It turned out being creative was a lot harder than it looked. Especially since he was so excited about the baby. He just wanted Bucky to know and share in his excitement, which made it hard to take the time to come up with a plan.

By the next morning, he still didn't have any brilliant ideas, but he was too impatient to wait any longer.

He opened a container of cinnamon buns, placed one on a cookie sheet and slid it into the oven. He snapped a picture of himself grinning and pointing to it. Bucky sent back a picture of himself looking excited about a plate of waffles.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he growled.

"Taking food pictures for Instagram, I see."

"Gah." Tony quickly looked over his shoulder and spotted Loki lounging by the fridge. "How long have you been there?"

"Long enough," Loki said with a sly grin. "What are you up to, Stark?"

"Nothing you should be concerned about," Tony said firmly. Because Loki was probably just going to laugh at his struggles. He could be a little bastard sometimes.

Loki shrugged. "As you wish. I was going to help you with your pregnancy announcement, but if you don't want-"

Tony groaned. "Okay, okay. How did you know it was a pregnancy announcement?"

"I think it should be fairly obvious. The bun in the oven. It's a pretty common method of conveying the news on your planet."

"So how come Bucky doesn't get it?"

"Some people just don't grasp subtlety. My brother, for example. I spent most of my teenage years trying to kill him in increasingly complex ways and he just laughed all of them off as silly pranks. For him to finally take me seriously, I actually had to-"

"Yeah, that's great," Tony said. "But you did say you were going to help me, right?"

Loki's eyes narrowed briefly, annoyed at being interrupted. But then he smiled, wide and dangerous. "Of course. What are friends for?" He gestured to the kitchen table. "Let's discuss your little problem in greater detail."

Tony swallowed. He had a feeling he was about to walk into a trap, but that was a pretty normal reaction when he was interacting with Loki. So he took a seat at the table and watched Loki carefully.

Loki steepled his fingers in front of him. "Now, the first thing you have to understand is that your mate isn't the brightest of bulbs."

"Bucky's not-"

"Silence," Loki hissed. "Do you want my help or not?"

Tony huffed. "Okay, okay."

"As I was saying, your mate won't understand all these little references. He's bound to take everything literally. So there's no point in waiting for him to understand that the cinnamon bun in the oven refers to a baby. To him, it will never be anything more than a picture of a cinnamon bun."

"Yeah, I got that," Tony said. "So what do I do now?"

"You proceed as if you want to break the news of your pregnancy to Thor," Loki said sagely. "Don't rely on any popular sayings or references to get the message across. Any photograph you decide to use must be of an actual baby or baby items. And then you can add whatever message you wish."

"Well, that doesn't sound like much fun," Tony muttered.

"Trust me," Loki said. "It's the only way he'll understand."

After Loki left, presumably to show up unexpectedly and terrify somebody else, Tony had a lot of thinking to do. He still really, really, really wanted to do something cute and fun. Just sending Bucky a picture of a baby and saying, "Look what we're going to have!" was boring. But he was sure there were plenty of ways to use a picture of a baby, or baby-related things to break the news.

He pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his Facebook feed. Most of his employees were following him on Facebook and with a company as large as Stark Industries, quite a few people were pregnant at any given time. There had to be a whole boatload of announcement ideas just floating out there.

He was faintly amused by all the eviction notices people served their babies, but he couldn't do that because he had no idea what his due date was yet. Note to self: visit doctor and find that out.

He also liked the pictures of baby shoes captioned with "Our family is growing by two feet". But like Loki said, it was probably best to stay away from the cutesy sayings. He didn't want to have to strangle Bucky when he misinterpreted the phrase to mean a literal two feet.

The best idea he saw was from a young couple that had taken two pictures of themselves standing next to a wall. In one picture, the woman's shadow was digitally altered with a pregnant belly.

He could do that easy. And it was a much better idea than the Prego jar or the cinnamon bun.

Tony went down to the lab and took a few photos of him standing next to a blank wall, adjusting the lighting to make sure his shadow was visible. After a brief moment in Photoshop, he had a perfect picture.

He sent it along to Bucky with the text, "This will be me in a few months."

And he was really looking forward to that, having his stomach round and full with child.

Bucky texted back, "If you keep eating cinnamon rolls every day :p jk"

Tony groaned. Maybe Loki was right. Maybe he did need to be a lot more obvious.

"Jarvis, make a note," he said. "I'm going shopping. Gotta pick up some damn baby stuff to take pictures of."

"Excellent, Sir. And might I suggest picking up some prenatal vitamins while you're out?"

"I got this, J. God, you're as bad as Steve."

"Thank you, Sir. I have always aspired to be just like the Captain."

Tony rolled his eyes. He was going to have to look into Jarvis' programming later. Of all people, he wanted to take after Steve instead of his magnificent creator? Nope, there had to be something wrong with him.

But that could wait until later. Breaking the news to Bucky was the important thing.

He left for the store right after a quick lunch. It was a bright, sunny day and he was feeling really optimistic about his chances.

Until Jarvis started up the car for him and he found himself on hands and knees, vomiting onto the garage floor.

And now he remembered why he hadn't left the house in a week.

"I'll have one of the bots clean this up," Jarvis said. "In the meantime, perhaps one of the others could do the shopping for you."

"Hell no. Then they'd ask why I'm buying baby stuff and I'd have to tell them and I'm just not ready for that yet." It was bad enough that Loki and Natasha already knew. He didn't want everybody else knowing he was pregnant before his own mate. That was just wrong.

"As you wish, Sir."

Since he was still feeling nauseous, Tony's first stop was the grocery store to buy ginger-ale and crackers to settle his stomach. He also made sure to grab a bottle of prenatal vitamins so Jarvis would get off his back.

He really wanted ice cream, but since he had just thrown up, it probably wasn't a good idea. Better to have crackers and chicken noodle soup for a little bit and see if he could hold that down. The baby needed him to eat plenty of good, healthy food. The ice cream had to wait until he was actually eating regularly again.

He gave the frozen aisle a wistful look as he passed by. But then he saw the bags of ice at the end of the row.

And he suddenly had another brilliant idea.

Tony settled two large bags of ice on the ground and posed beside them with a hand over his stomach. It was silly and clever and definitely a step up from a Prego jar.

Bucky sent him a text with several question marks and "Do we really need that much ice? We still had plenty when I left."

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. Okay, he wasn't going to blame Bucky for this one. He didn't grow up hearing Vanilla Ice. And somehow Tony had overlooked that one-hit wonder when he was explaining 90s music to him.

"Never mind," he texted back. "Forgot we still had some."

He spent the rest of the shopping trip in a grumpy mood. He went ahead and tossed ice cream and a couple packs of cookies into his cart because his stomach would stabilize eventually, and when it did, he wanted some damn chocolate chip cookies and mint chip ice cream to dull the pain of dealing with Bucky. At least he had something to look forward to.

As he was pulling out of the parking lot, he spotted a sign out of the corner of his eye that said, "Bump Ahead."

He made a quick U-turn and pulled over to the side of the road.

"Yes, this is perfect," he said, rubbing his hands together with glee. He leaned against the sign and snapped a photo.

"Where are you at?" Bucky asked.

"6th Street. Right across from Vons."

"Oh. I thought you had actually taken a road trip somewhere. Why are you taking pictures of random street signs?"

"It's not a random street sign. Did you actually look at it?"

There was nothing for a few minutes, probably as Bucky took the time to study the picture a little more closely. When he finally texted back, he said, "You're talking about the picture of the two bumps on the bottom, right? How they always look like a pair of boobs? I've noticed that years ago, babe."

Tony huffed and threw his phone back into the car. Okay, forget it. He was going to just go straight home and have his ice cream, nausea be damned.

He was pulling into the garage when he realized he hadn't actually bought any baby stuff to take pictures of.

Well, at least he had remembered the vitamins