Natasha laced her fingers through his, some - strange burst of joy blossoming low in her chest as he reached for it. Clint Barton, full on committing to one of what had to be, at least, the top five weirdest first dates in history, and he had gone all in on the first hand. "Hey," she said, then leaned up and kissed his cheek as they approached the host stand. "You're awesome. I love you." Which - was normally the kind of sentiment that would come at the end of a date, not the beginning. Also not the kind of sentiment that would generally come on a first date at all, ever, under any circumstance but, well. They hadn't really done any of this in chronological order, no reason to start now.
The hostess looked skeptical as they approached to be seated, and Natasha almost smiled. This didn't really count as spy work, exactly, this didn't count as a cover, but still. It had been a long time, and it was always nice to do the thing you were best at. She pressed herself a little closer to Clint's arm, smoothed her face out into something more frazzled.
"I know - I know," she opened, not giving the woman a chance to launch into their clearly practiced only adults accompanied by children spiel. "We know the rules, but it's a special circumstance. It's - my boyfriend's niece is coming to live with us for a few months, and it's....like, this is a crazy situation. His sister's getting this awful divorce, and it's so ugly, and - we just. We want to do something for her this weekend, to make her feel special. You know? And we had to try. We had to, I just - we were hoping we could just eat really quickly, just, we wanted to try it. We want to make sure it's special enough. God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you don't need this whole saga, it's just that neither of us knows much about kids but we want so much to make her happy - "
It was perfect, really, too many words, too much detail, the way her voice trembled just a little, the clutch of her hand in Clint's, and by the end of it, the hostess was nearly in tears, seating them at what was clearly the best table in the cafe, and had presented them with a 30 percent off coupon to use on any merchandise their nice might want when they came back.
"Excellent," Natasha said, cracking the menu once the hostess disappeared. "They've got about four kinds of dessert, you'll like that."