A/N: Rarely enough, I'm having some extra notes down below for some random fun facts I've sorta left out. As it is, I'm having my customary here's where the title of the fic comes from (Harry James and Ellen Forrest's It's Been A Long, Long Time, mainly because it seemed appropriate and I really couldn't resist) and I hope you enjoy reading!

It's been a long day for Steve — a long week, a long month, a long, long, long seventy years or so — and it wears on him as it might wear on one's old, favorite pair of shoes. He almost wishes that he was back on the rubble-filled streets of Manhattan, fighting actual aliens being led by a god that he didn't believe in. Alas, he's stuck on the top floors of Stark Tower, effectively quarantined as much as the rest of the Avengers are.

SHIELD has gotten even more high-strung lately; ever since Stark's random heart attack and his fight with his other self, security has been upped to more than maximum levels. It felt like ages ago when Stark almost had a panic attack in the middle of their meeting with Fury, negotiating for what little freedom they could still have while Romanov and Banner kept him up by the arms.

"I am a private individual," he stressed, eyes wild and hands shaking. "So is Bruce. You have no claims on Thor, he's not even from Earth and we don't have rules for him, and you may have found Rogers but that would not have been possible without the SI expeditions that my dad funded all those years ago. I didn't file charges against Romanov for that little stunt you pulled a few years back but do not think that I cannot. And do not think that I can't dig up anything against Barton, or against this whole goddamn shadow organization for the shady dealings you've undoubtedly had, Nick."

"Fine then," the other man gritted out. "I trust that Stark Industries would have better tech than SHIELD."

"If you would just let me upgrade your shitty OS—"

"So you'll have better surveillance," Fury continued. "You're all under strict orders to never leave the premises of Stark Tower unless permitted, by me and only me, for six months, starting tomorrow. I'll have Hill draft up the necessary paperwork and discuss the matter with Miss Potts. Dismissed."

Everyone turned wide eyes at Fury, and Stark openly gaped. "It's my property, my company, you can't do that."

"And you're my team and my organization has just gotten a security breach the size of that nuke you carried to space," Fury shot back. "I will not consider any alternative until I feel free to make the next move, so I suggest you run off, see a shrink, pack your bags, and don't try to tell me what I can and cannot do ever again."

And that was that.

Miss Potts — "Call me Pepper," she smiled, wearing heels that Steve was pretty sure would kill a lesser man — had the brilliant idea to sell it as a PR stunt. Calling themselves The Avengers, they'd make it look like they'd established Stark Tower as their main base of operations, establish themselves as a superhero team that would protect the world against villains that could not be dealt with using conventional means and basically give the public a heightened sense of hope after the attack. Meanwhile, since they couldn't actually fight threats unless Fury allowed them to, SHIELD would mitigate them in secret while they were safe and sound at the Tower. The credit goes to them as public figures, and SHIELD remains as covert as they needed to be. The resulting press conference meant that all of them had to come clean with their identities ("To inspire trust in the people," as they were told), which made Romanov and Barton grumble but SHIELD ultimately felt was necessary to keep up the act.

"Yeah, we're basically the Teen Titans," Stark had drawled, signature smirk and sunglasses in place. The press ate it up like sharks. "You know — the cyborg, the dark chick, the preppy alien, the morally upright leader, and the green transforming guy. Granted, we also have a guy that shoots arrows, but that's a little more Justice League, right?"

"Keep up that talk and you're getting that arrow up your butt," Barton said, and the crowd went wild.

Stark had played up his charming, annoying, but loveable persona in the presscon, and it more than made up for the stifling awkwardness everybody else had. Looking back at the whole video, the Avengers seemed a lot like the Howling Commandos at its prime: close as brothers, united as a unit. Steve had no doubt that the public saw them as good friends that fought crime in the day and laughed themselves silly at night, but the sad reality was this:

Stark gave them all their own floor, and none of them ever left it.

It's not a nice reality.

But at the same time, what could Steve expect? They worked together great as a team, but they were all essentially lone wolves — some by choice, others by fate — and apparently, if it took an attempted alien invasion to bring the six of them together, then it'd take more than that to forge an actual bond, an actual team. It's ridiculous, but Steve privately thought that he'd hoped a supervillain would come up soon just to force everybody out of their comfort zone again. Nobody on the team really interacted outside of Stark's visits to Banner's lab or Barton and Romanov's regular sparring in either of their gyms, and it's all just a far, far cry from anything the people on the internet imagine their home life to be like. The most they've been doing as a group has been ordering take-out, for God's sake.

Steve is frustrated by the situation and also resigned to it. If nothing's blowing up and the team isn't getting along as well as he'd hoped, then fine. He'll just educate himself on the modern times, hope he'll find something on Bucky (because even if he couldn't trust his other self who was probably Loki in disguise, the possibility of it still nagged at him), and express all his anger and boredom through art and demolished punching bags.

So he does. He wakes up, looks out the window, sighs, goes to gym, eats, goes back to the gym, maybe reads a bit, maybe sketches, tries to watch the news, gets angry, goes back to the gym, and pushes himself to exhaustion until he can collapse in bed and the cycle will begin anew. And it's routine, okay, and that's not exciting but Steve has been through worse. The important thing is that he is alive, and that he is healthy, and that he is safe, and he always has food in the fridge, and he's living with at least five other people in the building so no matter what he's not as alone as he actually feels and he just has to remember that he's not as cold as he actually feels and that he's out the ice now even if he left Bucky and Peggy and everyone he loves behind —

Steve stares blankly up at his ceiling and feels trapped. He pushes himself out of his bed, out of his room, and rides the elevator to the closest he can get to being outside the Tower.

Oddly enough, he finds Stark at the rooftop as well.

He's just about to apologize for intruding when Stark calls out, "Hey, I don't bite. You can stay."

Steve takes one look at the dark circles under his eyes, his unkempt hair, and the way his hands shake as he holds his half-empty glass of whiskey. He doesn't look like the nigh-invincible man who pilots the Iron Man armor, and the way the blue light of the arc reactor softens the sharp edges of his face makes Stark appear soft, gentle, vulnerable. And as much as he'd hate to admit it, but he could use a little vulnerability right now.

"I heal quick, bite me all you want," he says, and Stark laughs. Steve takes it as his cue to move closer.

They stand in silence, taking in the vast expanse of New York spreading out before them — the sight he saw every day and refused to fully acknowledge until that night. Bright and flashy and filled with buildings made to reach the sky, Steve had never felt both so amazed and nostalgic at the same time. The streets he knew back then and the streets he sees today are so jarring when held in juxtaposition with each other. He's filled with a sharp pang of pride at the development, and another of longing for a place he can't revisit. This odd feeling of missing a place that you're already in; maybe only Steve knows this feeling so well.

He spares a look at Stark, surprised to see that the other man is looking up. He looks oddly forlorn, an expression he didn't expect to ever see on Stark's face. Without the arrogant charisma, he looks. . . tired. Just as tired as Steve feels.

It feels wrong. As much as Steve disliked the man when they just met, he couldn't deny that Stark was a hell of a lot better-looking with a smile than he was without it. Besides, he had no doubt that Stark was having just as much trauma keeping him up at night, and it's three in the morning and he's really got nothing to lose, so he takes a deep breath and —

"I really like sci-fi," he blurts out. "I grew up loving it, you know? And sci-fi was on all the radios back then: Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Undersea Kingdom. I'd sneak into theaters with Bucky and it'd all be about a scientist with an experiment gone wrong, and I'd see the comics and the novels and it'd be the same. New technology everywhere, things that were yet to be discovered. I was young and artsy but when I got to go to one of them old Stark Expos, the newness of it all, the possibilities. . . it excited me.

"More than anything though, I loved it when the stories were in space. On the Moon, or on Mars, or anywhere in the galaxy: I loved the idea of man among the stars, literally reaching heights that were never reached before. I tried drawing it before but," he chuckles. "Nah. I didn't have the imagination for it. In the end, I still preferred drawing art of things that I could see."

"Well, I'm a billionaire engineer. I'm pretty sure I could get you on a spaceship," Stark says. He grins when Steve laughs, "No, Steve, I'm serious: I can literally build you your own spaceship. We'd paint it red, white, and blue and then we'd put little wings on the side like your cowl, it'd be great."

"I'm not in the mood to lose my lunch in zero-gravity, but thanks for the offer," he says dryly. He sees Stark smile into his glass, and oddly, he feels lighter upon seeing it. "That's my weird tidbit for the day. Bet that wasn't in the history books, or in my Wikipedium article, was it?"

Stark snorts. "It's Wikipedia, old man."

He shrugs. "It's all the same to me."

"Whatever," says Stark. "Lots of things they don't cover in the history books. Like how much you eat, after a morning run? And in only fifteen minutes? Forget biographies, that should be in the Guinness book of world records. I'd call a guy and verify it, but I don't think that's something you'd condone on short-notice."

"I'll. . .think about it?" Steve does not know how to respond. He's forgotten how much Stark's humor often feels like getting hit with a whip: loud, fast, and leaves you slightly stunned in the aftermath.

They fall into silence once again. After a minute or two, Steve sees the other man down the rest of his alcohol in one go and mutter fuck it under his breath, which shouldn't amuse him as much as it does.

"It's not the sort of thing I like to admit but, uh, I liked the Arthurian mythos," Stark says. "I was too young to be allowed in dad's study or interrupt mom's socializing, so I'd spend a lot of my time in the library. And it's mostly engineering books, right? A lot of physics and mechanical work and chemistry theory and stuff I needed to learn because someday I'd inherit SI and head R&D.

"But I was seven, and it gets boring, you know? And it wasn't even a big library, so I read through everything enough times to know it was all basic know-how. But my butler, he was British, and he knew me better than anyone else at that house. He takes one look at me reading Feyerabend for the third time, scoffs, and gives me this thin paperback. Breezed through it an hour or two. The damn thing fascinated me so much that it changed my life, and I never told him, but I think he knew.

"God," Stark smiles wistfully, and the way he says it almost sounds like a prayer. "I hope he knew."

Steve figures that there's a lot of baggage there that he doubts the other man would like to unpack in front of him, so he clears his throat after a moment and says, "Is that why you fly around in a suit of armor?"

Stark turns his face away from Steve, pointedly refusing to look him in the eye. "Maybe, but what's it to you? We barely know each other."

"The atmosphere, maybe?" he shrugs. "Having heartfelt conversations under the moonlight was getting old even back in my day, but it sure set the mood right."

"Is that what this is, Captain?" Stark asks. "Heartfelt?"

Steve pries his eyes off the bright lights and the flashy aplomb and looks, really looks, at the man beside him: the man he's known for weeks now but refused to fully acknowledge until that night. In a ratty tank top and loose pants, Tony Stark doesn't look like a superhero. Instead, he's just a man, and just as fallible as any other. Again, with the way he focused intently on the streets below them — a barely-hidden scowl, eyebrows furrowed, but the reflection of the city filled with the lives he saved lighting his eyes — he looks just as Steve feels: lost, and determinedly looking for a way out.

The realization hits him with a jolt. He's not alone in his frustration, that feverish anticipation of waiting for the tentative peace to be broken for better or for worse; and if Stark felt it, then surely the others did too. But everybody is too much on edge from recent events to attempt it, alien invasion notwithstanding Barton's brainwash, Coulson's death, Tony's two consecutive almost-deaths, Loki and all his mind-games — the quiet they have now is both a reprieve and a shackle, and the fact that SHIELD has refused to let them meddle in anything since then has only exacerbated their stress and horrible coping mechanisms. They've all been choosing to wallow individually despite literally being forced to live in close quarters, and nobody's getting any better because what little interaction they have has never gone any deeper than half-baked attempts at small talk.

"Heartfelt," Steve breathes out. "Yeah, we could use a little more of that."

Stark twitches. "You're not exactly answering the question."

"Look at me."

"What?"

"Look at me straight in the eye."

"What, why, I don't take orders from you —"

Steve grabs the other man by the shoulders and forces their gazes to meet.

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "I'm sorry for what I said back in the Helicarrier. I was horrible, you were horrible, and we probably would've argued forever if Barton didn't attack when he did. But I think I know you a lot better now than I did then, and I know you're a better man than I originally thought. If it weren't for you, I literally wouldn't be standing here today, because New York would've been nothing but dust. So thank you, Tony. But we're gonna need to work with the team. The world needs us to."

"That felt vaguely homo-erotic," mutters Tony. He shrugs off Steve's hands and Steve lets them fall. "'Because the world needs us to'? I've heard better from the sixteen-year-old interns from The Daily Bugle."

"It's true," he says. "You know it's true. More than anyone else."

Tony sputters about indignantly. "What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Come on," Steve says. "You don't need me to spell it out for you. We lost the Tesseract to Loki. We almost lost the scepter. We're lucky that Thor vowed not to return to his home planet until he captured Loki again, otherwise you know Fury's order wouldn't have stopped him. The good doctor is starting to control himself, but he's still reluctant. Hawkeye hasn't passed his psych eval yet, and even then, he and Widow are only human. You've got the suit, and that's nice and all, but you also haven't had any formal training. Adjustment period aside, I'd say I'm pretty okay —"

"No you're not, I'm the one that buys the new punching bags," Tony interrupts.

"Yeah, okay, maybe I shouldn't belittle the adjustment period," Steve rolls his eyes. "But you get what I mean. We have to be the team the public thinks we are, the team the public needs."

The sentiment rings out in the silence — or at least, New York's version of silence. Even on top of the highest floor of Stark Tower, Steve's superhearing still allows him to hear all the angry honks and the passing sirens and the crowds of people far below them. These are the people they saved not too long ago. From experience, Steve knows they'll need saving once again.

Finally, Tony heaves a great sigh. "I guess having to punch yourself in the face would change a person."

"Sure," Steve replies dryly. "That and getting frozen in ice for seventy years after having fought in a war and being experimented on, losing my best friend, and waking up to fight aliens with people I've never met before."

"Point," Tony nods. "Okay, JARVIS? Pull up all the files under Folder 1040364 in exploded view, with all the relevant color codings and yadda, yadda, yadda. Make sure you wipe all footage of it, yeah? Can't wake up tomorrow with SHIELD busting through my doors yelling about a security breach."

"If I may, Sir," a British voice says from Tony's watch, "might I simply enable camouflage viewing?"

"Eh, do both."

"I'm proud that you are learning the art of discretion, Sir."

Steve squints his eyes. "Tony, what the hell is going on?"

"Enough backtalk, you're embarrassing me in front of the Captain," says Tony, waving the concern off nonchalantly. "As for you, Cap, be prepared to be amazed in 3, 2, 1 —"

And just like that, an array of images comes bursting from Tony's watch in front of Steve's eyes; similar to the holograms he's seen used at SHIELD, which are a hollow echo of what is obviously Tony's invention now that he's able to compare them both. He's surrounded by what are undoubtedly schematics of individual gear for each of the Avengers: among them, arrow and quiver designs in purple, concealable high-voltage stunners in red, elastic polymer synthetics in green, electro-conductive tech devices in gray, and durable body armor materials in bright, bright blue.

Steve, a bit dazed, reaches out to touch what looks like a prototype for magnetic shield straps, and his eyes widen when a full description for the material needed for its development appears.

"'Strong, solenoid, electromagnets running with at least 72 volts, able to produce at least 3000 pounds of magnetic lifting force, able to withstand extreme amounts of pressure at multiple temperature levels,'" Tony recites. He's not even sparing a glance at it. "Power like that will burn your arm off if I can't find a cooling material to counter it. Bit of a pain in the ass."

"How long have you been doing this?" Steve asks. Overwhelmed doesn't even cover half of what he's feeling right now. To think of Tony painstakingly crafting all of this for the team while Steve was stuck moping around in his room . . .

Tony shrugs.

The tiny voice from the watch helpfully answers for him. "A few days before you arrived at the Tower, Captain. Might I add that it's lovely to meet you, though I would've preferred it if Sir introduced us inside the Tower, where I'm more comfortable."

Confused and amused, Steve says, "Nice to meet you too, Mr. . .?"

"You may refer to me as JARVIS," says the watch. "I am an AI system developed by Mr. Stark to assist in all his needs. I run the house and have access to anything vaguely electronic. If you need assistance, simply call for me and I would be happy to help you with all I can infer from all the world's informational databases."

"Okay, that's enough, I'll introduce you formally to the team tomorrow if you shut up now," says Tony. Obligingly, all the holograms disappear. Steve and Tony are, once again, left alone in the dark.

Steve opens his mouth, but Tony puts his hand up to silence him.

"Don't thank me for this," he says lowly. "I had the capacity to do it, and the time, and I needed something to focus on or else I would explode. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't drink. I couldn't eat. But I could do this, and it's the least I could do.

"I get what you mean, I do. I'm pretty sure the Chitauri won't be the last otherworldly threat we'll have to fight. I'm pretty sure we've just lit up a huge signal fire that could be seen from halfway around the galaxy that says we're ready for war. But we're not, and in the state that the six of us are in now, we might never be. We got lucky. So in the event that our luck runs out, and we have to suit up again, we have this.

"It's not enough, I know. If anything, we need clearance from all the world's governments that we're the authority against things like this. I'm not sure how that'll work out, and I'm half-hoping SHIELD can do it for us, but it'll take time. Everything will take time."

Tony closes his eyes and breathes out — a harsh, harrowing thing that sounds like he's trying to exhale all of his inner demons in one breath. "It's time I'm not sure we have, Steve. I'm not sure how much of it we have until the next attack."

Steve forces out a laugh. "I've fought in a war before. Compared to back then, I'd say we have a lot."

"Sure we do," says Tony, but the way his hands are shaking says otherwise. "Yeah, sure we do. We're totally, unquestionably, unequivocally, going to be fine."

"I didn't mean it like that," says Steve, who is internally cursing at himself. Dummy. "I just meant, well, they've left us alone for a few weeks now. It was quite the large invasion, and you blew up their mothership. It's either they attack now while we're still recovering or they attack later when they're done recovering. The way things are going right now? Definitely the latter."

"Right," says Tony. "I've literally got a military tactician beside me."

Steve tries, and fails, to hide his smile. "I suppose you do."

"Ugh, my back hurts," Tony groans. He slumps against the railings, looking sideways at Steve. "So, what do we do now, huh? Wait around 'til the next mission?"

"Pretty much," Steve agrees. "But I was also thinking, you know: we've got state-of-the-art training facilities, tech in development, an AI who can find out everything we need, and everybody in one place. Since we can't leave anyway . . . well, I've watched a few episodes, and I don't think being like the Teen Titans would be so bad."

Tony looks at him, wide-eyed. "Did you just say Teen Titans?"

He shrugs. "You're right, it's a little juvenile. Justice League? Gotta make room for Hawkeye."

The other man barely manages to stifle a laugh. "I can't believe you're saying this."

"I'm saying it because I know you know what I mean," says Steve. "We're supposed to be a team. It's about time we act like it."

He watches Tony chuckle into his empty glass. "That'll be the day."

It's a yes and they both know it.

They stand there overlooking the city, making small talk and essentially getting to know each other better. They talk a lot about what else Steve has to catch up on, and Tony enthusiastically blabbers on and on about getting Steve a proper education, and Steve soaks it all up like a happy sponge. Before they know it, they're watching the sun rise. . .

. . . as it does, in a grateful universe.

A/N: So, how about that Endgame huh?

There's so many little stuff in this fic that I couldn't find a way to include: the fact that Steve and Tony start talking at around 3AM, which I wagered was just enough time for them to reasonably talk until 5:40 AM, the average time for sunrises in New York on June 2012; the fact that Fury not-so-subtly purposefully manipulated Tony to take the Avengers in; the fact that Steve got knocked out by 2023!Steve and woke up to find the scepter still beside him, and it's currently being evaluated by Bruce to see if it's the real deal or a deliberate knock-off meant to throw them off the scent; that Tony didn't introduce JARVIS to the Avengers at first because he wanted his kid to himself (although Natasha totally knows and asks JARVIS for random info just so she can seem omniscient); that the book by Feyerabend that Tony was reading is called Against Method, and that it argues that science should be anarchistic because all ideas can improve knowledge no matter how absurd.

Fun fact, but the folder that Tony stores all his schematics for Avengers equipment is numbered 1040364 as a reference to the issue where the Avengers find Captain America in the ice: Avengers Vol. 1, Issue 4, published in March 1964. The tech that Tony makes for the Avengers is inspired by a similar scene in scifigrl47's Things Unseen (That Are Captured On Film). The technobabble for Steve's magnetic shield straps also comes from straight from the guy who made a replica, which you can watch as a video on YouTube titled How Do You Make Captain America's Electromagnet Shield?

Anyway, I really just wanted to write a fanfic where the events of alt-2012 lead to Avengers family that we deserved and fantasized about since 2012. This fic's working title was even marvel gave us an opening back to the 2012 era and im never leaving, so there's that.