Everybody knew the name of the kid. He was the son of Howard Stark and his picture had been in science magazines since he was old enough to give interviews. He was a certified genius and apparently it showed in the lab, even though the teachers all seemed to agree he was a handful.
Rhodey, despite being the new guy, and the kid being on the verge of getting his first damn degree, had been told to keep an eye on his new roommate, but instead of getting into trouble the kid had just shrugged his shoulders after Rhodey had told him everything the teachers and other students had hinted at and picked up a Rubik's cube from Rhodey's bedside table and started to solve it, hunched over on Rhodey's chair at his desk; silent and focused.
He watched him do it 4 times, before he cleared his throat.
“Speed solving?”
Tony shrugged. “Anyone can learn how to do that. It's just numbers. Not all that impressive.”
“Of course, it is,” Rhodey said and laughed. They were all here because of the numbers.
Tony threw the cube over after scrambling the colors. “There is a solution for every puzzle. The trick is to see the quickest way to get there.”
He had a feeling that he was the problem Tony was trying to solve here. “Would be cool if everything in life were that easy, right?” He smiled. He was beginning to like the kid. “So I hear you built your first engine when you were still a toddler.”
“I was six,” Tony said with a scrunched up nose. It sounded practiced and defensive.
He grinned. He had a car outside that he'd been planning on taking apart. Perhaps that would keep the kid busy for a while.
* * *
He set the cube down on Tony's living room table. Tony was kneeling on the floor and his hands were buried inside the bits and pieces of armor stacked there. “Sorry, for destroying your living space,” Rhodey said in the most unapologetic voice possible, as he looked around at the destruction they'd wrought on the house in their armored altercation. “Idiot,” he added fondly.
“I helped,” Tony said lightly.
Rhodey had no idea why he was working up here, but he was sure there must be an explanation he was just not yet seeing.
“So you're not dying anymore?”
“I'm not dying anymore.”
“Would it have hurt to talk about it, before...?”
“Yes,” Tony said and he sounded like he was just joking, but his jaw was set and his eyes flitted away from his work to Rhodey and back to what he was doing so quickly that it was the perfect tell. “It would have. But it's okay now.”
“This wouldn't have happened if you had just talked to me.”
Tony finally looked up and saw the cube on the table. He cleaned his oily, grimy hands on a dirty cloth and said: “Really?”
“Yeah.” Rhodey picked up the cube again and threw it. Tony caught it easily. “As a reminder. Quick way to solve problems: You don't go the long way around; you cut through the problem.”
Tony, of course, was already halfway through solving the cube and looked up at him with a slightly gleeful look. “Reminder for you or me?”
“Both,” he admitted. He forgot sometimes that his best friend wasn't just a complicated eccentric. Tony was good at making people see nothing but the surface. At the heart of it he was a puzzle and like all problems he could be solved. If you cared to look deep enough.