Who: Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff What: A first date for two people who have very possibly never gone on an actual first date before. When: Tonight. Where: The Doors have offered up a magical mystery dining location. The Doors are assholes. Rating: PG!
This was a normal thing, right? This was a very normal suggestion to make. It had occurred to Natasha off the cuff, and she hadn't paused to consider before she'd just let it loose: let's go on an actual date. If the options were limited in Starklandia, they weren't nonexistent, either. It would be nice, she'd thought, and after all - she and Clint had eaten together countless times. The only thing different would be the designation. A date. It sounded - something. She didn't know what it sounded, really, but she liked the feel of it. The idea that it did have the designation. (She did not have to be the expert in psychological thought patterns that she was to understand why the word felt important to her, but still: it was. And she liked it.) Plus, it was just Clint. She was always comfortable with Clint, she always had been - almost five years apart and the second she'd seen him in Tokyo, even, it had been like they had only parted a week earlier.
And she was an extra level of comfortable with Clint here, like this. Sort of a permanent low grade joy in that, even when other things could be rough, even when other memories crept in: she was comfortable, with him. Happy. She could reach for his hand if she wanted to, he would look at her in that particularly dazzling way, they'd slept together and it had been wildly good, they were synced up as they had always been. A date should be an easy thing to add into the mix.
Except this was not, she remembered, a couple hours after asking, a thing she did a lot. Her last date had been in 2015, for God's sake, if that even counted. Natasha was determined not to get in her head about it, to keep it low-key, but there was - excitement, a little? Nerves, maybe? Slight worry? All of which was probably pretty standard for a first date with someone you really liked, even if you had already jumped several steps ahead of first date territory with that same person. The Doors had been pretty obliging to her plenty of times, surely there'd be some decent option.
Today, though, The Doors appeared to have a sense of humor, because this was the third one they had opened, and this one was looking out into a sea of...varying and aggressive shades of pink, and doodled stars, and walls and walls of overpriced dolls lining the shelves near an even larger pink sign that screamed AMERICAN GIRL CAFE in swirling pink cursive. "Well - " Natasha said, and turned to look at Clint. It was impossible not to laugh, at least a little. Not what she'd imagined, exactly, but. "I mean. I'd say that of the three, this one looks the most like there's a shot at the food being decent."