Standard Deviation

STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT VERSE 1

By jennagrins and karengrins

"We are very desperate."

"I'm not doing it," Tony repeats for what has to be the fifth—eighth?—time. "I'm up to my eyeballs in circuits and coding. I don't have time to teach a course."

"I'm sorry," Dean Fury says, leaning over his giant desk and glaring down at Tony, "it seem I phrased that as a question."

"Nick, let's stop and think about this for a second," Tony says, trying very hard to keep the panic out of his voice. He's pretty sure Fury can smell fear. "I'm selfish and neurotic and I don't play well with others. I would make a terrible professor. There's got to be someone else. Anyone else would be a better choice. Really."

"Trust me, Stark, you weren't my first choice. But Professor Pym's still in the hospital after being hit by that bus, Jones is on maternity leave, and Coulson just died." Fury smiles at Tony. It's not a nice smile. "And your grant funding is conditional on your teaching a course if requested by the university."

"You're not going to touch my funding. My research is important. If I succeed with this reactor generator, it will be huge for this school. You're not going to screw that up over one stupid course."

"No? You want to try me?"

Tony really doesn't. Fury is scary when he's like this. But he also doesn't want to teach. He's an inventor, not a teacher. If he'd wanted to teach he'd have fucked around at teacher's college for a year drawing hearts and butterflies and braiding people's hair or what-the-fuck-ever people do while they're learning how to be useless from other useless people.

"There's got to be a hundred grad students at this school. Ninety-nine of them would make better professors than me! Ask one of them to do it."

"Ninety-nine of them didn't blow up the engineering lab last month."

"That is vastly overstating the case. It was one tiny explosion. Contained!"

"Contained by the brand new engineering lab."

"It's been fixed," Tony protests weakly, but he knows this isn't good. He gets it now. This isn't just bad luck or him pulling the short straw. This is punishment. Fury is actually out to get him. He's pissed and so he's going to make Tony's life a living hell for a semester as revenge.

Tony's always hated Nick Fury.

"Let me be clear, Stark," Fury continues. "This course needs to be taught. You are qualified. You will teach it. If you don't—and I know that's not going to be a problem—your funding will be cut and your research will disappear. Am I making myself clear?"

Tony swallows uncomfortably. His research is his entire life. And Dad's made it clear what he thinks of his only son and heir spending an extra two years at university while he dabbles in non-weapons related projects rather than coming to work for him and learning the business. He wouldn't bail him out. Not with this. He can just imagine how happy he'd be to see Tony forced into coming and working for him right away.

"Sir—" he tries.

Fury holds up a piece of paper. "Allow me to illustrate. You see this paper? Let's imagine for a second that this is your grant. It pays for your research. And this is what will happen to your funding if you refuse to teach this course." He tears the paper in half viciously. Tony winces. "I'm sure we can find other uses for it."

"I…okay, fine. I'll teach. Fine. It's just the one course, right?"

Fury bares his teeth in a caricature of a smile. "I knew you'd see it my way."

"So what's the course? Physics, Algebra, Materials?"

"Oh, didn't I mention?" Fury asks and by the note in his voice Tony knows it's going to be bad. "You've just graciously volunteered to teach Statistics for the humanities."

"Oh fuck no."

Fury continues on like Tony hasn't even said a goddamn word. "Class is at 10 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Professor Pym has been kind enough to provide you with his old lecture notes and text."

Tony just stares at Fury in mute horror. Stats. Stats for the humanities. He's teaching fake math to the future fast food workers of America. He's not sure anything's worth that.

"Stark," Fury barks. "What are you still doing in my office? You want to teach another course?"

Tony can't get out of there fast enough.

The walk home from campus takes Steve ten minutes. He walks it in a daze, still unsure whether the last half-hour of his life was real. It had to be real though, didn't it? Surely his mind couldn't have invented a class—or more specifically a professor—who was so god awful. He finds himself outside of the rundown, post-war pile of bricks that he and his three housemates call home, without really knowing how he got there. This must be what "blinded by rage" feels like.

He shoulders the door open and is greeted by Clint, who is sitting on the couch still in his pyjamas.

"Hey," greets Steve as he kicks off his shoes.

He puts his bag down at the foot of the stairs and then collapses into the giant green oversized chair opposite Clint. The chair had been Thor's contribution to the house in their second year. He'd found it on the side of the road on the way home from a pub crawl, declared it "glorious" and promptly dragged it home. At first everyone had given it a wide berth because it was, as Natasha put it, "probably infested with rats," but its spine-felting comfort soon won everyone over and now they fought over who got to sit in it. Clint especially loves big green so Steve is surprised to see him sitting on the couch. Surprise quickly turns to understanding because Clint is watching The Price is Right. Clint watches The Price is Right the way some guys watch football: religiously and vocally.

"You're home early," says Clint without taking his eyes off the TV. Steve isn't a big fan of the game show but Clint can't get enough. It's gotten to the point where he can guess the value of the showcases to within a hundred dollars. It would be an impressive skill, really, if it wasn't also totally useless. When the show switches to commercial Clint looks over at him.

Steve sighs and runs his hand through his hair, "Yeah, class let out early." Usually this would be a cause for celebration but Steve just feels like punching something. "You ever hear of a Professor Stark?"

Clint thinks for a second and then shakes his head. "What class?"

"Stats," Steve replies, trying to keep the venom out of his voice.

Clint nods slowly, "I've taken at least one stats class and I am pretty sure a guy named Hank Pym taught it. Kinda weird but seemed nice enough. I only went to two classes."

Typical Barton.

When Steve had enrolled in stats he'd looked Pym up on Rate My Prof just for kicks. According to the website Pym was supposedly on the level, really fair, and moderately hot. "That's what the course calendar said, but instead we got this Stark guy."

"And?"

"Total asshole. We asked him what happened to the original prof and his response was: 'I don't know, got hit by a bus or had a baby or died or something.' Who says that?"

Clint barks out a laugh, "Are you serious?"

"And that's not the worst of it! The guy practically threw the syllabus at us, told us to read it ourselves and kept referring to statistics as 'fake math.'" Steve feels his blood pressure rising. He has half a mind to complain to the dean. That man had been a total dick! The class had been demeaning.

"Dude, that is brutal! Do you have to take the class?"

"Yes, they're making me take at least one stats class in order to graduate. I don't get it. How is this going to help me design websites?"

Clint grins "Well, you never know. Do you think it will be easy at least?"

Steve shrugs, "It is stats for the humanities, so I doubt it's going to be mind-altering. And honestly, I think that Stark lunatic would rather give us all A's than risk us having to repeat the class."

As Steve is talking, the front door to the house opens and Natasha comes in. She has a tea in one hand and her iPod in the other. Steve gives her a small wave. She smiles back as she sets down her things and takes off her shoes.

"How old is this guy?" asks Clint. "Is he some antique they coerced out of retirement or something? 'Cause old people hate life and generally try to drag the rest of us down with them."

"Oh please, Barton," quips Natasha, as she playfully bops him on the head with her bag.

"They do!" Clint insists looking up at the redhead. She shakes her head and takes off her jacket. Clint turns back to Steve, "No, seriously, is he old?"

"Not remotely. I think I would be a bit more forgiving if he was, but this guy is young, like maybe a couple years older than us. He isn't a real doctor yet, he's still working on his PhD. He made it pretty clear that he was teaching the course at gunpoint." Clint gives him a slightly bewildered look prompting Steve to continue, "His opening line was, 'Hi everyone, I am the poor sucker that will be teaching you saps.'"

"Wait, what's this?" asks Nat, retrieving her tea and joining Clint on the loveseat. He scoots over to make room for her.

"My stats prof," replies Steve. "Let's just say it's going to be a long twelve weeks."

"He threw the syllabus at them!" Clint adds.

Natasha raises an eyebrow, "Seriously?"

"Yes," Steve pauses, "Well, he set them down at the front of the room and told us all to take one. Then he said we could read it on our own time and if we weren't bright enough to understand it, we could direct our questions to the TA."

"Wow," says Clint.

"Yeah, the poor TA looked like he wanted the earth to swallow him."

"And what happened after that? Did the prof just leave?"

"Yep."

"No!"

"Oh yeah, he told us to come get a syllabus then said 'see you next class' and left."

"What did the syllabus say? Anything helpful?" asks Nat.

Steve leans over the armrest of the chair and grabs his bag. He rummages through it before finding the slightly crumpled sheet of paper and handing it over to Natasha. He gives her a second to look it over and then waits for her reaction.

"Where's the rest of it?" she asks, holding it up and flipping it over. "All it says is the TA's name, e-mail address and phone number—the prof's name isn't even on here."

"I know," says Steve, exasperation heavy in his voice.

Natasha keeps staring at the sheet, "And then it says, 'Read a chapter per week, you figure it out.'" She keeps reading, "Assignment one due week 4, test week 6, assignment two due week 8, exam during scheduled examination period."

Clint bursts out laughing, "You are so screwed!"

Natasha leans forward, passes Steve back the syllabus and pats him on the knee in mock sympathy, "Well, Steve, good luck with that."

Steve takes the syllabus from her and flops back into the chair. He has the urge to call his Mom suddenly; she'd get a kick out of all this. He squashes the urge and instead begins to mentally go over his courses, cataloguing due dates.

It's going to be an interesting semester, that's for sure.

Staring into the open, optimistic faces of the students in his Stats for Humanities class, Tony Stark has only one thought: he hates his life.

For the next twelve weeks he is going to be holding the hands of a bunch of slack-jawed idiots as they venture into the terrifying world of extremely basic math.

No amount of coffee is going to make this better.

"Alright, everyone, who read chapter one of the textbook?"

A couple kids raise their hands. They are all sitting in the front row, except for a blond guy sitting three rows back to the right. Keeners, thinks Tony. No one reads the textbook, let alone the first chapter.

"Really? The first chapter?" Tony glances over at Bruce, who just shakes his head. "Well, good for you, I guess, but that's going to take all the surprise out of today's lecture. I am starting this farce of a class by giving you a list of definitions." They appear on the powerpoint. "I am not reading that to you. And honestly, if you didn't know the definition of 'variable' before you started, then I fear for the future of America."

He hits to advance to the next slide. A hand shoots up from the fifth row. Oh God. This is not his life.

"You don't seriously have a question about the definitions?"

"No, you just advanced too fast. Can you go back a slide?"

"No. The notes are online, print them off next time. Or better yet, go green and bring your laptop." Tony turns back to the slide. "Okay, next we are going to discuss the different types of variables. Quantitative uses meaningful numbers. Categorical puts individuals into groups. Questions?"

A hand goes up near the back. Tony sighs.

"You know that was a rhetorical 'questions,' right?"

"What?"

"Never mind. Please, share your question with the class." Tony makes a sweeping gesture and schools his face to look somewhere between professional and contemptuous.

"Are dates quantitative or categorical?"

"Can you subtract October 5, 1956 from June 31, 1987?"

"Would I want to?"

"That's not what you asked."

"Uh…"

"All dates are numbers, right? Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year. However if you wanted to know during which month do people buy the most vodka then a specific month would be considered categorical. But each month has been assigned a number which makes them quantitative. January is represented by a one, etcetera. So what's twelve minus three?"

"Nine?"

"Or…?"

The student stares blankly. God, this is not that hard.

"C'mon, when would we need the most vodka?"

"September?"

"We have a winner! Did that clear things up for you?" Fearing that the moron might actually answer that question—or worse, ask another—Tony quickly hits the enter key to advance to the next slide. "Oh, look, graphs!"

The next ten minutes are spent looking at histograms and pie charts and really, Tony hates his life. The whole time he receives blank stares he silently curses Nick Fury, the faculty of engineering and Professor Pym, whoever the hell he is.

"Okay kiddos, let's get down to the exciting world of hypothesis testing," Professor Stark says from the front of the room, rolling his eyes to make it clear exactly what he thinks of the class he is teaching. It's only been two weeks since class started and Steve wants to punch his prof in the face. Ten minutes in he can already feel a headache coming on.

"Hypothesis testing is very straightforward, so even this class should be able to grasp it. Basically, we're using a sample to systematically test a claim about a given group or population," he says, clicking forward to the first slide of the powerpoint. "Okay, these are the steps to test your hypothesis. First, you state your hypothesis, then you set your criteria for deciding whether or not the claim is true, then you put together your sample and measure it to compute the test statistic and then you make a decision: was your hypothesis true? See, easy, right?"

Professor Stark gets that annoyed, contemptuous look on his face that Steve has learned means that someone has raised their hand.

"You know how in your hand holding kumbaya classes they told you there are no stupid questions? Well, there are," he says. "But hey, sure, let's reserve judgment. Let's hear your question and then we can decide if it's stupid. Hey, this can be our example. The claim is that there are no stupid questions so that can be our null hypothesis. My alt hypothesis is that more than zero percent of humanities students' questions are stupid. We'll set significance at five percent, since that's what's done with behavioral research studies. And now it's time to test our sample, so let's hear it. What's your question?"

"Um," a student somewhere behind Steve says, "What?"

Steve wants to sink down in his chair with shared embarrassment.

"That's your question?"

"I'm confused," the student says. "Why are we going through all these steps to figure out the significance of a sample, why not just look at the population directly?"

"So you want to test every single member of a population? Sure, let's look at every single question a humanities student has ever had instead of just looking at the stupidity I deal with in this class alone. You have a couple of years to tabulate and analyze all the questions, right? What if our group is the population of the United States of America? Do you want to poll every single citizen of this country for your research?"

"Um. No?"

"Right. So there we have it. So now based on our sample size of the twelve questions I've gotten from this class since I started and the fact that 100% of them were stupid, we are all the way over on the other tail of the curve and we can reject the claim that there are no stupid questions and accept our alt hypothesis that yeah, there really are."

Steve looks down and realizes that he's squeezed his pen so tight it's cracked and his hand is now covered in ink. Great. That was just what he needed. He sighs and rips a page out of his notebook to try to absorb the excess ink off of his hand before digging out a new pen. This class makes him so angry. Who does this guy think he is? He has half a mind to walk out right now, go to the faculty office, and issue a complaint. The guy's a total dick. Yeah, maybe it was a stupid question, but was it really necessary to embarrass and belittle the poor guy in front of everyone? The only thing keeping him in his seat is knowing that the jerk upfront would probably consider driving his students to leave as some kind of petty victory.

When Steve looks up again he realizes that he's missed several slides and the lunatic up front is now walking the class through an example. Well, he read this chapter in the textbook. He should be able to follow this easily enough.

"—the force of gravity upon an accelerating projectile is 9.81 meters per second squared—well, okay, it's actually 9.80665 meters per second squared but for our purposes today we'll just use the more widely used standard because you guys are humanities majors and probably not used to that many decimals—right, so the claim is it's 9.81 meters per second squared but you think that because of the force of acceleration and because you're humanities majors and don't understand how separate forces work, you think it's actually greater than that. So the null hypothesis is that the gravitational force is 9.81 meters per second squared and the alt hypothesis is that the gravitational force is greater than 9.81 meters per second squared. So that's the first step in hypothesis testing. We've stated our hypotheses. The next step is to set the level of significance that will determine whether or not we'll decide the null hypothesis is true."

Steve stares at the front. What? Gravity? He flips through the printed off notes and reads the slides a second time. Steve learned last week that what Stark says in class and the content of the slides don't always compute. For one, Steve is positive that Stark leaves out steps in his calculations. His version of standard deviation and the one in the textbook are worlds apart. Steve wonders if maybe Stark is like his grandma, who only gives out complete recipes to people she likes. Maybe he only gives proper equations to students who are worthy. Honestly though, this hadn't seemed so complicated when he read the chapter last night. Why are they looking at the statistical significance of gravity? He is so confused… In any other lecture this is the point where he'd put up his hand and ask for clarification. But since he'd rather not be made fun of and called a moron in front of the entire class, Steve keeps his hand down.

He sure feels like a moron though. He looks around to see if any of the other students look as lost as he does. The girl next to him is creeping facebook. The guy in front of him is texting. Is he the only one who's struggling to understand this?

Maybe texting guy has the right idea. Clint said he took Stats, maybe he can help him. He slides his phone onto his lap and texts him: What do you know about hypothesis testing?

Clint texts back: It's how u test ur hyp?

He sighs. Real helpful, Clint. Thanks.

"…Now the most widely accepted way of working with gravity is Einstein's theory of general relativity, but since it's much simpler and due to your collective lack of scientific knowledge, we'll stick with Newton's law of universal gravitation, which gives sufficiently accurate results for most applications involving sufficiently small masses, speeds and energies…"

Steve doesn't even know what Stark is talking about anymore. How did they end up discussing Einstein and Newton's theories in a class about stats?!

- I'm in stats class and I don't understand the prof's crazy hypothesis testing example. Do you remember anything? I'm so confused.

- No. That knowledge ship sailed as soon as I handed in my final exam.

Of course. Sometimes Steve doesn't understand how Clint hasn't been put on academic probation yet. The guy is a total slacker. He doesn't go to any of his classes, crams at the last minute, forgets everything he learned the moment he doesn't need it anymore…and somehow he's still getting A's in all his subjects. Clint was his last hope and now he only has one option left.

Life is not fair.

"…and checking the p-value, we find that there was a ninety-five percent chance of obtaining the sample outcome, which as I'm sure you guys could figure out at least this much, is greater than the five percent we decided we needed to retain the null hypothesis. So our test did not reach statistical significance and we retain our null hypothesis that the force of gravity is in fact 9.81 meters per second squared. Questions?"

No hands go up. Steve's not surprised. Who would risk asking a question after that?

"Fantastic!" Stark says checking his watch. "And we're even early. Wow. Okay, we'll continue on with types of error next class. Now it's time to blow this pop stand!" Stark snaps his laptop closed with a flourish, as the students launch themselves out of their seats in an effort to escape the classroom.

Steve gathers up his stuff and heads over to catch Stark before he takes off. If Stark is going to call him an idiot, he'd rather he didn't do it publicly. He walks over to where Stark is checking his phone, standing in front of the TA who is sitting in the front row looking tired.

After fiddling on his phone for a moment Stark holds it out and gestures excitedly. "Great news, Bruce! I got another seven students to drop my class. High five!" he exclaims, holding out his hand.

Bruce just stares at him with undisguised exasperation.

At least someone involved in the administration of this class is normal.

"Oh come on, Brucey! Don't leave me hanging here! That's seven less tests we have to mark!"

Steve doesn't even know how to react to that declaration—where did they find this lunatic? He braces himself and then clears his throat. Stark turns around.

"Oh no," he says. "I already asked if there were any questions. No, no, no. I'm done now, no questions. You'll have to wait until next class."

"My question's a little bit complicated," Steve says as politely as he can. "I didn't want to ask it in class. I'd actually like to meet with you to go over it during your office hours. See, I'm having some difficulty with the material…"

"What?"

Now who's asking stupid questions, Steve wants to snark at him, but he really does need help so instead he replies "I want to meet with you during your office hours, please."

"Heh, office hours, that's a good one. I don't have an office," Stark says. He looks back at where his long-suffering TA is gathering up his stuff. "Bruce! Do I have an office?" Bruce gives him a look that asks very plainly what he ever did to be stuck with Stark. Steve commiserates. Stark turns back to Steve, "Yeah, no, I don't do office hours."

"Well, can I make an appointment?"

"No. It's bad enough that I need to teach this class three times a week. I'm not meeting with students outside of class time too. That's my time, you can't have it."

"But you're our professor," Steve says as reasonably as he can. Is he honestly arguing with this guy over extra help? He reminds himself that throwing something at Mr. Stark-Mad will not get him the extra help he needs. "It's your job to meet with us when we have issues."

"No, I'm pretty sure that's why I have Bruce," Stark says and he points over to where Bruce was sitting. Looks like someone was smart enough to know when to bail. Steve wishes he had that option.

"I emailed Bruce and he kindly suggested that my professor would be the best person to help me resolve my difficulties with the lecture material," Steve says evenly. Actually, Bruce's email had been more along the lines of 'he's got bats for brains, sorry, I haven't got a clue' but somehow he restrains himself from throwing that in Stark's face.

"But it's STATS! What possible clarification could you need? This stuff is easy! Forget being real math, this isn't even real stats! It's fake stats!"

"Look," Steve snaps, "no one has any clue what the heck you're talking about. I just need more of an explanation."

"Well…have you tried reading the textbook?" Stark asks. Before Steve can answer, he continues, "No, wait, of course you have. You're in the humanities. I bet you read the first chapter too."

"Yes, I did," Steve says. He's not going to apologize for trying to learn. "Look, I get that this course is so beneath you or whatever, but you do understand that we're taking stats because we haven't learned this yet, right?"

"Fake stats," Stark interjects, which is not even remotely an answer to Steve's question.

He sighs. "Can you please just explain what you meant with the example about what the force of gravity is and how it impacts on a missile? I didn't follow any of that. I thought gravity was just, you know, gravity?"

"Oh God save me from dumb jocks," Stark groans, giving him a look like he's just discovered Steve is particularly stupid. Steve clenches his jaw to avoid snapping at him. He reminds himself that he doesn't want to be expelled for decking a prof. Not in his senior year. He just needs this course to pass and there's no way he'll give this guy the satisfaction of dropping it. Stark continues, "Okay, fine, clearly you need the help, so how about you come by the engineering lab tonight at eight. You do know where that is, right? I mean, you being in the humanities and all."

"I know where it is," Steve snaps, before turning and stomping off.

If he didn't need this class to graduate, he would drop it in a heartbeat just to never have to deal with Professor Jackass ever again.

Tony's taking apart this circuit for the fifth time when there's a knock at the open lab door. Ugh, it's not that time already is it? He glances at the clock. Eight o'clock on the dot. Mr. Blond pokes his head in the door. Well, at least he can tell time. These days he's not willing to give his students even that much credit. Bruce showed him a couple of the emails the students had sent him, they ranged from, "How much are the two 15% assignments worth?" to "What grade do I need to get on the exam if I don't do the assignments?"

"Hi, I'm Steve, I'm one of your students… We had an appointment to go over some of the material I was having trouble with?" Aw, yes, Mr. Tall, Blond, What's Gravity?

"Welcome," Tony declares putting down the circuit and gestures him over to one of the work desks. "You planning on blocking the doorway all night, Steve, or are you going to come in?"

"I was just being polite," he mumbles. Steve dumps a couple textbooks off the sad looking wheely chair in the corner and pushes it over to the desk. So, maybe Tony could have prepared a bit better for this rendez-vous. Steve casts his eyes around the room. "So…isn't this kind of late for a school appointment?" he asks. "Shouldn't you be home by now or something?"

Small talk? Really? Yeah, sure, Tony's not busy or anything. He's happy for Steve to come waste his time.

He can't believe he's interrupting his research for this crap.

Tony shrugs and picks up a screwdriver, flips it over, once, twice. "As far as I'm concerned, I am home."

Steve gives him a puzzled look, "You live here?"

"Most days. Since this is where my real work gets done," Tony says. "When I'm not being forced to interrupt it to teach students fake math, I mean." He puts down the screwdriver. "Now let's get this over with. I don't live for teaching stats, you know."

"Oh, I know," Steve says and Tony hears the exasperation in his voice. What has he got to be exasperated about? Is he writing his dissertation on inventing a new energy source? "You have made that abundantly clear."

Tony gives him a toothy grin, "Great, then let's get this over with so that I can get back to stuff that actually matters."

"Um, yeah, okay, I don't want this to take long either. I wanted you to go over your example on hypothesis testing again. I got really confused by it in class."

Right. He needs help with this, really? Well, it's simple enough to go over. Tony can talk about physics and dynamics in his sleep. He's pretty sure he has on a couple of occasions, actually.

He runs through the example again, explaining that the null hypothesis is that the force of gravity is 9.81 meters per second squared, even on an accelerating missile, whereas the alt hypothesis is that it's greater than that. He sets up the level of significance, he comes up with a data sample and then does the calculations to account for the force of the missile. He walks through the steps to calculate the mean which, really, even humanities students have to know how to do that by now. And then he's only left with retaining the null hypothesis. Easy peasy.

He looks over at Steve, who has a glazed look on his face. Oh God, this is basic, basic stuff. How is this his life?

"Should I go back to the beginning?" Tony asks. He puts as much exasperation as he can into his tone, making it clear exactly what he thinks of that, willing the student to just give this up.

"Please," Steve says instead.

Fuuuuuuck. No, no more. How can he make this any simpler? It's gravity not thermonuclear astrophysics.

"Okay, so," Tony says, speaking as slowly as possible, "a hy-po-the-sis is a theory of what's going to happen. But you need to test that theory. You can't just say that because you think something is true that means it is, you have to test it first. That's where hypothesis testing comes in. Going into testing you have two hy-po-the-ses—that's the plural of hypothesis, by the way—the first is that your theory is true, the other is that it's not true."

"…I know that," Steve says, sounding exasperated.

"Easy there," Tony says, "You're getting awfully offended for a guy who thought gravity was just, like, you know, gravity."

"As you keep pointing out, I'm in the humanities. I don't study physics!"

"No, no, of course not, you're right. Listen, if this stuff is too complicated for you, I'm more than happy to try to come up with some other examples that your artsy brain can actually handle," Tony lies blatantly. He won't be happy to come up with them, and he's not sure he can dumb this down enough anyway. "Let's see, are all puppies cute? Oh wait, is this too complicated? Should I have gone with kittens instead?"

Steve glares at him, but his words have the hoped for effect. Steve stands angrily and shoves his stuff back in his bag. Finally.

"Just forget it," he snaps. "I'll figure it out myself."

"Great, you do that," Tony says, watching with delight as Steve storms out of his lab. "Glad to be of help! Bring coffee next time!"

As the door swings shut behind Steve, he can swear he can hear him mutter, "I'll bring him coffee alright. How about an espresso shot to the face?"

Tony can't help but chuckle at that.

Tony presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and glances at the clock. It is almost eight o'clock. Huh. He could have sworn it was a little after three. Wasn't it three like twenty minutes ago? Shit, that means he's just spent the better part of a day working on this seemingly simple experiment. If his calculations are correct, and so far they haven't been, by feeding stable iridium an extra electron, he should be able induce the radioisotopes to react with the palladium and the hydrogen and voila! Power! Except of course the "voila" stage isn't going as planned…

Tony stares at the data on his computer screen. His brain hurts and he's only vaguely aware of a pounding noise inside his head. Time to face facts, Stark. He needs to run the test again. Tony groans and slumps forward over the keyboard.

Maybe he is going about this all wrong…if he uses the non-stable iridium isotope then…if the hydrogen gives up its electron… He erases a couple of lines of data and rejigs the calculations. It registers to Tony that the pounding in his head is actually someone knocking on the door to the lab. Which is ridiculous because no one knocks, unless Strange is locked out again. So he ignores it. Okay, so if the hydrogen is reacting with the palladium to create a thermo—

The knocking persists.

Sighing with exasperation, Tony pushes his chair back, stalks across the lab and throws open the door, "I swear to god, Strange, if you lost your keys again I—"

Except it isn't Strange. It's that blond guy from a couple days ago, the one who didn't know his ass from his elbow and insisted on wasting Tony's time. Shit, what's his name?

"Uh, hi," says Blondie, looking a little startled.

"Hi…" Tony says slowly, suspicious. "You lost?" The blond guy narrows his eyes, but really lost is the only reasonable explanation for why this guy is at the door to his lab. "I think you might be lost. Take the third door on your left, go down to the ground floor, take the fourth door on the right, go outside, head East across campus, Arts Quad will be on your right, you can't miss it. Should I draw you a map?"

Blond guy's—no, Steve! Right, his name is Steve Rogers—face twitches as he takes a deep steadying breath.

"Uh, no, I'm not lost. I, uh, wanted to ask for help again." He gives Tony a strained smile.

Tony stares at him in disbelief. He came back for more? Really?

"I brought coffee," says Steve, face hopeful. He holds up Starbucks.

Tony glares at him but takes the cup and holds open the door to the lab. Steve brushes past him and goes straight for Tony's workspace, eyes sweeping over the messy workbench, lingering on the piles of papers, laptop and scraps of metal. Tony follows him over, kicks an empty chair towards Steve before flopping into his own seat. He takes a sip of the coffee.

"Holy shit!" Tony exclaims, holding the coffee out in front of him.

Steve jumps at Tony's outburst. "What?" he asks.

"This is my coffee," Tony stares at Steve in disbelief. "Like, this is the coffee I always order."

Steve is staring at him, brow furrowed. "Is that a problem?" His voice is unsure.

"No!" says Tony quickly, "It's great - it's more than great. Thank you. But - how did you know?" Tony pauses, "Can you read minds?"

Steve smirks. "No, but I can read."

Does he want a medal? Tony waits for him to continue.

"You come into stats with the same coffee every class, right? Venti black eye," Steve says and gestures to the side of the coffee cup, "They mark it on the side. I dunno, I remembered that you always have two espresso shots in your coffee." He shrugs, "I asked the lady at Starbucks and that's what she said it was called. The only thing I didn't know was if you added cream, but I had a feeling you took it black."

"Huh," Tony nods and takes another sip. He can't help it, he's impressed. Not only that Steve observed and remembered his coffee preferences but that he came back with the coffee in the first place. If Tony were a betting man and someone had asked him the odds on Steve coming back for more help after that first session, Tony would have said a thousand to one. Tony would owe someone money right now. Lots of money. Because not only did Steve come back, he brought coffee. That took stones. It probably meant swallowing his pride too, which if the situations were reversed Tony is sure he'd never have been able to do.

"Alright, what do you need help with?" asks Tony as he brushes his work into a pile at the end of the bench.

Steve pulls out a spiral notebook and the text out of his bag and sets them on the desk. "Hypothesis testing. I am sorry. I'm really not getting the examples. I think I understand it in theory, but why would I use it on a constant like gravity?"

Ugh. Not this again. Tony fights the urge to kick him out of the lab or hit his head off the desk. Didn't he get that it was just an example? What was so hard about pretending that gravity wasn't constant? "Okay, forget gravity. Just put that out of your mind, it isn't important." Steve is giving him that look again and Tony can tell he's about five seconds away from losing his temper. "Seriously," says Tony, raising his hands to placate, "we're forgetting that gravity example ever happened. Hypothesis testing is just what it sounds like."

The tension in Steve's shoulders eases. "Alright, I get that I am testing a query," he says, "but when do I use that as opposed to a z-test?"

"A z-test is part of it."

"But I thought…" Steve starts flipping through his notes.

Tony cuts him off. "The z-test is used to test hypotheses concerning the mean in a single population with a known variance."

Steve stops pawing through the text, giving Tony his undivided attention.

"Okay, so say you were looking at…" Tony thinks, what do normal guys like? "…cars. Say you are looking at cars, but just this one kind of car. What kind of car do you drive?"

"I don't drive a car," says Steve, looking a little puzzled, "I have a bike."

"Like a pedal it yourself kind of bike? 'Cause not only does that kind of suck for you but that really isn't going to work for this example."

Steve chuckles, "No, it's a 1948 Indian Chief."

Tony whistles, "Nice." That is a fine piece of machinery. "Does it have the original skirted fenders?"

Steve nods, "Yeah, actually, it took a long time to get them, one was rusted badly and one was missing."

"What kind of engine? Did you go with fuel injection, 'cause that's not really retro."

"Nope, I kept it classic, 74 cubic inch engine. It doesn't get as much power, but who cares? It can still gets up to 85 mph. It was a bitch to repair, had to special order everything."

"You did it yourself?" Tony wouldn't have called that, never would have pegged this guy as a gearhead.

Steve looks at his hands. "Everything I could. I mean some stuff was way beyond me, but I know my way around a bike. If you're interested you should come see it." Steve is smiling like he genuinely wants to show off the motorcycle. Tony can't blame him. He loves showing off his babies too.

Before really considering the implications, Tony finds himself saying, "Sure I'd love to check it out. What are you doing now?"

Strictly speaking this might not be appropriate. He recalls Fury blabbing away about professionalism and ethics and obligations. Tony decides he doesn't care, he's looking at a motorcycle, not accepting sexual favours. Fury can go fuck himself.

Steve gives him an odd look, "Getting help with stats?" He is eyeing Tony wearily like it might be a trick question.

Tony sighs, "Not right now. I meant after."

"Oh, nothing I guess. You want to come see it after this?"

"Why not?" It's not like Tony has a pile of research to wade through before his meeting with Dr. Richards in two days. Oh well, he just won't sleep tomorrow, probably wasn't going to anyway.

Steve grins, "Sure." His eyes shift to his open textbook again, "So, say I was looking at cars?"

Tony pushes aside any more questions he has about the bike. Right, fake math. "Okay, you are looking at a car, a single variable, and…"

Twenty minutes later, Steve pushes back from the bench declaring, "Oh my God, that is so easy." He's almost laughing.

Tony throws down his pencil. He'd been furiously scribbling out the calculations with Steve. Writing out standard deviation by hand is such a bitch. Tony grins at Steve, "I think you were just getting ahead of yourself."

"No, I think you just enjoy making things complicated," retorts Steve.

"What? No way. It isn't my fault that you can't follow some simple examples."

Steve gives him an incredulous look, "Any example that involves the laws of thermodynamics is not simple."

Okay, so maybe that's fair, but he only did that once, and that was because that guy in the second row from the back was being an ass and asking too many questions. Like, really dumb questions.

"I think I've said this before," starts Steve, "but you do know that none of us have taken this before, right? It isn't a refresher course."

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. "Yes, I'm aware, but it is so basic." It's so basic it hurts.

Steve just shakes his head. "Then use basic examples. I think it would make your life easier."

"How so?"

"It might put a stop to the stupid questions, for one," replies Steve. He closes his notebook and replaces it in his backpack.

Tony laughs, Rogers might actually be onto something. "But, I've worked in time for stupid questions into all of my lesson plans!"

Steve rolls his eyes and shoulders his bag. "I'm sure you'll manage." He stands and stares at Tony expectantly. What now? "Did you still want to see my bike?" asks Steve.

Oh right! Tony eyes the clock, it is a little after nine. He can totally take a break, yeah sure, why not? Plus it's a 1948 Indian Chief, that's like a little piece of American history. He's always wanted a bike, this could be research.

Tony stands and grabs his jacket, "Yeah, sure let's go."

They walk West across campus and into the one of the many student ghettos surrounding the university. Tony thinks he recognizes a street they pass from a past house party. Or was it a walk of shame? Either way he'd probably been drunk. Tony checks his phone while they walk. He missed the Jets game.

"Fuck!" he exclaims, staring at his phone.

Steve stops walking, "What?"

"Sorry. Jets lost," says Tony, a little defeated. He shoves his phone in his pocket. Damn it.

"Yeah, I watched a bit, it wasn't pretty. Cromartie totally fumbled that play."

Tony sighs, "Jesus, they need to get their act together."

They resume walking. Steve gives Tony a rundown of the game until he stops in front of an extremely modest two-storey brown brick house. The front yard is dominated by a large oak tree and there's no lawn to speak of, just patches of scraggly grass and mud. The driveway looks like a patchwork quilt except with large chunks missing. Steve leads him up the driveway and around the back to a small shed. Steve pulls out his keys and fiddles with them until he finds the right one. The shed is secured by a small padlock that Tony is fairly confident he could pick with a toothpick. Steve pulls the doors open and fumbles in the dark for a light while Tony waits outside. There's a clicks and the shed is bathed in a warm buttery light. The space is dominated by the bike, hidden under a dust cloth. The inside of the shed features a small work bench littered with various tools and parts.

"So this is where the magic happens?" asks Tony.

Steve laughs, "Yeah, something like that." Steve pulls off the dust cloth and stands back, lets Tony in to look around. Tony can't help himself, he has to touch. It's obvious that Steve has put a lot of time and effort into the bike's restoration even though he probably didn't have a lot of resources. He runs a finger over the leather of the seat, the chrome of the handlebar, the cover of the engine. Steve is smiling, clearly a proud papa.

"She's gorgeous," says Tony, letting awe creep into his voice. "How long has it taken you to…?" He trails off, waving a hand to encompass the whole bike.

"Well, I got it shortly after I turned sixteen. It used to be my dad's. I've been working on it ever since."

Tony can tell that Steve is trying to be casual but his face betrays him. This bike means the world to him.

"Well, you can tell. You've done a great job," he says. "Can I take a look?" He gestures to the engine block.

"Knock yourself out," says Steve with a shrug.

Tony pulls off his jacket and tosses it aside and grabs a screwdriver. Within thirty seconds he has the cover off the engine and his hands covered in grease. Steve crouches next to him, watching him work. Tony asks the occasional question which Steve is able to answer. Turns out he built the engine with a buddy's father the year before coming to school.

"You having trouble with the transmission? Especially first and second gear?" asks Tony, squinting at the engine.

Steve looks surprised for a second. "Yeah, I've been trying to work it out."

"Here, pass me that wrench. You just need to…okay now pass me those pliers…and that ought to do the trick."

Tony realizes that he might have just crossed a line, gotten a little carried away because Steve is staring at him, eyes wide. But then he smiles – a genuine smile. "Wow. Thank you, Mr. St—"

Tony cringes. "Tony, please call me Tony, we're not in class, and quite frankly Mr. Stark sounds like he's at least thirty. Or my dad. And yeah, just no." He puts the cover back on the engine, resisting the urge to continue fiddling. Steve tosses him a rag to clean the grease off his hands.

"Alright, thank you, Tony." He throws the dust cloth back over the bike.

"Y'know, if you like cars you should come see my babies. I only have the Mustang and the Jag here, the rest are back home, but I've done a lot of custom work. They are magnificent, even if I do say so myself."

Steve is looking a little awed. "You have a Mustang?"

Hadn't he just said so? "Yes…"

Steve must sense his confusion because he immediately says "Sorry, it's just that I don't know too many grad students with a luxury car collection."

True, it's not something he advertises. He generally doesn't have to. Most everyone already knows who he is, especially in the engineering faculty. Plus, nothing loses you the respect of your peers quite like flaunting your wealth, especially while they tell you horror stories about how they got scurvy one year from eating nothing but Mac n' Cheese for six months. Tony's sure he's been dangerously close to malnourished but that was just because he forgot to eat for a week that one time.

"You ever heard of Stark Industries?" he asks.

Steve thinks for a moment, "No."

"Oh. Well, it's a company my family owns." He shrugs. "It's, uh, big."

"Wait, are you some sort of Paris Hilton equivalent?" asks Steve.

Tony's jaw drops. "You did not just compare me to Paris Hilton, Rogers. There's no way you just made that comparison. My ears must have deceived me." Tony tries to hold onto his indignation but Steve is laughing and he can't stop the smile from creeping up his face. "You are such an ass," he laughs.

Tony checks his phone. Shit, it's 10:30. He really needs to get back to the lab.

"Well, Steve, I need to get back to work. Thanks for bringing me by. I am serious about you coming by to check out my cars. What's your number?"

Steve pulls out his phone and rattles off his number. Tony adds it to his contacts and sends Steve a message: This is the illustrious Anthony E. Stark

Steve snorts once his phone chimes the text's arrival. "I'm adding you as Professor Stark, just so you know."

Tony groans, "Whatever blows your skirt up. I'm adding you as Magic Mike."

Steve gapes at him. "Are you actually admitting to having seen that movie?"

Tony laughs. "No, God no, though one of my girl friends saw it and she wouldn't shut up about it for a week. It was a very long week."

Steve just shakes his head. He locks the shed and walks Tony down the driveway. "You know your way back to campus?"

"Yeah, I got it, thanks." He slides his coat on. "Catch you later." He starts walking down the quiet street towards the university.

"See you in class, thanks for your help."

Tony waves goodbye over his shoulder. For some reason he's smiling. He feels almost giddy even though his thesis isn't cooperating, he has a meeting with his supervisor in two days and he still has to write that fucking stats test.

Disclaimer: Please handwave all science. We sure did. Also, we're not really insulting humanities majors. We are humanities majors. Blame Tony.