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John would have expected himself to recover quickly, at least outwardly, from the effects of the super soldier serum. Things may have stuck with him for a while emotionally, but over the years he had gotten pretty good at keeping his persona free from any of that pesky emotional clutter. Whatever he felt would stay buried, and no one would ever have to know that it bothered him. But this shift had been harder to hide. When you’re an Alpha, you might have to work hard to constantly be strong and tough, to be the leader even when you don’t have it in you to lead, but when you’re an omega, it was the opposite. You COULDN’T lead, you COULDN’T be strong and tough. At this point, John guessed that he just couldn’t fucking win.
Aside from the fact that becoming an omega had just changed the expectations put on him instead of removing them entirely, the hardest part was just trying to adjust. Growls became whines, dens became nests, ruts became heats. It felt like the entire world had flipped upside down and John spent every day waiting for the floor to go back to being the ceiling again. His first heat may have been the hardest to deal with. He was still with Olivia then, just weeks out from injecting himself with the serum, and it hit him harder than anything he’d ever felt before. The way the serum increased his anger made him feel feral, snarling at anyone who tried to come into his space, hissing at any mention of help from his mate, from his wife. He loved her, of course he did, but there was nothing she could do to help him. She was an omega, she didn’t have a knot, there wouldn’t be any amount of love and care that would satisfy him without that. And even if having her around, having her touch him, would have made it even marginally better, John refused. Olivia married him, agreed to be his mate, under the assumption that he would provide for her, take care of her and their eventual children, be someone strong and dependable. He’d never let her see him like this, curled into the fetal position, crying for something inside him, noises weak and frankly, according to John at least, pathetic. They were never that way when Olivia made them, they had always sounded so sweet, made to get his attention, to soothe him. But he was supposed to be an Alpha, not this.
The part of him that had fantasized about being an omega was not a conscious part of his thought process. All he had ever wanted was to feel free to make his own choices, and to stop looking at every room he was in, every person around him, like a chessboard, making hungry power moves that would drive him to the top, no matter who he knocked over. He had wanted a chance to stop seeing people as obstacles, as threats to his authority, and just let them in, let them be his friends and his teammates. Every day that John was an Alpha was a day where he could hear his father in his head, telling him that he couldn’t cry when he was hurt, crying was for omegas. The same voice chastised him for wanting flowers on his kitchen table, for taking Christmas card pictures, for initiating cuddles and kisses. Soft was fine, if it was a chore that he undertook to make an omega happy, but Alphas weren’t meant for soft. He never really wanted to be an omega, necessarily, he just wanted to stop being an Alpha for a minute. Maybe he could have just left the military, dropped the mantle of Captain America, chosen to let himself be whoever he wanted, Alpha or not. But his father’s voice in his head would never go away, and sometimes the words back to it were soft whispers, in the dark of night when everyone else was asleep. Sometimes the answer to the pressure and demands was simply ‘I wish I was an omega so I didn’t have to deal with this bullshit’. He had never really meant it.
Sure, when Olivia was pregnant he had admired her. She was his wife and mate, pregnant with their son. His gaze lingered on her soft curves and round belly simply to admire someone he loved and found beautiful, not because he had ever been jealous. Not because he had ever imagined those features on himself. By the time their son was born, he was able to push most of those inner thoughts aside, focused on trying to give that tiny little baby every chance that John had never had. But when John saw that serum, when the realization of what he could do hit him, those same thoughts came back to him. This was a way that he could keep those expectations held up, stay the provider that he needed to be, and help avenge Lemar, the only person who had ever really seen him for who he was. He thought it would make him stronger, braver, a better Alpha for his wife and son. But those thoughts had really just come back to bite him in the ass. Now he was an omega, and that wife had left him, taking their son with her. No one left to provide for, even if he could. It was unfair. It was hell.
Until he became a Thunderbolt, and eventually a New Avenger. Bob showed him how to make nests so they would stay up for weeks and not get messed up, Yelena asked if he was okay when a rogue whine escaped his throat instead of laughing at him, Bucky kept his door guarded during his heats and left him food and water outside of it, Ava would yell at anyone who looked at him the wrong way. He had finally found something that felt like family. People who didn’t care what he was, just that he was John. That was what he had been looking for, this whole time, and it was poor fucking luck that he had to become an omega before he found it. They all helped, made him slowly regain his humanity, get back his real pride and shed the fake inflated ego. Everyone……with the exception of Alexei. The Red Guardian. The biggest pain in the ass in John’s life. Sometimes literally.
After a while with his new family, his guard had finally started to come down. He hadn’t even realized it was happening, but Alexei had slowly started to think of John as his, and John had started to share the opinion. At first it was simple things. Alexei was laying down on the couch, and refusing to move, so John just sat on top of him. It progressed from that to Alexei pulling John into his lap, John whining when he was already in the gym and had left his water bottle or towel upstairs, knowing Alexei would hear it and go get whatever it was that he needed. Eventually, it became John bent over Alexei’s bed, biting down on a pillow so the whole team wouldn’t hear him beg for Alexei to breed him. It became Alexei feeling more at home with his knot buried in John’s hole than he had ever felt anywhere else, voice soft and low as he praised the omega under him. They fell into each other without realizing it, and by the time John had his third Heat in the New Avengers tower, Alexei was there with him. It was four days full of hot cum filling him so full he couldn’t breathe, box of condoms in his nightstand long abandoned. Four days of Alexei grabbing him by his hips with one hand, pulling his hair with the other, commanding him to be a good omega and let his Alpha breed him full of pups.
What started as simple dirty talk, spurned on by John’s heat-induced whimpers and Alexei’s need to get him pregnant that had long since surpassed a typical kink, had smacked him the face on a Tuesday morning as he stared at the plastic test in his hand. He had been feeling off since his heat. Sore, uncomfortable, irritable, and he had missed his period and his next heat cycle, now late by almost a week. The first thing he thought when he noticed all of it was immediately that he was pregnant, reliving all the things Olivia had complained about in his own body, but he had pushed it aside until he couldn’t take the constant nagging at the back of his head anymore, couldn’t take being unfocused in workouts and mission briefs. A snack run for their weekly movie night eventually turned into John standing in the family planning aisle of a Walgreens, led there by feet that he didn’t seem to be in full control of, test placed on the checkout counter by hands that seemed to be in the same boat. Now here was that same test, gripped in his hand as he leaned against his bathroom counter, staring at the two pink lines so hard that they seemed to burn into his vision, seeing them no matter where he tried to look. After a meltdown about it, one that involved punching a hole in the wall and lots of dramatic crying, John brought the test to Alexei, who wordlessly dropped his mouth open, pulling John into an embrace, muttering to him that he was so excited, that he would take care of John and their baby. Maybe watching him proudly show the rest of the team the test wasn’t so bad, even if Yelena did remind all of them that it was so gross to touch something that had John’s pee on it, and everyone insisted on dragging him into a group hug, chatting excitedly about which Thunderbolt the baby would be named after, and who would be the favorite aunt or uncle.
By the time Sam Wilson sued them for the Avengers name and copyright, John showed up to the hearing six months pregnant, his first public appearance since finding out. He wanted to lunge at all the camera flashes, to hit anyone that stared at him, but Alexei’s soothing rumble as John leaned against him kept him mostly non-violent, especially accompanied by the knowledge that his own personal attack dogs were sitting beside him, the whole team ready to defend him, even though they reminded him daily that they still kind of thought he was an asshole. Was it petty the way he sat with his hands cradling his belly, making a show of rubbing it gently and looking up at Sam with big doe eyes every time he spoke? Oh absolutely, for sure. But as a man who used to be an Alpha, he knew the sway it would have on Captain America himself, and pity might be a decent way to get what you want, even if it wasn’t as thrilling as punching your way to victory. He was smug while he did it, making sure to drop a wink to Bob sitting a few people away from him, who was sporting a matching bump, just much newer and smaller, not visible under his suit yet.
John was in labor for 22 hours. He broke 7 bones in Alexei’s hand, said every single curse word he could remember, and declared that Alexei’s penis would never be near him again, which the both of them knew would be a lie. John pushed and pushed, feeling like labor would never end, like he would be stuck like this forever, but eventually, 22 excruciating hours later, it was finally over. John was holding a baby in his arms, his baby. He couldn’t stop the tears that hit him, dismissing them as exhaustion and hormones instead of weakness, and stared down at the little pink baby in his arms. He had light brown hair, and sparkling blue eyes that made him look like John, and he screamed so loud, waving his fists in the air, that he was well and truly proven to be Alexei’s son.
All of the Thunderbolts, the New Avengers, his family, met Lemar Shostakov-Walker at 9:22 pm. All of them cried, even Ava, and Bob proudly cradled his now visible bump, very firmly telling John that their kids would be best friends, siblings. Yelena was quick to remind all of them that in a lot of ways, Lemar was her sibling already, and Bucky was even quicker to joke that John was her step-dad. John fell asleep that night with his hand in the bassinet next to him, the fingers that had been stained with blood being held onto by a tiny little fist, fresh and innocent, with his new family asleep all around him, cuddled into chairs and benches around his hospital room, Alexei asleep against his neck, rubbing his scent on John and softly cooing in his sleep, happiness overflowing into sounds he didn’t even realize he was making. John had always been an Alpha. But maybe being an omega, maybe making a family, wasn’t so bad after all.