Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any of the characters affiliated with them. If I did, there would totally be a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie in the works.

Author's Note: While I embrace constructive criticism remember this old saying if you choose to leave a review "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"

Hey all! Here's another snapshot for your reading pleasure! I've caught you guys up to what I'm posting on tumblr, for my own sake honestly. Keeping track of who had seen what was driving me crazy.

Anyway, I got this prompt a while back and have recently become super into the show American Ninja Warrior, so here we are. This idea will likely get expanded on and retrofitted into an actual oneshot one day, because it falls in line with the Many Happy Returns series. So yeah. Anyway, enjoy!

This is another addition to this collection of ficlets, all based on prompts I received through my tumblr - aggie2011whoop - and all around 1000 words.

Btw: this is unbeta'd so any mistakes are mine!

Prompt: Clint and American Ninja Warrior

Submitted by: Imherethephantom (don't know your name here luv)

It had become an obsession throughout the tower.

Every Tuesday night, popcorn was popped, beers were thrown on ice, and pizza was picked up. And when 8pm rolled around, there was only one place to find the team. The home theater room watching…

American Ninja Warrior.

Bruce was fascinated by the physics of it. He liked to theorize how the competitors should tackle each obstacle, from a physics standpoint, as soon as the course was reviewed.

Steve tended to twitch around in his seat, as if he were running the course in his mind.

Pepper's favorite part was when someone wiped out. She'd cup her hands around her mouth and yell 'FAIL!' any time someone fell. But she also tended to get weepy when the more emotional back stories were revealed.

Thor, when he was there, took incredible pleasure in the moment of victory when that final buzzer was hit. If he was feeling particularly enthusiastic, he would throw his hands up and cheer.

Tony, he couldn't help but throw out obstacle ideas of his own. He tended to have his tablet in hand and would sketch out his own ideas, or improvements for the show's ideas, during commercial breaks.

But Clint and Natasha? They just watched. Occasionally they'd whisper something back and forth, chuckle smugly and go back to watching. Clint, always, watched with a hungry light in his eyes.

The idea came to Tony when he and the others were throwing around ideas for Clint's birthday – which he always told them not to make a big deal of and of which they always made a big deal. It had happened to be a Tuesday, as they sat around discussing possibilities. Clint and Steve had gone to get the pizza so they could plan without worry of discovery.

They'd been stumped, though, until Clint got back and Tony saw that hungry, challenging spark in Clint's eyes.

All at once, he'd known what to do for Clint's birthday.

"Was a blindfold really necessary?" Clint grumbled, keeping a wary hand stretched out ahead of him even though Tony was leading him by the elbow. Tony had huffed something about trust, and then promptly – accidentally he claimed – run Clint into a door frame.

"Would you have kept your eyes closed if I'd asked you to?" Tony shot back.

Clint feigned being horribly offended.

"Of course I would have."

He didn't have to see his best friend to know Tony was rolling his eyes.

"Liar."

Clint smirked.

"And you accused me of lacking trust," he teased.

His fingers brushed another door frame a moment before he would have walked into it. He turned, glaring at where he was fairly certain his friend was.

"Huh," Tony muttered. "Even with a blindfold that was chilling."

Clint smirked.

"Here we are!" Tony announced as they made it through the door with only a slight banging of his elbow. Without any warning, the blindfold was stripped away.

Clint blinked rapidly into the bright, artificial light of one of the tower's lower levels.

The rest of the team was standing in front of him, gleeful smiles on their faces and Steve was holding a birthday cake.

The cake had a ninja wearing purple drawn on it.

Every one of them was wearing a black t-shirt with the same ninja on it and the words "HawkNinja" printed above the figure.

Clint narrowed his eyes and glanced around.

He felt his jaw actually go slack at what he saw.

It was a ninja warrior course, in the tower. It was complete with the elevated obstacles and the pools of water beneath for safety. It was longer than the usual courses from the show, containing more obstacles. It snaked around the room, ending with the famed warped wall.

"Holy shit."

"Articulate as always," Bruce teased where he stood with the others.

"How did you do this without me knowing?" Clint asked as he wandered forward.

"Come on, after all this time, you think we haven't learned how to put one past you?" Tony grinned. Clint turned, arching an eyebrow at the group of them.

"Natasha ran interference," Pepper confessed.

Clint cast his gaze on his partner and shook his head with a laugh.

"I thought you'd been a little extra frisky lately," he smirked.

She glared and next to her Steve blushed. Stars and Stripes never could quite keep a lid on his good ol' boy propriety.

The Captain cleared his throat and handed the cake off to Thor, who eyed it gleefully.

"We know you could never compete on the actual show…"

"Because you'd destroy all their records," Tony put in.

"Because of the publicity," Steve finished, as if Tony hadn't spoken. "So we figured we'd bring the show to you. It was Tony's idea. He and Bruce designed the course and Thor and I helped them build it."

"I did the t-shirts," Pepper announced. "Your own cheering section just like in the show."

"And you?" Clint eyed Natasha, "what was your part in this."

Her eyebrow quirked in such a way that he felt heat rush through his body.

"I ran interference," she replied with a wicked smirk.

"God, you two, do I need to hose you down?" Tony huffed.

"Come now, Clint," Thor encouraged, "display your skill!"

Clint found himself smiling – a confident, cool smile, definitely not a gleeful, childlike one – and kicking off his shoes. The group followed him to the starting point and he stripped off his t-shirt.

Tony cat-called him, earning the man a baleful glare. Tony, of course, just started humming a stripper tune.

Clint rolled his eyes and trotted up the steps to the starting point.

"We designed most of these ourselves," Bruce announced. "But you'll find some of the traditional obstacles too."

Clint scanned the course with his eyes, taking a moment to stretch his muscles and warm up.

"Gonna time me?" Clint asked.

Pepper held up the stopwatch she already had in hand.

"Ready?" Tony asked.

Clint nodded.

It was Thor who enthusiastically shouted,

"GO!"

He was aware of them, as he moved through the course. They ran as a group along with him, cheering and whooping like idiots. Thor had jogged ahead, putting the cake on a table near the finish before returning to join the team.

Clint had always loved stuff like this. He felt like he was breaking the laws of nature, of physics. This was a bit less freeing than parkour, because there was a certain way he had to progress through each section instead of just being able to run freely.

But God, he felt so damn alive.

By the time he was doing a showy front tuck flip off the second to last obstacle, the team was in near hysterics.

He barely paused as he ran at the warped wall, bare feet digging into the curved surface as he scaled it.

His hands caught the ledge and he pulled, then folded his body, then straightened his toes towards the ceiling. Brit and Kara would have been proud – it was one of the most form perfect handstands he'd ever done.

"Showoff!" Tony accused, but he was smiling widely.

"Just wait," Natasha laughed knowingly.

Clint smirked. She knew him too damn well.

He abruptly folded his body down, bracing his feet between his hands. Then he exploded up and backwards, tucking into a tight, spinning ball.

From a height like that, landing on a hard surface, he couldn't stick the landing without risking breaking something. So as soon as his feet touched down, he let himself roll back over his shoulders, pushing his hands off the ground to explode into the air. Even so, he still had to take a few stuttering steps to slow his momentum.

The team was going crazy.

Natasha reached him first, wrapping herself around him and planting an unexpectedly enthusiastic kiss on his mouth. He laughed, surprised by the open show of affection, but he supposed she'd just gotten caught up in the moment.

Thor, loudest of all, got to him next. He hoisted Clint up onto his shoulder as if he were a trophy and cheered loudly.

Clint, vaguely startled, but mostly amused, allowed it.

When they finally started to settle down, Pepper happily announced his time.

6 minutes 17 seconds.

Clint smirked.

"I can beat that."

Done. ;) Hope you enjoyed it! You all know how much I love to hear from you, so scoot on down to that review box and drop me a line!