Chapter 5
“You know you’re going to have to do it sometime right?” Rhodey says, raising an eyebrow.
Tony sighs and rubs his temples; “I know that but… just let me avoid it for a little while, alright? I have other countries to deal with first. There’s a lot of stuff I still have to work out and honestly it’s a little grueling trying to work out individual contracts. At least they all decided to work with that basic document that my lawyers made instead of them all making something from scratch. This way it’s just a few different stipulations on a country-to-country basis. And Wakanda is still pretty isolated, I can deal with them last,” he reasons. He didn’t want to deal with T’Challa again if he could help it but the guy was the king, he didn’t get much of a choice.
Rhodey gives him that look but Tony ignores it. “You can’t avoid him forever… and honestly, man, the sleeping around with people who kind of look like him is getting really weird. Just talk to the guy and get it over with, then you’ll never have to deal with him again,” Rhodey says.
“Okay first of all I am not sleeping with people who look anything like T’Challa, thanks. And I know that but I don’t want to deal with this soul mate shit, okay? I’ve lived my whole life without one, I don’t need one now. Thirty percent of people never meet their soul mates and they aren’t missing out on life. Well, color is kind of cool but I’ve always seen color so I don’t think I have a proper appreciation. Other than that soul mate bonds do nothing,” he says. Or at least most times they didn’t. Most of the time the bond starts and ends with a strong emotional connection, one that wasn’t necessarily romantic despite what previous research suggested, and colored vision.
There were exceptions to that though and no one really knew why certain bonded pairs felt things stronger than others. Some pairs, or even trios depending on the person, reported feeling pain when they were separated from their partners, some reported being able to feel when their soul mates were in pain. Cue some sketchy ass experiments by the Nazis that were picked up by crappy scientists later and it turned out those reports were true. Sometimes soul mates would get access to each other’s memories, their muscle memory, their tastes and likes and dislikes. Those pairs liked to claim their bonds were stronger, more sacred or whatever but there wasn’t much to back that up empirically.
Studies showed that people who lived with their soul mates were overall happy, and interestingly enough people who were without soul mates were just as happy. Tony learned to email people those studies when people tried to pity him for not having a soul mate. Sometimes he’d also send emails with studies that showed that you were more likely to be killed by your soul mate than anyone else, especially if you’re a woman. Joke was on him though; it turned out he had a soul mare the whole time he just saw in color for some reason.
“Tony,” Rhodey says quietly, “we both know that you’re fine without a soul mate but you don’t need to be. And it’s pretty clear that you have one of those bonds that does other things if your habit of sleeping with people who look like T’Challa is any indication. Don’t shake your head at me, get FRIDAY to pull up pictures, it’s weird.” Tony, because he was intent on proving Rhodey wrong, does as he asks only to find that he was right. All of his latest one-night stands did kind of look like T’Challa.
“They do not,” Tony lies, “and we don’t have a special bond, it’s normal. Or as normal as it’s about to get when I’ve seen color my whole life.” So maybe he wasn’t meant to be normal, and for a long time he loved being different. But now it was getting increasingly painful to be the deviation from the norm and the pressure kept mounting and mounting and he couldn’t afford to blow. Not again.
“I know that isn’t true and so do you, Tones. I know you’ve been in a lot of pain since you two went your separate ways and I know you’re good at hiding it but that doesn’t mean I don’t know. I’ve known you for more time than I haven’t, don’t think I don’t notice the way you move around carefully, or the way you hold your ribs and your shoulder. If this was a normal bond I wouldn’t really care, I know how stubborn you are and I know if you want nothing to do with T’Challa you won’t have anything to do with him. But being apart is causing you literal pain and I’m not going to ignore that,” Rhodey says meaningfully. He looks worried too and Tony feels bad for being the cause of stress for him considering all the other problems he was dealing with. He was finally starting to get that loss of motivation that usually came with depression so Tony was doing his best to balance trying to push Rhodey while also giving him breaks.
Ideally he would tell Rhodey to rest and wait it out but Rhodey would never go for that and he would be suspicious if Tony even tried, so he pushed him when he could tell Rhodey was up for it. The rest of the time he claimed he was tired so Rhodey didn’t have to and he could tell Rhodey was relieved. If he wasn’t so god damn stubborn he would tell Rhodey straight out that he probably had depression but Rhodey wasn’t about to accept that and Tony knew better than to try and push it. It wouldn’t go well for anyone, least of all Rhodey.
“I’m not in pain because I’m not near T’Challa, I’m in pain because I had my ribs crushed by Captain Asshole. They’re still tender,” he says, prodding at his middle and regretting it. His chest was tight a lot too but that was to be expected when he had a shield smashed into it full force. He guessed that he was at least lucky that it wasn’t his neck Steve stuck the shield though; Tony was convinced he was going to be beheaded for a moment.
“Well if you stopped running around helping Spidertot avoid death you’d probably be healed by now. You do remember that the kid was doing fine before you came along right?” Rhodey asks, eyebrow raised. Tony doesn’t miss the change in subject, Rhodey’s way of letting him know that he knew he wasn’t about to convince Tony so he probably wasn’t going to push it more than he should.
“He’s a kid, and he doesn’t know the long-term effects of his powers. I figured it was best to play it safe. Also I dropped a fifteen year old into a political battle without double checking that he was at least a legal adult first, I have a bit to make up for, okay?” he says. Granted Peter did great until Lang smacked him into the ground but that wasn’t the point. Tony should have checked to see if his age was where he thought it was and now all those weird comments Peter made about homework made far more sense. If he was in college like Tony thought he would have had his soul sucked out by homework and he wouldn’t have cared as much. He has seven PhDs, he’d know.
“Tony, that wasn’t… okay that kind of was your fault but it wasn’t like you meant to involve a kid. Didn’t you show up talking about bursaries and some shit?” Rhodey asks.
“Yeah, grants, because I thought he was in college. I mean I’ve met some reckless fifteen year olds, I lived though my own stupid phases, but I didn’t think that Peter could possibly be that young, what fifteen year old takes on the world like that? Shouldn’t he be scared shitless like a normal kid? I thought maybe he had something wrong with his pituitary gland and that’s why he looked twelve, I didn’t want to bring it up, that’s rude,” he says. Too be fair that was because he did that once and it went terribly but still, he learned his lesson and he didn’t make comments about why people looked like prepubescent children anymore.
“Trust me Tony, I remember you at fifteen and you would have taken on anything if you thought you would have proved yourself, and Peter is the same way. Plus you both have a protection streak a mile wide and it shows. I know you feel guilty about your temporary child soldier but you stuck around because you see a lot of yourself in the kid and you aren’t wrong. I just hope that he world doesn’t make him as much of an uncaring jackass as it did to you for awhile. Don’t get me wrong I still loved you, but damn I wanted to punch you a lot. I didn’t because I knew that you were only trying to outlive Howard’s legacy and you did that by following Obadiah’s bad advice. But anyways, you know what I find weird? How come his aunt wasn’t suspicious when you mentioned grants? If he’s in high school why would he need a grant?” Rhodey asks and Tony has already been there himself.
“Peter is nothing like me and that’s a good thing, he’s way better than me and the media needs to catch a fucking clue. And he’s set to graduate early, right after his sixteenth birthday. He could have done it earlier but he decided to get a job and it sort of slowed down his genius some because even the smart kids need to sleep. Anyways, May probably thought I was referring to his graduation in the spring, not immediately like I meant. Honestly I was lucky that that matched up or I would have blown his cover and mine.” And wouldn’t that have been a disaster. He might have threatened to tell his aunt but he would have never followed through on it. Thankfully Peter was too naïve to realize it was an empty threat and crawled back home like Tony wanted him too. He really, really needed to have a conversation with that kid about reading people.
“Peter wasn’t forced to grow up as quick as you and he didn’t learn to hide his feelings in the bottom of a bottle or some twenty-one year old, that doesn’t mean he isn’t like you. And you’re good with him, you know. You do a good job giving him advice without sounding like a condescending ass. The early graduation thing does make some sense though, has he picked out a college yet?” he asks.
Tony snorts, “what do I look like? His mother?” he asks. Peter had applied before he ended up caught up in the Accords mess but he hasn’t heard back yet. He was getting nervous about the lack of replies but Tony’s been through this, he just needed to wait some and he’d get his reply. He’s seen the kid’s grades; there was no way he wasn’t getting into his top choices.
*
T’Challa can see himself from across the tarmac and he feels a twinge of surprise and a strange swell of hope. He has seen in color for his whole life, he had thought that he did not have a soul mate but here he was dressed in all black. Of course, obviously he would have seen in color his whole life only to have his soul mate show up in all black. It was as if this was the opposite of what normal people got. That’s when he noticed that his soul mate was not looking at him; his eyes were focused elsewhere so he followed his gaze. Bucky Barnes. He feels something else than, a strange twist of annoyance followed by betrayal and then hurt.
As quickly as he accepted he had a soul mate he rejected that soul mate, turning back to the task at hand: brining Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes in without causing any more damage.
He wakes with a start, frowning at the pain in his ribs and left shoulder. That was not there yesterday and there was no reason for his ribs to hurt, or his shoulder. He gently prods at his ribs and regrets it immediately when pain laces through his mid section. Tony, he suddenly remembers, has hurt ribs and… and he just had a dream of a memory that was not his own. He had a dream of the exact moment when Tony decided that T’Challa was not worth his time and that hurt. Not quite as much as knowing that it was his needless quest for vengeance that was the reason that Tony rejected him. T’Challa sighs and carefully pulls himself from bed, now concerned with Tony’s health with no real way to ask about it, not unless Shuri was willing to help him out.
Maybe she would be, Tony was in genuine pain if T’Challa’s ribs had anything to say about it, that had to be a reasonable excuse to speak with Tony on his behalf, right? He finds her in the kitchen and sits carefully, trying to avoid hurting his ribs more. Shuri raises an eyebrow, “something wrong, brother?” she asks.
“With me? Technically no, but I am fairly certain I am feeling Tony’s pain,” he says. Shuri gives him a suspicious look and rounds the table, jabbing him in the side with her finger. He lets out a string of Wakandan expletives that were probably not very becoming of a king, not that he cared in that particular moment. “Was there a reason for that?” he grits out, glaring at his sister.
“I knew where this was going and I was not going to call Tony because you decided to fake being in pain in some bizarre attempt to connect with your soul mate. Admittedly I did not expect you to be in actual pain so… sorry about that,” she mumbles, looking sheepish.
“I appreciate your faith in me, Shuri,” he says, irritated. He understood her reasoning but his sore ribs did not appreciate her method of truth determining.
“I have as much faith in you as Tony does right now, which is none. Maybe less than that. The point is that if I go to him on your behalf it would not do you any favors if you were lying or exaggerating. It certainly would not do me any good, I have established rapport, if I mess that up you will be stuck in pain for the rest of your life because he will not be going anywhere near you,” she says.
“If he is in pain too than why would he not come to me?” T’Challa asks. It was only logical, soul mates that felt each other’s pain healed faster in each other’s presence. Science had no explanation for that currently though current theories suggested a more positive environment was created and that fostered better bodily conditions. That, however, did not explain why soul mates in terrible conditions still healed faster than average.
“Physical pain will heal, psychological scars last forever,” Shuri says, depressing as always. He loved his sister but he wished she would lighten up sometimes. “Do not look at me like that, you asked and I answered. He has been hurt enough in his life, the last thing he needs is to add another person to the long list of people who have wronged him or left him.” He wants to make a snide comment about who wronged her in life to end up with the same worldview but he keeps the comment to himself. It was rude and the only reason he considered saying such a thing was because he was in pain and pain lowered his patience level. This didn’t stop him from being annoyed.
*
Tony is curled up on the couch nursing sore ribs and a hefty irritation at Peter’s latest Villain of the Week for reinjuring him. When he gets the call he would like to say that he was surprised but he wasn’t because of course he had to have definitive proof of that special bond Rhodey claimed he had with T’Challa. “Honestly T’Challa is whining and crying like he has never been in pain before,” Shuri says and Tony laughs only to regret that immediately.
“I can hear you,” someone in the background says. The small shiver down Tony’s spine tells him it’s T’Challa. He silently tells his body to fuck off.
“Then quit whining, you have suffered worse injuries than this,” Shuri tells him. Tony glances at his phone, frowning because T’Challa was currently seven hours ahead of him and he should probably be asleep.
“Is he okay? He can sleep, right?” he asks, concerned. He wasn’t going to sleep anyways, curse of being an insomniac, but he didn’t want to alter T’Challa’s probably far healthier sleep patterns.
“T’Challa is fine, do not look at me like that, there is nothing physically wrong with you and Tony does not sound like he is in an abundance of pain, are you alright, T’Challa has been crying about your health all day. Did you do something this afternoon to make the pain worse?” she asks. Tony swears under his breath because of course. Technically it was early this morning for him but it would have been sometime in the afternoon for T’Challa.
“Yeah, Spiderkid had a new villain and I got a baby piano dropped on my back. Thankfully the suit is built to withstand that kind of damage so I’m fine, I just need to take it easy for a few days.” Assuming people didn’t keep trying to decimate Queens anyways, how the hell Peter was keeping up with all this plus a job and school he had no clue. This just went to prove that, sadly, his youth was leaving him.
“Tell him to go to the hospital immediately!” he hears T’Challa say and he snorts. Fat chance, he hated hospitals with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns and unless someone else needed to go, i.e Rhodey, he was going nowhere near that antiseptic covered death trap. FRIDAY informed him that his ribs were bruised and that bed rest meant that he’d be fine and he was listening to the AI. She knew what was going on, he built her to have medical knowledge and she was more objective than the doctors, she would give him a better diagnosis anyways.
“That is not going to happen,” Shuri tells T’Challa, “but in the interest of keeping everyone happy I have a possible solution.”
Tony sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, “what were you thinking, Shuri?” He asks as a formality, really, because he was fairly certain he knew what she was going to suggest.
He hears T’Challa mumbling something in the background and Shuri mumbles something back in a language Tony didn’t know. Probably Wakandan, which meant he was learning Wakandan. He was good at picking up languages anyways, he spoke ten fluently, he was sure he could figure out another. “I love my brother but he is being a pain in the ass right now,” Shuri says, walking somewhere else if the shuffling was any indication. Tony snorts out something that was kind of like laughter but easier on his ribs. “When he came to me this morning I thought that he was faking it in some stupid attempt to get closer to you so I jabbed him in the ribs. It turned out that he was not faking it.”
Unfortunately for him he actually laughs at that for all of two seconds before he can’t breath and his vision goes spotty from the pain. He takes a shaky breath and lets out a small moan, “yeah, keep the funny moments to yourself,” he wheezes out, “and maybe don’t go poking T’Challa in the ribs.” He figured he should have a little sympathy for the guy; it wasn’t even his fault he was in pain. Yet another thing Tony has failed at, he wasn’t even on the same half of the world as the guy and he was causing him pain and distress. Just his fucking luck.
“Yes, well, I had no interest in being part of some no doubt stupid plan to win you over if it was not actually true. Now I feel bad because of course he would not stoop to such levels. Too late now I suppose, but do you have a high pain tolerance? Because you must,” she says and Tony swears.
“Damnit. I forgot about the nerve damage, I mean yeah I have a high pain tolerance but when the arc reactor was killing me it gave me some mild nerve damage in the chest area so T’Challa is probably in more pain than I am,” he says and he swears again. Of course. Of course this would happen to him because he couldn’t catch a break. Now every time he was out superheroing he was going to have to worry about T’Challa too, wasn’t that just fucking peachy.
Shuri sighs, “well then I guess my solution is looking better than ever,” she says in a reluctant tone and Tony appreciated it. Thus far she was the only one who knew about T’Challa and didn’t think that he was secretly pining after the guy. Weird one night stand coincidences aside he wanted nothing to do with him and Shuri was the only one to respect that, even if she was halfassed trying to make T’Challa look like a more desirable soul mate by establishing a connection to him. At least she was up front about what she was doing and Tony could appreciate that.
“Let me guess, you want me to come and negotiate those agreements I sent out to replace the Accords?” It was less of a question and more of a statement.
“I do. It would be easier this way, then you heal faster and T’Challa stops whining, you deal with the legalities of your agreements, and if you hate him by the end of your stay you will never have to speak to him again,” she says bluntly.
“This is why I like you, you’ve actually considered the possibility that I’ll hate T’Challa,” he says. Unlike everyone else. Rhodey let the… well the cat was a little literal in this case, out of the bag this morning in front of Peter and now he was convinced Tony was doing himself a disservice. He kept from snapping at the kid just barely, reminding himself that he was fifteen and freakishly naïve, of course he believed in all that Hollywood bullshit he saw. That wasn’t his fault and it would be unfair to be cruel to him at all under any circumstance, so Tony kept his mouth mostly shut. Rhodey, however, was an adult and he’s known Tony for years so he should have known better than to push it. He didn’t need T’Challa or anyone else, he’s spent most of his life alone or damn near next to alone and he was fine spending the rest of his life that way too.
“Oh make no mistake, I highly doubt that will happen, he is very likable. But if you do not find him worthy of your time than I see no reason for you to remain here to establish a connection that will never grow. Soul mate or not that is senseless.” She says that like it’s fact and that sort of throws Tony, mostly the part about T’Challa being worthy of his time.
“Uh, T’Challa is the king of a nation, shouldn’t I be the one that has to live up to some standard?” that he would inevitably fail.
“Sure, but that does not mean that he should have no standards to live up to. Being king does not make him immune to mistakes and it does not mean that he should not have any responsibilities to you. More than that it does not mean that he will live up to whatever standards you are looking for in a soul mate, that is illogical. Many leaders are corrupt, you know this, T’Challa may not be an exception to you. Besides, making the assumption that you must live up to a standard while he does not sets the relationship up for a dynamic that is not equal. That would lead to a toxic relationship at best and a flat out abusive relationship at worst,” Shuri points out. She was right, he guessed, but he was used to people holding him to high standards that didn’t seem to apply to him so he had naturally assumed this was more of that. He didn’t have much faith that it wasn’t.
“I guess. You’re probably the only one who thinks I have any right to judge T’Challa though, I’m sure the Avengers would all tell me that he’s too good for me,” he says bitterly. Mostly because they were right.
Shuri lets out an annoyed snort, “the Avengers are hypocritical fools, I would trust the pet rock I had as a child more than I would them and T’Challa has come to a similar conclusion. He was not happy when Barton showed his displeasure with you helping his family. He threated to dump him in the middle of the continent with only his underwear,” she says and Tony lets out another painful laugh that left him regretting the action. “Sorry,” Shuri mumbles as he groans in pain, “but the point is that you should always have a right to choose if you want anything to do with your soul mate. Anyone who suggests otherwise, regardless of how bad of a person they think you are, is ignorant.”
Yeah, he appreciated that, but she was wrong. T’Challa seemed like a pretty upstanding guy even with his mistakes and Tony… well, he was the Merchant of Death and Iron Man did dick all to erase all that blood on his hands. His not wanting anything to do with his soul mate wasn’t just because he didn’t want to get hurt all over again, it was that T’Challa deserved so much better than anything he could possibly offer him. But he agrees to Shuri’s plan anyways because he felt bad for causing T’Challa pain and he needed to get all the legal superhero shit out of the way eventually anyways. He might as well get all of this done, deal with his hurt soul mate, tell him to fuck off, and never speak to him again. It was better that way, really.