Tony's at public school with kids his age for the first time in seventeen years, and he is determined that this year is gonna be his year. He's going to make friends. He's going to be popular. People will like him.
Unsurprisngly, none of that actually happens.
He does sort-of-maybe fall in love with a vampire in his class that everyone is terrified of, though. So... there's that.
tony stark is rich and popular and an arrogant asshole. in other words: his iq rivals einstein's, he's slept with most of his "friends" at least once, and he's so fucking lonely that sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and cries into the cold sheets on the empty side of the bed.
it's no different at SHIELD boarding school, at first. half the student body hates him, half want to be him, nothing new. that is, until tony accidentally breaks james barnes's prosthetic arm, and he suddenly finds the most vulnerable pieces of himself surfacing whether he wants them to or not.
"You want to take me for a ride on your motorcycle," Tony repeats, slow so he can process it as he’s saying it, "because you think my glasses are cute."
Tony moves into the apartment directly across the street from Steve. Their windows face each other and there's a small piece of roof jutting out between them, connecting in the middle. As the summer goes on, they find themselves crawling out their windows to spend more and more time together.
Pretty much everything had gone to hell after the accident, really. Life had been good beforehand. His dad had been distant, sure, but his mother had been a warm light to wipe that all away. At least Howard had been supportive, in his own way. He hadn’t liked that Tony wanted to be a dancer, but he’d made damn sure Tony would be the absolute best once he figured out there was no persuading the young genius otherwise. He’d even been at that performance; the last one Tony had ever done. It was hard to keep dancing after a spinal injury, after all. Not to mention how all that metal in his chest really limited his lung capacity.
Steve hasn't always had this ridiculous crush on Tony Stark.
(Or, the one where Steve is his polite old self and doesn't really hate Tony Stark (unfortunately), Tony is a child prodigy and apparently a cab driver now, too, and high school is still high school, even when you are the son of a billionaire.)
High school AU - Adorable, sweater-wearing nerd Tony has been pining over Bucky Barnes from afar for years. When, on a dare from Rhodey, Tony starts to act on these feelings, Bucky is certain that he's trying to gain the favour of his best friend Steve, because why on Earth would someone as kind and intelligent and rich as Howard Stark's son be interested as someone as rough as Bucky?