After a while of avoiding it, Tony decided that he needed to talk to Pepper.

He wished he could have said his decision was based on his own conscious and concern for the well-being of others, but really, it was Bruce. Bruce was right; Pepper was important, and she deserved better than Tony ignoring this, ignoring her, because he didn't know how to deal with this yet. The problem wasn't going to go away any faster if he just avoided it for longer.

Well, then again, maybe thinking of the whole situation as a problem was his problem. For all he knew, Pepper didn't see her pregnancy as problematic as Tony did. Maybe she was excited about it and wanted him to be too; maybe he should be—

No. He knew her better than that. There was no way she could be excited about this, not after the end of their relationship and the fact that Tony was dating a man now and the toll a baby would take on her career…

Okay, stop.

Yeah, he needed to talk to her.

Tony shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and walked towards the door to Pepper's office, essentially ignoring the receptionist outside as usual. They all knew who he was, and it wasn't like he could ever remember her name anyway. He shouldered through the door without bothering to knock, and let it fall shut behind him as he stepped in and stood in the center before Pepper's desk.

Pepper barely looked away from the papers on her desk when Tony walked in. There was really only one person who ever came in her office without knocking, so it had to be him just by default. "Do you need something, Tony?" she asked, her tone not exactly annoyed, but uninterested at the very least.

"We should talk," Tony replied, fiddling with the inside of his jacket pocket. "About stuff."

"Stuff." Pepper's pen paused on the paper for a moment before she moved to scribble her signature on something else. "That's awfully vague."

"Come on, you know what stuff I'm talking about. And clearly it's making you a little moody."

At that point, Pepper just dropped the pen and leaned back in her chair. She knew that tone of voice, and she definitely knew that look on his face once she saw it; he wasn't going to leave until she said something. "What part of it do you want to talk about, Tony?" she asked, "You made yourself pretty clear when I told you."

Tony flexed his jaw and took a few quiet steps forward, lowering himself into the chair before Pepper's desk. He had made himself pretty clear, hadn't he? The long, awkward silence followed by phrases and curses of disbelief had certainly been pretty clear; a clear expression of shock, Tony thought, but apparently Pepper had taken it differently.

Could he really blame her, though? Tony could vividly remember the split second that wounded look had been on her face before she shoved it under her typical blank mask. Yeah, he was an asshole about it, but only because he was scared—except… maybe she was scared, too.

"Look, I just want to figure something out here. You need to work with me," Tony started, leaning forward to rest his forearms on the desk. "We've gotta work something out so we can deal with this, unless you…" He paused, not really sure how to say it, or even if he should say it.

"Unless I what? Decide not to have it?" Well, Pepper beat him to the punch. "If that's what you want to happen, you could have just said it."

"That's not what I want," Tony replied quickly, scooting forward in his chair. Shit. Now he was just backpedaling, which sounded horrible, and this really, really wasn't going the way he wanted it to. "Or, maybe… you know what, I don't know what I want, Pep. I don't know how to deal with this. Neither of us have ever wanted kids, and now we're apparently having one and we're not even together anymore, so I really don't know what to do here. I can't fix this one in the workshop, so please just try to work with me here." Tony sighed. He'd probably just said way too much, but as far as he was concerned, there wasn't much else he could do here other than run his mouth and hope that Pepper understood at least a little bit.

The look on Pepper's face said otherwise, though. She was trying to hide it underneath that emotionless poker face of hers, but Tony could still recognize the tiny glimmer of disappointment in her eyes. "You can't fix it," she repeated quietly. She dropped the pen she'd been twirling between her fingers to slide her hands into her lap below the desk, and through the translucent glass tabletop, Tony could see her slide one of her hands over her just slightly swollen stomach. "Well, I can't fix it either, Tony. And I have a meeting in half an hour that I need to prepare for, so I think you should go."

"Pepper, that's not—"

"Just go, Tony. Please."

Tony hesitated for a moment before he decided that the better option was to just listen to her and leave. He muttered a quiet "fine" as he got up, keeping his gaze on her even if she'd already broken the eye contact, and shoved his hands back in his pockets as he turned to exit through the door.

Fix it. Dammit. That was quite possibly one of the worst things he could have said. If Pepper hadn't already caught on to how Tony felt like this was a problem, she certainly did now, and that was something that Tony really didn't know how to fix at all. Every time he blinked he saw that look in her eyes and the hand she'd put on her middle over his child—no, their child—and he mentally kicked himself again, ripping the wound even wider.

Eventually, after making a few rounds around the residential area of the tower, Tony made it to the lounge where he found Bruce with his feet up and nose in a book (typical). Tony shuffled over and plopped onto the sofa beside his boyfriend, heaving a sigh as he rested his head on the cushion behind it.

"Hey." Bruce looked up from the page he was turning after Tony settled down, and lifted an arm to slide it around the other man's shoulders. "How'd it go?"

"Could have went better," Tony replied. He closed his eyes when he felt Bruce's fingers thread through his hair, tilting his head to rest it at the base of Bruce's neck.

"Want to talk about it?"

"Nope."

"Okay." Bruce exhaled quietly, leaning over to rest his head on top of Tony's. He decided not to push it, so instead he just pressed a light kiss into Tony's hair before turning his eyes back to the book in his lap. "Maybe you can try again another time," he added softly a moment later.

"Yeah." That was Tony's basically obligatory agreement as he nestled closer to Bruce's side. "Maybe."