Love and Hate - Stony Highschool

13| Drinking and Dying

"What part are you at?" He asked and opened the book. Steve snorted as a laugh.

"Does it matter? I don't get jack shit."

"Woah, language," was Tony's reply which made Steve roll his eyes. Hasn't he always cussed? Does it matter anyway?

Tony read the first page and flipped it over as if it was nothing. Steve just watched in shock. There was no way a single person on Earth understood this. Tony then looked up at made eye contact with Steve.

"It seems that Gloucester and Kent are telling us that King Lear is dividing his kingdom?" He said and Steve looked back at his opened page. When did he even mention that? Then Steve found the words "divide" and "kingdom", so Stark was probably right.

"Gloucester and Kent are people?"

"two noblemen, I believe."

Honestly, this book was pretty confusing for Tony too. The trick was to find what you thought are important keywords and just smash it all together.

"So you can actually read this?" Steve asked in disbelief, his voice a little breathy. He was baffled that they were reading the same few pages. How was he ever going to read his by himself?

Steve pulled a mini notepad and a pen out of his backpack that Tony just noticed he brought. Tony laughed as Steve jotted down what he just said.

"It's not that hard. Heard of SparkNotes?"

"Huh? Sparknotes? No, is that another Shakespeare play?" Tony laughed at his reply. What? It did sound like a play from him. King Lear, Sparknotes, Twelfth Night, they all seemed pretty similar.

"It gives you summaries of chapters. You can use it, pretty helpful."

"So like... cheating?" Steve has never cheated in his life, bedside during a fourth-grade spelling test. Didn't know how to spell recommend. Couldn't remember if it was with one m or two m's and didn't want to fail and disappoint his parents. So he peeked over at another person's test and got it right. He felt guilty for a year after that and started studying more.

"I guess, it's not really if you are actually confused. Just read the chapter... acts, scenes? Whatever they're called in this book. And if you don't understand the summaries can help." Steve nodded along to his words. That was actually kind of nice of Tony.

They were about 3/4s into the chapter when Tony groaned. He's been getting it fairly throughout, but still was confused. And Steve asking questions every two seconds wasn't making him any less irritated.

He got up out of his chair and walked into the kitchen. Steve watched his steps as he moved towards the fridge. Tony pulled out an orange from a drawer and a jar of what looked like... sweetened cherries? What was he doing?

"What are you doing?"

"Making a drink," Tony replied like it was the most obvious thing on Earth. Make a drink? It was like... Steve looked at the huge clock in the kitchen that had Romanian numbers. It was like 1:45 PM! And Tony was seventeen at most. Definitely underage.

Woah it was 1:45 already. They've been reading this for forty-five minutes basically.

"Want one?" Tony asked and grabbed a step stool. He placed it in front of a bunch of cabinets and went to the second step, opening the top cabinet. He pulled out a huge bottle that had brownish orangish liquid and another smaller bottle that was tinted black so you couldn't see inside.

"No thanks..." he kept watching as Tony set the bottles down and then pulled out a thing of sugar. Jesus, how many ingredients did this drink require? "What're you making?" Steve asked before he could stop himself.