The Super-Powered and Socially Useless Club
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of the Avengers; they are owned by Marvel, Joss Whedon, etc. Also, this is total crack!fic. You have been warned.

Steve finds the invitation hidden in a book in Natasha's room. He had wandered in, wanting to borrow another novel, something sad perhaps as Steve felt wistful again for the past, so maybe Thomas Hardy or Proust once more, and he had seen it peeking from the top of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a shiny black card embossed with red lettering.

Glancing once around the room, Steve tugs the card from the book. Upon the front, he finds the following:

You are cordially invited to the Super-Powered and Socially Useless Club.

Because such issues as ours must come with some benefit.

In this case, alcohol. But your own, not mine. Even if I am a billionaire.

Meetings the first of every month. You know where.

Be there or be emotionally well-adjusted like Rogers.

Steve frowns at the last. He wouldn't say that he's well-adjusted. Not well. Maybe mostly. He was frozen in ice for seventy years. That had to count for something.

Frowning, Steve walks out of Natasha's room and down the hall to elevator. If anyone knew anything about what Natasha did during her free time, it would be Clint. Steve travels to the next floor and walks down the hall to Clint's door; he knocks, but hears nothing inside, and then he remembers that today is the first.

Looking around again (because he might be Captain America, but he thinks that both Clint and Natasha could kill him with their pinkies for looking through their stuff without permission), he opens the door to Clint's room and peers inside. Seeing no one, he slips in and begins his search. He finds the card after ten minutes, shoved between two CDs by a band called the Clash. This one is also black, and it carries the same message, but the lettering on the front is not red, but purple.

Steve narrows his eyes. Okay, so he wore a red, white, and blue uniform instead of a scary black one, but he was an orphan, too. And he grew up during the Great Depression. The Great Depression. If that didn't scream issues, Steve didn't know what did.

Both invitations in hand, Steve returns to the elevator and travels to Bruce's floor. Sure, Bruce turned into the Hulk, and, yeah, he had tried to kill himself, and, okay, he couldn't be with the love of his life because her father wanted to experiment on him, but Bruce had made a lot of progress lately. He mostly turned into the Hulk when he wanted to now, and the Hulk had actually started conversing with the team in complete sentences, albeit short ones. There was no way Bruce fit into the idea of 'Super-Powered and Socially Useless' more than Steve.

But apparently he did. Steve finds the card beneath a book about nuclear fusion, a green one with purple lettering. And, come on, Bruce might not be able to be with the love of his life because of her dad, but Steve's love was dead because he had been trapped in a giant block of ice for seventy years. And, okay, turning into the Hulk was bad, Steve doesn't know how Bruce is able to maintain any kind of a wardrobe, but Steve had been a shrimp his entire life until Captain America and had been beaten up more times than he can count. And he had had rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, and asthma along with a dozen other ailments.

Fighting back a pout, Steve returns to the elevator and nearly punches the button for the penthouse. He tries not to crush the three invitations in his hand.

He had fought against Nazis.

He understood nothing about contemporary pop culture.

And, and, and he had to deal with them, all of the special issues ones, on a daily basis.

He should have been given the first invitation.

The door to the penthouse opens, and Steve charges out, ready to give Tony a piece of his mind for his serious oversight, when he sees them all on the balcony: Tony and Natasha, Clint and Bruce, and Thor (Thor? Thor? He was the happiest guy Steve knew most of the time. And he was going to be a king) and Loki (okay, maybe Thor had an issue or two). Steve blinks at Loki and feels the pout form. So they'd rather drink with Loki instead of him, Loki who had tried to kill each of them on numerous occasions. And so Steve couldn't exactly get drunk, but that was an issue, too.

Moving toward the balcony now, Steve hears Natasha say, "No. No. No. No. No," each 'no' slurring into the next, and Steve almost stops, never having heard Natasha drunk before. She waves a finger at Bruce and says, "No, you can't always win. You can control it now. So 'green rage monster' doesn't trump everything."

"Oh yeah," Bruce says, a bottle of ale clutched in both his hands. "What would top it?"

Natasha jerks a thumb now toward Loki, who sits beside her. "Have you seen his hair?" she asks, her brows drawing together as she turns to peer at Loki. Loki frowns as she reaches out and pokes him in the head. "It's so… hard. That's not right."

From Natasha's other side, Steve hears Clint giggle. He looks at Loki and says, "Your hair is wrong," before giggling again.

Loki slouches in his chair. "It's dignified," he says, glaring at Clint and Natasha. "Frigga said it brings out my eyes."

Thor leans over and claps a hand on Loki's shoulder. "Our mother—"

"Your mother."

"My mother lied most grievously to you. Again." He inspects Loki's hair and nearly goes cross-eyed looking at it. "I suppose it is better than the horns though."

"The horns!" Natasha shouts, nearly knocking over her bottle of vodka in her excitement. "I forgot about the horns." She leans now toward Bruce. "The horns are tragic. Even you must admit this. How would you feel if the Hulk had horns coming out of his head?"

Bruce's face falls as he pictures the image. "I would be sad," he says.

"We all would be," Tony says now from beside Bruce. "But, come on," he says, wheeling around to look at Thor, "you can't say anything about anyone's hair. Not with that highlighted straw."

Loki laughs and points at Thor's hair. "And he always devoted hours to his hair, trying to ensure perfection beneath his dumb helmet."

Thor glares at Loki, but before he can speak, Clint says, "No, no, if preening takes the top, then Stark has got to be the winner. I mean," and here Clint thrusts out a hand, nearly smacking Bruce in the face, "look at that ridiculous shit on his face."

The group turns to inspect Tony's goatee.

"That is kind of ridiculous, man," Bruce says.

Loki nods. "I wouldn't even wear that, and I'm a villain."

"Like you could," Tony mutters. "And shouldn't you stop with calling yourself a villain all the time? You haven't even tried to take over the world for, what, two months?"

Loki grabs the smoking goblet before him and sinks further down into his chair. "I was busy," he says.

"With your hair," Natasha mutters, and she and Clint start to giggle again.

"Like you can talk," Loki says, looking at the perfect curls in her hair.

Natasha shifts in her chair and reaches for the bottle of vodka. "I don't know what you're talking about," she says, sniffing once in outrage. "My hair looks like this naturally."

"If by natural," Tony says, "you mean twenty hot rollers and an entire bottle of mousse, then yes. Natural."

Clint chuckles, and Natasha turns to smack him on the arm.

"No, but seriously," Tony says, standing now, holding his glass of scotch, "if anybody has tragic hair, it's Rogers."

They all turn to look at Steve now. He raises a hand to his hair and frowns. "What's wrong with my hair?" he asks.

"Nothing," Tony says. "Except that it's the hair of a ninety year old man."

Steve bristles now. "That's because I was trapped in a block of ice for seventy years. And I'm an orphan and I fought Hitler, okay, fake Hitlers, but still Hitler, and my best friend died and became a one-armed super assassin and I never got to dance with Peggy and I had asthma and I have to deal with all of you every single day, so where is my invitation?"

Now they turn to look at Loki. He moves, wobbles, and then straightens, indignant. "I was busy," he says. He waves a hand in the air and conjures a red, white, and blue card before tossing it to Steve. Steve catches it and glances down at the front and finds the following:

You are cordially invited to the Super-Powered and Socially Useless Club.

Because such issues as ours must come with some benefit.

In this case, alcohol. But your own, not mine. Even if I am a billionaire.

Meetings the first of every month. You know where.

Be there or be emotionally well-adjusted like Rogers.

And new to his, in small letters at the bottom:

Which has to be a lie because Capsicle.

Steve looks up to find an empty chair between Thor and Tony along with a bottle of sparkling grape juice. He feels a tear form in his eye at the sight. "You think I'm as emotionally disturbed as all of you?" he asks.

"Absolutely," Tony says.

Bruce and Clint nod.

"Have you seen the outfit that you wear?" Loki asks.

"Definitely tragic," Natasha agrees.

And as they all stare at Steve, he feels a smile form on his face at the sight of his strange, emotionally disturbed, and somewhat violent and self-obsessed family.

Super-powered and socially useless they may be, but at least they had each other.

Fin.