Inimitable

T’Challa had thought it would be a good idea to dress him in Wakandan clothing and Tony had agreed, which is why he’s currently wearing a suit with some very beautiful embroidery on it. T’Challa looks him over for a few moments before he walks away, returning a few moments later with a brightly colored scarf that he carefully wraps around Tony’s neck before smiling. “You look lovely,” he says.

The scent from T’Challa’s scarf drifts up to his nose and if it were anyone else, or maybe if he were in America, he’d think the scarf was some kind of ploy to scent mark him but this is T’Challa and that behavior is not something Tony has come to expect from him. So instead of irritation or anger his lips tip up some and he shifts the scarf on his neck a little. T’Challa, who has obviously just clued into the fact that this is his scarf, one with his scent on it, widens his eyes as the implication of Tony’s shifting the scarf occurs to him.

“I… we… should go,” he says softly, struggling to maintain composure.

Tony grins wide, “guess we should,” he says, pleased he’s found an easy way to tease the prince. You could take an alpha out of a shitty culture but apparently they still cared about scent.

*

T’Challa is surprised by Tony’s openness and… and his happiness. He’s never seen Tony happy, not really, but he’s quite fond of the way Tony’s eyes light up when he smiles. When Tony reaches for his hand nearly unconsciously and threads his fingers through T’Challa’s his smile grows wider. “You will like the merchant tribe and they will like you too,” T’Challa tells him. “They are the group that is the most open to change and adaptation. Plus they are funny.” It helps, T’Challa thinks, that he lives closest to that particular group. To them he is more of a person and less of a figure that comes occasionally but ultimately leaves again. Its not that the other tribes of Wakanda have anything against him, its just that they don’t know him as well as the merchant tribe does.

It makes them much more open to his ideas, thoughts, and opinions and he’s hoping that they will be more open to Tony too. There are others- too many people really- that take issue with Tony’s American status but T’Challa is hoping that his presence will at least minimize any affects of that. People would not want to piss off the prince after all and if he can use that as a way to make life easier for Tony he will.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Tony says distractedly, looking out the window at the land as they dive by.

“Have you ever seen grass that green?” T’Challa asks, curious. In his experience grass is rarely green outside this country but maybe in America things looked different from the parts of Africa and Europe that he’s been to.

Tony shakes his head, “I’ve never seen anything like Wakanda at all. Its really beautiful here,” he says.

“The most beautiful in the world,” T’Challa agrees. “I am happy to share that with you,” he says softly.

Tony looks over then, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. “I’m happy to be here,” he says.

The comment touches T’Challa deeply and his lips curve as he brings Tony’s hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to his knuckles. “I like to hope that I can continue to make you as happy as I possibly can.”

“Is it really that important to you?” Tony asks, head tilted to the side in genuine curiosity.

“Of course it does, Tony. It means everything to me- it is partially my fault for your presence here to begin with. I took you from your home, from everything you love and care about; it is my responsibility to ensure that you don’t actually lose everything in the process. Besides that I actually like you. You’re smart, and passionate, and stubborn.” Probably a little too stubborn but T’Challa likes that about him too.

Tony snorts, “most people don’t like my stubbornness,” he says.

“From what I have gathered about your country most people dislike the fact that you have free will- their opinions are useless to me.” And in general, he thinks, but he leaves Tony to gather on his own that he means that too.

“And this is why I like you,” Tony tells him, grinning.

*

“Come look at this,” T’Challa tells Tony, gesturing for Tony to follow him. He’s been pointing things out as they went, sometimes explaining some cultural significance, sometimes explaining how Shuri’s technology changed the landscape around them, and occasionally he gets a personal story too. He likes those stories the best because he finds out all sorts of interesting things about T’Challa. Like the fact that he’s not fond of vegetables or meat, which resulted in him eating nothing but fruit for an entire summer much to his mother’s annoyance. Or that as a child T’Challa could only have been described as stunningly stupid given that he took pride in tormenting jungle cats for fun. The panthers didn’t find T’Challa’s pranks as funny as he did and his father found his pranks even less amusing. Which resulted in him being grounded for a year and a servant in Bast’s temples as an apology to the cats and their cat god. Tony finds the entire thing hilarious mostly because no panthers were harmed, just startled by a stupid ten year old boy.

Tony follows after T’Challa through some tall weeds that make his nose itch a little but he ignores that in favor of T’Challa’s excitement. “What exactly is ‘this’?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Come and see for yourself,” T’Challa tells him, laughing when Tony smacks a lingering weed away from his face. When he turns to face T’Challa though he’s shocked. He’s standing on a wooden dock in a body of water that’s unlike anything Tony has ever seen- or smelled. In America water is easily detectable because of the scent alone, but this water doesn’t seem to have a particular smell, at least not an easily detected one. But it’s the clarity of the water that really has his attention.

He walks forward slowly and somewhat cautiously thanks to the usual warnings he has to deal with when near water but T’Challa doesn’t show any sign of worry at all so he picks up his pace a little. “Its so clear,” he says softly, looking out into the water as he stops by T’Challa’s side. “Shallow though.”

“Actually its not. Its nearly five hundred feet deep at its lowest point, but is around two hundred feet deep in most places. But the water is so clear it looks shallow,” T’Challa tells him. “When things first began to go wrong with the environment this was the first place we saw it in. The water got muddy and fast; we had no idea why at the time. But we used this lake as a way to test how affected our environment was from the changes we made. Eventually Shuri figured out a way to make it clear again. Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks, smiling down at Tony.

Beautiful, yes. Tony has never seen water like this outside of a few history books. “This is incredible,” he says softly, crouching down to get a closer look. There’s no sign of any contamination, nothing that would be out of the ordinary.

T’Challa crouches next to him and dips his hand in the water, swirling it around a little while Tony watches with wide eyes. This isn’t possible in America; the water is too contaminated for that. Its probably his shock at T’Challa handling the water that distracts him long enough for T’Challa to flick water at him. He blinks rapidly, frowning at T’Challa for a moment before narrowing his eyes. For a moment T’Challa looks worried, like he’s done something wrong so he leans up a little and Tony takes that opportunity to push him into the water. T’Challa sputters a little as Tony laughs and he gives Tony a dirty look. “Really?” he asks, looking much like a drowned cat.

“Go big or go home,” Tony says, grinning.

T’Challa grumbles a little and pulls himself over to the dock, preparing to pull himself up but at the last minute he reaches out instead, dragging Tony face first into the water. When he comes back up T’Challa starts laughing. “Your hair looks like its painted on to your skull,” he says, doubling over a little as he laughs harder.

“Yes, that’s what my hair does,” Tony mumbles, pulling himself back onto the dock. “My outfit is ruined.”

“I thought if I had to be wet and miserable we should all be wet and miserable,” T’Challa says, pulling himself back onto the dock too.

“We should toss Concrete in for good measure,” Tony suggests and T’Challa snorts.

“If you want that cat to loath your existence by all means, toss her in the lake,” he says.

Tony smiles and shakes his head, “so I guess we’re going to take a small break while we dry off, hmm?” he asks.

T’Challa nods, “that’s probably for the best. You should let the cat out of her carrier, she’s probably quite angry and she could use a leg stretch too.”

Turns out he’s right about that, but it takes them all of five seconds to lose the cat and another two and a half hours to find her yowling in a tree that T’Challa has to go try and rescue her out of. He’s pretty pissed when he gets close to the cat only to have her jump out of the tree and walk over to Tony like she hasn’t just majorly inconvenienced them both for hours.

*

The merchant tribe, as it turns out, is actually pretty excellent and they took Tony’s sad attempt at a Wakandan greeting with pretty much no grace. He appreciates that they just launch into poking fun at his pronunciation mostly because he learns the right way to say the words. What he appreciates more though is the immediate criticism of Tony’s outfit.

“Why would you make him wear that? Its so stuffy,” the man to his left says.

“And it has to be hot. You know in America they aren’t used to the kind of heat we get here,” the woman to his right points out.

“Right!” the man to his left says. “I forgot about that, not only is the poor man overly formal but he will have heat stroke in that,” he says, gesturing to Tony’s outfit.

T’Challa squints hard at that, “heat stroke?” he asks, obviously very skeptical.

“Yes, the average temperature in New York is twenty five degrees in the summer. Its much hotter here considering that,” the woman says.

“Heat stroke?” T’Challa repeats, squinting more.

“Why do you keep repeating that?” the man to his left says, frowning.

Tony sighs, taking pity on them both. “What exactly do you think I do every month?” he asks. It takes an embarrassingly long time but eventually they both clue in.

“M’Koni, you idiot,” the man mumbles, clearly pinning this oversight on his friend.

“Excuse you, you thought of that just as little as I did! Men,” she mumbles, shaking her head.

T’Challa shakes his head at them both and makes introductions before dragging Tony through a mess of politics and cultural knowledge. He does, however, learn a lot about how wealth works in Wakanda and its nothing like what it does in America. “We had nothing but ourselves. If we had a system like America’s we would see nothing but strife and war- so we did our best to redistribute when possible though T’Challa still technically holds a good amount of the country’s wealth,” N’Baza says.

“Though its mostly housing and land- things people use more than I do,” T’Challa adds.

“Your system heavily relies on your royalty not being shitty people,” Tony says. “Give the kind of wealth you have to anyone in America and they’d hoard it, not let people use it. Seems kind of… naïve to have a system that runs like yours.”

N’Baza raises an eyebrow at T’Challa, who gives him an irritated look. “America is basically a dystopia- everything I have read and heard about the country is fodder for your average young adult novel,” he says.

“Oh, you guys have that weird subsection of YA too?” Tony asks, surprised.

T’Challa nods, “in Wakanda the genre always includes the children overcoming outsiders who are looking to take over the country with their dystopian world order. But yes, we have that too. Though in America your dystopian novels must read like either instruction manuals for those in power or instruction manuals for those looking to end the misuse of power. And in Wakanda’s defense your views of it are because you are suspicious of your leaders, you expect mistreatment from them. In Wakanda people do not settle for that- its happened of course- but a tyrant does not last long here. If our system begins to run badly everyone suffers. So when things take a turn for the worst we fix the problem, and if the problem is a tyrant, well.” He leaves it at that, letting Tony put the pieces together himself.

“How the hell did you even end up with a system like the one you have now?” he asks. Because from what he’s gathered its highly organized and goal oriented. Political debate must be less cumbersome here than what Tony is used to. Proceedings take months if they go fast, but usually take years. He wonders how that works for Wakanda and resolves himself to ask about it later. Along with their science and technological development and environmentalism.

Everyone in the room turns to give T’Challa a look. “You didn’t even explain the origins of Wakanda? What kind of useless husband are you?” M’Koni asks, shaking her head. “Can’t even teach the poor man how to speak, forgets to tell him the origins of the country- I hope you are a more organized king or someone will have to challenge you to the throne,” she says.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “challenge you?” he asks.

“Ritual combat, yes. Its usually how we get rid of the aforementioned tyrants. Don’t look at me like that, I know you are thinking that someone could just deny any right to a challenge but that is just not how our culture works. Denying it would be unthinkable and it would destroy the credibility of any leader. It would cause more chaos than accepting it and hoping to win,” T’Challa tells him.

He snorts, “in America they’d probably just shoot you, fuck the combat thing.”

N’Baza frowns, “America lacks honor- you don’t bring a firearm to ritual combat. That is cowardly,” he says.

Tony shakes his head, laughing. “In America the saying is the opposite- its don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”

M’Koni squints at T’Challa, “what kind of shithole did you rescue him from?” she asks, looking pretty horrified.

It only makes Tony laugh harder. “Oh, its funny because they think you’re the shithole. Guess it just goes to show that every country thinks they’re the best regardless of whether or not they’re right. Except Wakanda kind of is right from what I’ve seen. You guys have water you can swim in,” he says. This is a definite plus even if Tony’s swimming skills are limited. But they’re better than most people’s skills- most didn’t have indoor pools to learn in the way he had.

“America thinks this is the shithole and they don’t even have water you can swim in? The nerve,” M’Koni says, shaking her head.

“In their defense they think we are a textile nation, not what we actually are. I’m assuming Tony has not told them any different,” T’Challa says, sparing Tony a glance. “And I didn’t rescue him so much as violently pull him from his home and then expect him to be grateful for it. Its quite cruel actually, though as you can see he has a great capacity for forgiveness.” He doesn’t look proud either- he looks upset. Like the notion of him rescuing Tony is not something he wants perpetuated.

“Why wouldn’t he be grateful, compared to where he’s from this is basically a utopia,” N’Baza points out.

“A utopia that decided a marriage without one party’s consent was a good plan to solve political problems- that is not utopian, that is terrifying. Imagine what his life would be if I were not a good man. I refuse to accept that he should be grateful for being treated with respect simply because he has known worse. That is appalling,” T’Challa says in a strange tone of voice. It takes Tony noting the immediate reserved nature of those around him to figure out why the reaction was so strange. It’s the voice T’Challa must use in political discussions, the one that suggests he’s not just stating an opinion; he’s actively enforcing one.

“America could learn that lesson too. I’ve heard people tell entire groups of minorities they should be grateful they aren’t as oppressed as they used to be. Hey, I guess our lack of slavery means shorter life expectancies and higher incarceration rates shouldn’t be brought up. Its not all bad though- the food is great and the country itself is beautiful. Not like Wakanda, but there are areas that are just as stunning if you know where to look. And the coffee is way better.” The culture, when its not toxic, is fine too but it takes looking to find some of the better bits. Tony is fond of humor in particular though thankfully Shuri has proven to be hilarious. The food, though, is America’s shining jewel of goodness. Nothing is better than a cheese burger except a couple Wakandan foods and a well made pizza in what’s left of Italy.

“There is nothing wrong with our coffee,” T’Challa says, offended.

“Its basically bean water,” Tony tells him.

T’Challa frowns, “Tony, all coffee is bean water.”

*

Tony must be tired because he passes out in T’Challa’s bed basically as soon as he lies in it, curling into a ball with Concrete by his side. He sighs and sets his stuff down before he goes over to Tony and carefully shakes him awake. Tony makes an annoyed noise in response to this, glaring at T’Challa. “What?” he mumbles, obviously unimpressed.

“I figured you would like to sleep in your own bed,” he tells Tony, smiling at just how grumpy he is.

“I’m fine here,” Tony mumbles, shutting his eyes again.

T’Challa sighs, “guess I will sleep in your room,” he murmurs, content to leave Tony be but he speaks before T’Challa gets far.

“Just sleep here,” Tony mumbles at him, flinging an arm across the bed as some kind of signal to sleep there.

“Are you going to regret what you said when you were sleepy tomorrow?” T’Challa asks, raising an eyebrow. Tony lifts his head and gives T’Challa an unimpressed look and he sighs. “Alright, I will take that as a no,” he says, climbing into bed beside Tony carefully, still leaving plenty of space for him. Tony seems to disregard this entirely and crawls over, curling into T’Challa’s back and earning an irritated meow from the cat for disturbing her place at his side.

T’Challa ignores the cat though because he’s surprised. For a moment he’s frozen, but then he smiles, turning over and wrapping an arm around Tony. He presses his face into T’Challa’s chest and within a few moments he’s asleep. T’Challa, however, is too happy to sleep. Instead he rubs Tony’s back softly until the cat head butts his hand and then he pets her instead.