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They don’t go on dates very often, and neither thinks anything of it. Actually, Natasha is fairly certain that they have never shared a conventional “date” throughout the entirety of their history as a pair. The closest they come to dating is waiting together for baristas to craft coffee or tea beverages.
Once, Clint tried to get her to sit down at a table in a cafe in Montana after they were handed their drinks. If they had sat down to drink, perhaps it might have been construed as a date, but Natasha had shaken her head and said she wanted to get a head start on the hike into Glacier National Park for their rendezvous with the Canadian agents. Clint had grumbled—to be fair, it was only five-thirty in the morning and she had promised him the night previous that they wouldn’t have to begin the trek until seven AM—and spent the next two hours of driving and hiking complaining intermittently about her “masochist efficiency.” No impromptu not-exactly-a-date had been had.
They’ve never talked about it, really, the not-dating, but it hasn’t been necessary. While other coupes “date,” Natasha and Clint work covert operations together. While other couples share lingering glances brimming with sexual tension across rooms at parties, Hawkeye and Black Widow feel that tingle on the back of their necks that promises they are watching out for one another through the scopes of rifles (or bows) during B&E jobs. In lieu of sitting close together in the booths of restaurants during double dates or group dinners, Strike Team Delta rather regularly ends up in the close quarters space of hiding in ventilation shafts.
They spend plenty of time together in ways far more intimate than most couples will ever know, in ways that only assassins and spies can comprehend. What little time they have off and to themselves is important for them to decompress, so they give each other their space when they can. They know who they are and have long since accepted that they don’t need to date to be in a deep and meaningful relationship. …even if Natasha laughed off-and-on for three hours after Clint first muttered that cliché phrase.
So Clint texting her to meet him at an address and “dress to impress” on her first night to herself in months is unusual, to say the least.
She responds with three question marks and waits a few minutes, but he doesn’t respond. Clint can be a bit of an ass about prompt replies on his personal phone during off-duty hours, so she thinks nothing of it. She looks up the address. It’s a restaurant. …odd.
She shows up to the restaurant fifteen minutes later and after a brief exchange with the host, swiftly locates Clint at a table. “Got your extra breadsticks,” he says before she can ask him what this is about. Natasha grins. She hadn’t thought Clint was paying attention to the internet these days. Barnes is the only person she can count on anymore to help with her meme-mongering amongst the team.
“I’ll give you three tries to give me the correct opinion before I stuff them in my purse,” she chuckles.
“Huh?”
She rolls her eyes and assumes that he’s feigning ignorance again. “So a date, huh?” she prompts as she sits in the chair he pulls out for her. This is one of those things that let her know he loves her, because Clint is only reflexively courteous like that with her, never other women.
“Yeah, guess so,” he replies with a dorky grin, and she feels her heart warm at it.
For the next hour, they chat idly and have the most bizarrely normal dinner date Natasha has ever been on, and she’s been on a lot in the course of her undercover work. Clint is even wearing a dress shirt and slacks instead of jeans for once, and she’s never seen him do that voluntarily. He seems rather appreciative of the dress she chose as well.
They bill the dinner to one of their fraudulent Tony Stark credit cards. Clint loves to do that. He swiped some info a year ago out of boredom at one of Stark’s parties and Natasha had needed no encouragement to promptly open dozens of lines of credit—and elaborately hide their existence from Pepper—using that intel. They’ve been feeding themselves on Stark’s unknowing dime since.
On the way out, Clint slips his arm around her. “That was nice,” he says, grinning like an idiot, when he presses a kiss to her ear. It sends a shiver down her spine and makes her smile too.
“It was,” she agrees. “See you on the mats tomorrow?”
“Yup. I’m going to beat you senseless.”
“Don’t bet on it, Barton.”
“I’ll take that bet, Romanoff.”
“Idiot.”
“Bit—.”
She kisses him goodnight mid-word and they stand there on the curb, wrapped up in each other, for two straight minutes. Saying goodnight is reluctant, but Natasha does it, because she knows Clint has to be up very early for a training exercise with a promising new marksman recruit Victoria Hand picked out herself before her death. Maybe after they meet up for their afternoon sparring match, she’ll have a chance to pull him into a supply closet or the like for a little one-on-one time of a…well, honestly, only slightly less bruising nature.
That night, when she slides into bed, Natasha texts Clint with a grin she feels like an idiot for being unable to wipe from her face. She’s as bad as Clint, for once, but at least he’s not around to avenge all her teasing for it.
[20:42] 000: had g8 00:00 2nite. nvr thot say dis; re: snds lik grls in chxflx pst dte. thx 4 mking hap fnly tho
Seven minutes later, her phone begins buzzing with replies. Clint is slower at texting than she is, so she waits for the usual three-plus minute pause between messages to indicate he’s done.
[20:49] carwreck: i hate ur crappy txt code & ur anon #s. i tell u that lately?
[20:50] carwreck: cant even read most of that
[20:50] carwreck: theres shorthand & theres stupid nat
[20:51] carwreck: i know u do iton purpose
[20:51] carwreck: stop it
[20:53] carwreck: nyway u made it happen i jsut showed up.
[20:54] carwreck: thought it was a surprise op til halfway through
[20:55] carwreck: that dress was killer btw
[20:57] carwreck: wear it when i come over nextt ime?
Natasha ignores the last two texts because the two before that seem…odd. Now that she thinks about it, a lot of this night was odd. She skips the effort to mess with him during her follow-up and doesn’t wait to see if he’s finished; even if he’s not, he’s only about to degenerate into attempting to get her to sext again.
[20:58] 000: what do you mean ‘surprise’? you asked me out.
[21:03] carwreck: ?
[21:03] carwreck: u asked ME wut r u talking about
Natasha swiftly checks the subcode of her phone’s data memory. The text she received from Clint to set this all off is, now that she examines it, a trojan disguised to appear as transmitted from Clint’s encoded number. There is nothing to indicate how it infiltrated the secured network she has been using for communication for years. Thoroughly alarmed now, she is up and out of her bed in a rush, clothes and shoes on, rushing out into the night and into a cab. She reaches Clint’s apartment swiftly enough to justify having overtipped the driver to speed and run one red light. Clint is, of course, surprised to see her when he opens his door wearing pyjama pants with a cartoon dog all over them.
“Heyyyy, booty call,” he drawls with a dumb grin. “Guess I can go in a little late tomorrow after a—hey!”
Natasha shoves past him and goes straight for his bed up the stairs in the loft, where she knows his phone will be on the floor next to it. Their text conversation is still open. And there it is. A text from a random, falsified number, spoofed to present an introductory code like one of her many burners would when she initiates a conversation with her partner. The text asks Clint to wear something nice and meet her at the same address she had received earlier that night, almost identical to the message she had received, with the exception of an additional “order xtra breadstix.”
“Nat, what the hell?” Clint complains as he trudges up the stairs towards her. He’s grumpy now; she is obviously not there for a recreational rendezvous.
“Have you had your phone on you at all times?” she demands.
He frowns and crosses his arms over his bare chest, growing serious as he realizes something is up. “What’s going on?”
“I didn’t text you that address. You didn’t text me. We got played. Someone sent us there.”
Clint squints, suspicious. “…shit,” he concludes.
They spend the next few hours (after destroying their phones) trying to figure out when and how their secret contact system was hacked, how the safeguards were violated. Eventually, irritated and edgy, Natasha orders him to get dressed and they head out again in search of a computer she can use to do a little hacking.
By midnight, they’ve broken into a high-tech university computer lab.
By three AM, she has an IP address and is determining geocoordinates.
By six AM, they’re boarding a plane.
At noon, Clint is glowering behind her, texting one-handed with someone about the training exercise he’s now officially skipped with that kid, sidearm picked up at the local Walmart ready in his other hand, while Natasha is knocking angrily on a motel door. She is fully prepared for hand-to-hand combat when whoever this mastermind compromising their privacy and who knows what else opens the door.
She is not prepared for the face that greets them, pizza slice in hand.
“…oh, hi, guys!” chirps Darcy Lewis. Her expression is that of someone caught red-handed in the cookie jar—and not remorseful at all. In fact, she looks almost smug.
“…how?” Clint demands, voice gravelly for lack of sleep. He hates flying when he can’t be the pilot; it makes him very anxious and irritable.
“Did you guys have fun?”
“Hooooowwww?” Clint reiterates. Natasha is still processing that Dr. Foster’s intern just pulled one over on two professional spies. She is formulating a plan for interrogation.
Darcy takes a bite of her pizza and speaks around the mouthful, “That restaurant had, like, five star reviews across the board on Yelp. Oh! Did you get the pennyay stuff? Looked awesome online.”
“Penne,” Clint corrects reflexively, and then shouts, “HOW?!”
“Whoa whoa whoa, I did you guys a favor,” Darcy declares, offended. “Don’t get all snippy at me, Cupid.”
“Ms. Lewis,” Natasha finally grounds out. “That relay system is very above your accessibility. If you don’t explain, I will be taking you somewhere very unpleasant and asking you very unpleasant questions in very unpleasant ways. I think that might put some strain on our relationship with your boss.”
Darcy laughs. “Wow, way to thank the awesome genius to finally get you two on an actual date. I can’t believe you’d never done that before!”
Natasha remembers now. Three months ago, during idle conversation on a hijacked bus between more dangerous parts of a mission with Thor, Foster, and her assistants, Darcy had asked what kind of dates master assassins went on and Natasha had flippantly noted that she and Clint didn’t do dates. “Never?” Darcy had gasped, and Natasha had added, “Actually, I’ve never been on a real date, period.” Darcy’s bemused shock had been entertaining at the time. She has not seen or spoken to the earnest, wry woman since then.
“…I’m going to get coffee,” Clint growls, turns, and abandons Natasha to shove Darcy back into the motel room and figure this out.
It doesn’t take long. No sooner has she slammed the door behind her than the young woman says, “Hey, easy. I was just doing you a solid. You guys are so cute; you should go on dates all the time. Live it up, get disgusting and mooshy, enjoy yourselves. Life isn’t all dark and sneaky spycraft, you know.”
“How did you hack our network, Darcy?” Natasha presses.
“Oh, I didn’t really do it. I mean, we used my phone. But Phil did all the heavy techno-lifting.”
“…Phil.”
“Yeah, Coulson?” Darcy beams. “See, he owed the big guy—”
“Banner?”
“No, Thor.” Darcy laughs. “Coulson owed Thor a favor after our Go Fish game, and then I beat Thor at beer pong, so—”
Natasha interrupts again, disbelieving, “You beat…Thor. At beer pong.”
“There were some…um, mitigating factors involved, but yeah! Anyway, so I beat him at beer pong, and so he gave me the favor, and I called up good ol’ Phil and he was in the neighborhood with some frree time so we met up for coffee and he helped me do it all. Sooooo…how was it?” Darcy winks and the lewd suggestion in her expression isn’t wasted on Natasha.
“We didn’t have sex after,” she starts reflexively, still so thrown that she speaks before she can stop herself, a unique experience of its own. She and Coulson are going to have to have a very serious discussion about how “for emergencies only” is actually defined.
Darcy pouts and teases, “Awwww. Why not? I mean, those arms, right? Mama Mia. Bet Hawkguy can really do some push-ups, know what I mean? Is he a groaner? He looks like a groaner.”
“Please stop.” Natasha rolls her eyes, but she is beginning to appreciate the absurdity of the situation. To be honest, Darcy has always struck her as a uniquely pure soul, and something about her enthusiasm is contagious. So she admits grudgingly, “…the date was nice.”
“I knew it! Okay, okay, deets, girl. I’ve got an hour to blow before Jane gets back. Don’t leave me hanging here!”
Two hours later, Natasha tracks Clint down. He’s sitting on a couch in a Starbucks, coffee in one hand, new smartphone in the other. He scoots over to sit against the arm of the sofa and pats the cushion next to him for Natasha to join him. She does, fitting herself comfortably into his side, and accepts his cup when he offers it to her as well, taking a sip before handing it back.
“So?” he asks after a few moments of companionable silence, arm resting loosely around her shoulders on the couch’s back.
Eyes on her own new phone while setting it up, Natasha states matter-of-factly, “We've agreed to call Darcy Lewis Your Majesty, Queen of Deception at the next Avengers party.”
Clint makes a soft grunt of a noise and moves his head in a ‘I can accept that’ gesture, continuing to drink his coffee and read something on his phone.
A minute later, Clint curls the arm over her shoulders to bring her closer so he can bow his head and kiss her ear. Again that little shiver goes through her before he rests his face in her hair and exhales contentedly. “Hey. We’re having coffee,” he murmurs without withdrawing. “…like a date.”
Natasha smiles. She can’t help it. The resonance of warmth in Clint’s voice is tangible. He likes this, and she does too if she is being honest.
“Yeah. We should do this more often,” she says casually.
Clint kisses her cheek, that idiot grin on his face again. She loves that she's put it there.
“Sounds good," he agrees. "…but uh, hey, Nat? Can you explain the breadsticks in your purse thing?”