Pepper rolled over. God, she felt awful, but her cumbersome body was tugging her awake again. She supported her belly with her arm as sat up, and since Bruce wasn't awake to see, she allowed herself a wide-stanced heave to get out of bed.
She felt better after visiting the bathroom and returned to bed, but it wasn't long before the ache returned. Her due date had come and gone a week ago, and while the thought of labor did strike her mind, she mostly just felt tired and achy.
Half an hour later she abandoned the bed again and that was when she ran into Tony in the hallway. Pacing.
"What?" she asked, immediately sensing his worries. She closed the door behind her. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything. Well technically I did do--"
"--but I'm not calculating the likelihood of my direct resp--"
"No, how much? Did you have Reed over? He's smarter than--"
"Not thinking about damage, thank you, and I resent the implication that Richards--"
Pepper groaned here. She couldn't deal with cleanup, couldn't deal, she hurt and was huge and waddling and didn't want to evacuate at this hour and at this stage of her pregnancy. She grabbed Tony's arm.
"Breathe," said Tony, hyperventilating in her face to show her how to do it. "Did you wake up Bruce? Bruce!"
There was a vague sound from the bedroom. Dr. Banner did not exit slumber gracefully, ever.
"Breathe, breathe," he continued, his hands all over Pepper's arms and shoulders as he tried to support her. She swatted at him, which he ignored. "I've been tracking your body and your contractions--"
"--are getting closer together with a little bit of variat-- Bruce?"
Tony and Pepper argued about whether or not Tony was allowed to watch Bruce check her cervix throughout the whole cervix-checking operation.
"Yeah, um, guys, there's some definite dilation there and with the pattern-- I think we're going to have a baby today?" Bruce seemed to be going for optimism as he removed his gloves but fell somewhat short of the goal. He looked a little green around the edges and Pepper was going to have to eject Tony from the room if he didn't calm down soon. She was starting to feel a little bit of panic.
"Okay. That's good," she said firmly, trying to reassure them both. "Get me my phone. I need to call Rhodey."
That's when she realized that she was seated in warm and wet sheets, and even though she knew that it was probably her water breaking, she still tried to figure out how to get her husbands out of the room so she could clean this up herself. Oh god they were going to see her big and bloody and covered with fluids and Tony would never think of her as pretty again and this home birth thing was a terrible idea, the worst she'd ever had, why didn't she insist on a traditional hospital no-husband event?
"Rhodey?" Tony argued through this. "I don't think he's going to be on board with this. I don't think we've settled who is going to cut the cord but he is not on the list this time, I don't care which senator you call."
Three sentences and she hadn't interrupted him. She couldn't. Her body had crafted between her hips a new sort of pain, overwhelming to the senses like a full orchestra striking a chord. She was still with her mouth open and Tony's words were so distant and unimportant that her mind didn't even bother assigning meaning to the sound.
And then, next to her ear, Bruce's voice: "Breathe, sweetheart." She inhaled. She had forgotten to.