It's hard, understanding people these days. Steve grew up with a certain set of rules, rules that have changed more than people might think. You grew up and you made friends through experience and common interest and you stuck by them if they stuck by you and it was… well it was simple.

Or maybe his brain was addled from all those years in the ice.

Most of the others are ok with him… not getting it. Bruce… well Bruce doesn't seem to get a lot himself, every little thing he says is like treading on glass and Steve figures there are just some things that make you second guess yourself every step of the way and that's ok, that's fine he can totally understand that and it means they share a comforting… thing… that while isn't exactly friendship (Steve would call it friendship, but Bruce would be afraid that if he called it that something bad would happen to it) at least follows the forms for it.

Clint reminds him of Bucky — he has that easy charm that Bucky always had — buckets more of it than Steve ever had even after the Serum (thanks Erskine, he didn't say that it would increase the awkward) and just a general acceptance of all things weird that Steve thinks is probably a SHIELD trait. Or maybe it's just a Clint thing. In any case they get along fine, even if Steve has no idea what the relationship between him and Natasha is all about and that leads him to Tasha who…

…surprisingly is the easiest to get. It took him a long time and a hotdog conversation to realise why and when he realises that they are contemporaries the implications nearly floor him. She had time to adjust to change and Steve didn't, but she gets him and that makes it far easier to get her. Sometimes they watch old movies together and laugh and she's pretty much the only one Steve really relaxes around because if he slips or flinches at something that is just…. wrong she pats his arm and tells him not to worry and he'd never ever tell him that sometimes she reminds him of his mom, because… well. She's still younger than him.

He thinks she probably had it tougher than he did — he tries sometimes, to imagine what it would have been like if Bucky had survived, without the serum, and just gotten older while Steve… didn't. The thought makes him shudder and he squashes it whenever it comes out because if he thinks of Bucky surviving he's too close to Peggy doing the same and…

Thor is Thor and so darn comfortable with people not getting him that it doesn't matter and becomes a bit of a game, really, a game that Clint and Tony like to play — who will get more confused, Thor or Steve? It's usually Steve, though, because Thor has this… acceptance thing going, which Steve guesses is from coming from a place where elves and dwarves actually exist and his nephew is a horse and that's something that Steve will never ever get.

He's quite happy about that.

And that leaves Tony.

He doesn't get Tony.

He doesn't get Tony at all.

It's not just about the fight they have in the carrier that first day. It's not just because he looks like Howard and in some lights and situations, sounds like him too and Steve can squint and think he's back in the requisitions hall and Peggy will walk around the corner and fire a weapon at him. He said that once, to Tony, "You remind me of Howard…" and that was another thing he didn't get until Pepper gently took him aside and explained to him, that the Howard Steve knew is not the same one Tony knew, or the face that Howard showed his son was very different to the one he showed Steve and Steve almost gets that — his dad wasn't the centerfold in world's best parents either — but not quite because the way Tony's face just goes… completely blank and then he walks away…is not something he's used to.

It's not just because everything Tony says is a joke — it's definitely not that because after the first few weeks it finally dawns on Steve that everything he says isn't a joke, that most of the time Tony actually means it, and that for some reason the ability to censor his thoughts before they reach his mouth just was one that Tony wasn't born with.

Tony asks questions. He wants to know how much better things are than they were and Steve has to gently remind him every now and then that when Steve was a kid he was poor in Brooklyn and the kinds of things Tony wants to know about were things that may have existed for some kids in the 1930s but Steve definitely wasn't one of them. The most high tech thing Steve had ever handled was the Valkyrie and that… hadn't gone very well. He'd never even touched one of the Hydra weapons, even though Bucky had kind of liked them. They felt wrong in his hands.

These days he doesn't even like the look of guns. Even though he'd carried his service revolver during the war he hasn't touched one by choice since he woke up and won't if he gets the chance. Tony doesn't get that Steve isn't into weapons, but then the list of things Tony doesn't get about Steve is probably longer than the things Steve doesn't get about Tony.

That said, sometimes they fall into an easy routine. Tony's good at what he does. When he's in the suit he even takes orders, possibly because he can't see anything wrong with the orders Cap gives, possibly because he likes showing off. They work together, and it frustrates Steve that they can seamlessly defend the innocent against aliens or hydra or robots and not…

…get each other.

It changes a bit on his birthday. Tony's done something with the drinks, something that's possibly deadly and almost certainly illegal. It takes Tony a long time to convince him to try one, and for the first time in more than seventy years Steve can feel himself get pleasantly buzzed. They're having a barbecue on the roof of the Tower — best view for the fireworks. Clint nudges him and grins, saying how it's not fair that some people get fireworks on their birthdays and Steve shrugs, it's not like he's ever thought of them as his.

It's halfway through the display that a few rockets shoot up from behind them and he feels a hand on his arm turn him around gently. "Happy Birthday Captain America" is spelled out across the sky in blue and red and white and Tony has a smug look on his face that is just the prelude to him taking credit.

"Thanks, Tony," Steve says. "You didn't have to do that."

"Nonsense," Tony says. "You're a national icon. People need to remember that, especially now."

It's a big gesture, and Steve hasn't had a lot of big gestures that are just for him. But this one isn't just for him, it's for Captain America and everything that he represents and if he hadn't been slightly buzzed he probably would have stopped the words that fall out of his mouth next.

"I'm not like you, you know, Tony."

"No one is."

"I mean… Captain America. He's… not me. Not the way you're Iron Man any way."

Tony frowns and turns to him. "Is this your way of saying my birthday present sucked?"

"No. No! It's… lovely, thank you. It's just… sometimes I think… " Steve shakes his head and has another drink, because that's a good idea. Perhaps he is like Tony.

Tony's crossed his arms and raised his eyebrow and Steve knows it'll be up to him to dig himself out of this particular hole. He pats his chest. "What they did to me… it was never me, you know? They picked me, sure, but most of the time I still feel like the scrawny kid getting beat up in the alley."

Tony smiles, then looks up at him. "I think we all do sometimes, Cap," he says.

"Even you?"

Tony's smile widens. "Especially me. Why do you think I encase myself in metal and shoot at things in my spare time?"

Steve glances at him and in the light from the remaining fireworks, decides that he doesn't actually look that much like Howard after all.

"Yeah, I think I can get that," he says