"I bet you I can complete that obstacle course faster than you can."
"Come'on. That's not an obstacle course!"
"You're just saying that cause you know I'll win."
"Clint, that's a McDonald's playground."
"Obstacle course for eight year olds. Exactly." Clint takes a moment to blow his nose into a kleenex. "That makes it at least ten times easier."
"You're sick."
He drops the used Kleenex into a nearby trashcan and sniffles. "Nuh uh."
"Are you always this childish when you're sick?"
"You're just afraid I'm gonna beat you, Nat." He sticks out his tongue at her for emphasis.
Natasha looked again at the playground. "You seriously wanna do this? You're like a thousand years too old for these things. It probably won't even hold your weight."
"That hurts, Tasha. Stings me deep."
Natasha walks over to the darkened McDonalds and peers in the window. "They're closed for sure. Not even a cleaning crew." She looks back over her shoulder as her partner leans forward with his hands on his knees to cough so violently Natasha is convinced his lung is lodged in his throat.
She steps over beside him and pounds him on the back gently in an effort to help dislodge whatever it is stuck in his airway. "You sure you want to break in in the state you're in?"
"Don't be-" He stops to hack again and is spitting on the pavement and straightening beside her after a moment. "Don't be such a prude, Tasha. That's part of the obstacle."
"If I knew it was going to be this much trouble getting you back to the hotel I'd have stuck you in a cab."
"Fresh air is good for a cold. 'specially California air."
"Air and rest."
He pouted at her and she crossed her arms in response. He deepened his pout and she raised an eyebrow at him.
He sniffled.
"Okay. What's the course?"
Clint broke into a grin and looked like a child in an ice cream shop. "Do you have a quarter?"
She knew better than to ask for a reason and reached into her bag and to find him a quarter.
He stepped up next to the pathetic red fence and held the quarter out between the bars. She tracked his eye motion as he calculated the precise trajectory he wanted and flicked the quarter.
The quarter arced upwards, bounced off the top of one of the plastic half bubble view ports, pinged off two support bars before ticking off the side of the building and sailing cleanly through the black mesh surrounding the a ball pit.
"Show off."
Clint smirked and stepped back beside her. "We start here." He drew an imaginary 'x' on the ground in front of them. "You have to break in to the playground – easy. Then you have to go up the big slide, not the little one!"
She tracked along where he pointed.
"Next you have to go through the up-downy foam roller thingies and through that plastic tube there. Don't stop at the plastic bubble view port, Romanov, that'll lengthen your time."
"You act like I've never been on a playground in my life."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "I grew up on a playground."
"A circus." She corrected.
He coughed again. "Same thing." He bounced to the side and pointed at the playground once more. "After the port thing you'll see those like metal step things that aren't connected?"
"I see em."
"You have to go through those, and then – this is the part you shouldn't do, but we're gonna do it. Get on the outside of them. That'll put you on top of the ball pit netting."
"Where are you going with this?"
"There's Velcro on the edge. Open and go through the hole there and make sure to reseal the Velcro after! Then jump into the ball pit, find the quarter and extract via the shorter slide all the way back to the finish."
"Is that all?"
Clint nodded but then seemed to change his mind. "No! You can't have shoes in these playgrounds. You have to take your shoes off and put them in the shoe cubbies at the start and put them back on before you climb back over the fence."
Natasha stretched her arms over her head. "Well then, what're we waiting for?"
"After you."
"Oh no. No I couldn't." Natasha gestures towards the playground. "You better go first so I can ensure I've got the course right."
"Well alright, scardey cat." Clint stuck out his tongue at her and then rubbed the sleeve of his hoodie under his nose and smeared snot across his cheek. "Get ready to lose. You have a timer?"
Natasha pulled her phone from her pocket. "Ready when you are, sickie."
Clint did a little bounce on the balls of his feet and windmill'd his arms. "Get ready to weep, Romanov."
Natasha stepped back and held up the timer. "Oh I'm sure." Clint hopped back and forth from foot to foot and then stopped to blow his nose. "Ready?" Clint nodded. "Set." He bounced again. "GO!"
Clint lunged forward towards the short painted fence. He was over it with ease and landed gently on one of the wire mesh tables on the other side. Without faltering he sprang across the tabletops to the shoe caddy holder. He started hopping on one foot towards the slide entrance as he removed first one shoe and then the other.
She groaned as he used his perfect accuracy to throw the shoes into the cubbies before diving headfirst into the slide. "You're gonna get stuck in there you oaf."
She could hear him clumsily trying to get up the slide, as his hands and socked feet made awful noises on the inside of the plastic tube. At the top, his messy hair was the first thing to appear, followed quickly by the rest of him into the corridor of staggered foam rollers.
Despite the playground being designed for eight year olds, Clint appeared to have a fairly easy time contorting himself around and over the rollers. Most full grown adults wouldn't have been able to do it, but they both kept pretty limber for missions.
He reached the end of the short corridor and entered another enclosed plastic area and headed towards the view port. The playground creaked under his weight as he exited the plastic tunnel and attempted to twist himself through the metal wrungs.
"Don't get stuck." She called out to him as he rolled and put his hands and head outside the rings. His chest was too wide to fit through so narrow a gap.
He grunted and tried to pull himself through, he managed to get his shoulders clear but the bar constricted over his chest and he faltered.
"You know they build these things so kids can't get out of them."
"I'm a – " he groaned with a second effort. "-Professional, Nat." Another groan – this time from the metal framing of the playground. "I'm not a child."
"That remains to be seen." She muttered as the playground creaked once more. "You're going to bring the whole thing down on top of you."
"I am. NOT!" His chest finally squeezed through the bars and Natasha was pretty sure he had bent the metal in the process.
He hung upside down now with his waist and legs still inside the metal framework of the rungs. His hands dangled a minute over his head and ghosted along the top of the ball pit netting. "Wasting time, Barton!"
Clint smirked and started wiggling forward at the hips in order to drag his lower half straight out of the rings. He got as far as his ankles but was suddenly overtaken with a violent coughing fit.
"Дерьмо!" She jumped forward and was straddling the short security fence when he collapsed onto the netting. The sudden onslaught of weight was not what the playground had been designed for and the meager netting around the ball pit tore open at the Velcro and he was quickly dropping into the pit, net and all.
He landed with an awkward crash in the middle of a pool of plastic colorful balls and sank into the pit. His coughs continued and with each violent cough he twisted more netting around him and sank deeper into the pit.
She hesitated as his coughing resided and perched herself on the edge of the fence. "You alright there, Barton?"
His hand shot up in the air, a thumbs up wrapped in wire netting. Clint twisted and tried to sit up but his movements just stretched the netting tighter from where it was still attached to the framing.
"Goddmanit."
"I thought you trained for this sort of thing your whole life, Carnie." She watched him twist again, the net getting more tangled around him.
"Shut up!" She watched as his foot kicked up in the air and his hand went to meet it.
"Your knife is in your shoes."
"Goddamnit!" His leg collapsed into the ball pit and he stopped moving.
Natasha jumped down from the fence and strolled to the side of the ball pit. He looked like a captured animal the way he was wrapped in netting and laying there dejected. "Do you need help?"
He started wiggling again but the netting was pretty thoroughly wrapped around him. He sighed and tried to shift in the ball pit so he could meet her eyes. When he opened his mouth to start speaking he was instead wracked with coughs again.
She pulled a knife from her own boot and started cutting the netting at the edge of the pit before wading in to the ball pit towards him which proved to be much more cumbersome than expected. She cut the net above his head where it was now incredibly taut against the frame and then half squatted half sat in the pit beside him to survey the problem.
Clint stopped coughing and she noticed a tear in his eye from the latest coughing fit. "We need to get you to bed." He inhaled deeply and leaned back in the ball pit with closed eyes. She went to work slicing the netting around him and within moments had him free. "Can you get it from here?" He nodded so she started towards the edge of the pit.
She hefted herself out of the pit and went to collect his purple Chucks from the shoe cubbies as he extracted himself from the pit. Clint leaned over the edge of the pit and started coughing again and Natasha found herself sitting on the edge of the pit and thumping him on the back to help clear the phlegm.
When he finally stopped coughing she helped him out of the pit and wiped the snot off his face he'd smeared there earlier. They slowly climbed the fence together, the illness in addition to the brief obstacle course was finally taking its toll on his rundown body. He took a Kleenex from his pocket and blew his nose again and Natasha had to stifle a laugh at the bright orange ball lodged in the hood of his jacket.
"Come on. Let's get you home."
He nodded wearily and she didn't protest when he draped an arm over her shoulders. She responded by wrapping an arm around him and leading him down the sidewalk, his shoes dangling from her free hand.
"You know I win by default of you ruining the course?" He chuckled at her before falling in to another coughing fit that left him even feebler than the last. She was going to have to hurry him home.
He leaned into her after his coughing subsided and shuffled along in his socks for a moment before finally speaking.
"I owe you a quarter."