Chapter 3
The last thing Tony wanted to do was go harass T’Challa for Scott’s damn suit but he was a man of his word and he did tell Hope he’d get the damn suit back. He’s pretty sure he’s never made good on that blood pack he made with Hope so he was so asking her to borrow the Ant-Man suit for a night to try and reverse engineer as much as humanly possible. If Hope took him on training together he could probably figure out the missing information from that.
But that required him to get the suit back first and after haggling with that damn guard for a solid hour T’Challa better open the damn door. He knocks and stands back, not expecting much and finding the hallway conspicuously lacking in guards. That didn’t mean he was stupid enough to think that T’Challa’s guards weren’t around. The door opens and he jumps a little and T’Challa sticks his head out, “hello,” he says, looking suspicious.
“I need a favor,” Tony says, sticking his foot in the door just in time to avoid it shutting.
“You do know how strong I am, right?” T’Challa asks.
“Sure, you can slam the door on my ankle and I’ll be really upset with that, but I didn’t want to show up here and act like I had some other agenda until I got to what I was actually here for. Honesty is the best policy and all that. And you don’t have to do most of the work anyways, I just need the Ant-Man suit because I made this blood pact with Hope when I was like nine and now I can’t back out and-” T’Challa cuts him off.
“I am sorry, did you just say blood pact?” he asks, frowning. “Do you not know about blood borne illnesses?”
“I was nine,” Tony repeats.
“You are a genius, you built your first circuit board at six,” T’Challa says.
“Well I’m sure you’re aware that intelligence in one area does not mean intelligence in all areas. Like any other nine year old I was a fucking idiot and I made a blood pact because someone had to keep bullies from kicking my ass and Hope had a lot of pent up anger she wanted to take out on people’s faces. It worked okay, don’t judge me. I just need the Ant-Man suit.” Hope better freaking appreciate that he was doing thing because this was the last thing he wanted to spend his night doing. He pulls his foot from the door though because T’Challa was going to make a choice whether or not his foot was there and he wasn’t about to sacrifice his ankle if T’Challa got cranky. He needed it.
T’Challa considers him for a long moment though, “how did you find me?” he asks.
Tony sighs and accepts that this was going to be a challenge. “I looked you up, it wasn’t hard, FRIDAY found you within seconds. Then I showed up here and haggled with your guards for an hour and the fact that I can’t see them in this narrow of a space makes me nervous,” he says honestly. Where the hell were they? He didn’t get the impression that they were content to just leave him alone with the king, which meant they were somewhere in this hallway.
“They let you past them, then?” T’Challa asks.
“No, I somehow managed to kill a bunch of people I can’t even find in a narrow hallway just because I need some jackass’s super suit back. Yeah, obviously they let me past,” he adds when T’Challa frowns at him. Did they not have sarcasm in Wakanda?
“You are a very… prickly person,” T’Challa says.
“Coming from the guy who all but threatened to crush my ankle in his doorway that’s rich. Look, I just need to get the suit back and if you never want to see me again that’s fine, I’m not even sure there’s anything even here.” Wasn’t there supposed to be some lovey-dovey hormone flush or something? Nothing of interest seemed to be happening here aside from extreme hostility and annoyance from both of them. T’Challa’s shutting the door in his face sort of confirms his suspicions but he doesn’t move for a long while, rooted to his spot while he decided whether or not it would be worth it to knock again.
The door eventually reopens and T’Challa nods more to himself than Tony. “It appears you were wrong about nothing being there, otherwise you would not have stood at the door looking like a tit with your hand half raised to knock on it for ten minutes.”
“First, I still need that Ant-Man suit. Second, it has not been ten minutes.” There was no way it has been ten minutes, it was like two at best.
“I purposefully timed it. Come in,” T’Challa says much to Tony’s surprise. He opens the door wider and steps aside for Tony to enter. That was probably the nicest thing that’s happened between them by far and Tony takes advantage, stepping into T’Challa’s temporary space. Penthouses were unimpressive to him given his wealth; they were nothing new to him so he doesn’t take much time to focus on anything. It wasn’t like he’d learn anything about T’Challa anyways, not from a hotel room. T’Challa shuts the door and turns to face Tony, “I do appreciate your honesty. I dislike mind games,” he says.
He still looks put off, but not as hostile as before so that was kind of an improvement. “Neither do I. You must love politics though,” Tony says sarcastically.
T’Challa frowns a little, “no, I do not. Politics are necessary but needlessly tedious due to individuals misusing their power and authority.”
“I… yeah, I knew that. I was being sarcastic. You know, purposefully using irony to mock something?” Tony adds when T’Challa looks confused.
“Oh, the voice inflection… that is how we convey sarcasm in Wakanda. Sorry,” he says, somewhat sheepish. Tony shrugs, not overly concerned about T’Challa’s misunderstanding. “Alright. Look, I will be honest here. In Wakanda submissives do not face the discrimination that they face seemingly everywhere else. I was not prepared to deal with that kind of backlash to my orientation and it has not given me much faith in anyone, especially not someone with your attitude. I have seen the videos, heard from your teammates. People agree, you are an ass and I am not in the business of being lesser,” T’Challa says.
Yeah, Tony could understand that and given T’Challa’s general demeanor he probably threw a lot of people for a loop. Submissives weren’t supposed to have the kind of presence T’Challa did- the guy radiated power and elegance. That would freak a lot of Doms out. But… “fun fact, there are only four companies in the world right now run by subs. Even more fun fact, the first company to be run by a sub was mine when I promoted Pepper Potts to the position of CEO. Technically she’s a switch, but she took the position when she was in a relationship as a sub and it was ground breaking. I understand suspicion, but gathering information from people that hate me and notoriously unreliable media sources is the last way to get to know me. I am an ass though.” Might as well keep it honest- the statement was true. He’s always been a bit of a handful, everyone in his life has told him so at least once. In Howard’s case he outright told him he was a waste of space.
T’Challa takes a moment to digest that information before he speaks. “So I am gathering. You are nothing like what I expected, I expected someone more like…”
“Ross?” Tony suggests. He’d never out and out admit it, but he had a knack for hiding some pretty ignorant views under pretty words and synonyms.
“Something like that yes, or perhaps some more of America’s more regressive politicians. Imagine my surprise entering a world in which I have no respect for being born this way,” T’Challa says, rolling his eyes.
“Man, I hate to be there when you discover racism…” Tony mumbles.
“Do not be ridiculous, I knew about racism already. I was prepared for my race to be a problem in certain areas but somehow I missed the discrimination against submissives. It has thrown me, and it continues to shock me even when I expect it,” he says.
Tony sits there for a moment, unsure what to say but curiosity gets the best of him. “There’s… really no discrimination against subs in Wakanda?” It sounded way too good to be true to him honestly, like those moron Doms who thought subs were equal because it was illegal to abuse them. Except in this case T’Challa would be one of those idiot subs who agreed.
“No. There is a history of it, but that history was so long ago that subs do not feel the legacy of that. There are the occasional political outliers of course, but they are pariahs. No one with basic morals takes them seriously. In Wakanda discrimination is saved for switches and neutrals, they are thought of as unnatural and mentally ill,” he says.
“Well the evidence shows-” Tony starts, ready to defend Pepper’s orientation but T’Challa cuts him off.
“I never I believe that. Just that that is the general consensus in Wakanda. There is an assumed naturalness in regards to Doms and subs and things that lie outside of that are thought to be Western a phenomenon or, as I said, mental illness. But the evidence is far too solid to deny the existence of switches and neutrals- they have been documented in nearly one hundred and fifty countries. But bigots do not focus on proof- submissives have been found to be as competent as Doms in most areas yet discrimination still exists here,” T’Challa points out.
So Tony knew. It was shocking to him how much criticism Pepper got for running things way better than he had. Granted his illogical choices and snap decisions looked confusing to anyone who wasn’t in his head- he was acting on math most people didn’t even know existed so his decisions looked reckless when they were actually highly logical. But from the outside he was a terrible CEO with some really good luck, not to mention his drug and drinking days. Christ, if it was even remotely fun he was addicted to it and people didn’t think he was a bad CEO. Pepper though, she was criticized for everything when she was following the same math patterns that Tony did. Sometimes he was pretty sure she was a genius too, but he’s pretty certain that she had only picked up on his patterns, not that she understood everything that went behind it. Her abilities were impressive nonetheless, and the criticism was unwarranted.
“So it does. But if you were worried about discrimination coming from me that’s not going to happen, not purposefully anyways. Natasha could have told you that,” he says.
“No offense but the woman manipulated me for her own ends and then electrocuted me several times. Forgive me for not trusting her,” T’Challa says, body language tipping back towards the hostile.
“Whoa, whoa, I don’t like her or trust her either given that she showed up as Pepper’s assistant to spy on me then wrote a rather scathing report on me as if my actions when I was dying were the same as my every day actions. But she’s the only sub on the team and that’s probably the only thing she thought didn’t make me the actual devil. I mean I wear red but come on, that’s just dramatic,” he says, shaking his head. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, whatever. More like Dying and Running Through a Bucket List Disorder, which he felt everyone had. Who wouldn’t want to drive a racecar at least once? Or throw a really awesome final birthday party that Natasha agreed with? It didn’t end so well but until then it was fine.
T’Challa’s eyebrows go up and he relaxes some, “oh. I suppose we have something in common then. Well… I am not your typical sub,” T’Challa says, almost warns really.
Tony figures that the tentative statement meant that he was willing to at least talk some more. “I don’t really think there is a typical sub considering they’re a wide-ranging group of people with various thoughts and feelings but I get what you mean. If you were worried about my ability to handle a sub that’s in a powerful position I should remind you that I promoted my last sub to CEO of my company and didn’t take it back when I managed to fix myself. I’m not stranger to a sub in what’s viewed as a dominant position. Talk to Pepper about it,” he says. She’d back up what he was saying, if with a little more critical thinking.
*
T’Challa had no idea he had wanted to hear Tony tell him that there was no typical sub, or suggesting talking to Pepper Potts. It takes seconds to figure out that she certainly was not the kind of sub America seemed obsessed with either and Tony did not seem threatened by it. Actually he did not seem threatened by T’Challa either, not once had he made a comment about his orientation in relation to his position as king or his obvious confidence in himself. Most Doms, even the ones in Wakanda, were put off by that kind of demeanor- worried that they could not handle a sub like that. To be fair most could not, T’Challa happened to be picky but he felt he had a right to be.
But Tony was something else entirely. He did not flinch when T’Challa interrupted him, he listened when he spoke, and he did not at all shy away from his hostility. His team deemed him reckless and he had read that scathing report Tony mentioned from Natasha, the one that said he rarely thought of others outside the context of his own powerful personality. He might have agreed if the evidence did not seem to support the opposite, or something in between at least. The only time Tony made an effort to seek him out the first thing he did was consider T’Challa’s feelings by not lying to him by omission to get what he wanted. Of course that made things easier on him in theory by cutting to the chase, but given his obvious suspicion of Tony showing up and asking for something would not have worked out well for him.
Given how things progressed it did end up working in his favor- Wakanda had no need for the Ant-Man suit- but his honesty struck a cord with T’Challa. So much of politics was lies and deceit, it was nice to have a change in pace. And of course he took Tony’s advice and sought out one Pepper Potts to gather what she thought of the man.
Pepper smiles at him over her cup but he knows that it is fake. He was more than aware of what a public smile looked like but he ignores it in favor of listening to what Pepper had to say. “Look, Tony has a lot of flaws- a lot of flaws- but he’s never been a bad Dom. That’s probably the only thing he’s never screwed up at some point honestly,” she tells him, looking a bit surprised, like she would have expected failure there for some reason.
“Is… there a reason you’re surprised at that?” he asks.
She sighs, “you have to remember that I’ve known Tony a long time, long before he became Iron Man. When I first knew him he was just starting to drink more, party more, he was always doing something reckless and stupid with no thought to much anything, himself included. When you know someone that destructive it comes as a surprise that he takes aftercare very seriously, and that he somehow manages to make mini contracts for one night stands to cover his sub’s asses. Trust me, when I first met him I figured he’d be like pretty much every other Dom I met or worse. That’s never been true though, even though I’m a switch.”
Hmm. Tony’s teammates seemed at a loss as to what he was like as a Dom but Tony explicitly stated not telling anyone what he and his subs did behind closed doors. It was her last comment that attracts his attention though, “even though you are a switch?” From what he understood switches and neutrals were relatively ignored here but perhaps he was wrong. Maybe he only perceived it that way because his own country focused heavily on switches and neutrals in a way the rest of the world did not seem to.
“Yeah, you know how it is,” she says. He did not but thankfully she elaborates. “People like to think you can’t be a good sub because you’ll always have that Dominant side of you, or that you can’t be a good Dom because you’ll always have that submissive side. I don’t think people realize how adaptable switches are but they don’t care to understand either.” No they did not, especially in T’Challa’s experience.
“Tony did not assume that, then?” he asks.
“No. He’s probably the first person I’ve ever met that took my word for it when I said I could handle being a sub or a Dom depending on what I needed to be. Everyone else likes to assume you’re secretly faking it half the time- that switches need to be fifty percent sub and fifty percent Dom or they’ll… I don’t know, explode or something. But we don’t and Tony was the first I’ve met to actually believe that,” she says.
T’Challa keeps this in mind, soaking in the information from an actual switch because he has never met one before. At least not one that felt comfortable enough telling him about it and for good reason- who knew what the king’s son would react like? If he reacted badly that could have drastic affects on the entire country. The information on Tony was interesting too, how he was easily able to accept Pepper’s words and experiences. He had a considerable amount of trouble convincing people he was a sub outside of Wakanda and in his country Doms shied away from a sub that was in such a powerful position, threatened by his authority. He supposed it was natural to question the dynamic he would have with them when he was to become king, therefore having far more power than they ever would. Being king has not made that easier.
This seemed to be limited to him though because whenever he mentioned it to other subs, even those in high political positions, they looked at him like he grew a second head. Apparently it was only being a prince or a king as a sub that threw Doms off. Unless, perhaps, they were Tony.
“So Tony was never… threatened by your position of power? Your obvious dominance in other areas?” Pepper was perhaps the closest personality-wise to him as he could get- most subs did not carry themselves like he did and that was fine. But his ability to submit has never been an effortless one.
Pepper huffs out a laugh, “no. He once told me that he wasn’t threatened because I always knew my place, which I didn’t understand because I was never submissive one hundred percent of the time. Or even fifty percent of the time. It took me a long time to realize that he wasn’t threatened because he saw me as an equal, not subservient.” Pepper smiles a little but it’s sad and a little strained, like it pained her to come to that conclusion. T’Challa supposed he would be sad too if he came to the conclusion that his partner confused him because he was seen as an equal instead of a glorified slave. But the statement said a lot about Tony Stark and T’Challa was curious.