I am so sorry that this chapter is late - my new busier schedule is great fun this far, but it doesn't really lend itself to fanfiction. Sorry about that!

No copyright infringement is intended.

TapTap

It was dead silent in the Avengers' kitchen. Bruce was sitting at the kitchen table, patiently unpacking Claire's hand from its protective cast, ignoring the way Tony was glaring at him the entire time. The older engineer had thrown more tantrums about the injury than the younger one had, not that she'd been entirely patient either.

Now though, Claire was sitting silently, waiting for the doctor to release her hand, her head leaning into her other hand, with an unreadable facial expression.

"That looks so slow..." Bucky noted, leaning against a kitchen counter, unconsciously making sure to place himself between Claire and Clint, not that it was truly needed - Clint had already made sure of the same - and shaking his head. "You're so... breakable."

"We were once breakable too, Buck," Steven pointed out - from over where he was putting a truly ridiculous amount of food into the oven - with a patience which could almost rival Bruce's.

"Maybe you were. I never once broke a hand trying to punch you in the face," Bucky answered grumpily.

Claire's sudden, taken-aback laughter was drowned by Tony's sarcastic, "Please tell me that never happened to you either, Capsicle." This, in turn, had to drown out Clint's comment of in essence exactly the same thing. Bruce only just won the fight with a sigh, but Steven smiled.

"No, but I did crack five ribs coughing that one time, you remember that, Buck?" It was Bucky's turn to sigh, so presumably, yes, he did indeed remember that time. Possibly, he also wished that he didn't.

"You people are like having a houseful of infants. I swear every time I turn my back..." Pepper Potts, whose pregnancy was finally starting to show ever so slightly, said fondly from the door. Her doctor said that it was the position of her baby, which made it so subtle even relatively late in her term.

"Be fair, Pepper," Claire noted, looking utterly zen as she watched the last parts of her prison peel away, "Bruce and Steven are both entirely adult. Maybe even me, on a good day."

"Quite," Pepper conceded that point, smiling warmly but clearly suppressing an even wider smile.

"Speaking about babies," Steven started over by the stove, "what are we telling the press? People have begun to speculate that you may be pregnant, and they already want to know who the father is."

"Nonsense... let's tell them nonsense," Clint suggested, while Tony had tilted his head and looked every bit like the lead villain in any self-respecting film, cracking a truly evil master plan.

"We need to say something that matches," Bruce agreed, but Claire had tilted her head in a way very much like her mentor.

"Why?" Noting that everybody was watching her (though Bruce was still looking at her hand) the junior engineer continued with a shrug. "If we all stick to one, reasonable story, but not with quite the same details, surely that must be the best way to spread disinformation."

"Plus, it'll be fun!" Tony agreed immediately. Clint looked enthusiastic, too. Pepper might have been right, they were both children.

"Can't we just tell the truth?" Steve, of quite a different sort of temper, looked a little confused.

"No." Pepper's tone was suddenly die-hard serious, making everybody stare. "I don't want my daughter to see an old newspaper fifteen years from now and have some stranger judge her as an accident!"

"Good point," Tony immediately agreed, entering into a protective mode nobody would even guess he had. (Except of course the people present, who all knew that he did. Most of them from personal experience.)

"I'll..." Natasha started, making everybody except Bucky jump as they hadn't heard her come in. Smirking at them, she continued, "I'll just say it is my and Pepper's baby and that I am very happy and lucky." She smiled serenely.

Pepper smiled warmly back at her, eyes soft and warm. "I like the sound of that. I'll say the same, but I will add that it is Tony's baby by blood, if you don't mind - I won't hide that."

"I'll just be smug about that then," concluded Tony easily, leaning back in his chair. "I do that well." It wasn't easy to discern where the following snort came from, and it might have been several sources. (All of them, with all likeliness, though nothing could be proven.)

"I'll say Tony donated sperm and everybody is happy about the outcome," Bucky decided, making everybody turn their heads, unaware that he even knew about that technique. He shrugged, with an innocent expression.

"I'll go for that too," Steven concluded, voice only barely holding back amusement.

"I'll say that Pepper and Tony longed for a baby and got her, too, but that they decided they were better apart and went their separate ways," Bruce cut in softly.

"But did they break up because of the baby or despite of the baby?" Claire questioned him.

"Pick one and I'll do the opposite," Clint answered. Pepper suddenly giggled slightly into Natasha's hair at that, and Claire shrugged.

"I'll say that I am unsure who the father is if nobody minds", the younger engineer noted, "run with the sperm donation line. All I know is that she and Natasha asked the other Avengers."

"Good plan. It could be my baby," Bucky tried to keep a straight face.

"What do you mean, it is Natasha's!" Clint pushed, grinning madly.

"We'll give that one to Hulk. Or Thor. They could both totally pull that off," Tony decided, and he wasn't even kidding.

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Pepper went to get some more ice-cream.