Inimitable

When T’Challa wakes up his nose itches and he sniffs at the curious scent in the room. It takes him a long few moments to place the sweet, alluring scent and then he sighs, dragging himself out of bed and resigning himself to Tony hating him again. He pulls open the bathroom door and blinks a few times because the scent is stronger here but he shakes his head. Tony doesn’t need this at the moment. Instead of lingering just to sniff he knocks on their shared door, “Tony, are you awake?” he asks, remembering belatedly that he hadn’t checked the time. Of course he hadn’t- Tony’s scent had distracted him.

He hears shuffling around nonetheless and then he hears Tony swear loudly. “I will get Shuri,” he tells Tony, quickly leaving the room to give him privacy- shutting the bathroom door back to his room loudly enough that Tony knows he’s gone.

*

Tony squints at Shuri, “we what?” he asks because the words that just came out of her mouth made no sense.

“We go to a temple and essentially sit in cold baths until we are no longer ready to die of heat stroke. You know they say being an omega is a sacred thing but I think Bast secretly dislikes us given that she gives us fevers for four days every month. Seriously, what is the deal?” she asks, shaking her head.

Tony frowns, “people just… fuck off for four days and no one cares?” he asks. “In America that does not happen.” They’re mostly expected to get over themselves unless an alpha is involved- then a lot of sex was expected. Neither option is entirely pleasant to Tony. He’d prefer a good balance between the two but he’s not likely to get that. And here apparently he could sit in cold water for four days and no one even cared.

“America sucks,” Shuri says. “But yeah, here we go to temples and try not to die there. Don’t tell anyone that though, they have no idea what we do and it’s all shrouded in secrecy and all that. I was so excited for my first heat so I could figure out what we did in those temples and we don’t even do anything cool. I was so disappointed! But come on, you’re starting to smell nice to me and I don’t care what omegas smell like,” she says, prodding him forward.

He goes willingly, curious to see what exactly Shuri was talking about.

The caves where the temples are located, as it turns out, are quite beautiful. He can smell the water in them, and the omegas, but it’s the water that gets his attention. These days water that smells… natural for lack of a better way to put it is hard to come by. It either smelled like chemicals or like death depending on whether or not it’s drinkable. The water in the caves smells clean and fresh though and Tony sniffs, curious about how Wakandans managed. If he were to hazard a guess though he’d guess vibranium. It seems that they’ve found massive applications for the metal and they have a massive mountain of it- clearly its helped them adjust to the worsening weather patterns easier than everyone else.

“You look surprised,” Shuri notes and he nods.

“Water doesn’t smell this nice where I’m from,” he murmurs.

Shuri wrinkles her nose, “than what does it smell like? This water doesn’t smell fresh at all, it smells hormonal.”

“Better than chemical or ecological disaster,” he says. Shuri raises an eyebrow at that but remains silent in favor of dragging him through the caves, obviously intent on landing in a certain spot. It takes all of five seconds for him to end up completely confused but Shuri happily works her way through the confusing mess of walls until she reaches her desired destination.

“I like this space because its away from most others- I hate being around people in heat so be polite or I’ll abandon you in a cave by some random temple and you’ll be lost forever,” she threatens but she smiles, indicating that she’s probably joking. Or Tony hopes she is because he really would get lost for life in these caves.

*

The water feels cool and refreshing against his skin and he relaxes into it. Shuri had disappeared off somewhere some time ago but he doesn’t mind being alone. Actually he prefers being by himself when dealing with heats but rarely got the opportunity to- he was either expected to take suppressants and shut up or get with an alpha and either way he didn’t get to spend time by himself. Now though the water cools his heated skin, and the air feels fresh and clean in a way he’s unused to. It’s pleasant all things considered.

He wonders if the water has some other quality to it too considering how… cooling it was to his skin. In America there are several ways to deal with the overheating of heats but none of them are as effective as the water. He considers asking Shuri whenever she comes back but eventually decides against it. He has plenty of time to figure it out and for now his brain is mostly at its melting point. He’s always hated heats because he isn’t fond of feeling hot and sticky for several days nor is he fond of the perceptions his heats got but here they seem at least bearable.

“Hey, sorry I took so long I spent way too much time convincing people you weren’t going to desecrate our temples and ruin our traditions by simply being here. People are so dramatic,” Shuri says, rolling her eyes as she walks into the room with a basket of foreign looking fruits. Tony has seen them around but not tried any of them. “Stop looking at the fruit like that, heats take a lot out of omegas, we can’t eat crappy foods,” she says.

Tony wrinkles his nose, “can so. I do it all the time,” he says. He shouldn’t and he knows it but he has a bad habit of doing the opposite of that people tell him to.

“Well maybe that’s why you’re so exhausted right now. So shut up and eat the fruits,” Shuri tells him, pushing the basket his way before throwing herself into the water. Steam rises off of her skin and Tony snorts, almost feeling bad for her but not quite. So she got a little toasty while out of the water, he has to eat fruits now. They’re even. He does pick up the nearest fruit that looks like something he’s seen before and sniffs it though, curious before he takes a bite. It looks like an apple on the outside but the inside is black. He almost tosses the fruit away but his taste buds tell him that the food is good just in time and he frowns, deciding that the kind of apple might look gross but it tastes fine.

“What is this?” he asks when Shuri surfaces from the water looking less ready to keel over.

She stares a the fruit for a moment and then sighs, “I don’t know what to call that in English, he closest is grape but that is not a grape,” she says. Tony examines the overly large fruit in his hand and snorts at the idea of this being a grape.

“Fine then I guess. Tastes good regardless,” he says.

Shuri wrinkles her nose, “that is disgusting. I only put it in there to trick you into eating it and apparently you like that nasty fruit. Your and T’Challa have no taste,” she tells him, shaking her head.

*

T’Challa is doing his best to read but Tony’s cat is making his life difficult by trying to sit on his book. “Do you mind?” he asks the cat. She doesn’t- she goes and tries to sit on his book again, making a disgruntled noise when he lifts her off the text. “There is no need for you to be rude,” he tells the cat. She responds by rubbing her face on the corner of the book repeatedly with no regard to how this affects his reading. Cats.

While he does his best to rearrange the cat much to both of their annoyance he hears the door to the room next to his open and he frowns. The cat all but leaps off his bed and goes straight to the bathroom door to yowl and he sighs, getting off the bed. Tony must have particularly short heats if he’s back so soon but what does T’Challa know really? So he opens the door to let the cat back into Tony’s space just as Tony opens his door. The cat, oblivious to the sudden tension, runs across the bathroom to Tony and rubs herself along his leg while purring. “I put up with you trying to sleep on my face for four days and you abandon me like this? I am offended,” he tells the cat- in English for Tony’s benefit.

Tony smiles as he stoops down to scoop the cat up, “Concrete knows who loves her best, hmm?” Tony tells the cat. Her tail flicks back and forth and she purrs, pleased with her situation.

“This is the last time I politely host you,” T’Challa tells the cat, “next time you can deal with Okoye. And hello, Tony,” he says, nodding to him. “Also ‘Concrete’ is a terrible cat name.”

T’Challa expects Tony to ignore him but instead he smiles a little, “I named her that because she’s dumb as a block of cement. Cute, but she’s only got her looks going for her. Thanks for watching her,” he says.

He’s confused by the politeness but he doesn’t question it either. If Tony wants to be polite he will happily let him. “It’s no problem, I love cats so really it was a privilege. Clearly she prefers you,” he notes.

“Probably because I smell hormonal,” Tony says and until he mentions it T’Challa hadn’t much paid attention to the sweet smell of the room.

“You’re back early?” he asks more than states but only because he’s confused.

For a moment Tony looks guilty but then he shrugs, “sorry. Time off is foreign and also I bored,” he says, seemingly catching himself before he says much else. Shuri obviously informed him that whatever it was omegas did in their temples isn’t something the rest of the population knows about. He wants to know what they do, and more specifically how it could be boring to Tony, but he doesn’t ask out of respect.

Instead he asks something else. “No one was… unpleasant to you, were they?” he asks. His country is certainly ahead as far as omega rights go but the rights of foreigners? They haven’t even had to consider laws like that in hundreds of years. To say they are behind is an understatement.

Tony shakes his head though, “no and even if they were I don’t understand the language. I mean I know when people aren’t pleased- tone and body language does a lot to explain how they feel, but words are lost on me. Shuri said something about traditions being ruined but mostly I was worried about not overheating and dying, not ruining sacred traditions. But uh, I was bored so.” He shrugs like this explains things but it doesn’t, not to T’Challa anyways. Tony is always doing something, always in motion. He would have thought Tony would like the time off. Clearly he does not know Tony well.

“You don’t seem to take well to inactivity,” T’Challa notes and Tony laughs.

“One of many flaws,” Tony says, smiling a little.

He raises an eyebrow, “heats seem to make you more pleasant,” he notes, “no offense,” he adds.

Tony rolls his eyes but there’s no real heat in it, “more like I have no energy to do much else, but yeah. In America our more… laid back nature is mostly misconstrued as a biologically designed form of submission but if alphas had to deal with this shit they’d know its not submission, its being too tired to fight back much. Like being sick except with a higher fever,” he says almost more to himself than T’Challa.

T’Challa squints, “literally everyone knows that, how could America have missed such obvious biological facts? Your body is in overdrive and- well you’re living it, you know more than I do. How is it possible that an entire country could all but fabricate reasons for behavior that are explained in far more logical and less blatantly offensive ways?” He tries, and fails, to see how America’s conclusions could hold up to any kind of scientific exploration but its just lost on him. He simply can’t imagine coming to the same conclusion that Tony gave him.

“You look confused,” Tony notes.

“I just can’t imagine being so bad at basic observational science. Anyone with even the most basic of knowledge would know that heats aren’t some kind of… submission thing. That is so completely unrelated I- I don’t know, I cannot handle conclusions that are that ridiculous. Its like suggesting Egypts pyramids were built by aliens,” he says, shaking his head at the most ridiculous thing he could think of.

Tony snorts and laughs, “well in America some people think that too,” he says and T’Challa is certain hearing of this stupidity has made some of his precious brain cells die.

“America clearly only had one brain cell and it hung itself out of loneliness,” he says, shaking his head.

“What? Wakanda has no stupid opinions?” Tony asks, raising an eyebrow but it isn’t challenging like he normally is. Instead its more… curious.

“Of course we do, but our stupid opinions are certain birds tasting good when they are clearly the turds of Bast, not assuming offensive opinions about an entire group of people based on faulty science and aliens building pyramids. Oh, and there is this one plane of ours that went down forever ago that people have all these ridiculous conspiracy theories about but other than that we are mostly okay. And the opinion that foreigners will ruin our way of life but in our defense we did watch foreigners ruin the ways of life of everyone else around us but I think foreigners are mostly okay now. You seem fine,” he says and Tony laughs.

“And you’re rambling. Not a trait I’d predict a prince would have,” he says.

T’Challa shrugs, “usually its not a trait I have. But I ramble when I am unsure how to handle something,” he says. “Which doesn’t happen often.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, “what, don’t know how to deal with an omega in heat?” Tony asks almost playfully but not quite. Something about his tone of voice feels a touch forced but T’Challa elects to ignore it. Things have gone well so far, he’s certain he can keep it up.

“Not really- they are never around when in heat. But I think I’ve been doing okay all things considered. What’s causing me to ramble is more my being… unused to dealing with people who are outright hostile at my existence. People in Wakanda love me near universally and you… don’t. This interaction seems to be going well, I don’t want to botch it.” Like he has every other interaction, he adds to himself. But its difficult to try and get to know someone who wants nothing to do with you and he has no desire to force Tony to spend time with him so he’ll realize he isn’t what Tony thinks he is. If he did that than he would, in fact, be the person Tony thinks he is. He doesn’t want to prove him right either, for both of their sakes.

“Are you even affected?” Tony asks, frowning at him.

It takes a moment for T’Challa to realize Tony means his heat and he shrugs. “Sure, you smell delectable, like a dessert I like, but that’s mostly irrelevant. Is that… unusual in America?” he asks and Tony laughs with no humor in it.

“Oh in America alphas use heats as a rape apology argument. Or at least suggest our scents are an invitation for some kind of sexual contact,” he says and T’Challa feels his entire body react to that, mostly by recoiling and taking a step back.

“That is disgusting! That- wait, why be around me if that is the reaction you’re used to?” he asks, wondering what Tony would do such an… odd thing.

He shrugs, “everything else about how omegas are perceived here is difference, why not that too? Plus I already had evidence that was true- you were the one who noticed my heat to begin with and promptly left after waking me up. From across the room in a respectful manner. And I really was bored out of my mind,” he says, wrinkling his nose. He leans against the door, irritating the cat as she gets jostled but Tony adjusts her in his arms and she goes back to looking contented once she settles.

“Bored as you may be you should rest. You’re clearly exhausted,” he points out. Tony, for the first time since they started this conversation, gives him his usual offended look and he sighs. “I’m not saying do nothing, just do something that doesn’t require an abundance of energy. You’re clearly interested in science, I can grab a few books for you,” he says.

It takes a few moments but finally Tony nods, turning to head to his bed at least and T’Challa leaves him to go get a few books Tony might have an interest in. On a whim he grabs a book on Wakandan conspiracy theories too because they are just too ridiculous to pass up reading. When he returns though Tony is asleep so he leaves the books on his bed and goes back to his own room, Tony’s cat following at his heels because apparently she realized her owner is no fun at the moment. Cats.