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Okoye opens the door of her new Midnight Angel accommodations to find a hulking behemoth of a blue-skinned man at her doorstep.
“What are you doing here?” She says, crossing her arms across her chest. In her rush to open the door, she hadn’t thought twice about what she was wearing. Until this very moment, only five people knew where she was currently staying.
“Is this really where you live?” He asks, ignoring her question in lieu of his own. His eyes catch the movement of her arms and then they’re plastered on the bits of chest not covered by her arms or her sports bra. If his eyes flit lower, to her exposed abdomen, and the length of her legs beneath the spandex shorts she’s wearing, well… He’s a man with exquisite tastes.
“Yes, this is where I live. What are you doing here?”
He just smiles, eyes flicking into the room behind her, barren, undecorated. He taps his kimoyo beads to hers and says “Buy yourself something nice,” and then he’s gone.
Okoye looks after him as he goes, completely bewildered. When she checks her beads, she finds 10,000 Wakandan credits have been transferred to her account.
“What the fuck?”
When he’s in Wakanda, he’s rarely farther than a few feet from her. The only exceptions are when he’s in meetings she’s no longer privy to. Other than that, he’s there, hovering just behind her right shoulder, never speaking unless spoken to, and wishing she’d speak to him.
He waits her out, letting her frustration and confusion bubble to a bursting explosion.
“What. Do you. Want?!?” She yells. He’d been staring menacingly at any of the Dora that approached her during training until they broke off any of their conversations and fled the awkwardness. Okoye had been fine to ignore him but everywhere she went, he followed. It was frustrating. Wasn’t her sending down already embarrassing enough, now she had a shadow the size of her greatest failure and career-ender?
“You haven’t spent any of the credits I gave you.”
“Of course not! Why would I?!?” She checks her voice so that the next part isn’t a bellowing yell. “Why did you give them to me in the first place?”
He half shrugs, looking sheepish. “I’m the reason you had to change accommodations. Least I could do was help you decorate.”
If possible, her eyes go even wider. “Are you insane? I don’t need your pity money!” She reaches for his wrist to tap their beads and return every last credit he gave her.
He holds his arm high out of her reach, pulling her close to him til they're pressed chest to chest. “It’s not pity money.”
She sucks her teeth in frustration, pushing him back, and none too gently. “I think you’ve done enough damage to me to last a lifetime.”
“Okoye,” he reaches for her. Faster than he would have thought possible, she grabs his proffered hand yanking him to the ground and tapping their beads before he can even process that their dueling.
With her mission accomplished, she steps over him, walking toward the exit. “Stay the hell away from me.”
He knows he should stay away, but he finds he likes the way she talks to him. He wants more of it.
Okoye hears the knock at her door the following weekend and all her hopes for a quiet day off go down the drain. She knows who’s at her door. She wonders how long she’ll have to ignore him before he gets the picture and goes away.
To her utter shock, she hears her front door open. What. The. Fuck!?!
She tosses a large shirt on over her undergarments and grabs her vibranium daggers without thinking. Attuma and two other Talokanil whom she knows only by face and not name are bringing a lush sofa into her home. Two more carry a rug. Even Namora walks in with a lamp.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“You wouldn’t buy yourself anything new, so I bought them for you.”
She gawks at him.
“STOP! Everyone stop! Take it all out. Out! Get Out!” Absolutely no one listens to her. “Get this shit out of my house or I will kill you all!”
This gets their attention, but instead of taking the items back out, they all turn to look at Attuma, awaiting his orders. Okoye feels her face burn. This would have never happened if she were still general. Used to be she never had to raise her voice or make threats to be listened to.
Attuma gives his people a nod and they begin taking the items back out. Okoye’s shame is tripled. Logically it makes sense that they’d listen to him but it still stings. She leaves the room before she can embarrass herself further.
Behind her, she hears Namora scoff, “I thought you said she would appreciate this?”
Okoye doesn’t care to hear how he responds, opting to slam her bedroom door closed over the sound of his voice.
Okoye emerges from her room still frustrated. No matter what she tried, sleep wouldn’t come again. She was too tired, too wired, and too upset by half, to actually find sleep again. She doesn’t bother getting dressed again as she goes to her kitchen to forage for–looking at the time–lunch.
She immediately regrets her decision not to get dressed. Sitting patiently on her rock-hard sofa bed–it came with the accommodation and she never entertains guests–is Attuma. Okoye releases a long-suffering sigh and ignores him.
It matters not. He follows her to the kitchen, watches her prepare a small meal from leftovers, and says nothing.
She stands at the island eating her food and patently not paying attention to the intruder that stands barely a foot from her at any given moment.
“You could get nice high chairs and sit here to dine.”
Okoye doesn’t blink. “I could also get a restraining order and make it impossible for you to be within 100 feet of me.”
“You could also buy yourself nicer, newer clothing.” He’s staring at the holes in the hem of her spandex shorts. She does have newer ones. These are just her favorites, hence the threads.
“I could stab you.”
His quiet inhale of laughter is his only response. Okoye finishes her food and cleans her dishes immediately. When she finishes, she decides it’s time to face this head-on.
“Why are you here, Attuma.” She goes to sit on the sofa and silently agrees that she should replace this thing, except that this is the first and hopefully last time she’ll ever use it or have need of any living room furniture. She is always alone.
He sits beside her, and doesn’t bother hiding his own grimace. “I wanted to apologize.”
Okoye rolls her eyes but lets him continue.
“I simply wanted to make sure you were… comfortable.”
“I told you I didn’t need your pity.”
“It’s not pity.”
“Then what is it?”
He hesitates. “...I wish we had met under different circumstances.”
Okoye just glares at him until he finishes his thought.
“You’re the type of woman I would enjoy… taking care of.”
Okoye wonders what universe she’s been plopped into. Did she actually die all those months ago on that bridge in Boston and everything that’s happened since has been hell incarnate? This couldn’t possibly be real life.
“Do you make it a habit of ignoring these women whom you “enjoy taking care of” when they tell you to stop?”
Attuma looks adequately chagrinned. “I should have announced my intentions first.”
“You shouldn’t have approached me at all. Have you not already done enough?”
“I just want to make sure you’re taken care of, comfortable.”
“I can take care of myself!”
He looks around the barren room. The stone floors, the bare walls, the completely uncomfortable sofa they sit on. “It’s not a matter of if you can, but if you will.”
She sucks her teeth. “What do I need to do to get you to stop this madness? Buy a new sofa? Okay, I will. Buy some bar stools? Fine! Just… please just leave me alone.”
He takes her hand in his, tapping their beads together. “Let me take care of you.” She sees in his eyes that nothing she says will change his mind. Then what even is the point?
She jerks her hand from his and walks away. “You know where the door is, Attuma.”
Midway through the next week, he finds her in the training room. She’s stretching after a long session with Aneka who sits next to her, also stretching.
“I brought you this,” he says, by way of greeting. Okoye sits up, annoyance already plastered across her face to take the gift he offers her. Aneka watches in bewilderment.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
Okoye huffs, peeling apart the pieces of gift wrap to find a stone jar. Inside is a cream she’s never seen or smelled before. It smells like birchwood ash and sea salt.
“I still don’t know what this is.”
“It's a salve. Helps with muscle soreness. All the warriors in Talokan use it after training to speed their recovery.”
“Oh.” She knows there’s no use arguing with him that she doesn’t need this nor does she want it, so she settles on saying, “Thank you,” and moving to put space between them.
He taps her beads to see the untouched balance of credits he sent her. She jerks her hand away. “You didn’t need to be in person to check if I’ve spent any of your money.” Her voice is a sharp whisper. It’s no one’s business how much money she has or where it came from.
“No,” he says in his normal voice. “But I wanted to remind you once again what happens when you don’t buy the things yourself.”
Okoye has a sinking feeling about what she’ll find when she gets home this evening. “You’re insufferable.”
He grins at her. Under her breath, she adds “I’ll give you something to smile about, you fishy, musclebrained asshole.”
He smiles harder. “I’ll be seeing you, Okoye.”
She huffs in response.
Aneka moves to sit beside her again. “Someone has a crush.”
Okoye puts her face in her hands. “I don’t know how to get him to stop.”
“I meant you.” Okoye scoffs, but Aneka ignores her. “What? You haven’t killed him yet. Clearly, you like him.”
Okoye rolls her eyes and stands. “I dream about his death often. It’s always at the end of my blade.”
“Sure you do.”
Okoye throws her hands into the air, deciding that home is the better alternative to whatever Aneka is on.
Unfortunately, when she gets home, she finds her apartment transformed. The hard sofa has been replaced with a plush, suede sofa, in winter green. There’s a shaggy, white, throw rug in the center of the black stone floor. And house plants? Hardy, desert-growing, things, that can go weeks without watering and still survive.
In the kitchen are two bar stools, high enough that she can sit in them and see over the kitchen island, and a new set of kitchen knives along with a cutting board. She’s afraid to see what he’s done to the rest of her apartment. Did he go through her bedroom himself or did he have his people do it?
She collapses onto the soft sofa and accepts defeat.
It goes on like this for weeks. Every time he’s in Wakanda, he brings her gifts: little trinkets and thoughtful things to show he’s thinking about her and cares about her.
On this particular occasion, he berates her for still not touching any of the money he’s given her. “Why should I? You’re just going to buy me whatever you want anyway.”
An expression crosses his face that Okoye can’t quite decipher. She doesn’t know how this could be the line when she’s called him every possible name in the book and rejected every one of his advances even though he seems unperturbed by her rejection.
“I’d like to buy you things you actually want, not just…”
“Not just what?” She puts her hands on her hips.
“Not just things I think you might like.”
“If you cared at all about what I like or what I want, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. This would have ended the first time I told you to stop.”
He makes a face that says he’s definitely not going to stop and Okoye throws her hands up in defeat. “You’re ridiculous. Bast could not have sent a worse curse to me.”
“If you want to know what she likes, why don’t you just take her shopping?”
Okoye turns to stare at Aneka. She cannot be serious.
Aneka shrugs in response to Okoye’s shock. “Let the man take care of you. What’s the harm?”
“I can’t believe you.” There’s a stabbing pain in Okoye’s face that feels like betrayal all over again. Perhaps if she were someone else and he was someone else, this might be a pleasurable arrangement. But they’re not anyone else but themselves and there’s no way she can do this with him.
She storms out, never minding Aneka calling behind her or Attuma who’s surely trailing her. She makes it exactly two steps out of the training room before Attuma catches up to her. She shakes away his hand as he reaches for hers.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Her voice is quiet venom, more deadly than any of her previous protests have been and Attuma notes the change in her. “Why are you doing this? Tell me.”
He stares at her agape. The words don’t come.
“Pathetic. You’re pathetic. You can’t even be upfront with me, even now, after all this time.” She turns to walk away but he grabs her, pressing her into the wall.
She shakes his grasp before he can even get a word out. She trips him, mounts him, and holds him down with her arm against his throat.
“I don’t care about the alliance between our nations. I don’t care about the treaty. If you come near me again, touch me, buy me anything, I’ll kill you. May it be the last thing I ever do in this godforsaken hellscape called reality. You can’t even tell me why you’re doing this but you expect me to take it like I’ve taken everything else thrown at me this year, but I won’t. Stay the hell away from me.”
If he keeps coming to Wakanda, Okoye wouldn’t know. He’s finally listened to her and stayed away. The credits are still in her account but she hasn’t touched them. Maybe she’ll donate them to a charity. She has no real need for money she hasn’t earned by her own hard work.
The meetings she’s required to attend are few and far between. As general, she was always in one meeting or another, seeing council members and aligning with every branch of Wakanda’s expansive military. As a Midnight Angel, she receives orders and follows them. That’s it. It’s a nice reprieve though the journey here was not ideal.
“We’ve been invited to Talokan,” the King informs them. Ayo, Aneka, a few other Dora, and herself are present along with the council members and Shuri.
Okoye bites her lip. Of. Fucking. Course.
“The invitation is largely one of leisure. Talokan celebrates their new year next month and have invited us to celebrate with them. While this is an informal event, we need to discuss expectations while we are in their nation…”
Okoye only half listens as King M’Baku continues laying out the framework for security while they’re in Talokan. In her mind, she’s working through how she can get herself out of this, but it’s moot.
“There you are!”
Okoye sighs. She’d managed to stay hidden for exactly 45 minutes after that disaster of a meeting.
“Is it work-related?” Since that day in the training room, Okoye has refused to speak to Aneka about anything other than work. She hasn’t forgiven her for butting in where she doesn’t belong.
Aneka sighs before sitting next to her in the little alcove she’s hidden herself in. “Of a sort.” She hands Okoye the large parcel she brought with her. “You left too soon after the meeting to take this.”
Okoye looks over the large, nondescript, white box. “Is it from him?”
“Technically it’s from Talokan, but I wouldn’t lie and say he didn’t have a part in it. They wanted to make sure we had suitable clothing for the celebrations. I’m sure he went out of his way to make yours extra special.”
Okoye gives the box back. “I’d rather wear my suit.”
Aneka sighs. “You don’t think it’ll be a snub to wear your own clothes and reject a gift from their people? Besides, you’ll stand out if you’re the only one not dressed in Talokanil fashions–and on their holiday no less.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want anything he’s touched.”
“Why are you so reluctant to accept his gifts? He clearly has good intentions.”
“Clear to whom? He’s made nothing clear to me. In fact, the very thought of him muddies waters. None of his actions make sense to me.”
“All of his gifts have been thoughtful and considerate. He’s trying to make your way easier. What’s hard to understand?”
“Why!?! Why does he want to make my way easier? Why me? Why not anyone else?”
Aneka looks at her incredulously. “Because he likes you! Please be serious.”
Okoye scoffs. “What could I have possibly done to make him like me? When, between being sworn enemies to unwilling allies could he have possibly fallen for me? This is ridiculous. It has to be some sort of trick to embarrass me further.”
Aneka considers this. “I see.”
“Do you?” Okoye almost feels relieved. Any other woman would jump for joy at a well-to-do man insistent on paying their way. The whole thing has made her uneasy, however.
Aneka nods. “You know not every man is going to hurt you, right?” Okoye sighs. “I see your point of view,” Aneka continues. “I get that the last relationship you had ended in betrayal. I just don’t want you standing in the way of your own blessings by thinking this will end exactly how your previous relationship ended.”
Okoye thinks that if Aneka feels this way then perhaps she doesn’t see her point of view after all, but she’s tired of going back and forth, trying to be understood.
It’s exactly as Okoye feared. While her dress is the same color as everyone else's, gossamer, her hem has a lace design that tapers into fine silk. She’d assumed everyone received a collar made of amber and a bejeweled rebreather same as her, but upon appearing from her quarters in Talokan, she realizes she was mistaken.
Aneka and Ayo note the differences in her attire at the same time that Okoye realizes what happened, but it’s too late to go back inside and change. Attuma swims up to the ledge where they’re waiting for their escort. When he lands, he has eyes only for Okoye.
The sight of her dressed in clothes he bought for her, jeweled in gems he procured for her, so poised and godlike, is a dream come true. He can describe the feeling of satisfaction inside him that he provided these things for her, that he was able to take care of her.
He comes to kneel before her, taking her hand and kissing the back of her palm. “Okoye, would you allow me to escort you throughout tonight’s festivities?”
Okoye blinks. “I…I’m not sure I understand.”
He tries again. “Would you attend tonight’s celebration… as my date?”
If it were possible beneath her mask, Okoye’s mouth would be agape. She’s struggling to put letters together to form syllables when Aneka peaks over her shoulder and answers for her.
“Yes, she will.” Okoye turns to glare at her. “You will,” Aneka responds. “I will cover your shift tonight so you can go on your date and if it goes horribly, you can return the favor and cover my shift tomorrow. But… just give it a try.”
Attuma stands, releasing her hand gently. “Only if you want to.”
Okoye looks back at him, stunned even further. He’s realized how important it is for her to say yes. He thought before that if he was just consistent, she’d grow to accept his attentions–to expect them, dare he say it. But it’s important that she consents to this, else he’ll be swimming into a wall all over again.
Okoye heaves a great sigh and releases all her misgivings. “Okay. Yes. Yes, I will accompany you… as your date.”
Attuma smiles broadly. Dimples Okoye didn’t know he had appear on his cheeks. Oh. She could get used to this smile. He takes her hand and leads her to the edge of the ledge. They swim off into the night, leaving an amused Aneka and confused Ayo in their wake.
Attuma takes her to every booth imaginable. He buys her more clothing and precious jewels. If something catches her eye, he buys it. No questions asked. All the while he’s explaining the history of Talokan and the celebration of the newest moon.
His hand never leaves hers as he gives her a tour of the capital city. He shyly gestures at his home when they pass it, watching her face to see if the look of its exterior pleases her. “Later,” he says, “If you’d like, I could prepare a late dinner for you. Introduce you to Talokanil cuisine.”
“Okay,” Okoye says. “That sounds nice.”
His smile is like moonlight as he leads her to his “secret spot” to watch the lights. He brings her to a ledge some distance from the main plaza. They sit here in wait for the main event of the night.
The conversation tapers naturally and the silence is comfortable for a moment before Okoye’s thoughts wiggle their way into her mind.
“Attuma… why are you doing this?”
He looks at her, dressed in the threads and stones he bought for her, and finds he’s more able to speak in his own tongue.
“Because I love you.”
Okoye’s breath catches.
“I do. I’ve known since our first fight that I was… attracted to you at the very least. Then, we fought again and you spoke to me in my language and I–” He shrugs, helpless to his own wants and desires.
“Then I saw how you were living after being demoted and I knew.” He takes her hand and makes eye contact so that she can read the sincerity in him. “This was never about pitying you. It’s always been about giving you what you deserve and you deserve the world. I want you to demand it. Require it as it requires you. Anything you should ever want will be yours. I want to give you all of it and more.”
Okoye gasps. “Attuma–”
“I know it’s a lot. I’m only asking for a chance, an opportunity to prove myself.”
She watches the resolve in his eyes and finds her own. Behind him, the light show begins. It’s like underwater fireworks but he is by far the brightest thing she sees.
Months later, Okoye reclines on her plush, wintergreen, suede couch with her legs propped in Attuma’s lap. He massages her feet as she speaks absently about the mission she just returned from and how it could have gone much smoother if she were allowed to use her spear first and ask questions later.
Equally absently, Attuma reaches over and checks the balance of her account on her kimoyo beads. When he finds the balance has decreased since they last saw each other, he smiles indulgently.
Okoye’s smile is shyly pleased in return, especially as he wordlessly taps his beads to hers and refills her account.
“Did you buy yourself something nice while you were away?”
Okoye just smirks even harder. “I bought us something nice while I was away.”
Her fingers come up to unbutton her tunic. Attuma’s eyes follow the movement, enthralled. So far their relationship hasn’t been physical. Attuma’s been happy to provide for her every need and Okoye has been hesitantly accepting of his attentions. This isn’t to say they haven’t been romantic with each other. Just not physical.
When Okoye’s fingers reach the final button, she pauses, meeting his gaze. “You’ve been so good to me, I got you something.” She licks her lips, watching the shudder run through his body. She has him exactly where she wants him. “Would you like to see?”