Adopt - Chapter 17
Title: Adopt
Artist: cluegirl and waterofthemoon
Author: j_green_teeth
Rating: Explicit (Story), Teen & General Audience (Art)
Universe: MCU (AU)
Warnings: Subversion of reproductive choices by a third party, infertility, Violence (canon compliant level), Alpha/Beta/Omega, heat, mpreg, knotting
Beta: Many thanks to wylt for making this fic about a thousand times better.
Art: cluegirl did two wonderful pieces for this fic May I.. and Shovel Talk
waterofthemoon TBA
Tony woke up. Rolled to his side and dearly wished he had left those pain pills on the nightstand and not downstairs in the kitchen. Steeling himself he got up and started his quest for coffee and pills. He saw the neatly folded pile of blankets at the end of the couch when he stumbled down stairs.
"JARVIS, who?"
"Master Rogers."
"Ok. Good."
He followed the clinking sounds to the kitchen and found Steve rooting through the cupboards. “Morning.”
Steve stood up holding a frying pan he found defensively in front of him. “Oh. You’re up. Ah. Good morning.”
“We should talk.” Tony said.
“Yes.” nodded.
“Look put the frying pan down. My arm hurts to much to throw anything at you.”
“Oh. Drat do you have?” Steve looked around.
“Over there.” Tony nodded to the end of the counter
Steve grabbed the pill bottle and a glass of water and set them carefully in front of Tony.
Tony popped a pill and sipped the water. “So...” Steve kept staring at him. “You knocked me up.”
“Yes, um sorry?” Steve said.
Steve didn’t seem all that with it to Tony. “Are you going to do the decent thing and make an honest omega out of me?”
“Of course.” Steve nodded then stopped frowning. “Wait, we’re already married.”
“According to you for only the next nine to twenty one months. Unless this” He waved at his stomach. “makes you want to cut and run now.”
“No, I...Tony. You’ll leave me.” Steve told him with painful honesty.
“Did I miss a memo? Because I don’t remember scheduling my divorce.” Tony took another sip of water.
“Tony, you only married me to keep Stane off your back.” Tony snorted into the glass, off his back literally. Steve frowned and went on. “You’ll be twenty one next May. After that you wouldn’t have needed me. You would have found someone you liked better. Who could …” Steve trailed off.
“I wasn’t planning on divorcing you.” Steve sighed and gave him a sad look. “Fine. I wasn’t really planning at all. There’s this stuff with Obie and then we were married and then I was poking Stark Industries with a stick, I didn’t really think about getting unmarried.”
“I didn’t want to think about it.” Steve said quietly.
Tony set the glass down. “We need to be in the same time zone about this.”
Steve bit his lip, blew out a breath and looked Tony straight in the eye. “I like you, Tony.”
Tony let the silence stretch before making a go on motion. “But...”
“No but. I like you, Tony. If you’re willing I want to try to make this work.”
“This?” Tony prompted.
“Our...marriage.”
Tony cocked his head. “Is this because of the kid?”
“Yes.” Tony winced. “Not like that. I’m not saying that we should try because you’re pregnant. I feel like I have a chance. A chance to be a good alpha.”
“Steve, you’re a good Alpha. It doesn’t matter if you can’t have kids.” Tony decided Fury was right Steve didn’t chose good people if they let him get away with thinking these things.
Steve smiled but looked a second away from tears. “A lot of people will say that but not a lot of them believe it.”
“Alright. I accept.”
“Accept what?” Steve asked.
“Well you just offered to make this marriage real. I accept. Let’s act like we’re in love and it’s not going to end and see where that gets us.”
“Just like that?” Steve looked at him.
Tony looked back. “Just like that.”
“You’re not doing this because of the kid, are you? I don’t want you to feel pressured because of it.”
“Well you know if I was pregnant without a husband my parents would throw me out onto the streets penniless.” Tony mocked.
Steve set his jaw. “I’m serious. Don’t think that just because I got you pregnant you have to do this.”
“Steve, do you remember what I said at our wedding reception? You are the best man I know. You’re amazing. I’m greedy enough to want all of you that I can get.”
Steve smiled and shook his head. “When you put it that way.”
“You do realize this means we’re moving in here sooner rather than later, right? There is no room for a kid in your place. I’ll have to redo one of the guest rooms as a nursery. Oh damnit.”
“What?” Steve asked stepping closer.
Tony moaned. “This means I have to pick out another set of curtains.”
Steve started laughing.
Tony sighed dramatically at him and put the back of his wrist to his forehead. “You mock my pain.” He stepped closer so he could lean against Steve, into the solid warmth of him.
~*~
Tony hadn't expected to be back at SHIELD HQ so soon, but Steve had pointed out that Tony needed to see a doctor. SHIELD had all of Steve's medical records and if Tony was carrying a little super soldier that they needed to make sure the doctors were completely informed. Tony had sighed and agreed.
Steve also seemed to have forgotten about the concept of personal space. In the cab he had been pressed up against Tony shoulder, hip and thigh. He opened the door to SHIELD HQ for Tony and guided him in with a hand on his back. He stuck so close to Tony that he managed to step on Tony’s toes twice as they walked across the lobby.
After the second time Tony jabbed Steve in the stomach with his good elbow. “Ok. You’re going to need to back off big guy.”
“Sorry, I just …” Steve trailed off.
“I know, I know you can’t keep your hands off me but if we end up giving Fury a show one of us is going to die of mortification and I can’t promise it will be him.”
Steve squeezed on eye shut. “Tony, I never thought I would have to say this but please don’t talk about sex and my boss in the same sentence.”
“Well maintain a workplace appropriate distance and I won’t have to.”
“Alright.” Steve ran a hand down the side of Tony’s face then back a full foot away.
Mrs. DuLac smiled misty-eyed at them as they passed.
The doctor look a bit nervous when he met them in the exam room but calmed down after they started asking questions like 'can you tell us the sex and the gender?' and 'how did he get pregnant and what are the risks associated?'
"I consulted with my colleagues about it last night and we think it has something to do with the super soldier serum."
Steve frowned. "I thought that the serum made me sterile."
"No exactly.” The doctor flipped open a thick folder. “Mr. Stark, both your parents were betas and I see from your records that Howard Stark was your carrying parent."
"Yes. The plan was for Maria to get pregnant but Howard got knocked up instead." Tony had heard that fact several times during his childhood.
"What do you know about your mother's involvement with project rebirth?" The doctor asked.
"Just the basics. He worked with Doctor Erskine on the project."
"Well..." The doctor drawled.
Tony was pretty sure he knew what the doctor was going to say so he cut him off. "I've always assumed he was exposed to one of the early batches. I mean why else would he look fifty when he's closer to one hundred?”
"Do I need to tell you that's classified?" The doctor asked.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Do I need to tell you it's obvious?” Tony paused then added “I could never decide whether mom took the serum on accident or on purpose."
Steve rubbed Tony’s shoulder. “He would never give me a straight answer about that either.”
"Howard was exposed to the serum but not to the vita-rays. For a long time he and everyone else assumed that it hadn't had any effect. Then he noticed he wasn't aging as quickly as he should." The doctor explained. “One of the things that make the super soldier serum so hard to reproduce is that it alters the DNA along with body chemistry and we don't have the original samples for the only two successful subjects to compare to the altered DNA. When looking into Captain Rogers’ infertility originally we speculated that because of the genetic changes an embryo would need a specific chemical environment to survive. One that a normal bearer wouldn’t be able to provide.”
Tony followed the logic. “So that’s why dad couldn’t get pregnant. Mom’s sperm had the same type of genetic changes. But mom could get pregnant because his body could provide the right chemical environment.”
“And some or all of those genetic changes were passed on to you. Your body can
sustain the pregnancy.”
Tony looked down at his stomach. “So what does that mean for the kid?”
“We’re doing a full genetic sequence and so far there are no red flags and the baby looks very healthy but this is uncharted territory for the most part.”
Steve frowned.
Tony bumped his shoulder against Steve’s. “Hey, I came out ok.”
They got the other stuff worked out like the next time Tony was expected for a check up, next week, and vitamins for Tony and an ultrasound picture that Steve wouldn’t stop staring at.
Fury caught them before they could escape the building. Tony though he must have been laying in wait. “Ah, Gentlemen so kind of you to remember that you have debriefings. Cap, I need your input on what the Black Knight told us. Mr. Stark, Agent Sitwell will be talking to you about what happened at Stark Industries and what Obadiah Stane might do now that he is persona non grata.”
Tony stared at him. “There’s seriously someone going around calling himself the Black Knight?”
Fury smiled. “That’s classified.”
Tony nodded. “If I were fighting someone called the Black Knight I wouldn’t admit it either.”
“Tony.” Steve admonished.
“It’s staggeringly unoriginal.”
“And yet despite being perfectly ordinary he still manages to be a pain in the ass.” Fury commented.
And don’t think Tony didn’t know that Fury was talking about him as much as the Black Knight. “Really, what does he do? Ride after you on horseback?”
“Agent Sitwell, there you are. Please take Mr. Stark away.”
A familiar combination of yellow and steel caught Tony’s eye and he ducked passed Steve and Fury into the conference room. Laid out on the table were about twenty small arms. There were twelve blaster style energy weapons, the hilt of a sword, a few salad plate sized disks, a rifle with a bulbous end on a thin barrel, a cube made of sliding metal plates and a group of neatly arranged wires connecting two small and one larger blue hoops.
Tony asked "What are these?"
"Weapons.” Fury growled. “Highly classified weapons. Which means you have fifteen seconds to leave before I kick you out of here myself."
Steve made discontented little noise behind Tony and Fury added. “Fine, I won’t touch him, Cap. But get him the hell out of here.”
Tony ignored that as unimportant. He ran his finger along the edge of one of the disks. "No, I mean where did you get them?"
"Oh here and there, and other goddamn classified places. And don't touch those."
Tony shrugged off the hand Steve put on his shoulder.
Tony picked up a white and burnished steel blaster sighting along it. Then rotating his wrist to feel the weight of it. "These are crappy materials."
"Yes, now put it down." Fury ordered.
Steve carefully pulled the blaster away from Tony. Tony let him picking up one of the small blue hoops instead. “Geez are these insulated at all?”
“Tony, you need to leave. These are all dangerous weapons.” Steve told him.
Tony snorted let the hoop fall back onto the table. He flicked the bulb on the rifle with his finger and there was a hollow ping. He turned to Fury appalled. "These backfire a lot."
Fury’s expression went from angry to angry and curious. "Yes, how do you know all that?"
Tony glared at the man. "I designed them.” He gestured to a palm sized black and purple lump. “Well not that one because that one is complete crap. Now” Tony made sure he was speaking slowly and clearly. “Where did you get them?"
Fury’s jaw worked for a moment before he asked slowly "You designed them?"
"Yes.” Tony nodded not breaking eye contact. “I designed them but they never made it into production. The board decided they weren't viable product lines. Did Obie sell these to SHIELD without telling me?"
Fury looked, well Tony couldn’t figure out that expression. His mouth was flat and his eyes were hooded. "Not to SHIELD."
Tony took a breath and looked at the ceiling then very calmly he said "I. See."
The End
Artist: cluegirl and waterofthemoon
Author: j_green_teeth
Rating: Explicit (Story), Teen & General Audience (Art)
Universe: MCU (AU)
Warnings: Subversion of reproductive choices by a third party, infertility, Violence (canon compliant level), Alpha/Beta/Omega, heat, mpreg, knotting
Beta: Many thanks to wylt for making this fic about a thousand times better.
Art: cluegirl did two wonderful pieces for this fic May I.. and Shovel Talk
waterofthemoon TBA
Tony woke up. Rolled to his side and dearly wished he had left those pain pills on the nightstand and not downstairs in the kitchen. Steeling himself he got up and started his quest for coffee and pills. He saw the neatly folded pile of blankets at the end of the couch when he stumbled down stairs.
"JARVIS, who?"
"Master Rogers."
"Ok. Good."
He followed the clinking sounds to the kitchen and found Steve rooting through the cupboards. “Morning.”
Steve stood up holding a frying pan he found defensively in front of him. “Oh. You’re up. Ah. Good morning.”
“We should talk.” Tony said.
“Yes.” nodded.
“Look put the frying pan down. My arm hurts to much to throw anything at you.”
“Oh. Drat do you have?” Steve looked around.
“Over there.” Tony nodded to the end of the counter
Steve grabbed the pill bottle and a glass of water and set them carefully in front of Tony.
Tony popped a pill and sipped the water. “So...” Steve kept staring at him. “You knocked me up.”
“Yes, um sorry?” Steve said.
Steve didn’t seem all that with it to Tony. “Are you going to do the decent thing and make an honest omega out of me?”
“Of course.” Steve nodded then stopped frowning. “Wait, we’re already married.”
“According to you for only the next nine to twenty one months. Unless this” He waved at his stomach. “makes you want to cut and run now.”
“No, I...Tony. You’ll leave me.” Steve told him with painful honesty.
“Did I miss a memo? Because I don’t remember scheduling my divorce.” Tony took another sip of water.
“Tony, you only married me to keep Stane off your back.” Tony snorted into the glass, off his back literally. Steve frowned and went on. “You’ll be twenty one next May. After that you wouldn’t have needed me. You would have found someone you liked better. Who could …” Steve trailed off.
“I wasn’t planning on divorcing you.” Steve sighed and gave him a sad look. “Fine. I wasn’t really planning at all. There’s this stuff with Obie and then we were married and then I was poking Stark Industries with a stick, I didn’t really think about getting unmarried.”
“I didn’t want to think about it.” Steve said quietly.
Tony set the glass down. “We need to be in the same time zone about this.”
Steve bit his lip, blew out a breath and looked Tony straight in the eye. “I like you, Tony.”
Tony let the silence stretch before making a go on motion. “But...”
“No but. I like you, Tony. If you’re willing I want to try to make this work.”
“This?” Tony prompted.
“Our...marriage.”
Tony cocked his head. “Is this because of the kid?”
“Yes.” Tony winced. “Not like that. I’m not saying that we should try because you’re pregnant. I feel like I have a chance. A chance to be a good alpha.”
“Steve, you’re a good Alpha. It doesn’t matter if you can’t have kids.” Tony decided Fury was right Steve didn’t chose good people if they let him get away with thinking these things.
Steve smiled but looked a second away from tears. “A lot of people will say that but not a lot of them believe it.”
“Alright. I accept.”
“Accept what?” Steve asked.
“Well you just offered to make this marriage real. I accept. Let’s act like we’re in love and it’s not going to end and see where that gets us.”
“Just like that?” Steve looked at him.
Tony looked back. “Just like that.”
“You’re not doing this because of the kid, are you? I don’t want you to feel pressured because of it.”
“Well you know if I was pregnant without a husband my parents would throw me out onto the streets penniless.” Tony mocked.
Steve set his jaw. “I’m serious. Don’t think that just because I got you pregnant you have to do this.”
“Steve, do you remember what I said at our wedding reception? You are the best man I know. You’re amazing. I’m greedy enough to want all of you that I can get.”
Steve smiled and shook his head. “When you put it that way.”
“You do realize this means we’re moving in here sooner rather than later, right? There is no room for a kid in your place. I’ll have to redo one of the guest rooms as a nursery. Oh damnit.”
“What?” Steve asked stepping closer.
Tony moaned. “This means I have to pick out another set of curtains.”
Steve started laughing.
Tony sighed dramatically at him and put the back of his wrist to his forehead. “You mock my pain.” He stepped closer so he could lean against Steve, into the solid warmth of him.
~*~
Tony hadn't expected to be back at SHIELD HQ so soon, but Steve had pointed out that Tony needed to see a doctor. SHIELD had all of Steve's medical records and if Tony was carrying a little super soldier that they needed to make sure the doctors were completely informed. Tony had sighed and agreed.
Steve also seemed to have forgotten about the concept of personal space. In the cab he had been pressed up against Tony shoulder, hip and thigh. He opened the door to SHIELD HQ for Tony and guided him in with a hand on his back. He stuck so close to Tony that he managed to step on Tony’s toes twice as they walked across the lobby.
After the second time Tony jabbed Steve in the stomach with his good elbow. “Ok. You’re going to need to back off big guy.”
“Sorry, I just …” Steve trailed off.
“I know, I know you can’t keep your hands off me but if we end up giving Fury a show one of us is going to die of mortification and I can’t promise it will be him.”
Steve squeezed on eye shut. “Tony, I never thought I would have to say this but please don’t talk about sex and my boss in the same sentence.”
“Well maintain a workplace appropriate distance and I won’t have to.”
“Alright.” Steve ran a hand down the side of Tony’s face then back a full foot away.
Mrs. DuLac smiled misty-eyed at them as they passed.
The doctor look a bit nervous when he met them in the exam room but calmed down after they started asking questions like 'can you tell us the sex and the gender?' and 'how did he get pregnant and what are the risks associated?'
"I consulted with my colleagues about it last night and we think it has something to do with the super soldier serum."
Steve frowned. "I thought that the serum made me sterile."
"No exactly.” The doctor flipped open a thick folder. “Mr. Stark, both your parents were betas and I see from your records that Howard Stark was your carrying parent."
"Yes. The plan was for Maria to get pregnant but Howard got knocked up instead." Tony had heard that fact several times during his childhood.
"What do you know about your mother's involvement with project rebirth?" The doctor asked.
"Just the basics. He worked with Doctor Erskine on the project."
"Well..." The doctor drawled.
Tony was pretty sure he knew what the doctor was going to say so he cut him off. "I've always assumed he was exposed to one of the early batches. I mean why else would he look fifty when he's closer to one hundred?”
"Do I need to tell you that's classified?" The doctor asked.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Do I need to tell you it's obvious?” Tony paused then added “I could never decide whether mom took the serum on accident or on purpose."
Steve rubbed Tony’s shoulder. “He would never give me a straight answer about that either.”
"Howard was exposed to the serum but not to the vita-rays. For a long time he and everyone else assumed that it hadn't had any effect. Then he noticed he wasn't aging as quickly as he should." The doctor explained. “One of the things that make the super soldier serum so hard to reproduce is that it alters the DNA along with body chemistry and we don't have the original samples for the only two successful subjects to compare to the altered DNA. When looking into Captain Rogers’ infertility originally we speculated that because of the genetic changes an embryo would need a specific chemical environment to survive. One that a normal bearer wouldn’t be able to provide.”
Tony followed the logic. “So that’s why dad couldn’t get pregnant. Mom’s sperm had the same type of genetic changes. But mom could get pregnant because his body could provide the right chemical environment.”
“And some or all of those genetic changes were passed on to you. Your body can
sustain the pregnancy.”
Tony looked down at his stomach. “So what does that mean for the kid?”
“We’re doing a full genetic sequence and so far there are no red flags and the baby looks very healthy but this is uncharted territory for the most part.”
Steve frowned.
Tony bumped his shoulder against Steve’s. “Hey, I came out ok.”
They got the other stuff worked out like the next time Tony was expected for a check up, next week, and vitamins for Tony and an ultrasound picture that Steve wouldn’t stop staring at.
Fury caught them before they could escape the building. Tony though he must have been laying in wait. “Ah, Gentlemen so kind of you to remember that you have debriefings. Cap, I need your input on what the Black Knight told us. Mr. Stark, Agent Sitwell will be talking to you about what happened at Stark Industries and what Obadiah Stane might do now that he is persona non grata.”
Tony stared at him. “There’s seriously someone going around calling himself the Black Knight?”
Fury smiled. “That’s classified.”
Tony nodded. “If I were fighting someone called the Black Knight I wouldn’t admit it either.”
“Tony.” Steve admonished.
“It’s staggeringly unoriginal.”
“And yet despite being perfectly ordinary he still manages to be a pain in the ass.” Fury commented.
And don’t think Tony didn’t know that Fury was talking about him as much as the Black Knight. “Really, what does he do? Ride after you on horseback?”
“Agent Sitwell, there you are. Please take Mr. Stark away.”
A familiar combination of yellow and steel caught Tony’s eye and he ducked passed Steve and Fury into the conference room. Laid out on the table were about twenty small arms. There were twelve blaster style energy weapons, the hilt of a sword, a few salad plate sized disks, a rifle with a bulbous end on a thin barrel, a cube made of sliding metal plates and a group of neatly arranged wires connecting two small and one larger blue hoops.
Tony asked "What are these?"
"Weapons.” Fury growled. “Highly classified weapons. Which means you have fifteen seconds to leave before I kick you out of here myself."
Steve made discontented little noise behind Tony and Fury added. “Fine, I won’t touch him, Cap. But get him the hell out of here.”
Tony ignored that as unimportant. He ran his finger along the edge of one of the disks. "No, I mean where did you get them?"
"Oh here and there, and other goddamn classified places. And don't touch those."
Tony shrugged off the hand Steve put on his shoulder.
Tony picked up a white and burnished steel blaster sighting along it. Then rotating his wrist to feel the weight of it. "These are crappy materials."
"Yes, now put it down." Fury ordered.
Steve carefully pulled the blaster away from Tony. Tony let him picking up one of the small blue hoops instead. “Geez are these insulated at all?”
“Tony, you need to leave. These are all dangerous weapons.” Steve told him.
Tony snorted let the hoop fall back onto the table. He flicked the bulb on the rifle with his finger and there was a hollow ping. He turned to Fury appalled. "These backfire a lot."
Fury’s expression went from angry to angry and curious. "Yes, how do you know all that?"
Tony glared at the man. "I designed them.” He gestured to a palm sized black and purple lump. “Well not that one because that one is complete crap. Now” Tony made sure he was speaking slowly and clearly. “Where did you get them?"
Fury’s jaw worked for a moment before he asked slowly "You designed them?"
"Yes.” Tony nodded not breaking eye contact. “I designed them but they never made it into production. The board decided they weren't viable product lines. Did Obie sell these to SHIELD without telling me?"
Fury looked, well Tony couldn’t figure out that expression. His mouth was flat and his eyes were hooded. "Not to SHIELD."
Tony took a breath and looked at the ceiling then very calmly he said "I. See."
The End