Kyle & Clint | Thursday Morning

[x-hawkeye.livejournal.com]

Kyle has a most excellent idea while he and Clint work out together.


Clint walked into the gym, already pulling his shirt off over his head. No point wearing it when he was just gonna wind up sweating through it, anyway. At least this way he could wipe himself off before heading for the shower. The door swung shut behind him as he caught sight of someone already using the chin-up bar. Well, that was a nice view. "Morning," he said, waving a little.

Kyle grunted out something that sounded like "morning" but also sounded like "nineteen". A grunted out "twenty" confirmed that his greeting had been more than half counting and considerably less than half an actual greeting, even if he had made eye contact and grunted in Clint's general direction. Talking was hard when you were at best seventy-five degrees from upside-down.

Amused, Clint eyed the other potential equipment in the gym. He made a beeline for the salmon ladder and set about utilizing it to the fullest.

"Dude. How." Kyle slowed his last sit up and watched as Clint bounced the salmon ladder up a few rungs. "Hands. Powder. Gloves. How. Do you have skin on your hands?" He shook his head, and then spluttered some hair out of his mouth. "Like, is this an archery thing and your hands are all callus, or what?"

Clint paused, hanging in mid-air. "Yeah, lots of calluses. All the calluses. And practice. I like salmon ladders. Been doin' 'em forever. Started out... doin' 'em wrong, just never really fixed it. Used to it now."

"No one likes salmon ladders, dude. People just do them because they look awesome doing them." That was Kyle's theory because fuck, he hated salmon ladders. Even with tape, he ended up with some kind of scraped up hands. "You know what we outta do?"

Doing another salmon ladder just because, Clint paused again and raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"There's what, eighty-nine of us who can do this shit just so? And at least a couple people who know how to do carpentry or can learn. You know what this place needs? A obstacle course like American Ninja Warrior." Kyle let himself be upside-down long enough to wave his hands wildly, and then pulled back up to sit on the pull-up bar. "I mean, dude, don't you like really want to see your brother miss and land in a pit of clammy water?"

Letting himself hang there for a moment, Clint considered the proposition. A slow smile pulled up the corners of his lips. "Yes," he said, nodding. "Yes, I really want to see that. Obviously, this endeavor is going to require some intense research. So... finish workouts, wash off stank, marathon American Ninja Warrior? With food?"

Kyle nodded, and then slowly went backwards and flipped down to land on the ground. "Might be a good team building exercise for the kids too, and means I get to watch Angel and Julian fall face-first into clammy water."

Clint considered that as he worked his way back down the ladder. "I think I'm like honor-bound not to encourage my girlfriend to fall face-first into stuff, but like, yeah. I'm all for this. We can probably rope, I dunno, Doug or somebody in for stuff - or, hey. We could ask Scott about reprogramming the Danger Room to test stuff out before we make it real. Like, layouts and everything. And we gotta have moving parts so we can change stuff. And it's gotta be in the woods for like, team-building retreats or whatever."

"Yeah, it's gotta be modular. I bet we could get some of the blueprints online. I know one of the champions like no shit built some of the course in his parents back yard, and we have some of it already." Kyle gestured at the salmon ladder that Clint had just hopped down off of. "I mean this thing won't be too hard to reproduce."

Nodding, Clint grinned. "This'll be awesome. We need some of those moving things - like the roller things or whatever, the ones that make it super difficult to stay up on 'em. And then you fall into a pit of mud." Rising up onto the tips of his toes for a moment, Clint rocked back onto his heels. "Dude. This is the best plan."