Chapter 11
Tony couldn’t believe he was fucking engaged now. There was a lot he expected out of his life on principal- he was rich, pretty, and the CEO if a multibillion-dollar company. Life being good for him was expected minus the child abuse, absentee mother, father figure who tried to kill him via terrorists, father dying at the hands of said terrorists, getting tortured by those terrorists himself, and then getting framed for murder by some angry fake Polish dude. That was only a little bit of suffering though, it happens, but still. He was engaged now. To the Wakandan King for shit sakes.
“Congratulations,” Rhodey says when Tony calls with the news, “how badly are you freaking out?” he adds a moment later.
“You know me well, honeybee, what the fuck was I thinking,” he hisses, momentarily forgetting that he was still probably under surveillance.
“As usual you weren’t, platypus,” Rhodey croons in an almost mocking tone.
“Screw you man, what the hell do I do?” he asks, one hand gripping his phone hard while the other pulled absently at his hair.
“Get married. Look, I know you aren’t good at these things but do you know how many people you’ve put all your resources out for?” Rhodey asks, making Tony frown because that question was way off base.
“Uh, no? Does that matter?” he asks. He used his resources to help people all the time, or he tried to after that whole weapons sales thing. Zemo or whatever his name was proved that his sales had real and terrible effects on people even if he still had no idea how his weapons got there to begin with.
“Yeah Tones it does, because that number totals to three,” Rhodey says.
“It does not, I help way more people with me resources than that! Just because you don’t know about my charity work doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You’re sounding an awful lot like one of those news sources that would condemn me for not spreading my resources around while also condemning me for only doing charity work for show,” Tony says, offended at Rhodey’s blatant lie. Also screw new paper reporters who didn’t know how to use Google.
“Not the question I asked, Tones. I asked how many people you’ve put out all your resources for. That answer is three- you’ve done that for Pepper a few times, me obviously, and now T’Challa. You want to know how I knew Pepper was in it with you for the long run? She ran into travel trouble somewhere, I can’t remember where now, and you got yourself out of a bar and went and dealt with it. In those days anything that distracted you from a drink was impressive,” Rhodey says, sounding almost impressed and Tony sighs. He hadn’t handled his mom’s death well and no one cared if you were underage when you were rich enough to keep their noses to themselves. His father hit the bottle pretty hard too; hard enough that he stopped hitting Tony.
When he wasn’t drunk he was trying to build something new and world shattering to impress his father, who never really was impressed with anything he did. Or at least that Tony knew of when the man was alive. There was that fucking tape he got the year after Howard was killed in the height of his alcoholism and Vanko issue but he burned it using Howard’s preferred scotch as the fuel. He’s regretted it several times over by now.
“I didn’t know that,” he says eventually to Rhodey, who seemed to be waiting for a response.
“Of course not, you don’t pay attention to these things, Pep and I do that for you. So stop freaking out, if nothing else you will definitely keep in contact with him for a long time. You don’t throw yourself into things like this unless you plan on being there for the long haul,” Rhodey points out.
“Okay but like, I was framed for murder, it makes sense to throw in my all to prove my own innocence,” he says. That meant Rhodey was totally wrong.
“So? This isn’t the first time you’ve been framed for murder and the last two times your dumb ass assumed your innocence would prove itself. I love you man, but that was stupid.” He can almost see Rhodey’s ‘are you kidding me Stark?’ face now, or maybe the ‘what did I do in a past life to get stuck with your ass’ face.
“Right. I forgot about that…” he says.
“Only in the life of Tony Stark could you get framed for murder twice and forget about it,” Rhodey mumbles and Tony knows he’s shaking his head. It wasn’t his fault he had a very ugh… lively life.
*
Pepper calls him shortly after Rhodey hangs up and Tony thinks about letting it go to voicemail because he’s curled up with T’Challa and he smells good. But it might be important so he reaches across T’Challa and grabs his phone, grinning when T’Challa throws an arm around him. “Yeah?” he says into the phone in way of a greeting. This was Pepper; she knew what he was like.
“Are you sitting down?” Pepper says and Tony freezes because those were the same words Obi had said when he called about his mother’s car accident. T’Challa notices the difference in body language right away and frowns at him.
“Just spit it out Pepper,” he tells her.
“Well I don’t want you to… faint or some-”
“Now, Pepper,” he says in a more commanding tone. This gets another frowns from T’Challa, though this one looks more offended than not.
“Fine, I was going through some things regarding the terrorist thing with Obi with JARVIS, making sure we had enough to make the charges stick no matter what and uh… we found something else. Actually two things,” she says.
Tony shifts so that he’s sitting up again and puts her on speakerphone, getting the feeling that this was about to be relevant to T’Challa. “Go ahead then, tell me what you found,” he says.
“Rhodey called me about your… what the hell was his name?”
“Zemo,” T’Challa says.
“Yeah, him, so I had JARVIS flag the name and Slovakia. Well, we found a connection and then some. He’s been selling weapons under the table, Tony, to terrorists. That’s why there were weapons in Slovakia to begin with, and we’re working on how they made contact but we have a pretty long trail of conversations between your Zemo and Obadiah planning this whole murder. Your murder, he wasn’t planning on killing the King,” Pepper adds.
“There’s the partner you were looking for,” Tony mumbles. “Great. Got enough to make an arrest? And while you’re at it make sure there’s some sort of weapon recall. He must be selling what I pulled back when I closed that portion of the company.” He swears under his breath and silently curses whoever had him show up in Wakanda at this exact moment because Obadiah was fucked when he got home. Selling weapons was bad, but selling weapons to terrorists? Absolutely fucking not- Tony was going to make sure Obadiah paid for this dearly when he got back.
“Already on it, sir,” JARVIS informs him.
“You’re awesome, anyone told you that lately? You too Pep,” he adds maybe a little too late.
“I can’t believe you just complimented you AI before me. And as for Obadiah’s arrest, I’m watching a live feed of that happening right now. At the very least he’s going down for Howard’s murder, your kidnapping, and treason. I’ll do my best to make sure he gets his comeuppance for his involvement in T’Chaka’s death too but that one might be more difficult to stick,” Pepper says. Yeah, considering he was planning on killing Tony, not the King.
“No worries Mrs. Potts, the charges will hold,” T’Challa says in a clear, commanding tone. Tony winces, knowing how hard this must be for T’Challa to hear. Tony briefly thanks Pepper and asks her to keep him updated before hanging up.
“I’m so sorry T’Challa,” he says genuinely.
“This is not your fault,” T’Challa says.
“Yeah, except it is. If I hadn’t come here none of this would have happened,” Tony points out.
T’Challa shakes his head, “you forget that someone here knew what was going on too. Something like this would have happened whether or not you were here as the catalyst,” T’Challa says, jaw clenching in a mix of anger and upset. Tony gently presses his hand into T’Challa’s, silently offering his support.
*
It couldn’t have been helped really, Tony panicked and this was just the best method of dealing with things.
T’Challa fumbles with the box for a moment before catching it, frowning at the velvet. “Rings are an American thing,” Tony explains. Rings weren’t a thing in Wakanda and he only recently figured out the name change thing. Wakandan tradition said that he, if he were a woman, would take T’Challa’s first name as his last name. They didn’t really have a policy for same sex couples, they just sort of did whatever with their names but had paperwork indicating that they were, in fact, in a legally recognized marriage.
“Rings?” T’Challa asks, opening the box and raising an eyebrow. “How did you even find this?” he asks.
“I pestered Okoye for six hours straight to let me leave the property and then proceeded to annoy her into being my translator. Told her she didn’t want to disappoint the king,” Tony says. Not his finest moment but it was either that or look like a damn tool when he explained the ring thing so.
“You… annoyed and then manipulated Okoye into helping you? Did she choose the ring?” he asks.
Tony presses his hand to his heart, offended. “No! Typically in America the guy picks the ring but since we’ve got twin dongs and your culture doesn’t do rings I figured that meant I had to go do it. And panthers are important to you and all that and I liked the ring so uh, there. You have a ring,” Tony says, flapping his hands around. It took him forever to find the damn thing too so he hoped that T’Challa actually liked the panther ring. He thought it was cool but for all he knew he was being culturally insensitive somehow without knowing it. Everyone in that little store had looked pretty surprised when he picked up the ring.
“You have no clue what this is do you?” T’Challa asks, smiling slowly, his eyes twinkling.
“Uh…. Hopefully nothing offensive? Because if it’s offensive I’m blaming Okoye, she should know this stuff and-”
“Tony, this kind of ring is blessed by our gods, theoretically you should not have been able to pick it up. Please, in great detail tell me what Okoye’s face looked like when you picked this up,” he says, grin growing wider.
“Oh. Well I’m not much of a believer so whatever. And Okoye looked pretty shocked, and then pissed. She refused to speak to me after that and I guess I was right in assuming it was because I chose well and she was mad about it. So what does this blessing or whatever mean?” he asks. He’s curious more than anything, not that he’d believe whatever hocus pokus T’Challa told him. It was still a neat thing to know about he supposed.
“A ring like this is only meant to be touched by those worthy of Bast’s love. I suppose at least she approves of you,” T’Challa says softly, hand hovering over the ring for a moment like he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to touch it or however the blessing worked. But he reaches into the box and pulls the ring out, sighing a breath of relief when he picks the ring up with no issues.
Tony walks towards him as he examines the pretty ring, “you do know that’s just a hunk of metal, right?” he asks.
The comment earns him a dirty look from T’Challa, “do I insult your culture?” he asks.
“No, but-”
“Then do not insult mine. I cannot believe Bast let someone who does not even believe in her touch the ring,” he mumbles, shaking his head. Tony, because he’s an ass and because he wants to prove T’Challa wrong, reaches out to touch the ring and jumps when the damn thing shocks him.
“Ow!” he says, cradling his sore hand.
T’Challa grins, “aha, the truth is out. Bast led you to the ring so you could bring it back to me because I am worthy,” he says, snickering when Tony reaches out to touch the ring only to get shocked again.
“God damn it, for a second there I thought I had bragging rights to some random Wakandan god liking me. How are you even supposed to touch me with that thing on?” he asks, concerned for himself as always.
“I thought you did not believe in Bast,” T’Challa says, ribbing him lightly.
“I don’t, but if the ring is going to shock me if I’m near it for scientific reasons than I want to know how to fix it,” he says, glaring at the stupid ring in question.
“This is probably because you threw it at my head instead of giving me a real proposal. I take you to an ancient place of my people and you toss a blessed ring at my head. I think I have the better proposal unless throwing rings at your mate’s head is an American thing? Please tell me that it is not, that would be ridiculous,” T’Challa says, wrinkling his nose.
“It isn’t. And I didn’t throw it, it slipped,” Tony says in his own defense, nose in the air.