Chapter 20
Tony doesn’t realize how attached he is to T’Challa until he’s back home and then, like always, he kind of panics. He’s never done well with the whole genuinely liking people thing- Pepper and Rhodey could attest to that- so he isn’t sure what to do here. Obviously T’Challa was… well, he’s great, but he wasn’t the first person Tony has met that was great and as much as he didn’t want to he did wonder when it was going to go down the tubes. Every relationship he’s ever had has gone sour at some point or another- truly sour, not just your average disagreements. Even Rhodey, back when he was dying and panicking and they got into that fight… They worked it out; he always worked it out with Rhodey, but he was the only one that seemed to happen with. What if T’Challa was more like Pepper, fine until romance was thrown in the mix?
Truth be told he wasn’t sure he could handle yet another thing in his life going to shit. As it was he was currently sitting on a precarious balance of having everything together while everything is falling apart at the same time. To be fair his decision not to continue with the Avenger thing was probably for the best but it still stuck him in the middle of a political stew that was far more of a mess than anything else he’s ever dealt with before. What was worse that he didn’t exactly have the best of supports around him. There was Rhodey, sure, but Rhodey needed help more than he did. Tony was used to his mind being just a little bit off, it’s been that way his whole life, but to Rhodey this was all new and he clearly wasn’t sure how to deal with it.
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Rhodey asks, scaring the hell out of him because he hadn’t heard him wheel up.
“Jesus! Make a little noise, man. But to answer your question, one, I don’t wear panties because they’re itchy, and nothing’s got my panties in a twist even if I did wear them,” he says.
Rhodey wrinkles his nose; “I didn’t need to know that about you but thanks for that. And something’s on your mind because you’ve been staring at that… whatever it is you’re attempting to design for the last hour without actually doing anything. Usually you have no problem with these things,” Rhodey points out. Right, sometimes he forgot that Rhodey actually knew him.
He sits back in his seat and considers his options for a moment before he sighs, “T’Challa,” he says simply and Rhodey nods, understanding immediately. It surprises him though it shouldn’t, but he’s grown used to people not really understanding how he works. To be fair he didn’t really understand how most people worked either so they were even, he guessed.
“What about him? Because from where I’m standing you don’t exactly have much to worry about and trust me, I didn’t really like him much to begin with either. Pretty much everyone you’ve ever cared about has managed to screw you over in some way or another and I didn’t want to see it happen again. Hell, even I’ve done a crappy job at being a good friend sometimes,” Rhodey says, looking away for a moment.
“You’ve been there for me more than anyone else has ever. So you’ve had your moments, I had fifteen years worth of moments all in one shot so I don’t feel like I have a place to judge,” he says honestly. “As for T’Challa, yeah, I know he’s great. That’s the problem; Pepper was great too and look how fast that hit the fan when romance was tossed onto the plate. We worked better as business partners, always have. What if the same thing happens with T’Challa?” he asks.
“Tony, there was a lot going on with you that no one, yourself included, was dealing with. Doesn’t excuse you being an asshole but if I had known then-”
“Then I would have made every effort possible to push you away. I didn’t want to deal with my issues because they were scary and confusing and I didn’t know what I was doing. When you’re used to being the expert it’s pretty terrifying to be thrown out of that role. Don’t beat yourself up for not doing something I wouldn’t have let you do anyways,” Tony tells him. There was a person or two that got close when he was younger, ones that tried to help, and he pushed them away as fast as he could because that was easier than dealing with it. And, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was used to people using him and leaving him and he wanted to prove himself right. He had, on more than one occasion, and then the people he considered his rocks up and left him too and he was put in a weird space where he knew it was irrational to believe that everyone left him when they were done with him while also having ample evidence for it being true.
Obi, Pepper, the Avengers, even Rhodey though it wasn’t permanent. He considered all of them close, like family, and all of them left without his ever needing to push them away. Hell, he made an effort to reach out to Pepper and even that hadn’t been enough. So he’s been burned, even when he did what people asked he continued to get burned and now… well now he didn’t know what to think anymore. His closest friends were his childhood best friend and a fifteen year old he found on some YouTube videos. That was pretty embarrassing.
“I never would have let you do that Tony, not for long. We… we probably could have avoided so much bullshit if I would have just confronted you with all of this sooner. It probably would have ended up something like your birthday but it would have been so worth it if you actually stopped suffering a little and then stopped making everyone else suffer too. And sorry about never really believing you when you talked about your mental health. I thought you were being dramatic or something but you’re not. I used to think when I told you to just stop doing things and you would tell me that you couldn’t you were saying that you wouldn’t. Except now I get it- I’ve told myself about a million times to just stop feeling like this, stop the thinking patterns but it isn’t that simple. Now I feel bad for telling you you had a bad attitude when you genuinely couldn’t help it,” Rhodey tells him. He looks away again; clearly guilty for the way he treated Tony.
After all the shit he’s handed to Rhodey Tony didn’t think he was worthy of the guilt. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, “shit happens. Besides, after all the crap I’ve dragged you through I don’t really think that you owe me an apology. But yes, I don’t actually have much control over the thoughts. I try, but they keep coming back and then I panic and I… screw it all up. It’s like the faster my brain is moving the less it’s actually doing and it shows in the results of my actions. It would be fine if it was small stuff, but I nearly ended the world because I couldn’t make it stop and I just… I don’t understand how Steve can say the best hands are our own when I’m not sure any of the Avengers can make their thoughts stop,” he says honestly. Steve and his obsession with Bucky, Natasha and her secrets, Wanda and her anger, Vision and his confusion, Bruce and his self-loathing, Tony had the same issue, and Clint kept his fair share of secrets too.
They all had issues and all of their issues were clouding their judgment, especially his and Steve’s judgment. The best hands were almost any hands but theirs and it’s been proven over and over again but most if not all of them. Wanda’s anger still simmered under the surface if her throwing cars at him was any indication- even if he had acted foolishly. Vision’s confusion nearly killed Rhodey; Steve decimated an entire city in the pursuit of Bucky and then invaded no small number of countries to continue his hunt and he had an entire super team behind him. Natasha still ran double missions and her identity as two people at once was practically her nature now. Clint’s inability to focus on both work and his family led to him hiding his family, then nearly losing it when the news got out. Bruce… well they all knew what happened to Bruce, which was also half thanks to Wanda and her targeting all the wrong people.
“The best hands are the hands of the people you intend to help,” Rhodey says softly, “the Accords aren’t the perfect method of going about that but if we sat around and waited for perfection we’d be waiting forever and that’s unacceptable. People need help now and you amended the emergency situations thing so it’s more reasonable. But back to you, I do owe you an apology, Tony. Even at your worst you still apologized for being an ass, and I know you tried to change it too, even if you weren’t so good at it. But I’ve only apologized for what I thought I did wrong and that isn’t right. So I’m sorry for not listening to you, for ignoring you when I should have been paying attention. I could have done a lot more had I pulled my head out of my ass,” he says. Yeah, sure he could have, Tony too but that wasn’t the point.
“What’s done is done. Maybe you could have done more and maybe I’d be a perfectly adjusted individual because of your help but that probably wouldn’t be the case. You aren’t responsible for me and my health and you sure as hell aren’t the only contributing factor in why I am the way I am. My father abused me for years; I was manipulated by Obi for years after that, I didn’t deal with any of that well or at all, and I highly doubt your being more aware would have changed much. If I didn’t try and push you away Obi would have, and god knows what his methods would have looked like. In a way being ignorant kept you safe and I’ll take you alive and here for me now over being dead because you tried to help me then. It’s okay,” he says genuinely. Rhodey was one of his only supports now and the other supports were people he wasn’t sure of; he’d go to Rhodey long before he went to T’Challa. There was a lot of value in Rhodey’s simple presence with him and he hopped that Rhodey knew that.
“I… never thought of it that way. I guess that is kind of a good thing given that Obadiah made an effort to keep me away from you as it was. Man, that’s abuse 101, isolation. How did I not see that?” Rhodey asks more to himself than Tony. He shakes his head; his lip curling in disgust but Tony had no idea what he was talking about.
“What do you mean Obi already made an effort to keep you away from me?” To his knowledge Obadiah liked Rhodey because he brought out the ‘sensible’ in Tony. That was so not true, Rhodey might keep him somewhat grounded but he brought out the wild in Rhodey rather than Rhodey keeping him sensible. That was why Rhodey’s mother had hated him for the longest time. Week one was ‘hey mom, I met Tony Stark!’ Week two was ‘well mom, Tony Stark got me arrested but don’t worry I don’t have a criminal record.’ In his defense he had no idea that car wasn’t his, it was a pretty sports car, obviously it was his. Turned out it belonged to one Justin Hammer and that was the birth of a now life-long rivalry in which Tony squashed him like a bug every time. Even if Hammer technically won Round One of their fights.
“He was always rearranging your schedule to that it didn’t fit with the times I was home. Granted he did a bad job at keeping you away considering you managed to fly from where ever you were to visit almost every time that happened, but I almost always got a phone call detailing how busy you were and how you didn’t have time for me. I never took it seriously because the things he said never sounded like anything you would even believe let alone say,” Rhodey tells him.
Tony clenches his jaw and sits back in his seat, “that sonofabitch, he always told me you didn’t have time for me. I showed up because I wasn’t about to let you military your way out of my life,” he says angrily. Fucking asshole. Too bad Obi was dead or he’d find that Grade A piece of shit and kill him all over again for this. How dare he mess with his relationship with Rhodey like that! Honestly that made him wonder what he might have said to Pepper that she was too smart to fall for. She’s a sensible woman and she never did like Obi, she went very far out of her way to avoid him so whatever he might have said to her Tony doubted she’d ever believe it. But it still pissed him off that Obi would try.
“Damn. That adds a whole new layer of why he tried to kill you. He didn’t just want your company, he never did, he wanted your genius too but you’re not the type to be held down. Never have been really. Remember that prof you had that told you that you couldn’t possibly be doing the math in your head? I will never forget the way you laughed in his face and told him in front of four hundred students that he couldn’t fail you for being smarter than him and then solved his thesis by rattling off numbers off the top of your head. I guess Obadiah realized that he was basically the newer version of that prof, trying to stuff you into a box you were never meant to fit in and every time he tried you laughed in his face and did what you wanted. The only way to solve that problem was to kill you. Did you know that JARVIS wouldn’t let anyone into your lab? Not even me or Pepper, he was one stubborn AI,” Rhodey says, shaking his head ruefully.
Yeah, he got hell for that when he got home because how else was Obi supposed to run the company with Tony’s toys all wrapped up tight? With him had been the point, and if J had been a person Tony would have given him a raise. He updated the AI’s code instead. “Actually I did know JARVIS locked everyone out. Obi wasn’t happy about it but you know how I am with people in the lab, and I was way worse then. Never really considered it but you’re right about that abuse thing, it’s like… textbook.” Howard used to do it with him mom all the time but Tony got his free spirit from her. As if he was seriously going to stop her from doing charity work- how would that look to the press? God he missed her, she was the only light in his life as a child because she was one of the only people willing to stand up to Howard and his crap. Her, and a nanny he hadn’t had for long. Constantine was his favorite though, she was a hardass but she also rolled her eyes at Howard’s stupid comments openly and stood up for him mom.
Rhodey sighs, “yet another thing I failed to notice,” he mumbles.
“Hey, don’t do that. I get how easy it is to blame yourself but you were never the problem, Obi was. You can’t blame yourself for being preoccupied with your own life, it isn’t fair, and you can’t catch everything anyways. I made it through and so did you, that’s all that matters,” Tony tells him. Rhodey was there when Tony needed him and he hoped he was there when Rhodey needed him. That was all he cared about. “So um… how are you like… feeling?” he asks.
“Oh my god,” Rhodey says, rolling his eyes, “you sound like a cliché sitcom. But to answer your very corny question I’m not sure. Things seem to be up and down and side ways and all sorts of other ways I don’t really understand right now and I don’t know what to do with that.” Tony leaves it there for a moment, waiting to see if Rhodey had anything else to add but he doesn’t.
“Forgive me for not knowing how else to put it, cliché or no. And I know how that feels, being confused about what’s going on in your own head. You know that you can talk to me right? I won’t judge you, no matter what screwed up thing might be rattling around in there. Trust me, I’ve had my fair share of screwed up thoughts so I am not in a good place to judge anyways,” he jokes though the comment falls flat.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But let me try and work some stuff out on my own first, I need to try and figure out how to like… organize all of this and right now I’m lost. But we were talking about T’Challa and you know what would help with that?” Rhodey says, grinning at Tony.
“If you say what I think you’re going to say you can never judge me for being a cliché ever again,” he warns.
“Communication!” Rhodey says gleefully.
“You’re a walking stereotype and you can’t judge me,” Tony tells him.
*
After a long, long time of debating and otherwise warring with himself T’Challa ends up calling him, making the debate to call T’Challa moot. Tony lets the phone ring a few times because he might be desperate but he wasn’t easy. Actually, yeah, he was really easy and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. But still, he did have a small scrap of pride left. “Stark,” he answers almost automatically and he cringes. God, he managed to screw up a phone call in four seconds or less. He used to be a smooth talker and now he couldn’t even answer the phone without sounding like a twit.
“I know you checked the caller I.D,” T’Challa says in way of a greeting. Well, at least he isn’t the only one who is bad at this.
“It slipped out,” Tony admits grudgingly. It was half true; he panicked for three rings and then accidentally answered like it was a business call. He did it regularly, once when he and Pepper were still together he accidentally mistook a call from one of his investors for a call from Pepper and answered with ‘talk dirty to me.’ He wasn’t sure who was more embarrassed about that, Pepper or him.
“Well, I suppose I don’t much have a place to judge. I have answered with worse,” T’Challa says.
Forgetting his own embarrassment Tony leans forward, “ohh, I sense a story, do tell,” he says excitedly. So he wasn’t much willing to indulge in his own embarrassing tales, but he’d be damned if he was missing out on an opportunity to hear T’Challa’s embarrassment.
“Oh you know how it goes, clearly considering you just answered the phone as if I was a business investor. Unless you intended the formal greeting,” T’Challa adds slowly, giving Tony the space to admit whether or not that was intentional.
“I didn’t, but it’s probably better than anything I would have come up with otherwise to be honest. One time I didn’t check the I.D and told an investor to talk dirty to me because I thought he was Pepper. He was not Pepper and everyone was very awkward. The deal went well though, so in the end it was fine,” he says and curses himself. Damnit, he wasn’t going to share his embarrassing tales and here he was, his big mouth running away on him.
T’Challa bursts out laughing and Tony silently enters a shame cube of his own making. The saving grace to his day was Sharkbait entering the lab and jumping into Tony’s lap. He circles around twice and lies down, purring away despite the fact that Tony hadn’t actually got to petting him yet. That was a sign of a good cat, when they purred from being in your presence. It was like being blessed. He runs a hand over Sharkbait’s soft fur while T’Challa continues laughing at his expense. “Oh, that is far worse than the time I answered my phone thinking it was a lover only to find out it was my father. Thankfully it shamed me into the habit of checking to see who was calling first and I am forever grateful that it was him over my thesis supervisor. She was a severe woman and I am convinced she would have dropped me as her student had I answered her phone call like that,” T’Challa says.
“First off I am offended at the lack of detail in all of that, and two, I also made a habit of checking I.Ds but it never did help. I always answer with something weirdly inappropriate given the circumstances,” he says. Hence answering the phone with ‘Stark’ when it was his damn soul mate calling. He could have at least used Tony.
“Yes, apparently Rhodey has entre stories around your inability to answer the phone,” T’Challa says in a bemused tone.
“Rhodey needs to shut his whore mouth, there are no stories to tell unless we’re talking about the ones where he gets sick and I end up nursing him back to health. Let me tell you some wild things have happened,” he says. Rhodey wasn’t the whining and crying type- usually that was reserved for Tony- but when he was sick he turned into a child. He also got really weird food cravings and that’s where the wild adventures start. If Tony never saw a man eat a burrito with chocolate ice cream on it ever again it would be too soon. To add insult to injury Rhodey never did manage to keep the food down but he was damn insistent that he eat the food. On the plus side it led to Tony acquiring the knowledge that apparently cherry popsicles tasted almost the same coming up as they did going down. Those were now Rhodey’s go-to sick food and they had the added benefit of keeping him hydrated.
T’Challa hums his agreement, “like what? Because I feel like something has to be particularly strange for you to find it odd,” he says. It’s a fait assumption- it wasn’t like Tony was known for being normal.
“One time he decided that pickles and ice cream were a good idea. Orangesicle ice cream,” Tony says with emphasis. That was one of the more disgusting things Rhodey’s sick addled brain has come up with.
“That… is disgusting. I am glad he is not my soul mate; I could not do that to the ice cream. Or the pickles, that is just not right,” T’Challa says.
“Uh huh, you won the soul mate lottery,” Tony jokes, “I’m the best.” He wasn’t even close to the best but that’s fine, he ended up being T’Challa’s soul mate anyways, even though T’Challa is the best.
“Of course you are. You are the perfect choice,” T’Challa says, dead serious.
“Uhh. Thanks. That’s totally fake, but thanks,” Tony says before his stupid brain could stop his mouth from speaking. Damnit.
“It is not!” T’Challa says, offended. “I know that you have not been treated well in the past but I promise that I am not more of that,” he says firmly.
Tony snorts, “I believe that when I see it,” he says flippantly. He regrets it immediately though and he sighs, “sorry, that wasn’t fair. I have plenty of evidence that you aren’t like most of the people that have come and gone from my life. It’s just a little hard to believe, especially when a lot of the people I thought I could rely on… didn’t really work out that well.” Pepper for one, even if he understood why she went. It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t really his either, they just weren’t compatible anymore. Obi was the other and that had went all sorts of bad even before he thought it did.
“I know it must be hard, objectively speaking, thankfully I have not had to deal with the kind of heartbreak you have. But I am quite used to people depending on me, so I like to think myself reliable,” T’Challa says softly.
Yeah, so Tony gathered. “Must be a lot of pressure, people always relying on you. I’ve never been good at that, you’ve seen the results of people relying on me and honestly they aren’t good.” It was a fact as much as he wished it wasn’t, but he couldn’t just ignore the evidence that was sitting right in front of him. He’s spent too long doing that and it was time to let the results lead him to where he needed to go instead of what was going on in his too-cluttered brain.
“The results I have seen are mixed, and quite a lot of your bad results are either a direct result of someone else’s actions- Ultron coming from Wanda irritating your PTSD for example, or from people not taking your genuine issues seriously. Like your birthday party. Had people taken the time to actually work with you then those things would have had less of a chance of happening. But to answer your question yes, it is a lot of pressure but I have spent my entire life preparing for it,” T’Challa says.
If people had made an effort to help when he didn’t want it he would have made damn sure they didn’t try twice- he was quite vicious when he wanted to be- but he doesn’t say that. Like Rhodey T’Challa would probably argue that all he needed was a little help but he didn’t accept help until he was good and ready, it was one of many character flaws. Instead he focuses on T’Challa’s second statement. “Just because you prepare for something doesn’t mean it’s any less scary to do it. I can’t imagine being a king, honestly fuck that, I’d rather be a hermit.”
T’Challa snorts, “a hermit with a lot of technology maybe. You are an extroverted person though; I highly doubt you would enjoy a life as a shut-in. As for being king…” T’Challa pauses and Tony can practically hear him thinking about whether or not he was going to say what he wanted to. “I am a very successful person, I always have been, and that’s half of what terrifies me. Everyone expects perfection because that is what I always seem to deliver, but people are not perfect. I am bound to mess something up at some point and I dread the day when that comes. Shuri thinks I will be fine but I am not so sure,” he says honestly.
Tony takes a minute to process that because it was honest, more honest than he was used to. “I get that, at least before I actually did screw up all the time. Well, on a large scale, I’ve sort of always been a bit of a screw up. It sucks because every time something goes right it makes it all worse because that’s just one more thing people will hold against you when you inevitably fail. It’ll be ‘well you did a, b, and c right so why not x, y, and z!’ It won’t really matter that those were completely different things.” Actually that happened to him a lot when he was young, but it still happened now. He’d do something right and when he managed to make another mess it ended up being some crap about how he was doing ‘so well’ but then he ‘fell off the wagon’ or whatever stupid metaphor was used. It made him feel like he could never screw up because when he did everyone made such a huge deal of it, but no one ever cared when he wasn’t failing.
“Yes, exactly! It is hard to rest easy when I know something will go wrong, and I will be responsible, and then people will have expected that perfect person they constructed in their heads and… and I do not know how to deal with that. I cannot win, if I succeed I fear failure, if I fail, well, I fail. There is not option in which my actions just… are,” T’Challa says. Oh, and Tony got that too. Everything he did was under a microscope, always had been, and when he did something someone was always bound to have a problem with it. The things that he did were never just there, he never really had gotten that privilege and then people wondered why he got so frustrated. How T’Challa managed he had no idea, but Tony doesn’t tell him that. The last thing he needed was one more person telling him he was doing just fine, creating yet another dynamic in which he was afraid to fail.
“Yeah, and then people tell you that nothing is wrong because things aren’t wrong, everything is going right but that’s the problem. When all you have to deliver is perfection that becomes the standard, and when an imperfect person is expected to be perfect, well, that’s just a recipe for disaster. For the record if, or more likely when, you fail at something I won’t judge you for it. You’re only human; I couldn’t ever expect you not to fail. Besides, I know what it’s like to be defined both by your perfection and your failure. Both suck.”
He wasn’t entirely sure which one he would prefer either, on one hand it was nice to be doing something right but the pressure was awful. But on the other hand everyone hated him and expected that perfection regardless so it wasn’t like he was ever escaping that perfect little box people kept trying to stick him in. Frankly he liked T’Challa’s just… being as a solution. Just once he’d like to do something and not have people read into it, to just let the decision be nothing more than a choice he made. That was never going to happen though, even if he really wanted it to.
“I… thank you,” T’Challa says softly. “I have never met someone else who actually believed that, most think that I am not grateful for my success when I say things like that. But I am, it’s just…” he trails off, probably unsure how to word something.
“Its just that you know that your value is in that perfection and if you stop being that perfect person you stop mattering entirely,” Tony says.
T’Challa remains silent for so long that Tony winces, thinking he said something wrong and earning a one eyed glare from Sharkbait when he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Actually yes,” T’Challa finally says, “that was not something I realized until now, that I put so much of my own worth in my ability to succeed because that is why people find be valuable. That is disheartening.”
Tony knows the feeling; it took him a long long time for him to be able to word it too, mostly because he spent so long running from it. “It isn’t true you know, you aren’t valuable because you’re good at stuff. You’re valuable because you’re here, because you’re a person worthy of dignity and respect. I know it’s kind of difficult to accept but it’s true,” Tony says softly, meaningfully. When he first met T’Challa, back when he showed up at his place out of nowhere, he never would have guessed that T’Challa feared anything. From what he seen T’Challa was bold, brave, intelligent, wise, but not frightened, certainly not of his own success. That just goes to show how much you could pick out about a person without actually knowing them.
“It is nice,” T’Challa says after a moment, “to know someone understands. I do not thing people believe that successful people can have issues. I understand that I am very privileged, but it does not stop me from feeling like I am on a path that will only lead to my own demise because perfection is not sustainable.”
Tony huffs out a laugh, “I know. I didn’t really get the privilege thing for a long time, probably still don’t honestly. But that never did buy my sanity. I knew a guy once, he told me I had everything and nothing and honestly those few words changed my life. With all that I had it didn’t occur to me that I could have nothing too.” Yinsen knew so much about him, so much more than he knew himself at that point. He started a lot of self-reflection on Tony’s part and he would be forever grateful that Yinsen was there for him, with him, in those caves. He did wish that he had gotten Yinsen out; he had deserved life so much more than Tony had, but that wasn’t how things went. Don’t waste your life. Tony could only hope that he wasn’t.
“Wise man,” T’Challa says softly, “my father used to tell me that a good leader knew he would fail, but that he would try not to. Most unfortunately for me I have failed very little and it leaves me anxious for when something does happen. I have never dealt with failure, I do not know how I will react and I have a country of people to worry about affecting. I suppose all I can do is hope for the best.” Yeah, pretty much and wasn’t that just a kick in the pants?
They sit there for a moment in a comfortable silence, content to acknowledge the person on the other end of the line without actually using words. It was nice and generally unusual, most of the time Tony felt somewhat compelled to fill the silence but for now it was alright to leave it be. “I miss you,” Tony says softly, almost too soft for his own ears to hear so he was certain T’Challa hadn’t.
“I miss you too,” T’Challa says and Tony jumps, earning a grumpy meow from the now startled Sharkbait. “Enhanced hearing, remember?” T’Challa says, laughing. Of course Tony would forget a tiny detail like T'Challa being enhanced even though that was evident since the first time he had ever seen the guy. You'd think that was the kind of thing he wouldn't forget but here he is.
“Well now I do,” Tony mumbles grumpily.