A/N: I own nothing related to MARVEL except my dvds
'Life is all about finding people who are your kind of crazy' – Disney
Fury named them, Phil brought them together, Steve lead them, Stark housed them, Maria helped keep them informed, Pepper helped protect them from the press, Thor was their warning system for trouble coming from other realms, Banner healed their injuries, and Natasha and Clint proved that they could all find happiness in this crazy world of monsters and magic and psychopaths.
They didn't become a family immediately after the Battle of New York, heck, they were barely friendly to each other. After they apprehended Loki, they turned him over to SHIELD, and then they went to go try Shawarma.
Tony left his suit at the tower, but did grab his briefcase version and took it with them as they walked down the streets to the little joint Tony saw during the fight. When they reached it they found the owners already sweeping and tossing chunks of concrete out the broken window.
The owners started to protest when the bedraggled group came in, but when they saw Steve, still in his Captain America suit, although the hood was down, they changed their tune and started cooking fresh food...as soon as they wiped the appliances down.
Steve and Thor moved tables together and the others dragged up chairs to sit in. Natasha scooted her chair a little closer to Clint's and motioned for him to prop his foot up behind her. He smiled at her and rested his hand on her knee when she pressed it into the inside of his thigh.
"So where do we go from here?" Tony asked the group.
"I shall take Loki and the Tesseract back home. The cube cannot be trusted in the hands of midgaurdians."
"I take offense to that, SHIELD cannot be trusted with it. You could at least let me run some tests." Tony said.
"No." came Steve and Bruce speaking in tandem.
"Spoilsports." Tony muttered.
"Personally, I want to sleep for several days before taking a road trip, try to clear my head." Steve said.
"Apparently I'm always under surveillance, so it shouldn't matter if I stay or go." Bruce said looking over at Natasha who was having an eyes only conversation with Clint.
"I told you Brucie, Stark Tower, candyland. I'd love to get you in there and see what you've got."
"Watch out Banner, Stark has had more than one sexual harassment suit against him." Natasha shared.
"Not from you though, Widow." Tony pointed out.
"Well, she is made from stronger stuff than what you're used to, I'm sure." Clint spoke up.
"Of that I have no doubt." Tony waggled his brows and even managed a slight smirk.
Steve shook his head when Natasha produced a knife from behind her back and started twirling it between her fingers while staring Stark down.
Tony cleared his throat before standing up, "I think I'm going to go try to call Pepper again." He walked outside.
Clint held his hand out, "my knife please."
One corner of her mouth lifted up as she ignored his hand and put it back in the ankle sheath on the leg propped beside her instead.
"So are you going back to SHIELD right away or is Fury going to let you have a break?" Steve asked the two agents.
They glanced at each other before Natasha tilted her head just a bit to the side allowing Clint to answer as he pleased.
"Well Loki showing up kind of ruined both of our assignments, so now we report back to SHEILD to file our paperwork, then I'm taking some time off."
"Take a drive, clear your mind, get lost, at least until Fury calls for you." Tony said, catching the tail end of the conversation as he returns to the table.
"Sounds about right." Clint agrees.
"What if you didn't?" Tony asked.
"Didn't what?"
"What if you didn't go back to SHIELD? What if we stayed as a team, taking out bad guys together?"
"Are you expecting an alien invasion every week?" Bruce asked.
"Well, now that we know it's possible and, now that, according to Point Break here, other worlds know we are here, it's a possibility." Tony said.
"They do." Thor agreed before Bruce cut in.
"I don't think so Tony." Bruce argued.
"If the world needs us, we can come back together; otherwise, we should go our separate ways." Steve said looking around at the rag tag group he had fought side by side with all day.
"Hear hear." Thor said, slapping a hand down on the table causing the owners to look over at them.
"You don't even live here." Tony said, "How would we even contact you?"
"You cannot, but Earth is always being watched, when something comes up that requires my attention, I can be sent back to take care of it. Now with the cube going back to Asgard, it will make travel to this realm a lot easier."
"How?" Tony asked.
"I'm afraid I cannot explain it in your science terms. If Lady Jane were here, she could explain it in much detail."
"Who is Lady Jane?" Steve asked.
Clint answered, "Jane foster, his girlfriend."
"Also, a genius in her own right, she is an American astrophysicist working on her theory of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge out of New Mexico." Natasha added.
"She is a fair maiden, far smarter than the average human." Thor said.
"She is also working for SHIELD now." Clint said.
"Well, then she can't be that smart, can she?" Tony asked.
"She joined SHIELD's R&D department for reasons you wouldn't understand Stark." Natasha defended.
Since Coulson convinced Darcy to help him convince Jane to submit to working for a federal agency, Coulson took it upon himself to introduce the two women to other female SHIELD employees, including Natasha. Actually, Coulson cashed in a favor so Natasha wouldn't have any option but to help them out. She hated owing debts.
"Do you have personal knowledge of her reasons?" Tony taunted.
"That's for me to know, and you never to find out." She deadpanned.
"Anyways," Steve headed off Tony's retort, "Thor is going home, and we're going our separate ways until such time as we might be needed. If that time comes, how will all of us be reached?"
"SHIELD." Came the synchronized voices of Clint, Natasha and Bruce.
It turned out not to be SHIELD that called them back together, but Tony and Bruce. After Natasha and Steve exposed HYDRA within SHIELD's ranks, she used some of her off the book resources to locate Clint who was away on an op and Steve worked with Sam to find Bucky. Bruce and Tony had been working together to try to find and expose different HYDRA bases. They used information gleamed from HYRDA agents captured from the day SHIELD fell, from information found on SHIELD's protected servers but also from following radiation signatures that some of HYDRA's weapons gave off.
Every time they found a base, depending on the size, they would call on whichever of the team was available to take it out. Tony insisted on throwing a party every time they won a fight.
By the time they had taken out five or six bases, all the Avengers were staying at the tower full time. Tony had redesigned parts of the tower to suit having the team there. The top ten floors were still R&D, but instead of the next two floors down being living suites, he made the next six floors into living suites.
Every floor had multiple bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, and an actual living room complete with big screen TVs, multiple gaming systems and a state of the art sound system. Stark knew how to make his guests comfortable. He took out several floors of offices to add in a gym, archery range, gun range (with multiple lanes of course) an indoor pool, and even a library that would put most small universities to shame.
They had settled into a rhythm at the tower. Although they never came out and said what their relationship was, Natasha and Clint were sharing a floor which they added their own security measures too. Steve, Bruce and Maria Hill took the floor above theirs, which worked out quite well for them and for the team as that's where they gathered for meals since Bruce and Steve cooked more than anyone else in the group. Thor had his own floor which he shared with Jane and Darcy when they came back into town. Of course, Tony and Pepper had a floor to themselves and another floor hosted any visiting friends of the Avengers, James Rhodes and Sam Wilson being the most common to crash there.
It was after one of these parties, when everyone one was sitting around Clint and Natasha's living room that Bruce came to realize he was a part of a family…a crazy dysfunctional potential time bomb of a family.
Natasha, Clint and Rhodey were on one couch, Pepper, Tony and Maria were sharing another one while Sam, Thor and Jane took the final one, and Steve was in one of the arm chairs, leaving Bruce in the other chair while Darcy elected to sit on the arm of his chair.
Bruce was watching the team, his team, sit around laughing while Maria and Clint told a story about a particularly dumb batch of SHIELD recruits they had one year while Natasha put in her own comments from time to time when Darcy nudged him.
"You okay?"
"Mhm, yeah, just thinking."
"The next base can wait Brucie, enjoy the party." Tony said.
"I am, I am." He held up his drink, "See."
"I see a glass almost empty, and mine is completely empty." Darcy said getting up, "Who wants another round?"
When half the group held up their glasses for refills she grinned and nudged Bruce's leg with her foot, "Come help."
He dutifully got up to help.
Sam made a sound like a whip cracking which caused the guys to laugh.
"What can I say guys, she wears the pants more than I do."
"Oh, a Hulk joke, really?" Steve said with a laugh.
Bruce offered a smile and followed Darcy to the bar.
"What's really going on?" Darcy demanded.
"I was thinking about how most of this group didn't have a good home life when we were younger, and how this group is becoming almost family like."
"Yes Bruce, you have a family. Not a traditional family, by any means, but a family all the same."
"I believe it was Walt Disney whom said, 'Life is all about finding people who are your kind of crazy.'"
"Well, you succeed." She said.
"What's taking so long you guys?" Clint called.
"Hold your horses, Hawkboy, we were having a moment." Darcy called back.
"Care to share with the class?" Tony asked as they made their way back to the group.
"Not really, it was just an observation I made." Bruce said.
"Let's hear it." Sam said.
"It's okay Bruce, I'm sure most of them have already come to the same conclusion." Darcy tried to coerce her boyfriend into telling them.
"Okay, fine." He sighed. "I remembered a quote I'd heard once from Disney, 'Life is all about finding people who are your kind of crazy' it got me thinking about how we are becoming more than a team, like maybe a strange family almost."
"You know, you have a point there." Rhodes said.
"So in the family, who is who?" Jane asked.
"Well being the oldest, I guess that makes Steve the grandfather." Tony said.
"Really?" Steve asked.
"I see him as the dad and Pepper as the mom." Darcy said.
"Well, I did raise Tony." Pepper said accepting her role with a smile.
"If you're the mom, shouldn't that make me the dad?" Tony asked.
"Not necessarily."
"So Steve is the dad, Pepper is the mom, Tony and Bruce are totally the trouble making brothers." Darcy started.
"Twins, they could be twins." Sam said.
"So that would make Legolas the younger brother." Tony interjected.
"Since Natasha helps Steve and Pepper keep you three in line that would make her the older sister." Jane added.
"Maria could be the aunt, she's strict about following mom's rules, but she's also will let you slide with certain things." Clint said.
"So do we have an uncle?" Bruce asked.
"Fury." Steve said.
"How so?"
"He's like that weird old uncle who only shows up in times of family crisis' or holidays."
"Good point." Tony accepted.
"Where do I fit into this family?" Thor asked.
"You're a cousin obviously." Tony said.
"A cousin?"
"Yeah, you're a member of the family who happens to live out of state but every time you come to visit the conversations pick right back up from before you left."
"Which makes Jane a cousin and Darcy is their kid, so a second cousin." Rhodes said.
"So you and Sam are brothers who happen to be so close to our family, you are basically two more kids for Steve and I to raise." Pepper said.
"You know, it amazes me that we spent less than ten minutes figuring out everyone's place in the family and there wasn't any major arguments about it." Bruce pointed out.
"Well, we're all crazy enough, that it just works for us. This thing being that we are basically a family, like you said." Darcy said poking Bruce in the arm.
Bruce covered her hand with his own and smile at her.
"So you're dating your cousin." Tony said.
"You're dating your mother." Darcy retaliated.
"Well, crap." Tony said. "We really are a dysfunctional family."
"Yes we are." Bruce said, giving the group a genuine smile.
A/N: So I'm not sure what happened to this, I had a different idea in my head but the story kind of ran away from me. Thanks for reading, please review if you think it is worth it.