Chapter 8
Natasha perches on Tony’s bed looking pleased with herself for being released along with quite a few other alphas that obviously had nothing to do with T’Chaka’s murder. “So when’s the wedding?” she asks, grinning.
Tony frowns, “the what?” Rhodey had asked him the same damn thing this morning and gave him the exact look of confusion that Natasha was currently giving him.
“On a scale of one to ten how clueless are you to basic human interactions?” she asks.
“I’d rank myself pretty high but something tells me you’d disagree with that.” Rhodey certainly did and he, for one, resented that.
“Yeah I would. You are clearly useless in deciphering human interaction because T’Challa has had a thing for you since day one and you were completely oblivious to his attentions and everyone else’s jealousy. I think that made him like you more, honestly,” Natasha says, head tilted to the side.
“Maybe everyone else should have played hard to get,” he suggests cockily, nose in the air. It was hardly his fault he was naturally more appealing.
“If you played hard to get maybe, you’re just genuinely unaware of the dirty looks and scoffs you got frequently. I’d pin it to arrogance but it doesn’t fit the behavior well enough- plus you have plenty of arrogance elsewhere. More like… like you’re used to the way everyone has been treating you so you didn’t actually know there was a difference in how you were being perceived,” she says. She examines him and he fights the uncomfortable feeling of being observed without really knowing what she was seeing, just what she was willing to tell him.
But to be fair she wasn’t wrong, he was plenty used to jealousy in all areas. “Are you aware of who I am? The kind of life I’ve lived? People would kill to me be or fuck me over, and they have now apparently. T’Chaka’s murder does look like I did it, too much like I did it actually. So yeah, I’m pretty used to the jealousy and dismissal because that’s pretty much all I’ve known. Still don’t think T’Challa favors me though.” Jujube did for sure, the cat has taken to following him around while T’Challa went off to do King things or whatever it was he did with himself all day.
Natasha rolls her eyes at him, “Tony you knew he had a cat and the cat’s name before any of us even realized how extensive the importance of cats were to Wakandans. Plus you figured out a bunch of other personal details too- the rest of us were barely able to hold a conversation. You two have a lot of natural chemistry and it’s hard to compete with that,” she says honestly.
Well alright then. He figured T’Challa stuck around because he was the only one without a motive to be there and that had to make him more appealing company than anyone else. Maybe not though… “Fine, maybe we have chemistry but I refuse to believe that scenting made me less intelligent than a goat,” he mumbles.
“You scented each other? Oh come on, when the hell did that happen?” she asks, obviously annoyed with this fact.
“The night T’Chaka was killed- that was half the reason that T’Challa thought I was innocent. Timeline didn’t match up.” Natasha’s eyes basically double in size as she leans forward in interest.
“And what were you doing with T’Challa in the middle of the night,” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.
“Why are people so obsessed with out sex life-”
“You two slept together!” Natasha shouts, squealing in what Tony thinks is happiness.
“No, we didn’t but everyone seems to be happy to give us a sex life. Kinda wish there was a sex life to be had, seriously, have you seen his ass? Mm. Anyways that’s not the point, I don’t sleep well, never have, so I was working on some designs and he showed up and we chatted a little alright. We just scented each other and I totally disagree with the suggestion that it made me develop a sudden case of stupid goat brain. And why are you happy about this exactly? Shouldn’t you be like… at least a little irritated that you are losing this whole competition thing?” he asks. Assuming she was right about him winning this whole thing without actually knowing what was going on. Honestly he’d be impressed with himself at that point because he will have reached a new level of clueless. Pepper would not be impressed if this were the case because she’s against him even being here let alone going off and getting married.
Natasha shrugs, “I was never really here to win T’Challa’s affections, Russia is a political disaster right now. There was no way I was winning, even if I sort of hoped that I would. I just wanted out of Russia and then you came along and I love some good drama so I figured I’d stick around to watch. So you scented each other, what else?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows at him again.
Tony rolls his eyes at her.
*
T’Challa takes comfort in the small circles that Tony was rubbing on his back, even if it bothered him slightly. Tony should not be the only one willing to show him comfort- the entire country was mourning at the moment and everyone… they expected him to set his feelings aside to deal with them, with his father’s murderer. He understood why they felt that way of course, but he also knew how unfairly he was being treated. In the past when this has happened there was a period of time in which the King was allowed to grieve. His father had had time to grieve for both of his wives and his father and he was not granted such a period. Instead people expected him to pick himself up and lead the country regardless of his own feelings. Feelings, if they belonged to an omega anyways, were not desirable. It did not matter that he had more reason to grieve than near everyone in the country.
“You’re either holding up really, really well or you’re damn good at hiding the fact that you want to fall apart. Which is it?” Tony asks softly. He stays silent for a long few moments, unsure if Tony would judge him just as harshly as the rest of his country was. He has done his research; America had a more brutal history with omegas than Wakanda did given the histories of omegas that belonged to other minority groups in particular. At least Wakanda did not assume that illegal scientific experiments were perfectly fine so long as the subjects were black omegas. But there was no evidence that Tony believed what his culture told him about omegas; actually it appeared that he was rather progressive in his thoughts even by Wakanda’s standards.
“I… I am not certain what to feel,” he says finally. There was just too much happening at once. His father’s murder, his coronation planning, investigation, grief, dealing with the damn alphas his father invited here to begin with, the rest of his country… After all of that he wasn’t certain which direction his feelings were going in and it was irritating and frightening.
“It’s hard, when you lose a parent. You sort of assume they’ll last forever, or at least until they’re old, and when they go young and in an unexpected way…” he shakes his head, “it’s difficult to know what to do with that.” His words are honest, real. It’s refreshing after all of the messes he has had to clean up as of late, and it was far different than the strange lack of empathy from his country.
“What happened?” he asks. They both know what he’s talking about even if he doesn’t specify what he was referring to.
“When I was seventeen my mom was killed in a car accident. Drunk driver. It ruined my dad, which pissed me off because he was an abusive piece of shit. What right did he have to mourn a woman he treated like shit? And Howard, he died when I was twenty-one in an explosion but you knew that. Terrorist attack, probably somewhat random. I ended up getting kidnapped for and held hostage for three months so I could build a particularly dangerous bomb. Long story short I built myself a sort of suit- a metal exoskeleton- and blew the terrorist up and flew myself the hell away from the cave they had me stuck in. That was when Rhodey found me, drawn to the explosion because, and this is a quote, ‘some things just scream Tony Stark.’ To be fair he was right,” Tony says, letting out a small, bitter laugh.
T’Challa frowns because he has not heard much about Tony’s late mother until now, nor has he heard anything about Howard Stark and domestic violence. “That is a lot more trauma than what I am dealing with,” he says eventually. He was hardly being held hostage by terrorists to build a weapon; his country is just being insensitive. It was hardly similar, especially since he was certain that the terrorists holding him hostage would not have treated Tony very well.
“I’m not so sure. I mean you’re mom is obviously not around so something happened there, and I don’t this being thrust into Kingship right after your father, who was the previous King, is something that would be super fun. Besides, it’s not a competition. Parents dying sucks no matter which way you have it happen or what happens to you after. There really isn’t much that can make that worse for a person,” Tony says, shrugging. Maybe not but T’Challa would assume that being held captive for three months by terrorists would certainly make that trauma worse. He does not say anything though; they both already knew that was true.
“My mother was killed when I was a child. I barely remember her because I was so young and the attempt at creating political unrest- the goal of the group of people that killed her- was unsuccessful. My father remarried and they had Shuri, but I was never very close to her. She also died a few years ago of a terminal illness but that was nothing like this,” he says honestly. It was not that he did not care for his stepmother, but they were not close. Shuri was actually less close to her mother than he was but she had held up surprisingly well through the loss. So had his father and he knew his country was expecting him to be the same, and that any hint that he had any emotions at all would quickly devolve into him being an over emotional and incompetent leader. Or, on the flip side, if he did not show any emotion he would likely be accused of being a heartless shrew. There was no way he was going to come out of this winning.
Tony remains silent for several long moments before he speaks again. “It gets easier, not the loss, but dealing with it. You get used to them not being there and when that first happens it’s going to hurt like hell, and the first everything after they die is awful. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, all of it will be ruined with the obvious missing person. But eventually you’ll get used to them not being there with you and that makes it easier.” His words are quiet, solemn, and T’Challa hates that because he does not want those words to be true.
“I do not want to get used to my father being gone,” he says in a tone that was perhaps more petulant than what was called for.
At that Tony sits back, “I get that, I do. But you don’t get a choice in the matter- when something in your life stops being there you get used to its loss and people are no different. How else could you go on if you didn’t get used to the person you lost not being there?” T’Challa clenches his jaw because that was horrible, forgetting how important those people were, getting used to them not being there like they were not important at some point but… but Tony is right. Getting used to the loss was the only way to move on, even if T’Challa had no interest in ever getting used to his father being gone forever.
*
Wakanda was really odd. Tony had gone to the library specifically to look up how Wakanda dealt with the deaths of their leaders because the way they were dealing with T’Challa was… odd. Turns out the history books proved his observations right because expecting the new King to replace the last was unheard of- there was usually a three month grace period in which they had time to grieve. In the case of assassination it appeared to be less but T’Challa hadn’t been granted any time to grieve before he was expected to solve his father’s murder, deal with all the alphas still remaining, and fulfill all his kingly duties all at once or else. He was already receiving criticism for not solving his father’s murder fast enough and what little data Tony could find on the solve rate for political assassinations suggested that T’Challa was actually far ahead of the typical three year schedule.
“You really did all that research just to determine that Wakanda has prejudice against me because of my omega status?” T’Challa asks, looking surprised. “You would not have needed that much evidence, you know that the world as a whole does not like omegas. Wakanda is no different.”
“Except it is. I don’t know what omegas lives here are like and I’m not going to jump to conclusions based off my own cultural assumptions. What America thinks is useless because this is Wakanda, you’re going to do things differently. But yeah, turns out you guys also suck when it comes to treating omegas fairly.” Sure he could have assumed that was the reason from the beginning, it was the only obvious difference between T’Challa and previous kings, but for all he knew there was something else that might have made T’Challa distinct. After going through his research and examining T’Challa’s general position it was pretty obvious that his initial thoughts were actually right. “Oh, and you’re way ahead of the typical solve rate for political assassinations so you can tell Wakanda to stop being a bunch of assholes about not solving things fast enough. Oh, and get that grieving period that you’re entitled to.”
T’Challa tilts his head to the side, “you did that much research?” he asks.
“Well yeah, I didn’t know if Wakanda actually was treating you differently than other kings so I had to look up how things usually worked around the death of a king. Once I established that yeah, things are actually functioning strangely based on Wakandan standards rather than American standards I had to find the why. The only big difference between you and other kings is your being an omega though. I mean you’re also a lot younger than the typical king, which might be playing it’s part in perceptions, and you did go to Oxford for a year but that’s irrelevant because I would have noticed discrimination based off that sooner. And Shuri went off to boarding school in Asia so she would also be feeling potential effects of that and Wakanda doesn’t seem to care about her at all. Anyways, to make a long story short I figured I’d pick the biggest criticism of you so far- not solving your father’s murder fast enough- and figure out how long these things usually take. Turns out you’re way ahead of the game by literal years.”
It irritated Tony because it was cruel to put that kind of pressure on someone who just lost a very important person to them. He knew what it was like to have that happen, how hard things were when he got back from Afghanistan and people assumed that he’d not only function completely normally, but that he would be exactly like his father too. But he and Howard Stark had had far too much in common for him to be comfortable with at that point in time and he was never, ever going to be anything like that man again. So he basically scrapped his company and started over, nearly ruining SI in the process. But he has more than recovered now, and he is certain that T’Challa would recover too. And quickly if his ability to investigate continues on it’s impressive rate.
“That is… that is a lot,” T’Challa says eventually. “That is probably one of the sweetest things that anyone has ever done for me.”
Tony tilts his head to the side, “I was just trying to figure out what was going on using Wakandan knowledge instead of assuming people were being unfair dicks by my own standards. That isn’t sweet, it’s just me being curious and figuring stuff out.”
“But you did it because you did not like the way people were treating me, yes?” T’Challa asks, eyebrow rising.
“Yeah, of course. Seriously, people are being really unfair.” It took some time for him to figure out what the hell was even happening due to the whole language barrier thing but once he did he was not impressed with the headlines. It made no sense for T’Challa to have solved what was increasingly a more complicated sounding crime in less than a full week. It wasn’t as if anyone else was investigating faster so Tony thinks that unless the news outlets figure out who killed the king they could fuck off.
T’Challa reaches out and gently brushes his fingers along Tony’s cheek, “thank you,” he says with meaning. His fingers linger there for a moment before he tips Tony’s head up and he leans forward pressing a chaste kiss to his lips.