Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! We're back with chapter 6!

Chapter title comes from ...Baby One More Time by Britney Spears.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the black and gold 'verse~

~black and gold~

~chapter 6: ...baby one more time~

Tony did not actually get a chance to talk with Jason or Dick that night. By the time that dinner was over, he was exhausted, like he was back to being pregnant with Edward and Gemma. No one blamed him for this, including Alfred (who had had watery eyes as he'd pulled him into a bone-crushing hug, whispering, "it's good to have you back, Master Stark") and Rebecca (who had also pulled him into a hug, not as bone-crushing as Alfred's in spite of her superior strength, with, "it's a good thing they found you. I was about ready to join Bruce in tracking you down myself"). He went to bed, dressed in his favorite pair of pajamas, and once again he was out like a light.

Unfortunately, this time, he did not stay asleep for long. It felt like barely any time had passed before he was awake again, practically screaming at what he had seen behind his eyelids. He jerked, feeling a pair of strong arms wrapped around him, but not knowing where he was – the contents of his and Bruce's room were just as unfamiliar as the cave had been when he'd first woken up in it in his panicked state.

"It's alright," a voice murmured in his ear. "You're home. You're safe. Everything's alright. Come back to me, Omega."

His body relaxed once the words registered in his brain. Bruce.

Tony shifted around in his husband's hold so that his nose was pressed up right against his mating gland. He inhaled his alpha's scent to remind himself of what Bruce was saying. "You're in our room at the Glass House, Tony. You're home. You're safe. Come back to me."

When he was finally calm enough, he let out a sigh and pushed himself away, reaching out for his glasses which were on his stand, right next to the bangle (where it would remain for an undeterminable future). He put them on and saw the time. It wasn't even eleven o'clock yet. He sighed. He'd been hopeful that the nightmares wouldn't hit him this soon; so much for that.

"Omega?" Bruce prodded gently.

"I'm fine," he assured his husband, who had apparently shaved during the time that Tony had been asleep, sitting up. He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm fine. Just...bad dream."

Bruce was silent for a moment, although he did pull Tony over so that he was resting between the alpha's legs and with his back up against his stomach. The omega was grateful for this as he tilted his head back, closing his eyes and basking in the other man's warmth.

Then came the question at last. "Do you want to tell me what it was about?"

"...The cave," Tony answered. He shuddered as the images became that much more vivid in his mind's eye, since they hadn't really left upon him waking up. But, he knew from helping Bruce out with his own nightmares over the years that it was better to talk about the nightmare in the immediate aftermath than not. "I was dreaming I hadn't got out. They put me back in there. But I was alone this time...nobody else," Anahita, "wasn't there. They didn't trust me with weapons anymore, either. I was waiting...waiting for..." He swallowed as he felt Bruce's abdominal muscles become as hard as a rock beneath him. "I'm sorry. You don't need to hear this."

"You need to talk about it," Bruce disagreed. And it was a disagreement, not a deflection of Tony's horrible trauma from the past two months.

But, now being reminded of the past two months...

Tony turned his head halfway. "You know," he said, pausing briefly to yawn, "we didn't really get a chance to talk about what you were up to in the past two months."

"I looked for you," Bruce answered him. But with how they were pressed up against one another, Tony could feel his heartbeat. His husband's, the Batman's, heart skipped a beat. "I waited for two weeks with our family for the military to find you, because I...I know what I promised you with Peter. But when they couldn't find you, I had to look for you myself, and I'm not going to apologize for that."

"It's okay; I wasn't expecting you to," the omega replied. He took one of Bruce's large hands in both of his, tracing the lines of his palm. "I was kind of mad when Rhodey first told me, but I get it. There's always an exception to the rule."

For once, Bruce, the world's greatest detective, didn't seem to pick up on his hidden meaning. He nuzzled the crook in Tony's neck on the opposite side of his mating gland. "I love you, Omega. You and the kids, you're my world."

"Love you too, Alpha," Tony said.

But inside, all he could think about was:

What was Bruce keeping from him? And why did he feel the need so badly to keep it?

They woke up late in the morning, since it was a Saturday – although even if it hadn't been, St. Philomena's had been more than willing to allow the older children a couple of days (read: almost a week) of leave now that Tony was back home. They had a breakfast for the first time as a full family in ages, and it showed. All of the kids were a bundle of chatter, even Dick and Jason, eager to tell Tony all over again what they had ben up to in the past couple of months just like they had yesterday, though Tony didn't mind the repeat. His only problem was that, also like yesterday, the two younger omegas didn't really talk about the things that he wanted to talk with them about.

Tony wasn't really sure of when he would get a chance to talk with them about those things, unfortunately, because his biological children were doing their best to take up all of his attention. But then, about an hour after breakfast, Rebecca suggested lightly, "Who wants to go downstairs to the pool?"

"Swimming sounds like fun!" Lili exclaimed.

"I do! I do!" agreed both Harley and Peter. Bea nodded eagerly.

The four children turned to look at their omither expectantly. "Omi," Peter said, "do you want to come swim with us?"

Tony gave a strained smile, doing his best to not show the kids just how much of a good idea he did not think that was, and not just because he now had an electrical device inside of his chest. It was taking just about everything that he had in him to not hyperventilate at the prospect of being in a large body of water again, of his head being submerged (even though their pool had a shallow end to it), of everything from his brain to his lungs burning because he couldn't breathe couldn't breathe couldn't breathe –

"Not today, dears," he said. "Maybe another time."

The four children all deflated at this, but with the notion of a swim now in their minds, they didn't let it bother them for long. They scrambled upstairs to go put on their bathing suits, which meant that Tony himself had to get up because Bea wasn't quite old enough to be able to put on her own just yet. Then, when they were all dressed appropriately, they took off again.

"Be careful! Don't run down the stairs! I swear," he muttered the last two words under his breath while his ears rang with the sounds of shouts and excited squeals, "one of them is going to fall down and break something one of these days."

When he walked down the halls of the upper floor, he saw that Dick and Jason had apparently both come upstairs while he'd been helping Bea with her swimsuit, and they were sitting on the bed in the former's room, the door open. Seizing this as his chance, he knocked at the door frame. "Knock, knock. Can I come in?"

The other two omegas had obviously been expecting him. "Yeah," Dick said.

"That was kind of the point," Jason tacked on, confirming his suspicions.

Tony walked into the room and settled down on the bed so that he was leaning against the headboard, and Dick and Jason scooted around so that they were on either side of him, a pile of three omegas. Jason, for the first time outside of the family cuddles, was especially clingy today, curling into Tony. But his adoptive omither did not complain, choosing to run his fingers through the boy's hair, which not to his surprise, earned him some purring sounds. When omegas in particular presented, it was so much easier to give into the urge to do the baser things like that due to all the new hormones running through them.

"Alright, I've heard all about what you two have been up to academically – and at night," Tony said in reference to Jason taking over the mantle of Robin. "But I haven't heard much about what's been going on with you outside of that. Either of you want to go first, hmm? I'm all ears."

Neither of the two boys seemed all that willing to speak. Jason looked over at his older brother. "Dick should go first, since his happened first."

Dick glared at him. "Why should I have to – ?"

Jason stuck out his tongue at him. Very mature for a fourteen-year-old...actually, no, it was still right on the mark.

"Okay, okay," Tony settled them. "Jason does have a point, though, bambino. But...since you were so willing to volunteer your brother, Jason, maybe you should go first. How was your first heat?"

Jason crossed his arms as best as he could, given his position. "It was fine," he mumbled. "I mean, it hurt like a bitch, and I hate the brain fog. But it was fine."

"Everybody hates the brain fog," Tony informed him. "Were you scared when you realized what was going on? It's okay if you were. I was, too, when I had my first heat."

"...A little," Jason admitted.

"And how do you feel about being an omega now? It's okay if you don't like it," Tony added at the end.

He was aware of the transdesignation rights movement that had been picking up a little in the media as of late. He didn't think that was something that Jason would want necessarily, but he had it in mind. Because if Jason did wind up thinking that it was something he would want, that he wasn't really supposed to have been an omega in spite of what he was biologically for reasons that extended beyond what HYDRA had taught him to expect himself to be, then Tony wouldn't hesitate in supporting him. He just wanted all of his kids to be happy, healthy, and safe, whatever form that took.

Jason shrugged. "It's alright...I guess." He appeared to pick up on Tony's line of thinking. "I don't think I like heats or what some of the other kids at school have been saying about me, but...now that I've had some time to get used to it, I don't feel like I wasn't meant to be an omega. It feels...right. And if HYDRA didn't already know, it'd probably piss them off a fuck ton if they could see me now." He grinned at the last part.

Tony grinned himself. "Yeah, they probably would be."

They talked a little bit more about the things that he'd talked with Dick about after the other omega's first heat had ended and he'd been up for the conversation (considering how his first heat had gone), and got into a more extensive play-by-play of Jason's first heat. Dick really had pulled out all the stops with Jason that Tony had with him.

"Alright, Dick. Your turn," Tony said nevertheless, though, after a while. He hadn't forgotten about the eighteen-year-old. "What about you? When did you find out that you were pregnant?"

Jason started to snicker, and Tony had a feeling that it wasn't necessarily for a good reason, judging by the look on Dick's face. But, he ignored the fourteen-year-old boy's antics for now.

"The night before you left. That was why I said I didn't have a stomach bug; I knew I wasn't sick," Dick responded. "I was going to tell you when you came back."

This made Jason snicker harder. "And then you didn't tell anybody at all until Rebecca realized your scent changed!"

"I didn't want to freak anybody out!" Dick shot back. "Tony was missing, and I didn't even know if I was going to – !"

"But you did," Tony interjected, trying to keep a fight from breaking out again. His tone was soft and soothing. "You did decide to keep it? Or are you going to give them up for adoption?"

Dick calmed down. "I'm keeping it. Or, um, her. I already found out the gender on Monday. Rebecca drove me to the appointment to trick the press since they don't know about her but they do Alfred and Taryn." He picked up an ultrasound picture off of his nightstand and handed it to Tony.

Tony grinned stupidly as he held the small photograph. He remembered what Dick had said when he'd seen Lili for the first time ten years ago now. "'Oh, she's so pretty,'" he quoted.

Dick beamed back at him, clearly getting the reference. Jason eyed them speculatively at the inside joke, but he didn't comment on it. "I know. She's perfect."

Tony decided to broach the obvious subject – well, besides where they were going to put Dick's baby, because the Glass House only (yes, he knew how privileged "only" sounded) had twelve bedrooms, and neither of the remaining two were close by to Dick's. So either they were going to need to do some rearranging, which he wasn't so sure if the other children would be pleased with due to how personalized their rooms were even if they understood the necessity of it, or Dick's baby would need to stay with him in his room until he moved out for college. Speaking of which, Tony suddenly realized he and Bruce needed to talk with Dick about what his plans were for college now, too, since his due date would be during his first semester and that was far from ideal.

But, he was digressing. The obvious subject:

"Is the baby Zatanna's?"

Now the tables were turned, as he was the one on the outside of an inside joke. But it wasn't one that Dick found funny, as his lips became pursed. He shot a look at Jason too when he went back to snickering again, and it was so severe that Jason stopped.

"Yes," Dick said quietly. "She is."

The older omega's eyebrows furrowed. "Did she not take the news well?" That was the only reason why he could guess for the change of emotion in the room.

"No." Dick chewed on his bottom lip. "I...haven't told her, Tony. I'm not going to."

Tony gaped. "What? Why not?" As Dick flinched back, he toned down his reaction. "I'm...I'm not mad at you, bambino," and that was true, he wasn't. He was baffled, absolutely baffled, but he wasn't angry, "I'm just trying to understand. Why don't you want her to know?"

"Because I don't want to ruin her life. Yes, I know that my baby wouldn't ruin her life if she knew about her, a baby doesn't automatically ruin somebody's life. But we'd been practicing safe sex with birth control and condoms for the entire time that we were together, and I still don't want her to know. It's my baby, so it's my choice, and I know you have JARVIS, but you're not going to be able to find her. You don't know what her legal name is and there aren't any pictures of her online or in government databases, so you're not going to be able to figure out who she is. And I don't want you to try. I am going to raise this baby by myself, one way or another," Dick said with a determined look on his face. This wasn't the first time he had rehearsed the speech, although it obviously had some differences, Tony could tell.

Now he understood why Bruce had been so uncomfortable in revealing this to him. He could only imagine the arguments that had broken out between Dick, his adoptive father, Rebecca, and even Alfred. Zatanna had a right to know about her child, whatever Dick thought, unless there had been abuse or something like it going on between them. But he didn't think that there had been.

Tony breathed in through his nose, trying to prevent himself from yelling just like they had. "Okay. Nah-ah! That is not me agreeing to what you're saying, because I don't." Dick's visage had become so hopeful, but Tony couldn't let that hope remain. "What I am saying is that I promised you we'll figure this out, and we will. But right now, I think we need to table this conversation before things blow up."

Dick scowled. "But – "

"No 'but's'," Tony ordered. He pressed a kiss to the eighteen-year-old's forehead. "I love you, bambino, but I'm not getting into a fight with you the day after I've come back home. I'm just not." Nor am I going to unwittingly reveal to you that I'm pregnant myself again yet, either. Because that is a mess that Bruce and I are still trying to figure out, and we need to get our shit together with that before we tell it to all of you.

Tony didn't really get any more sleep for the rest of the week.

He and Bruce went down to his lab that night after all the children sans Dick and Jason had been put to bed. Like he'd told Anahita, the arc reactor could only work for so long. He'd needed to make a new one this afternoon before the current model gave out, which he had. Now they just needed to get the two switched out.

There quickly became a problem with this, however.

"JARVIS, can you get Rebecca to come down here?" Tony asked of his trusty AI. He'd been able to finish the self-learning AI between the birth of Edward and Gemma and his leaving for Afghanistan. The name was technically an acronym for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, but anybody who knew him knew he was actually named after Edwin Jarvis.

Like Tony had said before, JARVIS mostly operated at Stark Industries, but he had his purposes at the Glass House that extended beyond just being a security system – like this one. "Right away, sir," the AI said in his British voice.

A few minutes later, Rebecca came downstairs and walked into the room, an eyebrow raised. "JARVIS said you needed me?"

"Yeah. How big is your right hand?" Tony asked.

"What?"

Tony repeated his question.

In lieu of giving him an answer, the female alpha took in how he was laying down on a chair only wearing a pair of flannel pants and his black robe, which was open enough to show off the arc reactor but also obscure his breasts from view, if only barely. Bruce was standing off to his side. A blush dusted her cheeks. "Why the hell did you call me down here?"

"We were trying to replace the arc reactor, but both of our hands are too big. I know you're an alpha, but I was hoping your right hand would be just slim enough to fit," Tony explained.

"The thing that's keeping you alive?"

"The very one. Now, get over here and show me your hand."

Rebecca did, albeit very reluctantly. She held out her hand and Tony inspected it. "Yep, I think that'll do," he decided. "Bruce, hand her the new arc reactor, would you?" As his husband gave her the device, he explained to her better what was going on, "There's an exposed wire under my current arc reactor. It's contacting the socket wall and causing a little bit of a short. It's fine." He pulled out the now-old arc reactor and handed it to Bruce. They'd had to put it back in when neither of their attempts to switch out the devices had worked.

Rebecca was hesitant, but she accepted the fact that she was going to have to help them anyways, though her flush remained. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to reach in, and you're just gonna gently lift the wire out."

"Is it safe?"

"Yeah, it should be fine. It's just like Operation. You just don't let it touch the socket wall or it goes 'beep.'"

Bruce gave him a look for that.

"What do you mean, 'Operation?'"

Now Bruce sighed. "That probably wasn't the best way to explain it to her."

Right. Their kids had never been fans of that game. Whatever.

"It's just a game. Never mind," Tony said. "Just reach in and gently lift the wire."

"Okay," she said. Then she grimaced. "But I don't know how qualified I am to do this, Tony. I wasn't a medic in the army."

"You're going to do fine. You're going to do great," Tony reassured her. "Isn't that right, Bruce?" He patted the alpha man's arm for emphasis.

Bruce smiled. "We trust you, Rebecca."

That was the encouragement she needed. "Okay." She reached in to Tony's chest. Her grimace worsened. "Why is there pus?"

"It's not pus. It's an inorganic plasmic discharge from the device, not from my body," Tony explained.

"It smells awful."

"Yeah, it does. The copper wire. The copper wire, you got it?"

"Okay, I've got it!"

"You've got it? Good. Now, don't let it touch – " he gasped as she did the very thing that he was trying to warn her against. Next to them, Bruce stiffened " – the sides when you're coming out!"

Rebecca winced. "I'm sorry!"

"That's what I was trying to tell you not to do. It's fine. Okay, now when you pull it out, just make sure that you don't..." This time, he groaned as Rebecca once again did the very thing that he was trying to warn her against. "And you did it. There's a magnet at the end of it! You just pulled it out."

Rebecca gritted her teeth. "What do I do now?"

"Don't put it back in! Don't put it back in!" he warned her.

Rebecca's eyes flicked up to the heart monitor that he was attached to. Her face became pale. "Did I just – ?"

"You put him into cardiac arrest," Bruce confirmed. His tone was nonchalant, but Tony could see just how freaked out he was along with the two of them.

"You said it was safe!" At any other time, it would've been funny to see Rebecca freaked out like this, because it was a new one. But not now.

"It was supposed to be. But you yanked it out like a trout," Tony grumbled in spite of himself. He could feel those pieces of shrapnel in his chest trying to get to his heart. They had to act fast. "The new arc reactor...you gotta switch it out quick. Quick, Anastasia."

Rebecca nodded, steeling her breath. "Okay. I've got this, Tony, Bruce."

"You've gotta attach it to the base plate first," the omega instructed. When she did, he screamed from the pain of the zap of the electricity and the shrapnel being pulled back. He was pretty sure he was bleeding somewhere, but it would heal. Probably. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" he asked Rebecca and Bruce breathlessly as he rubbed at his skin around the arc reactor before he moved to put his robe back on properly. "That was fun, right?"

He could tell from their expressions just how "fun" that was.

But neither of them said anything about how they didn't want to do it again. Partially, that was because he'd already explained to Bruce that hopefully they wouldn't have to, since he'd made the new arc reactor with a "recharging" ability, if you will.

Rebecca held up the old arc reactor. "What do you want me to do with this?"

"That?" he questioned rhetorically. "Destroy it. Incinerate it."

"You don't want to keep it?"

"Nah."

After she left, Bruce sighed again and ran a hand over his face. "What am I going to do with you, Omega?"

"Love me," Tony quipped. He kissed Bruce on the cheek. "You should go out tonight."

"What? No," Bruce protested. "You just got back from being held captive for two months. I need to be here with you."

"The people of Gotham need you, too. You've been gone for a month and a half; they're probably wondering where you are," Tony pointed out. Honestly, sometimes he thought that it was a miracle nobody had connected the dots yet. "I will be fine. I'm actually going to be doing some work down here tonight."

"'Work?'" Bruce quoted him. "What for?"

"I told you: I need to figure out how my weapons got into the hands of Zadran and his people," Tony answered him evasively. He poked him in the chest. "Go. I know Jason's got to be dying to finally get to patrol with you as Robin."

It took a little bit more encouragement on his part, but he was able to get Bruce to go out. After he'd left, Tony went back down to the lab, a mug of coffee in his hand. He was going to need some caffeine tonight. "JARVIS, you up?"

"For you, sir, always."

"I'd like to open a new project file, index as Mark Two."

"Shall I store this on the Stark Industries Central Database?"

Tony thought about it. "Actually, I don't know who to trust right now. Till further notice, why don't we just keep everything on my private server?"

"Working on a secret project, are we, sir?"

"I don't want this winding up in the wrong hands. Maybe in mine, it can actually do some good."

He was making another suit. Perhaps it was stupid. No, it was stupid. He was Tony Stark; billionaire, omither, philanthropist, genius. He was not a vigilante or a superhero. The former title belonged with his husband as Batman and those he patrolled with, and the latter title belonged to perhaps Captain America, but mostly to comic books. Neither belonged to him. He'd never had any interests in crime-fighting before, and he still didn't – at least, not when it came to problems outside of who the fuck was selling his weapons to people they shouldn't to, because there had to be another traitor in Stark Industries than just Farzana.

But just like everything else he built, Tony knew he could do better than his initial suit. He'd built it in a cave in Afghanistan with nothing more than scraps. Now that he had everything that he needed at his disposal, he knew that the Mark Two could blow its previous installment out of the water. And with this new suit, or maybe the one after it, he knew that he could get his weapons out of the hands of the wrong people – maybe not for good, because nothing good could last forever, but as close to that as he could get.

He was so lost in his work of designing the suit, he didn't notice that he'd drained his cup of coffee – or that it had been refilled. It was only when he brought the cup to his lips and drank from it that he realized what had happened. Coughing, he spat out the liquid back into the mug, whirling around with a glare. "DUM-E, are you trying to kill me?" he demanded the robot incredulously. "This is motor oil, not coffee!"

The robot, along with his "siblings" Butterfingers and U, chirped out an apology.

Tony wasn't able to stay mad at him. In many ways, he viewed the robots as his own children just as much as his actual children. He patted DUM-E's side as he went over to the kitchenette in the lab to wash out his cup (and his mouth) and to get a pot of coffee brewing. "I know, you were just trying your best. It's okay."

He spent his nights for the rest of the week, up until JARVIS informed him that Bruce and Jason would be coming home in a couple of hours because then he went upstairs and went through the motions of getting ready for bed, working on this little "pet project" of his. Bruce didn't really ask him what he was doing and Tony didn't tell, because there was technically a legal document preventing them from going too in-depth about their companies with each other due to antitrust laws. Granted, they both could get pretty selective about following laws when they wanted to, but in this they stuck pretty true to the letter and spirit. Tony didn't know, though, if it was because they were truly following the spirit, or if Bruce had decided that he didn't want to know what he was planning and Tony didn't want to inform him. Maybe it was both.

Regardless, by the end of the week, he had a decent amount of the Mark Two built: the boots, the flight stabilizers/repulsers for his hands and arms, and the helmet. The test runs of them all were also going well. He'd quickly found out that using even 10% of the thrust capacity of the repulsers was a very bad thing, as he succeeded in flinging himself back and hitting the upper wall of his lab, which had caused DUM-E to prematurely blow the fire extinguisher on him, but things could be worse. Nobody had woken up from his little stunt and come down to see what he was doing, though he wouldn't have hidden what he was doing from them (except for his biological kids, to be honest). He'd worried initially if he'd harmed the baby inside him – he was already thinking of them as a baby now, maybe not the best of things considering he wasn't even four weeks yet – but he didn't experience any cramping or anything else. Though if he had, it wasn't like Dr. Maxwell would be able to do anything for him this soon anyways.

(How was he going to explain to her that he was pregnant again when she'd performed his tubal ligation and that all of his reproductive issues had been spontaneously fixed? That was another concern to add to his growing list. He had the feeling she was absolutely going to lose a gasket when she found out.)

But back to his run-in with the wall, his initial worries changed into something else later the following day. As he was changing his clothes with his husband in the room, he realized that Bruce wasn't making any comments about the bruises that were on his back. Because with how hard he had hit the wall, there had to be bruises on his back.

"Bruce," he began tentatively, "does my back look...bruised to you?"

He watched the alpha in the mirror as he turned around, frowning. "No," Bruce said, stepping behind him. He put his hands on Tony's back, and Tony felt even more uncertain as it didn't even hurt. Not at all. "Should it be?"

"I had an accident in the lab last night," Tony replied. The lie by omission felt hot and sticky in his mouth, but he knew if he fessed up to just how bad it had been, Bruce would be the one to lose a gasket, not his obstetrician.

Bruce scowled. "You need to be more careful, Omega."

"I know. I usually am," he responded. "It was just a slip-up."

Now he had a mystery of his own going on to think about besides his husband's: why had his body been so resilient last night?

But this was one that he would think about later.

Later.

Word Count: 5,380

Next Chapter Title: just an omega