Tony was used to the flashing lights and bright cameras and more than that she was used to the way people looked at her. Not many people knew this but she made people look at her that way on purpose because it was useful to have an image. If everyone was concerned about her being a slut who partied too much no one paid attention to the way she could invent and she was good. She was great actually, probably the best her era had to offer, maybe even the best the world had to offer. People called her arrogant but she felt like she more than earned the right to say that when no one could even understand the math that she invented.
Needless to say Tony Stark was damn good at controlling the things around her and manipulating them to go just her way. And when that didn’t happen she did what she wanted anyways because fuck whoever tried to mess up her plans. Rhodey always got annoyed with her but he could deal with it, he was actually one of the few people who could. What they said about it being lonely at the top was true but Tony never really liked people anyways, and she certainly didn’t like dating people. Too many formalities, social niceties, and insecurities for her to deal with on any given basis- especially if she was dating a guy. They didn’t like when women made more than them and they liked it less when she told them to grow the fuck up and get over it. She was supposed to be comfortable with them making more than her; they could get over themselves and do the same. Not that they ever did, she was always written off as a heinous bitch, a femanizi, of too much altogether. She took it as a way to weed out the weak and it worked well, maybe a little too well but she’d never admit that out loud.
People, at the end of the day, just weren’t for her because they were all too hung up on small things that were pointless. Why should she have to remember birthdays like they were significant when they happened every damn year? She didn’t care that people thought they were special because they weren’t, they were perfectly ordinary and useless things but people disliked her disregard for social rules. Especially the birthday one. So she didn’t have many friends but she had plenty of other things going for her so she didn’t think too much about it. That was probably why she never saw T’Challa coming.
*
T’Challa has always had an interest in the outside world but that was the natural curiosity that he had. His father had thankfully been accommodating with this and let him travel, but it never had been enough to escape his responsibilities back home. His only real solace was inventing, something that he was rather good at but didn’t have much time to do. He had long followed Tony Stark’s work because she was the best and far more brilliant than even she let on, not that she got nearly enough credit for it. People liked to compare her to Justin Hammer but they weren’t even remotely in the same category as far as intelligence went in any category. T’Challa, for fun, liked to see if he could recreate her inventions and sometimes he was successful at it too. Sometimes he managed to make it better too, but he never really had a way to tell her that so he mostly just stuck to following her work. And then there was the other guy, Ivan Vankov, who was perhaps the only one who might rival Stark for intelligence but he put out far less work for T’Challa to dissect.
Unfortunately for him though he was the prince of a country and his responsibilities typically kept him from doing things that he loved. So when his father sends him off to America he is more than surprised at least until he finds out he has a political agenda, then he is far less surprised.
“T’Challa, you are going to have to learn how to deal with diplomatic duties sometime and this is a good opportunity for you to learn,” he says. His tone is gentle and it is clear that he is genuinely trying to help but T’Challa is annoyed with having to do things he was not interested in again.
“You know how much I hate diplomacy,” he says. There was too much social convention, skirting around the real issues, and playing nice for him. T’Challa has always been a person who liked to be direct- if he saw a problem he would rather cut to the chase and deal with it, not play nice until several people came to an agreement that likely did not address the issue at hand effectively.
“I do, but you are getting good at it for someone who hates it so much. I would like to see you improve more. You are going to take over for me some day and I want you to be prepared for your role,” his father says. He can see the concern there, and his age and it makes him panic for a fleeting moment. He was by no means ready for the role his father wanted him in and he probably never would be. Kingship has never been for him. T’Challa does not know how to tell his father that he did not want to take over for him so instead he goes to fulfill his father’s wishes.
The last thing he expects is to run into Tony Stark herself.
*
Tony, despite having backed out of the weapons game a long time ago, still worked closely with the military. Security was still a top priority to the American military and she was well known for irritating famous hackers just for a fun night so they tended to look to her to figure out how to keep the talented computer geeks, military groups, and governments out. She didn’t mind it because Rhodey always gave her his passwords to his ultra secure accounts and she got all sorts of information she shouldn’t have. Not that she couldn’t hack in anyways, she made the systems after all but she was pretty sure the military and various government bodies thought that she was harmless if she was working with them. Probably that ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ kind of thing, which was totally not true. As if she wasn’t going to break all kinds of security measures to get ahold of all of America’s dirty laundry. Puhlease.
She doesn’t exactly expect the office to be busy though, at least not outside of the average military presence in whatever government building she was brought to. They thought sticking her in some creepy windowless chopper with no perceivable way to track her way to and from the building would stop her from figuring out where she’d been flown to but she always got ahold of the information eventually.
“What’s he deal?” she asks Rhodey.
He frowns down at her a little and squints, “is that grease in your hair?” he asks.
“Who cares? You’re paying me to keep Russia out, not to look nice. So what’s going on here?” she asks again.
Rhodey shrugs, “no clue. My best guess is some asshat diplomat is here ruining our schedule again but I won’t have confirmation for that until someone else higher than me lets me know what’s going on,” he says.
“Well in that case I am sorry to be a bother,” someone with a smooth accent and an amused little to their voice says. Rhodey and Tony both turn to find a guy and several severe looking women surrounding him looking ready to snap necks. Well, the women looked ready to snap necks, the guy seemed perfectly agreeable.
Tony looks through the women that were obviously his bodyguards and nods, “nice. Do they come in male?” she asks.
“No,” one of the bodyguards tells her, glaring her down.
“Sweet,” she says, totally nonplussed.
The guy, obviously some kind of diplomat though she couldn’t quite pinpoint the accent, looks impressed. “You are more impressive in person than on paper,” he tells her.
She raises an eyebrow, “you read the magazines? Lovely. Glad to live up to my reputation,” she says, grinning.
The diplomat frowns, “magazines? Is that what you call scientific journals here?” he asks.
The comment throws both Rhodey and Tony off for a moment. “Uh, no? We call those scientific journals. I… you read my science?” she asks, surprised. Most diplomats weren’t exactly well versed in the kinds of things she wrote let alone well versed enough to compliment her on her written personality. Now she was curious as to what he thought of her given that he didn’t seem to know what she was talking about initially.
The diplomat frowns at her again, “I… yes? What other information would I have gotten on you?” he asks.
“Tabloid bullshit? That’s where most people get their information,” she says, eyebrows furrowed.
The diplomat wrinkles his nose, “ugh, absolutely not. Tabloids are useless garbage that spread lies and slander, not a proper method of gathering information on a person,” he says.
Tony shrugs, “I agree with most of what they write so I mean it isn’t that inaccurate. Mostly because when they do write things that are inaccurate I make sure to publically shame them pretty good with indisputable evidence of the truth.” Beyond that she did sleep around a lot, she did party too much at least in her youth, and she was kind of an asshole. She figured she’d let all that stuff slide eve if the media would probably report on her a whole lot differently if she were a guy. Then she’d be the lovable kind of asshole that everyone hated to love rather than some slutty bitch everyone loved to hate at least until she released some sweet new product. When Disney told her taught her that she couldn’t buy people’s love they were damn dirty liars because she did a good job of it now.
The diplomat smiles wide, “I like you. Please tell me I can work with you instead of whatever government buffoons they are going to force me to communicate with,” he says.
Tony throws back her head and laughs, “oh, we’ll get along just fine,” she says, grinning. “But unfortunately for you I’m not the one you’ll work with.”
That earns her a sigh, “that is unfortunate. I strongly dislike dealing with government idiots,” he says and she laughs again because she did too. Rhodey gives her a weird look but she ignores it.
“Well, sorry to be the government idiot you have to deal with,” someone else says from behind them.
They all turn to find Phil Coulson standing there and Tony wrinkles her nose, “ugh, Agent,” she says with a note of obvious distaste to her tone.
“You know him then?” the diplomat asks her.
“Yeah, the little bastard put me on house arrest last year when I got bored and hacked the pentagon to send every single government official and military personal pictures of my cat,” she says.
To her surprise this earns a boisterous laugh, “oh my, please tell me that is true!” he says between fits of laughter.
“It is. We were not impressed,” Agent confirms. “And my name is Phil Coulson,” he tells the diplomat.
“If you call him Agent he gets mad,” Tony tells him, winking.
The diplomat gives her a nod of acknowledgement, “noted.”
*
Rhodey, as a general rule, assumed Tony hated everyone. It helped that it was mostly true given that she had a hard time relating to others and couldn’t stand people that she deemed unintelligent. Sometimes her standards were logical and then there were some wacky Tony-specific things. Like disliking people who liked their birthdays because she personally found them pointless. He’d point out that she threw a birthday party for herself every year but he knew that was only because everyone else hyped it up for so long and she was expected to. Plus she took pretty much any opportunity to party hard, or at least she used to. The last few years she’s stuck to charity events after that whole alcoholic thing.
Regardless, Tony was not a people person and she pretty much never hit it off with someone. T’Challa, whom they found out was the prince of Wakanda later, seemed to be an exception to her general rule. Tony didn’t laugh when she didn’t find things funny and she almost never connected with a person immediately but she and T’Challa were pretty much perfect for each other from day one. His proof was that they both hated the government and didn’t care that the government knew it right away. People liked to complain about the government but no one really kept that opinion to an official’s face and T’Challa was happy to let them know exactly what he thought though he was far subtler than Tony could ever be.
Tony threw out plenty of her own comments too and it was clear that the prince was keeping from laughing most of the time until he finally broke.
“Jesus Christ Agent, you keep yapping it up over there but all I’m hearing is word salad,” Tony says and T’Challa bursts out laughing, covering his mouth as he tries to temper his loud snickering without any success.
“Word salad?” T’Challa asks, looking to Tony for guidance here. He’s spent the entire meeting looking to her for clarification when she wasn’t even the one in charge here. Rhodey suspected that was because of her ability to generate one hell of a presence and because he liked her better than anyone else in the room.
“Yeah, when people talk and talk but the shit they say makes no damn sense. Like peanut butter tridabism or something,” she says and Rhodey smacks his hand to his forehead as Coulson chokes on his water.
T’Challa frowns, “tridabism?” he asks.
“Porn thing,” Tony explains easily, “sex,” she continues when he continues to look confused.
T’Challa starts laughing all over again, “oh you are too much, everyone should be like you. Except for you, Okoye, you can be like you,” he says when the severe woman gives him a look.
Tony perks up, “well I am fantastic,” she says happily.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Coulson mumbles under his breath.
“Well Agent I’ve been told I’m an acquired taste so if you don’t like me acquire some taste,” she tells him, looking pleased with herself when T’Challa starts laughing again.
The rest of the meeting, to Rhodey’s intense surprise, was mostly Tony and T’Challa playing off one another and pissing off Coulson something fierce.
*
Tony, as a general rule, didn’t go on dates with anyone anymore. Too much hassle for absolutely zero payoff. But T’Challa was interesting and she liked the way he appreciated her intelligence and humor before anything else. It was a rarity that someone appreciated anything about her other than those leaked sex tapes awhile back and it got real old real fast. And even when people didn’t comment on that within the first ten minutes they tended to view her through the lens of whatever the tabloids were saying about her this week. Needless to say it wasn’t a fun position to be in. She used to joke in a way that wasn’t really a joke that she’d have to find someone who lived under a rock to accept her for her.
Luckily for her T’Challa was from Wakanda, which might as well be under a rock. “How are you not with someone by now? You are fantastic,” he tells her, grinning brightly.
She shrugs, “I like to think so but pretty much everyone else thinks I’m arrogant slut bitch, so,” she says, shrugging.
T’Challa winces, “oh, that is not nice,” he says, clearly not knowing how to react.
Tony doesn’t care too much though, “whatever. It’s the nature of things when you’re good at something and not afraid to tell people that. People really don’t like that, and they especially don’t like it if you’re a woman. You’d think I was the literal devil with the way some people talk about me,” she says. Hell, she kind of wished she was the literal devil just because she’d at least have some power to roast people in the afterlife and she had a few people she’d burn extra crispy. Like Justin Hammer for pretending to be intelligent so hard that he actually managed to convince people he was smart. And then all the idiots who believed him.
“The… devil?” T’Challa asks and it takes a moment for Tony to realize where she went wrong.
“Oh man, you are going to be fun! I’ve never managed to run into someone without a working knowledge of Christianity before. Basically the devil is the antagonist of the religion, burns bad people in hell, rejected the one true god basically because he wanted free will. You get the point,” she says, waving a hand dismissively.
T’Challa frowns, “the devil is the… bad guy? I do not understand, if the devil burns bad people in this hell place he sounds similar to police minus all the mythology. I am I missing something?” he asks and Tony starts laughing hard enough to draw the attention of everyone around them.
“Not really. I mean if you really want to get the skinny on Christianity you probably shouldn’t ask the atheist anyways. From what I gather god was just as much of a dick as the devil was in the Old Testament, there are some talking snakes with apples, it gets weird. Point is people act like I’m some all powerful force of evil, to catch you up without giving you a theology lesson,” she says.
“I… still do not understand how the one who punishes bad people is a bad person when that sounds similar to the justice system minus the burning thing. Perhaps that is why he is a bad person, that is a bit excessive,” T’Challa says thoughtfully and mostly to himself. The poor waiter chooses then to check on the table and the poor guy looks right confused.
“Care to join in on the debate about whether or not the devil is really a bad guy if he kind of acts like a jailor for bad people?” Tony asks the waiter.
“No thank you,” he says quickly and he flees the scene.
T’Challa raises an eyebrow, “if I would like people to leave me alone should I just bring up theology? Because I have gathered that there is one god here, one that this devil character has rejected, and that is strange to me. Wakanda has several gods, most of them related to cats,” he says.
“Sure you could do that, or just tell the they’re being culturally insensitive and give off some bullshit reason that’s solid enough that they can’t argue. Shuts them up every time. Or you could go my route and just tell them to fuck off,” she says. That was easier but people got annoyed faster and you’d end up with a bad reputation. Not that she cared because most people weren’t worth their gossip. “Also cats, awesome. I love cats,” she says. She’s owned a few. Mostly because she hated dogs and cats were a lot less maintenance, especially considering her travel schedule.
T’Challa perks up, “you like cats? I think I remember you saying you had one,” he says.
“I did but that one died,” she says and T’Challa winces hard at that. “No worries, I have another one and her name is Lord Forquaad but I doubt you’ve seen Shrek to get the reference,” she says. Most people thought that was hilarious but T’Challa just looked confused. “If it makes you feel better she’s like eighty years old, has eyes pointing in two different directions, half her tail is missing, and the fur on the one half of her body looks like it’s matted but that’s just how she is. I’ve sent her to the cat spa several times to try and sort out her hair. And she sounds like a chain smoker when she meows. She’s the best,” Tony says with meaning. She really did love her ugly cat even if everyone thought Lord Forquaad was hideous. The media slammed the cat for her looks once and Tony purposefully made sure that media outlet died for their efforts. The media has left the cat be ever since.
“You know in Wakanda if the ugly ones like you it is good luck. Ugly things are generally neglected by a species that prefers prettiness and the cats know it, so if an ugly cat takes a liking to you it is because it knows you will look past what is on the outside to see what is really underneath,” he says, smiling almost wistfully. Clearly she said something right but she wasn’t exactly sure what that was. Obviously the cat was part of it, but all the cultural reference beyond that was over her head. The ugly cat meant more to T’Challa as far as significance than her but she’d take it.
“I didn’t exactly expect having an ugly cat to reveal some deep truth about me, I just liked the cat, but hey I’ll take it,” she says, shrugging.
“Where did you find the cat?” T’Challa asks.
“Behind a dumpster, took me like four hours and crawling almost all the way under the damn thing to get her out but I got her eventually. Pretty sure I almost got stuck with a needle under there but hey, I’ve probably done worse and I wasn’t just going to leave the cat there,” she says. It was raining and the cat sounded sad and scared. Happy hadn’t been happy (haha) about having to deal with her spending all that time acquiring a cat and the Board had been some pissed when they found out that was why she was late to her meeting but she was hardly bothered by what those old coots thought of her anyways.
T’Challa just smiles knowingly and asks more questions about the cat.
*
“There are cat cafes,” Tony tells Pepper over lunch.
Pepper wrinkles her nose, “that sounds terrible. Why would you want cats with your coffee?”
“Why wouldn’t you want coffee and cats?” she asks. Coffee and cats were optimal on their own but combined they were absolutely a thing she needed to try. T’Challa had seemed happy enough to bring her back with him to Wakanda even if his guards looked like they wanted to skin her alive.
“Cat hair in the coffee,” Pepper says easily, taking a sip of her latte.
Tony wrinkles her nose, “you know what, you like lattes so I don’t trust you anymore. Clearly you aren’t right,” she says.
Pepper rolls her eyes but moves on, “you seem to like this guy. You don’t really like any guys,” she points out.
“Yeah, yeah, there was that lesbian rumor because the media somehow managed to not guess bisexual first despite the fact that the evidence would have pointed to that first. People are stupid. But to answer your question yeah, I really like this guy.” He wasn’t threatened by her intelligence at all, or her money, or her general powerful place in America given that in one way or another she was responsible for keeping the country safe even if she didn’t hold that responsibility alone. People didn’t usually like being around someone with power like that because it freaked them out.
T’Challa had said that people did the same to him. They expected a prince to act a certain way and he rarely lived up and although that was usually positive for him he noted that people never really relaxed around him because of the knowledge of the power he held in his position. Tony could relate to that given that she had the same problem. Neither one of them were intimidated by the other and it worked out nicely for them.
“So then where do you see this going?” Pepper asks.
Tony shrugs, “no idea to be honest. But I’m willing to at least see what happens,” she says. A rarity for her because most people weren’t engaging enough to waste her time with and beyond that. T’Challa matched her intelligence and wit and he didn’t believe the tabloids written about her, plus almost all of his knowledge was based off first hand experience instead of media hearsay. T’Challa was pretty much everything she never thought she’d find given her general fame and position of power. Who knew she’d find a prince in a similar situation and end up dating the guy. She used to watch Disney films but she never expected to be living one.
Pepper looks impressed with this and she should because she wasn’t an easy woman to please and she didn’t settle for anything. It made her difficult to be around unless, of course, you were T’Challa and then you had no problems living up to the expectations she set.
*
T’Challa watches as Tony looks around in wonder, eyes wide as she look in the scene around her. The beach was beautiful T’Challa knew, which was why he took her here to begin with. If he was going to take her to his country than he was going to show her the most beautiful parts.
“This is gorgeous,” she says, still looking around. “the sand is black!”
He smiles, “there used to be an active volcano here and now the sand is black,” he tells her.
“Okay, this is almost cooler than your lab. Almost. Oh, and those cat cafes, those are awesome,” she says enthusiastically. T’Challa watches as she explores around, smiling. As soon as she mentioned her cat he knew she was the right one for him. The cats were never wrong about these things.