Chapter Text
"Captain!" Thor cries, thumping his fist down beside Steve's almost untouched basket of food and they all jump, startled out of the collective dazed exhaustion they seem to have slipped into, not least Steve who almost falls off his chair. "You must eat something."
Steve looks bewilderedly up at Thor, heart pounding as the Asgardian takes his arm to steady him, and he struggles for a moment to remember just where the hell he is. Then everything comes back in a flash flood of blood, smoke and destruction. Helicopter airships. Aliens. Giant flying metal shark things that he might never ever get out of his dreams tearing apart New York city.
Shawarma.
Thor is right, he should eat. He can't even remember the last proper meal he had, but his stomach rolls with nausea at the thought of it and he nudges the basket of flatbread and spicy smelling meat away.
"You alright there, Rogers?" Natasha asks, looking back over her shoulder, and he can hear that she's trying to keep her question light, keep things casual, but now all their eyes are on him and he musters the most reassuring smile he can.
But he's not really alright. Not alright at all. He's exhausted and hurting. The couple of bites of food he forced down his throat earlier are now sitting like a lump somewhere in his chest, and he would give all the money he had in the world if someone would right now magically produce a bedroll and lay it out on the ground for him.
He picks up what's left of his Coca-Cola and downs it, trying to dislodge the lump. It tastes sickly-sweet but in a good way, it tastes of his childhood. Something familiar in a world that barely makes sense to him anymore. It almost disguises the taste of ash in his mouth, and he crushes the empty paper cup tightly in his hands and closes his eyes against the pounding in his head. "I'm beat... Could we go?"
Tony peers at Steve for a moment then gets to his feet and waves at the waitress who is busy sweeping debris from the floor around them. She only let them in after Tony used all the charm he could muster on her, and when that failed, he thrust a hundred dollar bill into her hand. The restaurant, much like the rest of the city, had been badly damaged in the attack, but their faces were already all over the news reports on the TV that was playing quietly in the corner, and the waitress and the cook seemed happy enough to keep them in food and drinks while they ate in exhausted silence, none of them even having the words to talk about what had just happened.
They'd saved the world. Literally saved the world. And then, like Tony had said they should, they'd had Shawarma after. And now?... Now there was a question. Now nothing was going to be the same ever again.
Tony pulls out his wallet again and begins dropping bills onto the table, then taking a proper look round at the disaster zone that used to be a restaurant that the waitress had been trying to clean up around them; he carries on dropping bills until his wallet is empty. "Can we get the rest of this to go?"