing, something difficult to share with others, when you wanted everyone else to think you didn't care about anyone but yourself.
But that didn't matter. Tony was fine with other people not knowing how much Stephen Strange mattered to him.
Or how much he needed to see it for himself, how much he'd "changed."
Tony had peeked into the music college's records, found the first-year violin majors' schedules, and pinpointed a possible class that Stephen might have just finished attending. He used that knowledge as a guidepost for his search.
Faint strains of music entered his ears as he walked down the conservatory's corridors. He made his way down to the room in the schedule in his head, and found the door ajar.
Sounds of a sad violin drifted to him from inside.
He opened the door. The source of the sound was a tall, lanky young man with short, dark hair that was neatly brushed back. He was playing a melancholy tune in a sort of trance: eyes closed and swaying lightly.
Tony, mesmerized, waited at the doorway until the piece was finished.
When the silence settled and the young man put down the violin, Tony clapped his hands loudly, causing the older boy's eyes to snap open and fix on him.
Gorgeous eyes, bright blue in this light, piercing and relentless.
"As brilliant with the violin as you are with computers, I see," Tony greeted.
Tony didn't expect the reaction he got: a flash of pain crossed the young man's face.
The young man looked away quickly. And turned toward the window, poised to throw his violin out of it.
"Wait wait wait, what the hell, STOP."
Tony strode forward. The young man stopped, as instructed. Looked back at him again.
"I just LITERALLY told you that you were brilliant, and somehow that made you want to smash things?!"
All over the young man's body was a level of poise, of calm. But there was some turmoil in his eyes, in the way his brow furrowed.
"I'm not," he explained slowly, "at the level of improvement that I wanted."
Tony drew in a deep breath, then began again in rapid-fire: "Okay so maybe you're not at maestro level yet. But you're still in your first year of violin - it's too soon for ye olde chucking your gear out the window drama." Tony gestured to the older boy, spread his arms out wide. "I mean, who are you, Sherlock Holmes?"
The young man glanced at the violin in his hand, then back at Tony.
"How’d you know I was in my first year?"
Caught off guard, Tony rubbed the back of his neck with sudden shyness.
"I kind of" - cleared his throat - "asked around about you." Extended the hand that had been rubbing the back of his neck, before he lost his nerve. "Tony Stark."
The older boy took the offered hand, shook it. The hand was cool, hard, the long fingers sharply calloused, against Tony's.
"You know who I am." It was a statement.
"Sure do." Tony beamed. "Matter of fact...I came here for you."
Stephen Strange was a silent coffee companion.
Another notch in Tony's freshly crafted bedpost of college disappointments.
"All right, look." Tony ran his hands a couple of times over his face as if washing it: a feeble gesture of frustration. "When I said I came here for you...I didn't mean in a romantic way, okay? In case that was what you were thinking..."
"Oh, this isn't a coffee date?" The sarcasm was strong. At least one of them wasn't taking this too seriously - it made the whole awkward affair slightly easier to live down.
"What? No. Of course not." Although he allowed himself a touch of offense; so what if it was a coffee date? It was with him - the one and only Tony Stark - did the jerk have to make it sound so terrible? "It's just...this isn't how I imagined it would play out. I came to this school hoping to find you, because I had plans." He caught himself, because WOW, that sounded creepy... "And by plans, I meant like - we were going to meet for the first time over coffee, and talk about tech stuff."
Tony might have fantasized about going on coffee dates with Stephen Strange, and engaging in animated discussions with him. DateS. DiscussionS. More than one of each.
"Tech stuff," Stephen echoed, his eyes unreadable.
"Sure, I mean - you're Stephen Strange! And I'm Tony Stark, heir to Stark Industries. We were going to put our massively oversized brains together and take over the world."
Stephen cocked his head ever so slightly to one side.
"Was that the plan, Mr. Stark?"
"No. Wait a second." He was caught off-guard by the older boy's absolute composure. He needed to regroup. "I don't think 'plan' is the word. Let me rephrase that. That was the hope, yes, I think that's a better term." Change gears. Smile, disarm. "And please, call me Tony. That's what you call me, in the many, many earth-shattering, history-changing conversations we've had in my head, Stephen. Can I call you Stephen?"
"No." He pulled a couple of bills from his wallet - remarkably more than what the single cup of coffee on his side of the table warranted. Planted the bills on the table, then declared: "I have to go."
Still not quite able to believe the "smile, disarm" tactic didn't work, Tony held out his desperate hands to his companion. "No no wait!" he cried. "Please...I want to understand. What happened to you? What made you into...this?"
That might not have been the right way to say things, but it kept Stephen in his seat.
Stephen, face still somewhat shadowed over, replied, "By 'this,' you mean - different from the loud, self-centered, arrogant social media influencer you'd looked up to?"
Tony started. He wouldn't have used those words.
To his mind, Stephen Strange had always been...graceful. To-the-point. And deliberate. Quite simply, he won. Every time.
The self-confidence, the absolute certainty in direction, the magnificence of his fucking ideas - that was what had attracted Tony Stark to Stephen Strange. Not the number of viewers or hits on his social media accounts. Never the numbers.
"The accident I had last year...my cognitive abilities were impaired. I keep trying to think of how to explain it in terms that other people can understand, but I can't...I just don't have the words anymore. So I just...went away. To no one's loss, it seems."
Tony squinted. "Are you trying to tell me you're less smart now?"
Stephen paused. "I don't know if that's the right way to say it. I just. Can't. Think. The way that I used to."
"Meaning, you used to think with your left brain, but now you think with your right brain?" Tony snorted. It was a snort he thought he'd mastered to seem belittling. "Yeah, that's not a thing."
Stephen listened quietly, studying Tony's face.
"Did you just shift to music because you think your brain's wired differently now?"
"I don't think that, Mr. Stark," he said calmly. "I know it. Something's changed." He leaned forward on the table, hands with impossibly long fingers clenched together. "The truth is...I can't solve equations in my head as quickly as I used to. My focus and attention span aren't as good. And I'm not as...what the fuck is that word."
Stephen's hands separated into two fists. One of them banged lightly and rythmically on the tabletop as he sought for the word, eyes tightly shut. His hands only relaxed when he finally found it:
"Eloquent. That's it. As I used to be. It was the best case scenario, all the same. The crash was...some brain damage was expected."
"Brain damage." Tony scoffed at the term. "Will you listen to yourself? If you ask me, you're perfectly normal! No brain damage at all."
Stephen sat up, pulled his shoulders back. Tony should have been able to tell from the way his face clouded over, that he didn't care for his story being dismissed just like that.
But Tony was too busy arguing his point.
"Wait, I know - is it because you don't like science anymore? You're sick of all the attention, is that it? Are you avoiding your stalkers? I know you've got a few. There's gotta be a simpler reason..."
Stephen Strange stood abruptly. Tony Stark also stopped speaking, abruptly.
"A bit of goddamn respect for other people. You need it." Stephen's tone was cold as ice. "Good to meet you."
He stepped past Tony before Tony could do anything about it.
But Tony was just not the kind of person who stood by helplessly while destiny slipped past.
His hand shot out. It caught the cloth of the left sleeve of Stephen's jacket.
He held on to it tightly.
Stephen glared down at him. He met that glare, boldly.
"I've offended you, haven't I?" His gaze darted from one of Stephen's eyes to the other. He was fascinated: Stephen's eyes had been blue a while ago. In a change of light, they were what - gray? Green? "I'm sorry. I want to start over." You're my hero. I waited so long to meet you. Now that I have you, will I let you go? "Look...would it still be all right if we hung out sometimes? Just sometimes, so I can show you some stuff I've been working on." Without releasing the sleeve, he lowered his gaze deferentially. "Is that...still okay?"
The older boy stood in place. The other cafe patrons were starting to stare, Tony knew.
But he swore to himself, he swore - that if Stephen Strange pulled away, that would be the end of it. All of his childhood dreams, all of his illusions of finding another mind very like his own - he would abandon them.
He wasn't obsessed. Not with anyone. He was still Tony Stark, the Chosen One, the Heir. He had everything he needed to conquer the world all by himself.
Stephen Strange did not pull away.
He covered Tony's hand with his own, removed it from his person gently.
And when Tony looked up again, there was a profound, indescribable sadness on Stephen's face.
"Sure," Stephen answered, with an almost miserable smile. "Why not."
Stephen said yes, though under sketchy circumstances. Tony simply took it for the victory that it was.
It would only be many weeks later that he would get around to asking why, when it would have been obvious to anyone else that looking at Tony's work was hurting him.
It took Rhodey to point it out.
"So, you and Stephen Strange have been hanging out a lot..."
Tony looked up. He'd been eating lunch on autopilot; he was, in fact, thinking of the new inventions he was going to show Stephen later that day.
He rewarded Rhodey's out-of-nowhere comment with a smirk. "Getting jealous, Rhodes?"
Rhodey grunted. "Stark, you strut into my classes every day just to park your sorry ass on the chair beside mine. Even in classes you don't need. Maybe if you leave me alone, I'll have time to get jealous."
"Sorry, handsome, you're stuck with me." He made as if to touch Rhodey's face. Rhodey batted his hand away, laughing.
"Seriously, though. You and Stephen, huh?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. We just hang out so I can show him my stuff."
"Your 'stuff'?" Rhodey grinned.
"Inventions. Jesus, Rhodey, I'm not horny 24/7."
"News to me. And to other people, apparently. There's talk that every night, after you meet, you come back to the freshman dorm all glowing and flushed and sweaty..."
"Because I jog all the way back from the conservatory." Tony sighed, rolling his eyes. "Gotta burn energy at night, so I can sleep. Do people say I'm bursting with new ideas for new inventions, too? Because that's part of the story, even if it's not as juicy."
"You and Stephen really talk about just your inventions?"
"Yes! Honest to God." Tony leaned forward to say something in a conspiratorial whisper, a fierce light in his brown eyes. "Rhodey, he's brilliant. I know I've told you this, like, a hundred times, but he is. A fucking mastermind. He gives me insights on cutting edge tech I can't find in any book."
"Yeah, you've told me he's brilliant," Rhodes pointed out. "You've also told me it was his choice to leave engineering, because, he said, and I quote: he 'doesn't think as good as he used to.'"
"Clearly a lie," Tony huffed. "I mean, from his YouTube uploads of past years, I sort of expected he'd talk a lot faster, you know - and maybe it's true the accident made his verbalizing and abstract thinking abilities just a tiiiiny bit slower, but..."
"Do you guys really talk to each other? Or do you talk at him?"
Tony paused. Held up a mildly threatening finger.
"Better be a follow-up explanation for that, Rhodes..."
Rhodey looked away, shook his head.
"I've seen you two together, Tony. I mean, you guys have been spotted all over campus together, how can I not? He lets you talk. He doesn't do much talking - and the few times that he does, it fires you up. Maybe that's what makes you think you guys are talking, when really - it's just you."
It was a weird turn of tone, from slightly playful to brutally admonishing. Tony was torn between wanting to walk out on Rhodey for that, and wanting to stay because he was so fascinated by how his good friend was able to pull it off.
"Well, there's nothing wrong with that, is there? I mean, Stephen and I got our thing, just like you and I got our thing, and it's working out for us. Right?"
"That thing you got with Stephen...it's working out for you. How about him? What's he invented lately that he's told you about?"
Tony scowled, at the same time thoughtfully biting his lower lip. "Okay, genius. Tell me this - why would he agree to listen to my ideas if he doesn't like it?"
"Because sometimes we want to hear how our old boy or girlfriends are doing, even if it's from the lips of someone who's dating them." Rhodey fixed his stare steadily on his friend's face. "You know what I'm saying? It hurts, but the information is available, so you take it any way you can."
Tony was incredulous.
"You're telling me...that I'm hurting Stephen...Stephen fucking Strange, the golden boy of robotics, before I came along...by talking to him about tech stuff?"
"Not on purpose." Rhodey sighed. It wasn't an annoyed sigh - it was a sad, sympathetic one. "Look, obviously you care about him, because hearing this from me is very obviously bothering you. All I'm saying is - think about his feelings, too, once in a while."
Tony fell silent. It was his last card for ending the conversation.
He wasn't ready to process the things Rhodey was saying. He wasn't prepared to think of how much of it was right.
"Is this hurting you?"
Stephen blinked at him. "What?"
"Is this hurting you." Tony gestured with one hand to himself, then to Stephen, and back. "Us talking. Is this a bad thing?"
Stephen frowned. "Why would it be a bad thing?"
"That's not really answering my question."
Stephen stared at his younger companion. Sighed.
Stephen stood, but didn't seem like he had any specific part of the conservatory room to go to. He kept his hands clasped behind his back.
"We've never talked about feelings," he said presently. "How I feel has never been relevant."
"Okay, let's talk about feelings now. Does it hurt? Am I hurting you?"
Stephen's violin lay nearby. He cast a cursory glance at it. But in the end, he decided not to approach it. With his back to Tony, he answered:
"It's not easy...being reminded...that you can't do the things you used to love doing. It's even less easy...when you still love those things."
There it was.
A confirmation.
Tony registered anger. Indignation. And he was pretty sure he knew the rationale for it.
I mean, when you think about it - isn't it HIS FAULT that he never said...?
But he quelled those feelings. Over many weeks, he'd come to accept that Stephen had trouble expressing himself verbally.
Therefore, it was up to Tony to be verbal for the both of them, to connect the dots and find solutions.
"But maybe you can still do them."
Tony took out his trusty proprietary Stark smartphone, started typing into it.
"There's something I've been working on. I've had it in the backburner for a while because acoustics isn't really my specialty, and it isn't as flashy as my other projects, but..."
He moved closer to Stephen. Stephen leaned closer to him to see the screen.
On the screen was an algorithm. At a glance, Tony knew, Stephen should be able to recognize it.
"It's based on a paper you submitted to your Intro to AI class, a couple of years back..."
"I know."
But Stephen's brow furrowed even deeper. He might have recognized the code, but he had a hard time focusing on it.
Tony let him hold the smartphone. He studied the displayed content closely.
"I'm going to need your help getting this ready in time for the AI fair in a couple of months," Tony said. "The algorithm still needs a lot of work, but I think I can leave this up to you. Since you practically built the foundations, this isn't strange territory." He shrugged. "Pun definitely intended."
Stephen didn't answer. He was still studying the code.
"Of course, you're getting 12% of the credit."
"Of course," absently. Stephen swiped the screen up.
"And, your musical skills are going to be needed for the presentation. You can probably already tell how."
Stephen must have tuned Tony out completely by that point, because there was no answer. It seemed his eyes swept over the same bits of code over and over, as he tried to make sense of it. The slow pace of how he absorbed the code did not escape Tony, but neither did he make a big deal of it.
When he finally reached the end of the code, way too many minutes later, Stephen rubbed his eyes. Tony took the smartphone from his hand, and he freely released it.
Like a puppy eager to take instruction, Tony stared squarely at Stephen's face while he waited for an answer.
"All right," Stephen declared - without excitement, or any other emotion. "All right."
Their joint project was, of course, a rousing success.
And why wouldn't it be?
It was destined to be popular: something that turned music into equations - verifiable, tangible equations that people could see as holograms, following weightless, unfettered motion paths traced by the flow of the melody.
The objective was so everyone - laypersons, engineers and musicians alike - could see the elegance of music in visual, numeric form.
And when their "music-to-math translator" was presented at the university's AI fair, set to an original composition Stephen played on his violin, everyone could see how elegant Stephen's music was, in particular.
The composition started off in shades of blue, hologram variables flowing out of Stephen's violin into pools of water at his feet. Then, slowly, they built up to a tense crescendo until finally they burst into explosions of color in the air, to the cheers of the pumped-up crowd.
Magic, people would say of the spectacle.
It worked. It killed. It was talked about for weeks after it was unveiled.
It was magic that they'd made together.
In the course of working on the project, Tony felt - or imagined, he was willing to concede - that he and Stephen were growing closer.
Stephen had lent him his favorite albums, which were a bit too eclectic for Tony's taste...and, in turn, Tony had lent him his precious AC/DC and Iron Maiden box sets - which, somewhat surprisingly, Stephen gushed over.
Tony didn't really get why Stephen particularly loved the drum-heavy interlude for "Where Eagles Dare"; he was just happy to find that they shared a liking for the same song.
Best of all - Stephen had actually started smiling at him, not just at things he said in general - but at him.
And laughing at his jokes. And making jokes of his own, which Tony found hilarious, tongue-in-cheek though most of them were. Tony used to think double entendres were a bit pretentious - but Stephen wore the style well, somehow.
And best of all, Stephen finally called him "Tony." Not "Mr. Stark." Not the occasional, slightly affectionate "douchebag." Although, Tony admitted, that last one was beginning to grow on him (besides, he was starting to enjoy answering with "asshole").
There were moments of frustration - Tony was aware of that, though he tended to brush it off. When Stephen got stuck on a module, and got angry enough at himself to lash out and throw things, Tony simply stepped in.
He didn't mind: it was a pleasure to step in. It was a pleasure not only watching Stephen work, but to actually feel needed by Stephen.
That was, unfortunately, the problem.
"Let's work on something else!"
It had already been weeks, but Tony was still riding the high of their success at the AI fair. He felt an enthusiasm that Stephen did not overtly share.
And on that evening, during one of their ordinary sessions, Stephen made his lack of enthusiasm clear.
"No."
No theatrics. The answer was so plain, it was puzzling.
"No?" Tony stared at him. "Come on...I knew you were struggling while fixing the algorithm, but we put our heads together and did it. We can do it again."
Stephen fidgeted. It seemed as if he wanted to say something else, but in the end, just settled on another:
"No."
In riding his high through its downward spiral, Tony cycled through a number of emotions in a split second: confusion, betrayal, hurt, curiosity.
"Did I do something wrong?" Tony fought to sound calm, and he worried that the effort made him sound inauthentic. "I just wanted to show...I wanted to help you see that you've still got it. Whatever it is that you think you lost in that accident."
"I know." Stephen's gaze softened. "You meant well. I know that. But..."
His hands made weak gestures, as he struggled to find the words to continue. Presently they fell onto his lap in defeat, and his shoulders slouched.
"...I don't think I can do this again."
"But why?" Tony stood, walked to where Stephen sat. "Why? We're so good together, just like I've always known we would be! There's so much we could still do! Just..." He ran a hand through his hair. "...why?"
He was genuinely upset. He was surprised to realize it. What Stephen said sounded like a rejection, one he was taking uncommonly to heart.
Stephen was upset as well. It was a familiar look, one he wore when he couldn't put his thoughts together as quickly as he wanted - it was his whole body preparing to explode.
Tony braced himself for it. He wanted an answer. Even if it obviously wrecked Stephen to come up with one, even if their confrontation ended up being physical, he didn't care. He was entitled to an answer.
Stephen closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Then he stood, and moved to where he'd left his violin.
Oh, no, Tony started to think. No, you're not going to tune me out. You're not going to use that thing to pretend I'm not here. I want your reasons, and I'm not leaving here without them.
Stephen picked up his violin and bow. He turned toward Tony and seemed, for a moment, that he really, really wanted to say something else.
But instead he clamped his lips shut. That was the first time Tony noticed that his blue-green-gray eyes were moist. They gleamed in the low light of that deserted conservatory room.
"Listen," Stephen said softly.
Just as softly, he began to draw the bow across the strings.
Tony stayed. He didn't have to. He didn't know why he did.
But he stayed.
And listened.
He stood a reasonable distance from the boy with the violin, who was playing a low, pensive tune that, as far as Tony could tell, was another original composition.
The very first thought that entered Tony's mind, as the music played, was: holy hell, he's gotten GOOD.
He should have known this. He was listening to Stephen play, while they worked on the algorithm for their music-to-math translator. But he was basically listening to a single composition, made specially for their project; it didn't especially tell him anything.
This was a different composition.
It spoke to him, alone.
Tony didn't need a translator - Stephen had gotten that good. Somehow, he was able to convey the emotions behind the music clearly, even without the help of Tony's machines.
The music entered Tony's senses gently, almost shyly, and told him of one thing:
Pain.
And then, the preference of feeling pain.
Over not feeling anything at all.
Tony was fascinated. In the absence of words, Stephen's music spoke for him.
Maybe he didn’t work with iron and metal anymore, but Stephen Strange worked with something else. He never stopped growing. Never stopped inventing.
(Was Tony getting in the way of that?)
This song told Tony about the accident. The one long and tormented moment of realizing things would never be the same. To know that one had lost something significant, and there was no getting it back.
In picking up the pieces of oneself, there was only numbness. The violin was just one method: if it didn't work, there were others.
He was going to give up, but something happened. Someone said it was worth trying again, so he stayed.
Tony said it was worth trying again.
You did that.
All over the rest of the song was pain - exquisite and real. Every time Tony showed off another one of his inventions. Every time people applauded when they heard their names, praised their work, his work, which he could never again replicate.
At the same time, there were moments - small and private, but no less real than the pain. The hand on his shoulder. The reassuring smile. You can do this. WE can do this.
Stark and Strange. The whole world was going to see nothing but them. Not leaving your side until the end of this. Not going anywhere until people SEE.
All the heartache. The elation. The moments of suffering and self-doubt.
Everything winds back to you.
Stephen Strange had become much too dependent on someone else.
And things couldn't afford to stay the way they were.
Tony eased himself back to reality, and saw that Stephen was looking at him. Piercing gaze on him, waiting for a reaction, as he wound down his composition.
Everything weaves back to you.
Tony found, to his surprise, that he was shaking.
"I --"
He thought he felt something wet fall from his left eye. He put his hand up to keep it in, but he was too late.
He couldn't say anything else. All his words had been magicked out of the air in his chest.
So he turned and walked out of the room.
He didn't bother to look back at Stephen, who'd stopped playing all of a sudden. Who looked after him with concern and alarm, but couldn't follow.
Who couldn't even say "Wait."
Rhodey asked what was wrong. And normally, he could tell Rhodey anything.
But when there were no words left, there was nothing to tell.
At the very least, the ever-perceptive Rhodey got it right: his unusual quietness had something to do with Stephen. But Tony couldn't even describe how.
Over the long week that he didn't see Stephen, didn't even coordinate with him by private message or text, Tony listened to Stephen's favorite albums on repeat. Watched the few videos he could scavenge of Stephen’s old livestreams.
Stephen occupied his thoughts almost constantly, scenes from the past flashing through his mind in the middle of thinking about personal projects or schoolwork.
Tony seriously contemplated leaving campus.
He would go somewhere safe. Away from the trouble. The disappointment. The hope...
...that Stephen would be the one to text him first.
Stephen never did. They were both proud people, egotists. He knew that much.
Hell, everyone knew that much.
Someone had to make the first move. In the end, Tony knew it was him. He had to be verbal for the both of them.
He finally went to the conservatory classroom where they usually met, after all their classes were done. He found Stephen there, hunched over a sheaf of staff paper, furiously and messily scribbling something down with a standard ball-point pen.
Staff paper. Not schematic plates or spreadsheets.
But Tony was done caring about that. Done with making Stephen fit into the eloquent-elegant-hot-tech-genius mold inside his head.
"Look," he greeted.
Stephen looked up. His pen fell from his hand. But he stayed hunched over his notes, waiting for Tony to continue.
Tony hung his head.
"Look...I'm not saying I get it. Not all of it."
His brown eyes zeroed in on Stephen's blue ones. Blue this time, and shiftless, like a windy morning sky.
"But now I know at least how rough it's been on you. And I haven't made it any easier. I mean, I wanted to, but...I just made it all worse, didn't I?"
Must be all the dust in the air; Tony felt his own eyes watering. He took a deep breath.
"And now I'm going to leave you alone!" he announced, with a cheerfulness he was pretty damn sure came across as inauthentic. "Finally. I just want you to know. I'm sorry. For everything."
Hearing this, Stephen straightened up in his seat.
Tony turned to walk away.
He didn't know what he was expecting. He just knew he could no longer keep the words in.
But Stephen caught his right sleeve.
He'd stood from his chair, and strode up to Tony, and caught part of his clothing.
"Please don't," he heard faintly, close to his ear. "Don't leave me alone."
Tony turned.
There was a moment of hesitation, as Tony's steady gaze seemed to make every fiber of Stephen's being fall still.
Then the spell was broken.
Stephen leaned forward.
And touched his lips to Tony's.
Tony could have reacted another way. He could have, for example, jumped back, yelled "What the hell?!" made light of the situation and made all this less complicated.
But instead...
His hands gripped Stephen's shoulders. God damn the older boy was bony. He returned the kiss. To be more accurate: he made sure it was a proper kiss, not just haphazard touching of sensitive bits of skin to skin.
Without breaking contact, Stephen drew in a breath sharply. And sparks flew. He drew Tony in closer, and behind Tony's closed eyelids, he saw fireworks - very much like the explosions of color that had erupted all around Stephen as he played his violin at the AI fair.
He had no idea what Stephen saw behind his closed eyelids.
He didn't care.
Perhaps the music had already told him it would all lead to this. The first piece he heard Stephen play, the piece Stephen played at the fair, the song played for him a week ago, the music from Stephen's favorite albums...all of it. Without seeing the equations generated by the melody, Tony wouldn't be able to offer up proof.
But he didn't care about proof right now, either.