Chapter Text
It wasn't exactly like Erik had extra time to hang around International Studies classes. He had just lost track of which class used which classroom when he had set up in the back corner. Some people wrote best in coffee shops, he wrote best in the back of classrooms.
He only glanced up twice during the class. The first time when he realized they were watching one of those annoyingly feel good movies about the civil rights movement, and the second when he reached the end of a paragraph and took a moment to stretch out his shoulders. Glancing around the room as he stretched, he noticed a boy sitting only a few empty seats away from his corner, one hand clutched tightly to his wrist and quiet tears streaming down his face.
Erik blinked, did a quick check at the screen, and found himself snarling slightly at the heroic sounding speech they were giving the black leader on screen. As if speeches every changed anything, as if victory had ever been achieved for those oppressed in America. But the boy—probably not much younger than him, though his face was rounder, and his heart apparently less broken—wasn't crying with some inspired emotion. He looked wretched, like someone had killed his dog in front of him.
Erik realized he had been staring at this boy for almost five minutes, crying at a movie that seemed to bore the rest of the class, or give them some sense of advancement. Scowling at himself, Erik finished shaking out his shoulders and started typing again, going right through the class and the next one before finally packing up to move somewhere else.
Except a few weeks later he was in the same class again, the professor squinting at him as if wondering if he just skipped most classes and if he should yell at him for clearly not paying attention.
Which would have been hilarious if he didn't in fact, end up paying attention to most of the class period. “It makes no sense,” the boy from the other day said, and Erik found his eyes going to him. “Who would even accept missionary style aid? It is giving the people what someone thinks they need without any regard for their intelligence or agency.” Erik frowned, because he had an accent, one that almost sounded like he should know it.
“Well, they're poor, aren't they?” another student asked, and the boy's mouth twisted. “So isn't taking anything that's offered in their interest?”
“A hundred boxes of toothpaste when people are starving?” the boy asked, incredulous. “How do the groups sending the aid even justify their decisions? If they are morally trying to aid, shouldn't they listen to those who they are sending the aid to? These poor countries aren't going to have their poverty solved by shoes that don't even fit into their culture, but by initiatives to raise the standard of living that the people are themselves a part of, like by offering them investment and business—”
“The models of aid have changed,” the professor said at the front of the class.
“Have they changed fast enough if this sort of aid is still allowed?” the boy demanded, and Erik was staring at him, at the way his eyes were wide and earnest as he argued for the dignity of people to not be subjected to the whims of those wealthier and more powerful than them.
He didn't manage a single paragraph and it infuriated him.
-0-
That was going to be the end of it. There were plenty of other class rooms and crooks and loud crannies to hide in. He did not have the time for a boy with a foreign accent and too much earnestly. Especially since Erik couldn't quite tell if he wanted to punch the boy or take his hand and explain to him why he needed to let go of all of that right now if he was going to survive this country without getting shot.
Except he was on the bus that afternoon, sitting by the window and staring out at nothing, going through formulas in his mind when he saw the same boy running along the side of the bus for the door, barely catching the bus before it left. Erik found his hands curling because the bus was mostly full and the boy was grinning at the bus driver, who was giving him a narrow eyed look.
“How's your understand of exact change doing today?” the driver asked.
“Much better,” the boy said, dropping some coins into the machine and glancing down the line of the bus. Erik put on his most annoyed face and the boy sat down next to him anyway, muttering something as he adjusted his sleek black messenger bag about the inefficiency of fossil fuels.
“You know there are bus passes, right?” Erik found himself asking.
“Yes, of course,” the boy said, whatever that meant. “Do you often skip your classes so frequently.”
“I ain't in your class,” Erik said and the boy fully turned his head to look at him. “Was working on my project and got distracted, that's all.”
“Oh,” the boy said and they sat, Erik's leg pressed against his by the small seats as the bus squeaked its way down the street.
“Where's your accent from, anyway?” Erik asked, because he still hadn't quite placed it.
“Isn't that considered an insulting question here?” the boy asked and his whole face seemed to light up when he smiled.
“Not brother to brother it ain't,” Erik said, shaking his head.
“South Africa,” the boy said and Erik considered him again. “I came as a, hm, exchange student?” and there was something about the hesitation that made Erik's brows go up.
“So you care a lot about foreign aid, huh?” Erik asked and the boy's face shifted a few times, somewhere between annoyance and amusement.
“What they're doing is a travesty,” the boy said. “Aid without conference is amoral, and just another power structure.”
“Don't the people need it though?” Erik asked. “Moral or not, can beggars be choosers?”
“They should!” the boy said, leaning forward. “And those with wealth and power should not be making the choices for them. They deserve dignity, everyone does. Not just in aid either, but these trade agreements are often just excuses for the rich to steal from the poor and give them back pittances—”
“How can a kid from South Africa talk like that?” Erik asked and the boy tilted his head back in confusion. “About the dignity of people. Wasn't Mandela still in prison when you were a kid?”
The boy blinked rapidly and looked out the opposite window. “Isn't that as much as reason as why I talk like this?” he asked and the corner of his mouth twitched, almost like a smile, but almost like he could cry again.
Erik wanted to press his mouth there to figure out which one it was.
Upon realizing the thought, he carefully pulled his knee away, trying to fold himself smaller into the seat so they weren't quite so close. “Man, I suppose. Seems weird is all.”
“There is a lot about this country I am finding weird, so far,” the boy said and Erik chuckled, a small laugh that faded quickly.
“Yeah, I bet you are,” and when he got up for his stop he expected that would be the end of it. He hoped that would be the end of it.
He had way too much to do and not ever really enough time to do it.
-0-
That night he dreamed about his father, talking to him in an accent not too far off from the boy's, about a fairy tale Erik only wanted to see burned down now.
“The sunsets there are the most beautiful in the world.”
“And the people?” Erik had asked. “Are the people there kind?”
“They try to be,” his father had said, with his sad eyes, like he always had when he talked about home. A home he loved, but a home he despised, the fires of rage lit in his heart at their inaction. “But they are a blind people, born into a privilege they do not understand.”
“Is that why they hide?”
“In part.”
“Would they be kind to me?” Erik asked.
“I hope so,” his father had said and when Erik woke up he had more of an impression of the conversation than a solid memory. He lay in bed longer than he planned, staring blankly at the wall, anger curling hot and heavy in his chest, under his breast bone.
He wanted to hurl things at the wall, destroy something, hurt someone, just to ease some of the ache inside him.
-0-
The next time he ran into the boy it was at the grocery store, Erik with a basket full of mostly produce, and the boy with a cart full of probably half the store. “How many people do you cook for?” Erik asked, squinting at it.
“Myself,” the boy said and looked down. “Is this too much for one person?”
“Shit, like half of that is going to spoil before you can eat it,” Erik said and the boy shifted.
“I, uh, am not used to shopping for myself.”
“Let me guess, your daddy is pretty rich,” Erik said, shaking his head. “How long have you even been here?”
“This is my first semester,” the boy said, a bit stiffly and Erik looked from him to the shopping cart.
“Yeah, I'm not even sure how you're going to make good meals from what you have in there,” he said, shaking his head.
“Do you know how to cook?” the boy asked, almost hopefully.
“Well, sure, it's survival,” Erik said, because there had been plenty of nights when there was no one else around but himself to put food into him. “Besides, that's one of the things I learned at school, how much food matters to your health. It's not exactly rocket science.”
“I think rocket science is easier than food,” the boy muttered and Erik found his brow twitching up again. “You said you learned it at school? Is there a class here?” and he sounded almost hopeful.
“Nah, I mean at Navy. Or rather the, uh, United States Naval Academy. Gotta eat healthy to be fit.”
The boy blinked at him. “You go there? Isn't this a little ways away?”
“Well, yeah,” Erik said. “I already graduated. This is grad school.”
“Really? I thought you looked the same age as me,” the boy said, and looked him over again which made Erik shift slightly.
“I graduated when I was nineteen,” he said and somehow that made his entire face light up, like he was proud of Erik or something, for working and pushing and pushing, his anger driving him faster than anyone else he knew. And here they stood now, Erik clutching his basket and this rich foolish boy with his mad cart of food, like the boy knew Erik, like he had a reason to be proud of him.
It made something sluggish, like magma, burn inside Erik. He just didn't know exactly what it meant.
“That's amazing,” the boy said, and his eyes were bright and he looked so pleased.
“Yeah, whatever,” Erik muttered. “Look, your cart is giving me a heart attack just looking at it. We gotta put some of this stuff back.”
“We?” the boy asked.
“You obviously are shit on this on your own,” Erik said, already tossing a box of sugary and useless cereal back on the shelf. “It huts just looking at it.”
Erik made the mistake of dropping his basket into the cart at one point as he picked up vegetables, and he should have seen the boy sneaky paying for it himself, and insisting Erik couldn't pay him back for the favor of apparently saving his taste buds from himself.
“You know, Bambi,” Erik said, scowling at his bags which the boy had handed him with a smile. “Third time I've run into you this month and I still don't know your name.”
The boy paused, like he wasn't really sure with what to say to that. “Thomas,” he said, and cleared his throat, something about the pronouncement just a little off.
Erik winced for him, because it was one thing for his mother to have named him Erik, because he had the name his father gave him too, burned into his heart and of his home. But for a boy coming from Africa itself to have a name so obviously given by the colonizers made him pity the boy, and wonder what he could have been named instead.
“My name's Erik,” he said instead of any of that.
The boy—Thomas—offered him his hand quite seriously. “It is good to formally meet you,” he said and Erik squinted at the hand before taking it, shaking it firmly. Thomas' eyes widened slightly, perhaps at the force of the grip, before he let go with another smile. “Thank you for helping me navigate American grocery stores.”
“Yeah, whatever, anytime,” Erik said and realized with a sinking feeling that he meant that.
He needed to have his head checked.
-0-
T'Challa sat, looking up recipes on a site Erik had given him, scribbled down on the back of a business card Erik obviously didn't feel a need for. T'Challa found himself turning it over in his fingers several times, considering the handwriting from different angles.
He had been the one to beg his father to let him come to the United States, even if only for a few years, to see what the world outside of Wakanda was like. He wanted to learn how others thought, and to experience it for himself. He had even finished college in Wakanda several years early to prove he could do well in any sort of school.
But now that he was here, he felt almost unbearably lonely. Pretending to be someone he wasn't grated on his nerves constantly and he had to remind himself several times every day not to start yelling about how different Wakanda was, how much better their transportation was, and their art, and their compassion for each other.
He missed Nakia, his mother and father, W'Kabi, and perhaps most of all he missed little Shuri, who could already speak circles around him despite only being four. Perhaps, he was starting to think, he should have simply stayed home, like his father had initially wanted.
But no, he promised himself, looking at a recipe and even wondering if he had enough pots and other various kitchen utensils to make what he was looking at, he would make it at least a year. He had begged and pleaded for this, and he would not run home without experiencing what he came here for.
Besides, he thought to himself with another smile at Erik's handwriting, perhaps he was starting to make a friend.