#oneofthree

Clint goes into labor first. He’s two weeks early and he’s terrified because Tony has said that it’s not good for babies to come early. Clint’s water breaks as he’s accepting a breakfast smoothie from Steve and they both stare down at his sweatpants where there’s a wet spot growing before a klaxon starts blaring and JARVIS booms “RED ALERT. RED ALERT.”

“WHAT THE FUCK,” Clint shouts as Bucky comes skidding out of the bedroom.

Tony comes waddling out a moment later, looking harried. “Clint, are you okay?!”

“I’d be better if JARVIS would SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Clint shouts at the ceiling, and the klaxons immediately cease.

“I had that set up in case I went into labor in the workshop,” Tony says apologetically. “I guess with the baby brain I forgot to just have it apply to me.”

Well, Clint thinks to himself silently. He supposes he can forgive Tony for it just this once.

“So we need to go to the hospital now, right?” Steve asks.

“I mean, I don’t feel like I’m having contractions,” Clint says after a moment. He’s had Braxton Hicks. This doesn’t feel like that.

“You still need to go. You’re early. Something could be wrong with the baby!” Tony insists, waddling toward the door. “I’ll get the car!”

“No the hell you won’t,” Bucky says, and Tony grumbles about being stuck in the backseat with Clint all the way to the hospital about how it’s his car and he should be able to drive it, he can still reach the pedals if he pushes the chair back a bit.

“Yeah, assholes, it’s Tony’s car,” Clint says, smiling a little. “He should be able to drive it.”

“I will come back there and strangle you,” Steve tells him.

Clint opens his mouth to crack another joke but stops when he notices how stricken Tony looks. “Tony?”

“Don’t–don’t say things like that, Steve,” Tony says worriedly, and the blond looks back at him in concern. “We’re not married. What if they hear you saying those things and make you leave?”

“I would hope they’d make me leave anyway because what abusive trash,” Steve says, but reaches out to cup Tony’s cheek gently anyway. “I’m sorry. I won’t make jokes like that again, okay?” Tony leans into his hand.

Clint curls his arm around Tony’s shoulders and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Don’t worry. We’ll all behave.”

Tony gets kicked out anyway because he makes a fuss about how NO ONE’S PAYING ATTENTION TO HIS BOYFRIEND WHAT IF HE GOES INTO LABOR AND POPS OUT A BABY WHILE NO ONE’S LOOKING. “’s quiet in here,” Clint comments, rubbing his thumb gently over Bucky’s knuckles.

“Mm,” Bucky agrees. “’s nice.”

Tony is allowed back in about four hours later, when Clint is finally starting to have some labor pains. “We had to promise to be quiet,” he mumbles petulantly.

“Tony had to promise to be quiet,” Steve corrects gently. “And I had to promise to carry him out if he misbehaved.”

“I’m breaking up with all of you,” Tony says, lip trembling a little, and they all blanch when they realize the tears in his eyes are real. “I’m just concerned about my boyfriend and his baby and you’re making fun of me!”

“Sweetie, come here, come here,” Clint urges, sliding to one side of the bed so Tony can curl up beside him. It’s a tight squeeze, since they’re both about to pop, but Tony has always been good about curling around his boyfriends like liquid, so he hides his warm face in Clint’s shoulder as the other omega makes soothing noises.

Dr. Cho tries to make Tony get out of bed when it’s time for Clint to push but Clint snarls at her and gets real close to her face and hisses, “He stays,” and when Dr. Cho looks at Steve and Bucky for help, they shrug. Clint has already crushed Bucky’s hand and dislocated one of Steve’s fingers. They’re not going to actively make him unhappy by moving Tony, especially when Tony is whispering encouragement into his ear and petting his hair.

“A girl,” Clint whispers, running a finger down her chubby cheek, and then sobs, overwhelmed. Sarah is small but she’s perfectly healthy and she immediately poops all over Bucky. Clint has never been more proud.

As early as Sarah is, though… that’s how late Tony’s baby is.

“DON’T. Touch me,” he hisses when Steve moves to wrap an arm around him. Steve awkwardly sidles away from him. Tony continues to glare at the television, arms crossed over his chest and resting on his belly.

“Doll, c’mon,” Bucky cajoles. “A back rub would make you feel better.”

“DON’T. Tell me what would make me feel better,” Tony hisses at him, wild-eyed. He attempts to flounce away but can’t get up off the couch without help. He sneers at Steve’s hands in disgust before taking them and allowing the alpha to pull him up onto his feet. Then he tries to flounce away again, but it’s hard to flounce when you’ve got to waddle instead of sashay.

Clint rolls his eyes and sighs and says, “Someone go after him. At this rate he’s liable to take something to induce himself.”

Bucky skitters after Tony frantically and carries him back an hour later, looking sleepy and sated and somehow still mulishly impatient.

Then one night Tony wakes up and doubles over in pain, eyes crossing with how much his head hurts. “Steve,” he whispers, because Clint is hard to wake even on a good night. His vision is blurry. “Steve. It hurts.”

Steve jerks awake and scoops Tony up before he’s even really aware of what’s happening. “JARVIS something’s wrong get Clint up bye,” the alpha says as he stuffs Tony into a car and promptly proceeds to break every traffic law possible to get Tony to the hospital.

“Eclampsia,” Steve grits out when Bucky and Clint come stumbling into the waiting room, Sarah clutched in the omega’s arms. “They’ve got to–he’s on IVs and they’re inducing, but the baby isn’t turning. They’re doing a C-section.”

“Why aren’t you fuckin’ in there, then?!” Bucky snarls, and Steve starts sobbing as he answers, “Because he fainted before he could say he wanted me in there and I’m his boyfriend and not his husband!”

Bucky and Clint freeze, cold down to their bones. It’s no secret that they’re all dating, especially with the interview Tony did, but legally, they have no say in anything that happens. Because they’re not married–none of them are. So all they can do is sit, and wait, and worry, because they don’t even know which one of them is the father of the baby in the operating room.

Then Maria Stark arrives like an avenging angel and pounces on the first nurse she sees. “WHERE. IS. MY BABY,” she hisses, and the nurse bravely tries to state that she’s not allowed to say but then Maria bares her teeth and growls and in a situation like this protocol says “tell the mother and then immediately notify security.” She storms into the operating room and is promptly dragged back out by security.

“You may sit here or in a cell,” they tell her in the waiting room. She chooses to sit in the waiting room.

“Where’s Howard?” Steve asks snidely.

“He didn’t make it past the front desk before he punched a security guard,” Maria sniffs. Her eyes dart over Sarah before going back to the wall in front of her.

Steve and Bucky are all for stuffing Clint and Sarah between them and keeping Maria from ever looking at them again. The sounds of dismay from them as Clint stands up and walks over to her are not quiet.

“Do you want to see her?” Clint asks kindly.

Maria doesn’t answer for a long moment before tipping her head down to look at Sarah. She’s quiet for several minutes before her face crumples as she looks back up at the other omega. “Oh, Clint,” she says tearfully. “What if my little baby doesn’t make it?” And then she sobs helplessly into his shoulder as Clint wraps his free arm around her.

Steve and Bucky still don’t like her, but it occurs to them that just because she doesn’t like the people Tony’s dating doesn’t mean she loves Tony any less for dating them, so they begrudgingly keep their mouths shut.

Howard is eventually allowed up into the waiting room.

“You are tranqued,” Maria comments, much more put together now that she’s been allowed to have a good cry.

Howard smiles at her happily. “I am so tranquilized that they had to keep me in observation to make sure they didn’t accidentally overdose me.”

“You never did do anything by halves,” Clint comments, just a little meanly.

Howard looks at him, then looks at Sarah, and then says, “Well, that’s quite a lot of baby weight for you to lose.”

“HOWARD,” Maria barks.

“Is that what your nose looked like before it was broken? Because it doesn’t look like Steve or Bucky’s. Honestly you look better after having it broken. I can pay for your baby’s nose job.”

“Steve! Bucky!” Clint yelps, hustling out of the way so Steve and Bucky can keep Maria from strangling Howard.

“Ma’am, have you ever considered teaching a self-defense class,” Bucky asks once he’s gotten her into a headlock and Steve has dragged Howard to sit on the other side of the room. “Because honestly I’m pretty sure you made my testicles jump back inside my body.” Maria sniffs at him disdainfully.

A nurse brings out a little yellow bundle. They all crowd around her, too awed and scared to say anything. The baby fusses, whines, then falls silent with a little coo.

“How’s Tony?” Steve asks after the baby has fallen asleep.

The nurse frowns. “He’s… not well.”

“My baby,” Maria gasps, eyes going glassy.

Another nurse appears a moment later, looking harried. “He woke up and attempted to strangle the doctor with his own stethoscope.”

Everyone turns to look at Maria. She blinks at them placidly. “What?”

“Why did Tony have to inherit all of your Italian anger,” Howard asks her sadly. “You tried to club me with a bedpan when you woke up after giving birth to Tony, too.”

“Carbonells don’t like to be vulnerable,” Maria sniffs.

“You hit me twice.”

Tony’s recovery is slow, but he makes it. “This is our only baby,” Bucky tells him sharply when he’s lucid.

“I lived,” Tony tries to argue.

“We had to keep your mom from strangling your drugged-up dad,” Steve deadpans. “And your dad said Sarah’s nose is ugly.”

“Mm,” Tony says, fussing with the blanket his son is swaddled in. “Sounds like my dad.”

“Tony,” Steve and Bucky bark. They’ll have time to get used to Tony’s parents, though. After all, Clint has.

“I can pay for Sarah’s nose job if you’re that upset about it.”

“It’s not about the money!” Steve and Bucky exclaim.

Clint examines Sarah’s little face. “I think Sarah’s nose is cute.”

“It is, but if we keep talking about it, it’s going to give Sarah a complex and she’s gonna want to change it,” Tony says reasonably. “That’s how I felt when I got my tattoo.”

Steve and Bucky are quiet for quite some time before Bucky says, “You don’t have a tattoo.”

“Yeah, I made him laser it off, it was bad,” Clint replies, shrugging. Steve and Bucky squint at him. What was so bad that even Clint couldn’t handle it?

(The world finds out about Tony’s baby and his difficult birthing of him when Tony tweets a picture of him holding the baby and doing a peace sign while captioning it, “My child could kill Macbeth and tried practicing on me.”

“TONY,” Steve and Bucky snarl as Clint laughs and laughs.

“I’m naming him Macduff,” Tony says.

“YOU ABSOLUTELY THE HELL ARE NOT.”)

((They agree on Malcolm, but only because Steve and Bucky will not name their son “Pendragon,” “Arthur,” or “Merlin.”