Tony's Girls

By: InitialA

Disclaimer: I own nothing in the Marvel universe.

Tony followed the two nurses into Pepper's room. She smiled at him wearily as the nurses placed the bassinets near the bed. "Hey."

He flashed a smirk, patting one of the bassinets. "Top-notch effort. Good work team, the project was an enormous success," he said, going over and kissing her forehead. "I'm confident the next one will go even better."

Pepper chuckled. "I'm so not even ready to contemplate having any more. Two should be enough for now, and I'm sure they're perfect as they are."

Tony gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look. "I'm just saying, give me a bit of time in the lab and I'm sure we can engineer the perfect offspring."

"No."

He tried pouting, but she rolled her eyes and reached for one of the babies. Tony gently lifted her from the bassinet and placed her in her mother's arms. "This one is Antonia."

"You named them without me?" Pepper asked, hurt.

"They were really pushy with the birth certificates!"

"We never even discussed names, Tony!"

"Well, look, see I named this one after both of us. Antonia Virginia. That's nice, right? There's a musical quality, it'll be sublime to yell when she's getting in trouble. And this one," he lifted the second girl from her bassinet, "is Cleopatra Selene."

"Two girls?" Pepper asked, looking from one to the other.

"Just the way I like it, I'm now surrounded by beautiful women," Tony said. She smacked his arm, and he kissed her lips.

She moved over, and he slung an arm around her shoulders as he settled in next to her. "Wait a minute," Pepper said. "You named our daughters Antonia and Cleopatra?"

Tony grinned. Pepper gave him a look. "You think you're so funny, don't you? You know they're stuck with that for life, right?"

"Oh come on. What's life without a little humor?"

"Who names their daughter Cleopatra?"

"Uh, eccentric billionaires? Mothers of psychics? The Ptolemy line? For your information, I didn't name her after the doomed Queen of Egypt; I named her after her daughter and only surviving child. She was a fighter, fiercely intelligent, and ruled over ancient Mauretania. Perfect for the heiress of an industrial empire."

Pepper shook her head, smiling. She ran one finger down Antonia's cheek. "Tony, what have we gotten ourselves into…"

"Dunno, Pep. They're pretty cute; I think we should keep them for at least a few weeks. Test run."

She nudged him. "They aren't puppies."

"And we have a super team of super nannies to help out. Maybe not Thor, but he's never on-planet anyway."

They were silent for a while, drinking in the new, scariness of being a family. Pepper shifted. "Here, can you put them down, and help me walk a bit? I'm so sick of being in bed…"

He obliged, and they made a few circuits around the room. He held her upright as much as possible, but she still hunched slightly, holding her abdomen. It wasn't long before she had to sit down again. "Ouch… Well that was pathetic…"

"As I recall, you asked for the highest dose of epidural legally allowed under New York law. I think a nurse commented that it was enough to take down a small elephant."

"I suppose that's you being nice about saying "it will take a while to get yourself back together, don't rush it"."

"Pepper, please. Look who you're talking to. You almost had to have Captain Sparkles lock me in the panic room after I broke my ribs and another emergency came up. All I'm saying is, and I speak from experience as a semi-professional connoisseur of alcohol, you have no game and can't keep up with the big boys."

Pepper laughed outright at that. Tony grinned. "There we go. See, this is why we're a team. Fifty-fifty, the whole way."

"If we're going fifty-fifty, you have a long way to catch up," Pepper teased.

"What? I distinctly remember carrying a brunt of the load these last few months."

Pepper raised her eyebrows. Tony amended his statement, "Okay, I did a lot of the work." Her eyebrows went up further. "Some of it? Oh come on, give me some credit."

A smirk played on her lips. "Twelve percent credit?"

"You're still mad about that?"

"I distinctly remember doing most of the work in both of these situations."

"And I distinctly remember playing a huge role in both situations. Building it, for one thing. And I'm fairly certain I was there at the beginning of this one. In fact, I remember it pretty well, if we pinpointed it correctly. Christmas party, you had too much eggnog," Tony said.

"Okay, fine. We'll split it," Pepper said.

"Good. Negotiation. Business' blood and breath."

"Five percent for the help during the pregnancy, and seven for the sex."

"You call that a seven percent performance? I remember at least a ninety-five. And, if we're going to start rating bedroom performances, I will be happy to do the math. We can make charts, hold quarterly meetings on how and where to improve."

Pepper's lips twitched in an effort to hide a smile. Tony waved his hands. "Okay, okay. I can present a really, really good argument for twenty-three percent."

"And that would be?"

"Twenty-three chromosomes from each parent. Since there's two of them I would say forty-six, but they were from the same source, so I'll be nice."

Pepper smiled. "Fine. I'll give you that one."

One of the girls began to cry, quickly followed by the other. A fleeting look of panic crossed Tony's face. Pepper rested a hand on his arm in reassurance. "It's fine. They're probably hungry."

They called in a nurse. Tony disappeared to the cafeteria while Pepper was taught how to switch between nursing naturally and with formula. He returned well after feeding and diaper-changing time was over, which Pepper teased him about. He presented her with a blueberry muffin and a small decaf in response.

Later, she was dozing against him while he paged through a book he'd brought. The twins had been taken back to the nursery for the time being. A nurse stopped by, knocking quietly on the door. "Mr. Stark, I just wanted to let you know that visiting hours are over in about twenty minutes. If you wanted to see your daughters again before you left, they've finished with the test."

"Right. Got it, sounds great. Thanks."

Gently, he dislodged himself from Pepper. She mumbled something incoherent and he shifted her pillow under her head. He kissed her on her forehead. "You did good, Pep," he murmured against her hair.