"I can't believe she's pregnant."

Tony sat hunched over on the bed, elbows resting on his knees with his head hung in his hands. He slowly exhaled the breath he'd been holding as he opened his eyes, finding the grey of the carpet in front of his eyes. "How did this even happen?"

Bruce was perched on the bed beside Tony, moving his hand along his boyfriend's back in smooth, sweeping motions while he tried his best not to look too amused. "Well…" He was fairly sure that Tony was more concerned with the what rather than the how, but he would let the other man talk himself through it however he needed to. "It's a fairly common biological process. Often occurs naturally between a man and a woman, but some recent technological advancements have made it possible—"

"It's mine, Bruce. She told me it's mine." Tony picked up his head for a moment, shooting a skeptical look in Bruce's direction. "I mean, honestly. Do you really think for one second that Pepper Potts, inhumanly-busy-CEO-who-works-27-hours-a-day Pepper Potts, would suddenly decide she wants a kid and go to a sperm bank? Come on."

"She may have." Bruce shrugged. He knew damn well that Pepper wouldn't tell Tony something like this and not mean it, but he was really just trying to help the other man calm down.

"She wouldn't. I know her. She would only want the best possible option to father her kid, and obviously that's me," Tony rambled, and after a brief pause, he looked at Bruce again. "Next to you, of course."

"I can't have kids, Tony."

"Yeah, I know. That makes me the best option." Tony's mouth quirked into an almost-smirk until he exhaled a heavy sigh and flopped back onto the bed. "And not to mention that we were all under the impression that she couldn't even have kids in the first place. What the hell am I supposed to do, Bruce? I can't be a dad."

Bruce watched his partner fall back to the bed, bouncing a little bit himself under the impact. "Well, I don't know much about being a dad," he started, reaching out to touch Tony's shoulder. "But what I do know," he continued, trailing his hand slowly down Tony's arm, "is that I've never seen you run into something that you can't figure out." His fingers had ended up twined with Tony's by the time he was finished speaking, and he squeezed gently to urge the other man to look at him. "I really don't doubt that you can figure this out."

Yeah, sure. Tony sighed as he tucked his free arm behind his head, his eyes set on the ceiling despite Bruce's little tugs on his hand. Okay, Bruce was just trying to help. Tony got that, but he also got that Bruce probably couldn't even begin to understand how all of this felt right now. Everything just felt like some kind of sick joke; the timing, the situation, everything. This had to happen now, months after he and Pepper had broken it off, and just when he was finally falling in love again.

He really didn't want this to happen now. In fact, he wasn't sure if he ever wanted it to happen at all.

"I don't know if I want to be a dad, Bruce."

It was the cold truth. This was the kind of opportunity that Tony never wanted to have, and it was at the top of that very short list. He'd always taken so much precaution with anyone he'd ever been with, always been so sure that he would never have to face the chance that he might end up in his own father's shoes.

Of course there wasn't any guarantee that Tony would be anything like Howard, but he still felt that tiny itch of worry in his mind anyway. He tried to distance himself from his father as much as he possibly could, but at times he just couldn't deny that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The last thing he wanted was to take a chance with a child of his own, and for that child's life to end up as disastrous as his own.

Well, apparently he hadn't been careful enough this time, because that chance was about to smack him across the face.

Tony's eyes continued to wander across the high ceiling until he felt the familiar pressure of Bruce settling on top of his hips. Normally Tony would have jumped at that feeling, but this time it wasn't suggestive or sexual or any of that. It was just comfort and closeness, the two things he could see in Bruce's warm gaze when he finally looked at the other man.

"I think you should talk to her," Bruce said, leaning forward to brush his hand over Tony's shoulder.

"What, you think I should just walk up to her and tell her that I don't want any part of this?" Tony asked in disbelief, huffing out a small, distressed sigh. "I can't do that. She's Pepper. I know that I'm me, but even I wouldn't be that horrible."

Bruce fought back a sigh of his own. Always jumping to the most dramatic conclusions, Tony was. Sometimes Bruce wondered how he'd ever fallen in love with Tony's ridiculousness in addition to the rest of him. "No." He leaned forward over Tony, adjusting himself so he was essentially resting on top of the other man, and dropped a light kiss onto his lips. "Look, I'm not going to tell you what to do here, because I honestly wouldn't know what to do either if I was in your position. I'm just saying you should talk to her, try to understand and work something out. She's still a part of your life, Tony. This is important. She's important."

Tony's eyes were left halfway shut after Bruce kissed him, and he didn't bother opening them any further as his partner spoke. "Yeah," he said quietly, lifting his arms from the bed to set them around Bruce's waist. "She is. I know. I just don't want to think about it right now. Can we just not think about it right now?"

For a brief moment, Bruce almost opened his mouth to say, 'Okay, but you still need to talk to her,' but decided against it before the words could slip off his tongue. Tony was clearly very flustered and shocked and tired and… scared, probably. Tony was scared. It's just that Tony never verbally admitted when he was scared, which was exactly how Bruce knew.

So Bruce decided to listen to Tony and just not talk about it for now. He would be thinking about it, surely, thinking about how this would affect their lives and their work and their everything. He thought that maybe he should talk to Pepper himself, but not now—maybe not even tomorrow or the next day. For now, he just needed to lay there with Tony, quietly while he stroked a hand over his boyfriend's hair, and do his best to help them understand that both of their lives had just changed drastically.