Chapter Text
Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose, counted to five, and remembered that Shuri was his ex-wife for a reason. “Less science, more English. What are you telling me?”
She snorted through her nose - the way she always did when she thought he was being stupid which was adorable when they started dating but quickly lost its luster after his coronation - and spoke slowly. “Michelle needs a tutor if she wants to go into engineering. My lack of formal training has come back to bite us here - I do not actually know the names of the theories or important dead white men she will be expected to know to gain entry in that world.”
Bucky heard the tone that was delivered with and grinned. “You also want to kill her a little.”
Shuri’s mouth twitched into a smirk and Bucky remembered why Shuri was his wife in the first place. “My mother tells me that fifteen was a hard age for me as well.”
Bucky snorted at all the things that weren’t in that sentence. “I’m assuming you already contacted someone?”
She nodded. “I did not tell him it was for Michelle -”
“You understand that your insistence to call her that name and not MJ is one of the reasons you fight like alley cats, right?”
She arched an eyebrow. “All those fancy American boarding schools and the most elegant simile you can come up with for two women fighting are cats?”
“Shuri, I do actually have a kingdom to run.”
“Tony will be here on Monday if you agree to the plan,” she replied.
He nodded and calculated briefly what his Monday looked like. I have the fisheries thing at ten, and that meeting with Steve that I can’t move again or he wins the bet, and then -
“Bucky, are you listening?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, going over my schedule to see when I could meet him. It wouldn't be until after dinner.”
She nodded and pulled out her phone. “He’s flying in from New York, so he’ll want a little time to adjust to time zones anyway. Oh, and he’s bringing his nephew as well. Michelle’s age and supposedly also a genius, so perhaps she will learn humility.”
Not touching that, Bucky thought. “So is that all parenting matters out of the way?”
Shuri checked her phone, where he knew she had a list. She always had lists. “We discussed Tony, and her application to the summer program at Columbia for next year - which you will come to see my point of view on -”
“I’m not sending the sixteen-year-old heir to the Ballyglendore throne to live in Manhattan for an entire summer, Shuri,” Bucky said with a sigh. “I understand that she gets her own passions and her own dreams and I’m not trying to suppress them, but sixteen is an important year here and so my answer is no. She has a lot of state functions next year and I already have fourteen headaches an hour over the old timers thinking she has to be engaged by the end of it.”
“Lord Reilley still throwing fits that we turned down the betrothal?”
“Every fucking day, Shur,” Bucky confessed.
These were the pieces of his life that she hated - the royal pieces. When they met and got married, everyone assumed Bucky would inherit many years in the future and Shuri would have time to establish herself as a scientist outside of being an official entity of state. But then - three years into their marriage - Queen Winnifred started getting sick and never got better and by the time MJ was four, James Nicholas Buchanan Barnes was crowned King James IV of Ballyglednore, a small independent island kingdom off the southeast coast of Ireland.
And Queen Shuri, born Princess Shuri Bathandwa Cebisa of Wakanda and far removed from succession in her own country by her brother’s five children, slowly began to emotionally wither on the vine. Their fighting became legendary, and all of their friends advocated for divorce.
“Buck,” Steve said quietly one night. “I’m saying this as your Captain of the Guard, and as your best friend. This is killing you.”
“I know.”
“Michelle does not need -”
“I know.”
“Then do something about it.”
And so they did. When Michelle was seven, they hammered out a co-parenting arrangement that made headlines for its pragmatism. Shuri returned to Wakanda, where she set up a laboratory in experimental physics that drew interns and collaborators from all over the world. Michelle visited frequently, but never resided in Wakanda, because for all the ways that Shuri loved her daughter, they were oil and water and everyone knew it.
Shuri and Bucky’s deepest hope was that as Michelle grew and matured, she’d see the value of having a mother like Shuri, one who was brilliant and fair and loving, but not cuddly or doting the way Michelle saw her aunts and friend’s parents. But the jury was certainly currently out.
Besides, Michelle Juliette Khethiwe Nomlanga Barnes was the Crown Princess of Ballyglendore and raising her to be both Michelle (or MJ, as she began to insist at the age of six) the human and Michelle the ruler required a lot of time with her dad.
Shuri and Bucky themselves settled into a deep and respectful friendship. They teased each other about their dating lives - nonexistent for each, but there had been someone on the horizon for Bucky before they found out he was actually a spy - they sniped the press, complained about the paparazzi, and still went on family vacation together every year like clockwork.
Still, though, co-parenting a teenager and ruling a Kingdom were not for the faint of heart and every time he had to talk to Shuri about a difficult decision with MJ that meant he’d be doing more of the emotional heavy lifting required in adolescent development, he got tired.
If he was ever allowed to be honest when someone asked him how he was, that would be his answer. Bucky Barnes was tired.
“Bucky, you disappeared on me again,” Shuri said.
“Sorry, Shur,” he shrugged.
Her face softened. “James, this is too much for you to do alone, you know that. I did not leave so that you would be single for the rest of your life. You’ve become far too much of a recluse since I left.”
Bucky snorted. “I’m a grumpy pain in the ass who is too tired to wank off most nights, much less actually date. My daughter is a genius who runs mental circles around me and wants to reform every single tradition we have without understanding where they came from and why people hold them dear. My ex-wife is also a genius but in totally different ways than my daughter which is just a damn delight. And my best friend is being denied the right to adopt because I can’t get Parliament to move fast enough even though I am dragging them with every ounce of my being.”
“Lord Stafford?”
Bucky nodded and ticked names off on his fingers. “Lady Herman, Lord Albertson, Lord Coyle, and they’re all being bankrolled by the Duke of Albany.”
Shuri made the wanking off motion that they both did whenever Bucky had to mention Stanley Wainwright, the Duke of Albany, who counted Nigel Farage among his personal friends.
“Absolute monarchy looks more attractive every day,” Bucky said.
“You’d hate it,” Shuri replied blithely. “Do you really want to decide on tax rates and sanitation schedules? No, you want to make sure military action is a last resort - which is part of a King’s job - and make sure the people are safe and the social agenda is as progressive as the people want and not the aristocracy. Those are all in your purview.”
“I fucking hate when you’re right,” Bucky grumbled.
“I know, you put it in the divorce settlement.”
They grinned at each other and he reached under his desk and into his snack drawer. Offering her a bag of her favorite Irish crisps - Keogh’s Cheddar and Onion - and pulling out a bag of Tayto Smokey Bacon for himself, he smiled at her. “Now, tell me all about this ball T’Challa’s been tricked into hosting and every single detail of how much he hates it.”
“So, he’s what? My personal tutor? For how long?” MJ made a face at her dad. She already had too many dudes in her life telling her what to do. Why did they need to add an American?
Bucky shrugged. “His contract is for the summer. He’s bringing his nephew along as well, Peter, he’s your age and also into rewriting the laws of the universe, so maybe you’ll get along and make a friend.”
“Your weird obsession with me having friends is so old, Dad.”
He looked at her the way he did whenever she could tell he was thinking of her as his replacement and not his daughter. “This job is really lonely, Meej. I couldn't do it without your Uncle Steve and Uncle Sam. Aunt Becca’s great, but she’s not in the day-to-day of it all and doesn’t want security clearance for the military matters. She likes the pomp and circumstance that I hate and I love the actual governing that she does.”
“And you’re not legally allowed to consult with Mom,” MJ replied quietly.
“No, I’m not,” her dad said softly. “And so I just want to make sure that you learn how to trust people who aren’t our family, learn how to open up a little. I know it’s hard. I know I got lucky with Uncle Steve and that we’re an exception and not a rule, but I also know that Meghan and Harry are on your case about this, too.”
MJ remembered back to the last conversation she had with the formerly-kinda-still royal couple where Meghan told her to find a maid of honor, not a lady in waiting.
“I’ll try to make friends besides Orfhlaith and Bridget,” MJ grumbled, naming her two cousins.
“Just think about, sweetheart,” her dad replied. “There’s going to be a lot of things in your life they will not understand and they may not want to. There’s going to be other things that you can’t tell them because rules of state prohibit it. And, I’m just throwing this out there, some day you may want to date, because at some point you’re going to have to sort out the whole heir situation and that usually requires a partner of some kind.”
MJ rolled her eyes. From all the books she read and the American teen soap operas she secretly consumed, she knew it was odd for other parents to talk to their kids about dating and sex and kids at her age. She and her parents had starting talking about who she’d marry about four minutes after she hit puberty.
Her life really was the property of the state, of her people, of the legacy she was born into and she knew it.
It’s why it all terrified her.
“So when is my new overlord coming? And what’s his name, anyway?”
“Um,” Bucky dug out his phone and peered at the text from Shuri. “He’ll meet us for dinner on Monday night and his name is Tony Stark.”
MJ’s heart stopped. Did her dad really not know who that is?
“Tony Stark,” she said slowly, “as in Carbonell Technologies Tony Stark?”
Her dad’s brow furrowed. “As in this guy your mom met in that one semester of grad school she did at MIT.”
MJ rolled her eyes dramatically. God, her dad was such a muppet sometimes. “Dad. Tony Stark is the founder and CEO and genius and everything behind Carbonell Technologies. Him and his sister-in-law started it when they were 18 from a garage in Boston and now they’re, like, the best.”
“I thought the guy who ran Carbonell is named Edward Carbonell.”
“Right,” MJ said, impatient, “it was, that was the trade name for a while, but then it got revealed a few years ago that Tony created that name for himself so that no one would connect him with Stark Weapons Division and I cannot believe you don’t know this.”
“Meej,” her dad replied, exasperated, “I don’t always remember what shoe size you are when I check your receipts. Do you really think I can keep track of gossip?”
She glared at him. “What was the score of the first Liverpool match after Klopp became the manager?”
He rolled his eyes. “Nil-nil draw to the Spurs, and I get what you’re saying. But football is how I unwind. Monitoring international business gossip is not. That’s literally what I hired Sam to do.”
“Fine, fair, I guess,” she conceded. “But you hired Tony Stark to personally tutor me in engineering? Doesn’t he have other things to do?”
Her dad shrugged. “Ask your mom, I was just told this was happening and I have four major fights to have with Albany on Monday, so I haven’t really gone past that this is happening.”
She nodded and pulled out her phone to text her mom while her dad returned to the stack of papers in front of him. He looked so tired.
The doctors all promised her that he was in peak physical condition, that he didn’t have any of the genetic markers of the thing that killed her grandma, and that he’d live a long and happy life and be on the throne for a long time. But none of them could tell her how long he could keep going when he looked like his soul was so damn tired.
“Where are we going?” Peter looked askance at Tony.
Tony sighed. “Ballyglendore. It’s off the coast of Ireland, but it’s an independent kingdom.”
“Like in a Hallmark movie?”
“I would assume there are gay people in Ballyglendore, but otherwise, yes.”
Peter snorted and went back to whatever he had been doing on his phone.
“Peter,” Nat called from the top of the stairs. “Can you take Molly for a walk?”
Peter scrambled up from his seat, all gangly limbs like his mom had been at his age. “Yeah, sure, Mom.”
Once Peter was gone, Tony went back to his work, but should have known that his sister would replace her son. “Can we talk about how you’re going to be living with Super Hot King?”
Tony side eyed her. “You are very, very committed to the lady thing, yes? Because otherwise, you should really give Pep a heads up.”
“I’m gay not blind,” Nat said with a snort. “And King James is fucking gorgeous.”
Tony was about to protest and feed her some line about how he was too committed to being a professional, but she’d known him since she was born. “I know. I used to tease Shuri about his eyelashes.”
“I didn’t know you were friends with the princess of Wakanda.”
Tony shrugged. “I am capable of keeping secrets.”
“How many NDAs?” She asked with a snort.
“Five.”
“And now she’s calling in what favor?”
He looked up from his hologram. “What do you mean?”
“You mean to tell me that you’re schlepping to a tiny island for the summer for shits and giggles?”
Tony smiled. “She’s worried about her daughter, and I know you guys want Peter to see the world a little, so it seemed like a win/win, to be honest. Plus, I could use some new creative projects - Pep’s been on me for months to update the circuit board in the MTS421 and I can’t quite figure out how to. Maybe this break will be what I need.”
His sister was quiet and peering at him in the way that made him very, very nervous.
“What?”
“When did you and Ty break up this time?”
He felt a blush creeping up but ignored it. “A month ago. But it’s for real this time, Nat. I’m not taking him back.”
She fell silent again, which meant she knew he was lying, but he wasn’t going to say anything and neither was she.
“You and Pep must be looking forward to some alone time, eh?” He said after he cleared his throat to get rid of the lump forming there at the thought of how much time he wasted on Tiberius Stone.
“We are,” Nat confessed. “We are going to miss him like we’d miss a limb, but we figure this is a once in a lifetime shot and he should take it. Plus, you know...”
She trailed off and Tony looked at his sister for a long beat. “He’s mine too, Tash. That’s why we did it the way we did. So that no matter what, he’s a Stark and a Potts and no matter where he goes or who he becomes, he’s all of us.”
Nat nodded. “This is just the first time we’ve really put that to the test, I guess.”
“At least this way, if he decides his teenage rebellion is due and he gets arrested for loose morals and looser women, he’ll have diplomatic immunity,” Tony quipped.
Nat rolled her eyes. “He’s my son, not yours.”
“Spoilsport.”