The moment Steve got the text that the team's celebratory pizza had arrived, he'd started on his way to the kitchen. There was a time when he wouldn't rush for something to eat, but he's come to realize over the last few weeks that food goes fast in a tower of six superheroes. Thor alone eats enough for a family of five. There have been a few times that people have run late and missed out on the team dinner entirely, and he is not going to be the next victim of Thor's appetite.

He runs into Natasha on the way, and he slows down to match her pace. He'll gladly spend the walk with his favorite teammate, even if that means it takes a bit longer. It's not her fault she's been cursed with such short legs – not everybody gets the miracle serum that adds eight inches, after all.

"Hey," Steve greets her.

"Hey yourself," Natasha replies with a grin.

"Any sign of Loki yet?"

"As far as I know, he hasn't left his room since he got here," Natasha answers. "It sounds like he's pretty content leaving us alone."

"Well, that's what it sounds like right now," Steve says. "I don't think we want to get our hopes up this soon, though."

Natasha sucks in a breath through her teeth. "Yeah, probably not," she admits.

It grows quiet after that – they've just about covered everything they need to cover on that topic, after all – and Steve wracks his brain for a new topic to discuss. He just wants to keep the conversation going. He likes talking to her. It's become one of his favorite things to do, if he's being honest – easily the best thing to come out of Loki's attempted world domination, that's for sure.

Fortunately, Natasha steps in with a new topic of her own. "How're you doing, by the way?" she asks. "After the whole 'falling hundreds of feet into a lake' thing?"

Steve huffs in amusement at the nonchalance of that question. "I'm doing fine," he tells her. "Still a little sore, but, you know, what do you expect after falling hundreds of feet into a lake?"

Natasha cracks a smile at that.

Just to tease her, he adds, "Thanks for checking on me in the hospital, by the way. Really appreciated the support."

Natasha rolls her eyes playfully. "Well, sorry I decided I'd do more good defending our asses from the entire US government than sitting around a hospital for three days."

"You should be sorry," Steve says, and he sniffles for dramatic effect. "It really hurt my feelings."

Natasha slaps him on the shoulder playfully. "You're ridiculous," she tells him. "And I did visit you, you know."

Steve pauses, his brows furrowed. "You did?"

"Mm-hmm," she hums. "I stayed for a few hours when we brought you in, and I went back a couple of times when I had the chance." With a teasing smile, she adds, "I promise I didn't just ditch you."

Steve can't help the smile that creeps up on his face. She did visit him. He'd just assumed that she'd been too wrapped up in other things to check on him, but she wasn't. Even when she was busy, she still made time to check on him. That's really sweet, actually.

"Speaking of almost drowning in a lake," Natasha says, which is a very weird segway, "I'm assuming you've got no updates on your buddy."

Steve shakes his head. "Still looking, but..."

"Nothing yet," she finishes for him.

"Nothing yet," he confirms. Bucky's out there somewhere. He knows that. And he doesn't care how long it takes him: he is going to find him, and he is going to bring him home.

Natasha offers him a sad smile. "We'll find him," she assures him. "Someday. He can't hide forever."

We'll find him, she said. Not just Steve; not just with a little help from Sam. They're all going to find him. Together. They're a team.

If he had to wake up in the 21st century, he's glad he woke up to a world with Natasha Romanoff in it.

They reach the dining room, where the duo wastes no time in grabbing their first slices of pizza. With the number of boxes they have here – and it is a lot of boxes – one would think there'd be no rush to start eating, but no matter how much food they have, Thor will always find a way to finish it.

Tony, Pepper, and Bruce are already seated at the table – they were the ones tasked with bringing all these pizzas back to the compound, after all – so Steve and Natasha join them. He will admit, it's not really his choice to sit next to Tony, but Natasha sits one seat away from him, so unfortunately, it's the seat he's stuck in if he wants to sit with her, and he definitely wants to sit with her.

"Romanoff," Tony says, a taunting lilt to his voice, "what kind of pizza is that?"

Natasha gives him a weird look. "Hawaiian? Why?"

"Uh, yeah, that's my question, too," Tony says. "You're eating pineapple on pizza?"

Natasha scoffs. "What's wrong with pineapple on pizza?"

"What isn't wrong with pineapple on pizza?"

Natasha nudges Steve with her elbow. "You like pineapple on pizza, right?"

Steve hesitates. "I mean, I've never had it, so I can't..."

Natasha holds her pizza out to him. "Try it."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously! Eat my pizza and tell Tony how good it is!"

Steve shakes his head to himself, but when Natasha sticks the pizza in front of his mouth, he rolls his eyes and takes a bite. (He has to admit, eating a piece of pizza out of Natasha's hand is kind of giving him butterflies right now, but for the sake of his mental wellbeing, he's going to ignore that.)

He knows from the moment he puts that pizza in his mouth that he will never eat another bite of Hawaiian pizza again, but he forces himself to swallow it without making a face, and after a thoughtful hum, he says, "Yeah, it's not bad," like the liar that he is. (Is this a stupid thing to lie about? Maybe. Could he bring himself to side with Tony over Natasha on anything ever? Absolutely not.)

Thor's voice can be heard down the hall, faint enough that it's difficult to make out what he's saying but still loud enough that it's unmistakably him. He must have met up with Clint on the way over. It makes sense; all roads lead to the kitchen, after all, especially when there's pizza around.

But then he hears the other voice, and it's not Clint.

It's Loki.

He's eating dinner with them.

Steve's not even sure the thought of it had crossed his mind. He'd been convinced that the god would do anything in his power to avoid them – or, if the situation arose, to taunt them or to mess with them – and yet, he's here, just coming to eat with them as though he's a part of their team.

Steve grimaces and glances at Natasha, but if she hears Loki down the hall, she doesn't show it. She's still munching on her pizza like it's the only thing in the world that matters. He glances at Tony, who looks back at him warily. At least they're on the same page – a rare feat, really.

Thor and Loki step into the room, and while Thor goes straight to the pizza boxes, Loki pauses in the doorway, eyes scanning the faces of those who beat him here. Any thoughts he may have about this arrangement are carefully sealed away behind his pointedly unreadable expression, and he follows his brother over to the array of different pizzas.

Thor explains each type of pizza to his brother, and, in the process, loads his plate up with one... two... three... four... five slices of various flavors – and this is just his first round. Loki is more selective, and, after a few moments of deliberation, he chooses a single slice of pepperoni pizza and follows his brother to the table.

Thor gestures to the three open seats. "Where would you like to sit?"

Loki rolls his eyes at the question. "I assume I'll have to sit next to an Avenger regardless of where I sit?"

"It would seem so," Thor says.

Loki looks over his options – the seat next to Bruce, the seat next to Natasha, and the seat between two empty seats that will soon become the seat next to Clint – and Steve waits for him to choose the last of the three, if only to have a few moments of relief before his other seat neighbor appears. He wouldn't even be too surprised if he sat next to Bruce, just because he's the least antagonistic of the group.

But no.

Loki puts his plate down next to Natasha instead.

Thor, of course, takes the seat on the other side of him, and nobody seems to give these seating choices any thought, excluding Natasha's raised eyebrow as she watches them take their spots.

Steve prepares for the worst – not that he really knows what 'the worst' is when Loki's (supposedly) not here to cause any problems – but the worst does not come. Loki takes a bite of his pizza, and, when it becomes clear that he's just going to sit here and have dinner with them, everybody else resumes their meals, too.

Once Loki's had his first few bites, Thor asks, "Did you like it?"

Loki waves him off while he finishes chewing.

"I told you it was good," Thor reminds him. "Midgard has some of the best food in the Nine Realms – just wait until you've eaten their candy."

Loki swallows his pizza, then says, "It's better than I expected; I will concede that much, at least."

"Better than prison food, I'm sure," Thor adds teasingly.

Loki rolls his eyes. "A live rat would taste better than the food in the dungeon."

Steve makes a face and puts his pizza down. He's going to need a minute after that visual before he starts eating again.

"Well, rest assured," Thor says, "you will never again have to crave the taste of a living rat."

"Thank you, Thor," Loki says monotonously. "That means so much."

Thor flashes him a smile, and then turns his attention to his own dinner, the slices stacked carelessly on his plate as if they were the leaning tower of pizza.

They eat in silence for a minute or so, a rather uncommon occurrence since they all started living together the other week. There's always something to talk about. And he supposes that's not untrue today; the problem is that this something is sitting at the table with them.

Loki leans over toward Natasha and says, quietly but still very much audible in the otherwise silent room, "You weren't joking when you said you wouldn't leave me alone."

"Hey, don't pin this one on me," Natasha says. "I had no idea you were eating with us until you showed up."

Loki pauses, then looks over at his brother. "That is not what I was told."

Thor shrugs, a carefree smile on his lips. "Oh well. You're here."

Loki rolls his eyes and shakes his head to himself.

Steve glances between him, his brother, and Natasha, as though just looking at them is going to make this situation make sense. Needless to say, it does not explain itself.

Clint shows up then, holding his phone between his shoulder and ear, and he heads straight for the pizza without sparing so much as a glance at the others. As he pulls out a piece of pizza, he says to his phone, "Alright, I'll be there – scepter-hunt permitting." He plops the pizza on his plate and turns around, making his way to the table with the others. "Yeah, you–"

He cuts himself off when he sees Loki sitting there – and in what was doubtlessly supposed to be his seat, too; he and Steve usually get to share custody of Nat for both meals and mission reports. He pauses, then says into his phone, "I gotta go. I'll talk to you later." He ends the call and shoots Loki a dirty look (not that the god notices; he's already turned his attention back to his food).

He takes the last remaining seat between Thor and Bruce, about as far away from Natasha as he can get, and a part of Steve feels bad enough that he wants to offer up his own seat. Unfortunately for Clint, there's another part of Steve that is overjoyed to be sitting next to his favorite person born after 1945, and that part wins out.

"Alright, place your bets," Tony says. "How many slices of pizza are we going to have left over?"

"None," Natasha says immediately.

"At least a full pizza," Clint says. "Probably closer to two or three pizzas, even."

Natasha scoffs. "What? No way!"

Clint scoffs, too. "Look at how many pizzas they got!"

"Look at how many super people we have!" She gestures between Steve, Thor, and Loki to prove her point.

"I'm leaning toward Nat's end," Tony says. "I think we're gonna finish it tonight – by midnight, at least. Anything we have 'left over' is gonna be gone before tomorrow."

"I don't think we're capable of having leftovers," Steve says. At least with Thor around – and especially if Loki's appetite is anything like his brother's.

"With this many pizzas?" Clint shakes his head. "We're gonna have leftovers."

Pepper looks between them all, incredulous. "How much pizza do you guys eat?"

"More than we should," Tony answers.

Natasha hums in agreement as she finishes her bite of pizza. "He's not wrong."

"Do you want leftovers?" Thor asks. "I can leave some if you'd like me to."

Tony waves that off. "Eat as much pizza as your heart desires. We can always get more."

Thor beams, and Loki rolls his eyes.

That's the beginning of the usual friendly chatter amongst the team. It's like all they were missing was Clint's presence. (That was not the case. It was quiet because Loki's here. They're going to pretend, for their peace of mind, that that's not the case.)

With the others' voices to cover his own, Steve nudges Natasha's arm and whispers to her, "What was Loki talking about?" He suspects he knows the answer. He just wants to hear her say it – or, really, he wants to hear her say that he's wrong; that she didn't go seek him out after they both agreed that was a bad idea; that Loki wasn't referencing some conversation they had in secret since he arrived.

Natasha shrugs nonchalantly – too nonchalantly, as cliché as that may sound.

Steve narrows his eyes. He knows. And now she knows that he knows; he can see the moment she realizes it.

She deflates at that, but at least she answers honestly: "It was creeping me out that nobody'd seen him for hours, so I went to see if he was still in his room. No big deal."

Steve sighs. "Nat, what did we say about that?"

"I don't remember," she says, and her usual air of teasing creeps back up into her voice. "Did 'you're not my dad' make an appearance at all?"

Steve rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. "Nat, come on."

"I didn't go to provoke him or anything," she says. "I just wanted to see what was going on – which was a grand total of nothing, by the way. He's very boring."

"I can hear you," Loki deadpans.

Natasha looks over at him, a shit-eating grin on her lips. "I know."

Loki shakes his head to himself, but as he takes a bite of his pizza, Steve swears he sees a look of amusement on his face, and he scowls at that. Loki's not supposed to be amused by this. Steve is supposed to be amused by this. She's doing this for his amusement (and her own, of course), not Loki's.

Directing her words to Steve once more, she says, "And look, I survived! Didn't get murdered at all. You did all that worrying for nothing."

"I wasn't worried you were going to get murdered," Steve says. She would have had to be really annoying to get Loki to murder her on his first day of freedom, and though he has no doubt that she'd be capable of it, he certainly didn't expect it.

"Oh, don't let Loki hear you say that," Natasha says teasingly. "He'll take it as a compliment – or maybe an insult; jury's still out."

This time, the slight smile on Loki's face is unmistakable, and he swiftly covers it with his pizza, even before he's ready to take another bite. Natasha glances his way, like she's checking how he's reacting to that – which is ridiculous because this conversation may be about him, but it's not with him – and she smirks when she sees the god's amusement.

"Nat, you're killing me," Steve tells her.

Natasha flashes him a smile. "Thank you. I try."

Steve shakes his head to himself. She's ridiculous – and he loves that. He loves her humor; he loves her smile; he loves her self-assuredness. He loves everything about her, really.

... He just doesn't particularly want to share those parts of her with Loki.