Chapter 22
“Holy shit, I have never seen Buzzfeed so excited,” Peter tells Tony, all but vibrating with excitement. “I totally mentioned you and T’Challa a week ago to my friends and they thought I was making stuff up about you to look cool so I am so validated right now.”
Rhodey frowns at Tony, “what the hell is a Buzzfeed?” he asks. Peter looks at Rhodey like he grew a second head and Tony laughs.
“Entertainment outlet. What’re they saying?” Tony asks. Technically speaking he didn’t actually name T’Challa but with the pressure to tell people who his soul mate was, and permission from T’Challa, he gave the information up. Shuri, according to T’Challa, was having a blast reading all the absurd things online about them.
“Well, there’s the butt comparison- you won by the way, that Twitter fight defending your cat that has been deemed adorable, and some crap about politics,” Peter informs him, looking at his phone.
“You do not have a better ass than T’Challa,” Rhodey says, eyeing Peter skeptically. Tony tilts his head in Rhodey’s direction and Peter wiggles around in excitement.
“Are you jealous?” he asks enthusiastically, eyes bright with curiosity.
“No,” Tony says in a bland tone, “who in their right mind wouldn’t look at T’Challa’s ass? Didn’t assume Rhodey would have spent enough time staring at our asses to know who had the better butt though. But I agree, T’Challa has the winning butt.” And his ass in that cat suit of his was way better too. Honestly it was a damn crime he had to wear pants at all.
“Yeah, well, the downsides of being at ass level all the time is that you have no choice but to look. The benefits of being ass level all the time is Shuri’s ass,” Rhodey says, grinning.
“It’s true, she does have a nice butt but don’t ever tell her I said that. I plan on living to see tomorrow,” Tony says. Rhodey narrows his eyes at him and Tony snorts, “you’ve spent enough time staring at my soul mate’s ass to determine that his is better than mine. I just happen to have working eyes and made a passing appreciation so don’t you get all jealous with me. Trust me I have zero inclination to go anywhere near Shuri in a sexual manner. She’s basically my sister, that’s weird.” Even if she would technically only be his sister in law it still had an ick factor a mile wide.
“Man, swamp ass must be a struggle for the average wheel chair user considering where your faces usually sit in comparison to the standing population,” Peter says, interrupting Rhodey’s offended looks.
“Swamp ass?” Rhodey asks, eyebrows drawing together.
“Yeah, you know, when you’ve been sitting down for awhile or if it’s really hot and it’s like a marsh down there. Swamp ass,” Peter says, shrugging. Rhodey’s face scrunches as he realizes that he had a whole new struggle he hadn’t even considered.
Tony throws back his head and laughs, “oh my god, that’s hilarious! I was born in the wrong generation, Rhodes, because between their weird new terms, constant over exaggerating, and terrible mental health I was clearly meant to be a millennial,” he says.
“You know what, you’re right. Don’t forget that self-depreciative mental health humor and all the trash can jokes- you’d blend right in. You should have born two decades later than you were,” Rhodey says. Yeah, then maybe someone could have explained mental health to him as a teen when he could have fixed all this shit. Now he was like an old dog- there was no learning new tricks so he was designed to be fucked up forever. At least kids these days actually knew what was happening in their minds- as someone who had no idea it was nice to see progress to a point where people actually talked about these things.
“Too bad my dad’s dick would have been dust if he attempted to have me two decades later than he did,” Tony says. Howard had already been pretty old by normative standards when he had Tony, it would have been weird if he had been older.
“Literally man, if he had you two decades later than he did he would have dead,” Rhodey points out.
“Oh my god, I am so sorry!” Peter says, ever aware of Tony’s emotions. It takes a second for Tony to get Rhodey’s joke but once he does he bursts out laughing, freaking Spidertot out.
“He should have waited two decades, I would have been saved a world of pain,” Tony says, still snickering.
“Do you need a hug?” Peter asks, looking concerned.
*
T’Challa was not impressed with the American media assuming Tony made up their connection, an odd reaction that took a full forty eight hours to kick in, but he was more than happy to set them straight. “I cannot believe you had to sit down with an American journalist and explain that no, Tony did not invent a soul mate connection to you for attention,” Shuri says, shaking her head.
“Well believe it. People like to think Tony does everything for attention- actually I used to think that too but now I think he actually doesn’t know the difference between what everyone else assumes is ridiculous and what he thinks is ridiculous. Regardless, ever since this whole ‘Civil War’ thing people have been making up all sorts of things about Tony and claiming that he’s the problem. Guess that’s what you get when you disagree with Captain America in America,” Rhodey says somewhat resentfully, shaking his head.
“I can confirm that he has a genuine misunderstanding of social norms,” T’Challa says. He’s had more than one dream of Tony’s life in which he broke some social rule by accident and genuinely had no idea why people were upset. Usually he did this by being too honest- something he was consistently told was a valuable trait only to be told he was rude for giving the honest opinion he was asked for. T’Challa used to do that too but his father had made sure to give him to tools to figure out what, exactly, was the right way to say whatever it was he was trying to say. Tony was not so lucky- instead of trying to help him understand things socially he got yelled at. Being a child in an adult’s world had no helped him any either, especially when people routinely forgot how young he was and expected him to act like an adult while telling him he was a child. On a contradictory note people consistently got annoyed when he acted his age and then wondered why he was so socially stunted.
He had, apparently, learned to compensate by throwing social rules out the window entirely, something that still stuck around though he was not nearly so callus about it. T’Challa rather enjoyed Tony’s special brand of communication though, even if it was frustrating at times, because it made him special. He could do without the cruel public reactions to his soul mate though, especially because they came from such an illogical place. “I do not understand you Americans and always assuming you are right. Why is it that you are all allergic to being wrong and admitting it? There is nothing wrong with being wrong, it happens to everyone,” he points out. In Wakanda admitting you were wrong when you hurt someone was very important- if you refused to admit that you were not in the right people did not much want anything to do with you. In an isolated country like his it did not do well to have the public turn against you. He found the trait both useful and damaging depending on the circumstance.
“Do not forget their aversion to not knowing the answer to a question. Imagine having to act like an expert in everything out of fear that people will assume you know nothing if you are not sure of everything you say. And they wonder why their youth is so mentally ill- with that kind of pressure I would be mentally ill too,” Shuri says, shaking her head. Her words match up with what T’Challa has learned from Tony both through dreams of his memories and through his interactions with him now. T’Challa certainly knew what it was like to feel the pressure to get things right all the time, but he was also certain that his people were far more forgiving of mistakes than Tony’s country was. If he did not learn from his mistakes then his people would be rather upset, which he found fair enough.
“Not quite sure if that’s how it works- they mentally ill thing, but you make a point,” Rhodey says. “We do have a weird aversion to being wrong- and god forbid you be wrong if you aren’t white, you’ll never get your credibility back. I’ve watched more than one black man make some stupid mistake only to get burned so bad he never recovers. Thankfully I’ve had some good luck, that and people don’t really like insulting me because Tony makes a very public habit of defending me.”
“Yes, I found that in my research. He’s quite aggressive about it too,” T’Challa says. Tony was rather good at pointing out the discrepancies between the way people viewed Rhodey versus himself too. It did not look good for the military to penalize Rhodey for doing something Tony admitted he did consistently so most of the time they were forced to let whatever incident go. It was a smart move- T’Challa read about Rhodey’s accomplishments in the military- they would have been fools to let him go over some petty mistake. Eventually Rhodey rose high enough on the ladder that he got away with most everything he did, including consistently covering for Tony flying around in airspace he was not supposed to be in for superheroing purposes. T’Challa liked to think Tony was at least marginally more responsible about it now.
“He should be,” Shuri says, sticking her nose in the air and drawing T’Challa’s attention back to the conversation at hand.
“Yeah, he’s always been pretty good about that. He didn’t understand racism like at all when we met but he’s damn good at picking up on patterns and inconsistencies so he noticed the differences between the way people talked about me versus him pretty quick. He was just as quick to point it out too; it’s why I like him so much. Even at his worst he wasn’t fond of people being treated different for no perceivable reason.” Yes, T’Challa had ample evidence for that too. Tony appeared to be fond of evidence based thinking and when he saw no evidence for a claim he was quick to call it out as incorrect, even if he had limited understandings as to why someone ignored the evidence to come to a false conclusion. From T’Challa’s experience he was more socially aware now, or at least it appeared that way.
“T’Challa?” Tony asks. He does not need to turn around to know it is him, he felt his presence as soon as he opened the door.
“No, I am a figment of your imagination,” T’Challa jokes, “Shuri too.” Tony blinks slowly for a moment, as if he was trying to figure out if that was actually the case or not, “how long has it been since you slept?” T’Challa asks, concerned. That was something else he noticed, his own sleep pattern becoming extremely erratic. The bonus, if he could call it that, was that his connection to Tony and his being enhanced made it easier to cope with being sleep deprived far more than he was used to.
“Uh… not sure. I was in the lab for a bit but Pepper needed some paperwork so I went to do that,” he says, clearly unconcerned that he was not actually certain of when he last slept.
“You were in the lab for the last day and a half,” Rhodey tells him. Tony blinks again, obviously trying to recall the lost time and failing. T’Challa looks at Rhodey, who shakes his head just a little, ‘later’ he mouths and T’Challa frowns.
“So uh, what are you doing here?” Tony asks, regaining his bearings some.
“Explaining our relationship to American media seems how they are ignorant enough to assume that you fabricated our bond,” T’Challa says, clearly irritated with this. Of all the absurd things he thought would come of Tony’s accidentally outing their relationship on Twitter he did not think that he would have to confirm that the bond was real. He assumed that he would have to put up with Shuri reading him some painfully bad article about he and Tony secretly being lizard people. Instead his relationship was insulted on some very personal levels.
“You came to America to say that yeah, you are actually my soul mate?” Tony asks. He sounds skeptical, like he did not quite believe that T’Challa would do such a thing and that irritates him.
“Oh course, I was not going to let them spread untrue rumors about you being an attention seeker for telling the truth. Besides that I am very offended that I even have to confirm this, the public does not get to insist on knowing about your personal life and then insult you for being gracious enough to share. So yes, I am here to inform people of their absolute ignorance,” he says primly.
Slowly Tony smiles, ducking his head, “thank you.”
*
The last thing Tony expected was a nasty rumor that he invented a soul mate connection to T’Challa- an appropriate target because he supposedly couldn’t stand up for himself. He hadn’t expected T’Challa to take enough offense to fly across the world to tell people how ignorant they were being, though. If he was honest with himself he half expected T’Challa to agree with the media and leave Tony for the wolves even if there was nothing to support that he’d ever do something like that. So he went down to his lab to deal with things, or more accurately not deal with them. Which was sort of what he was doing now, avoiding T’Challa because he knew that Rhodey ratted him out. He needed to reteach Rhodey the bro code- rule number one was not ratting your bro out for using terrible coping mechanisms to deal with your problems.
FRIDAY at least gives him a warning before she lets T’Challa in because apparently even his AI was conspiring against him. “Rhodey tells me that you came down here to busy yourself with whatever project you’re currently working on when you caught wind of that rumor about you fabricating our bond. I know that must have been difficult to hear but please know that you can talk to me,” T’Challa says. He looks worried and for the first time in a long time Tony actually believes it.
“I… I know. It’s just easier down here with the things that I understand and the things that understand me. Sometimes I just need to check out for awhile,” he says honestly.
T’Challa’s lips tip up into a smile, “thank you,” he says.
“For what?” Tony asks, frowning.
“The last time I told you that you can talk to me you told me that you did not trust me, and I understand why. But this time you told me that you knew you could talk to me, so thank you for offering me that trust. I promise you that I will not break it,” T’Challa says meaningfully. They look at each other for a moment before Tony leans forward in his chair, pressing his face into T’Challa’s stomach.
T’Challa runs his fingers through Tony’s hair, gently massaging his scalp. Tony is reminded vaguely of the last time he did this with someone, Pepper, but this was different. He loved Pepper, probably always would in some capacity, but she was nothing like T’Challa. T’Challa understood him in a way he didn’t think was possible, and he worked with Tony rather than against him. It was nice that, for once, when things went wrong T’Challa didn’t assume Tony was the only one at fault, but he wasn’t about to let Tony off the hook for his own misdeeds either. It’s a nice balance.
“So,” Tony says, pulling back a little, “I was doing some research on soul mate bonds- not for the reasons you might think-” he adds quickly when T’Challa gives him a worried look. “I’ve always seen in color, which is clearly odd, and I wanted to know if there was anything in existing literature on the subject that would explain why. According to research sometimes if a person is pregnant and they meet their soul mate their fetus gets a nice dose of soul mate hormones too- hence being able to see in color,” he says.
“Sorry,” T’Challa says, looking slightly pained.
“For what? If my poor mother had a soul mate that wasn’t Howard I’m happy for her, she deserved better than anything he could have ever given her. So either that’s what happened, or the much less exciting alternative is that I’m part of the 0.2 percent of people that are born with the ability to see in color. But like I said, that’s boring.” He liked to think that somewhere out there his mom had someone else there for her that wasn’t Howard, someone who actually cared about her even if it was unlikely.
T’Challa shakes his head, laughing softly. “Of course being part of a very tiny population would be boring to you. Either way you are special and unique and I appreciate that regardless of how you ended up seeing in color your whole life. Besides, I do not particularly care how color came into your life, all I care about is that I get the privilege of having you as a soul mate.”
“I’m glad that you’re my soul mate too,” Tony says. It’s dangerously close to ‘I love you’, which hasn’t gone well for him historically speaking, but it’s far enough away from the phrase that he was comfortable saying it. Plus it was true, he is glad that T’Challa is his soul mate, he couldn’t imagine it any other way.