Chapter 27
2015, date redacted
"You mother-" Sam screams as Clint dodged and dribbled the ball.
The Avenger sports day was going well, alright. They had split up into two teams, one side with Steve, Tony, Rhodey, Sam. The other was Clint, Natasha, Maria and Pepper. Laura had kindly declined playing, but would referee.
They had just finished a game of football. The agenda for the day was football, basketball, badminton, darts, parkour and a softball-baseball hybrid. They were going to add in water polo or synchronised swimming, but the pool was currently under repairs.
Instead, they would go for ice skating with the kids. The kids were doing their own sports day, or playing monopoly currently if the betrayed screams of Yelena were an indication.
"Goal, Falcon," Clint smirks as he slam dunks.
"110-106," Laura announces.
Natasha, Maria and Clint meet each other's eyes as Pepper moves to her position, defending Tony as he tried to pass the ball to Steve.
Their S.H.I.E.L.D. days gave them an advantage, they could communicate well.
They got into a triangle formatino around Pepper, leaving their goal seemingly unguarded.
"Cap!" Tony yells as he does a wild dribble-pass to Steve, managing to evade.
Clint, Natasha and Maria immediately break their formation, Pepper picking up the cues and moving to the goal while Clint, Natasha and Maria spread out into a line.
Natasha manages to feint and gain possession of the ball.
Clint takes over goalkeeping as Pepper and Maria move, Natasha tossing to Pepper who immediately tosses to Maria.
Clint joines again, sneaking and weaving between players as Maria throw to Clint and Clint shoots.
It lands a few inches away from the hoop, bouncing off the board.
Rhodey is right below and manages to catch it, dribbling and throwing to Sam.
Natasha runs off to the goal, letting Pepper, Clint and Maria move seamlessly together in formation again.
Sam throws across half the court. Steve is jumping up to reach it when Maria herself leaps up to take possession of the ball.
Maria immediately dribbles and throws to Pepper, who tosses to Clint before Tony could run to Clint and defend.
Natasha is somehow already at shooting position. Clint, seeing that the other team was coming to him already, threw to Natasha as Natasha concentrated and tossed.
"Goal!" Maria and Clint yell, Pepper laughing as Natasha smiled, catching the dropping ball.
A whistle blows and the game is over.
"Boom bitches, 1-1," Clint says as he passes Sam.
"That just means we're matched evenly," Sam says.
'Well yeah, but the next activity is badminton, and I know you can't play if your life depends on it. Clint and I have, however, received extensive sports education. Maria played competitively for some time too. Pepper has been playing with Maria for some time since she started working together, is that not right?" Natasha smiles, honey dripping.
"We're fucked," Rhodey mutters.
2015, date redacted
"Serve or choose?" Laura asks as they start the doubles match.
Maria and Pepper would be going up against Rhodey and Tony in the doubles matches, while in the singles Clint would go against Sam and Natasha against Steve.
"Serve," Rhodey decides.
Natasha and Clint lounge at the line judge seats, meeting each other's gazes across the court and grin.
Oh the other team was so going down. Maria had a mean smash, and Pepper was incredible at defense.
Maria and Pepper begun side by side as they got into ready position.
Tony serves to Pepper as Pepper nets lifts and the shuttle goes to the back court.
"Mine," Rhodey says as he moves back to hit the shuttle.
The shuttle, due to Rhodey's mis timing, reaches the middle of the other court before dropping.
"Mine!" Maria yells as Pepper moves to the back of the front-back position.
Maria smashes and the two men opposite only have time to look as the shuttle comes crashing down in between them.
Maria and Pepper high five as Natasha and Clint whoop.
They were sweeping these badminton matches.
2015, date redacted
"Next, darts," Laura announces.
Tony groans.
"Is this rigged in their favour, Steve? Didn't you and Romanoff plan this?"
"Hey, I had no idea that they played these sports."
"We are very good at what we do, Tin Man," Clint teases.
"I have admitted defeat already, lets just play the best we can," Rhodey miserably says.
"We could still beat them in softball-baseball," Sam says.
"I played baseball," Rhodey offers.
"I did to. In high school. We were best in the country, our rival and us had a lot of beef. Team was like a pack of wolves, hence the team mascot," Maria shrugs.
"Okay, Steve, what the hell?" Sam complains.
"Natasha's an incredible batter too, she may not look like it but she's got a lot of home runs when we have S.H.I.E.L.D. vs CIA vs FBI games," Clint mentions.
"Softball isn't my forte," Pepper admits.
"Did you see when Pepper and Tony got into the thirty seconds lobbing match, then Pepper ended it by doing a drop ball? Hilarious," Natasha says as they laugh at Tony's expense.
"Alright, who's ready to get their asses handed to them?"
2015, date redacted
Natasha does a flip off the railing of Avengers compound as she warms up.
Clint runs up the wall, grabs the railing and does a triple twist off, landing perfectly.
"Popcorn?" Maria offers Pepper as they watch their two representatives try their intimidation technique.
The other team was sending Sam and Steve on.
Pepper accepts as they settle down onto benches, watching Clint and Natasha do tricks and spins and flips off the wall.
"We're crushing the other team," Pepper chuckles as they watch Steve coax Sam into running up the wall and doing a backflip off it without his suit of wings.
"Steve might be good though, but he's not as good as Nat and Clint. Circus boy and ballerina-gymnast, honestly this is just a time for them to flex their skills," Maria laughs as Nat flips Clint off, scaling to the third floor and jumping off, performing a quadruple Arabian and back handspring when reaching the ground.
Steve was now doing handstand walking.
Clint was hanging upside down on the railing, watching.
"Shall we begin?" Laura asks.
2015, date redacted
'Have to admit, that was a cool one, Birdboy," Tony says as they eat lunch, finally resting. They'd rest for two hours before going for softball-baseball and ice skating at last.
Clint shrugs.
"I used to do tightrope and trampoline, picked up a lot of things."
Natasha eats her spring rolls as she discreetly sneaked the mushrooms to Galina, who passed them and hers to Maria.
Galina grins and Natasha winks.
Maria notices, of course, and rolls her eyes.
They spent the rest of the time catching up and allowing digestion before they went off for softball-baseball game of the century.
2015, date redacted
In foresight, what were they expecting when they organised this.
The game was declared a draw as Steve made holes in the net from hitting the ball too far and tearing through the net.
Of course, if it weren't for those, Maria's team would have won.
Maria was a great pitcher and Galina was a good catcher.
The teams were first, Maria, Natasha, Clint, Pepper, Galina, Wanda and Cooper. It was basically the female dominated team.
The other team was Steve, Sam, Tony, Rhodey, Lila, Yelena and Vision.
Maria pitched, Galina catched, Natasha was first base, Cooper was shortstop, Wanda did third base and Clint was the only outfielder due to lack of members.
They caught many balls but when Steve played, it was very unfair as he always hit homeruns except for the time where he missed the ball due to him miscalculating and bunting.
The first round's overall score for Steve's team was 4. Rhodey had gotten a home run too, and Yelena got the other.
"Super soldier serum, Soviet version," she shrugged.
In the next game, the team was on fire. Natasha got 1 home run, Maria got 3, Galina nearly got one but Vision caught the ball at the last minute, flying up to catch it (they had complained that it was unfair, but they said that using powers was never banned, so Wanda used hers and it quickly turned into a dirty game), Wanda managed to get one too.
Overall, they concluded the game with a neutral stance, although Tony did hiss at Clint who smirked.
They changed out of their muddy clothes, Maria complaining about needing to clean her boots (yes, she still had them from aforementioned S.H.I.E.L.D. vs CIA vs FBI games, including Clint and Natasha), and they drove off to the rink to skate.
Tony had booked the entire rink for three hours, to the excitement of the Avengers.
Yelena and Natasha had brought their own skates. ("What, Melinda taught me to skate when we were on a mission together. Vancouver, I think," Natasha had said)
Melinda was also the one teaching Yelena to figure skate. Yelena could now do triple axels, she was planning to train for quads. The super soldier serum helped, but she knew from experience that it did not really do much of a difference on the ice.
They quickly put on their skates, Natasha helping Galina as Maria put on hers.
"Oh my god, how to people walk in these," Sam complains.
Tony, surprisingly, was quite good at balancing on them even though it was his first time. Pepper, Maria and the Bartons had skated before.
Galina had gone skating once, when Yelena brought her along. Galina didn't like falling too much though, so she always made sure she balanced and didn't skate too wildly.
Steve, surprisingly, was really bad at skating. He was holding on to the skate support penguin thing, and it was a sight to behold.
"Captain America, defeated by skates and ice!" Natasha teases as she skates past him and Sam, attempting to balance together.
"Very funny Natasha," Steve deadpans, but his eyes widen as Sam lets go of his support, manages to skate for a few metres before falling and grabbing onto Steve, causing them both to topple.
Natasha laughs and pulls them up.
"Come on, even Wanda is doing better than you," Natasha says, pointing to where Wanda was slowly skating with Galina.
Lila and Cooper were following behind, trying to copy Yelena as she flawlessly executes a triple toe loop.
"See you when you've decided that the ice isn't going to hurt you," Natasha winks and skates off to flex her skills, performing a skating combination.
"She's showing off," Maria sighs but stares at Natasha as she spins on one foot while her back was arched and holding one leg up.
"Cap, see ya later alligator! Sam, good luck there!" Tony yells as he and Rhodey support each other, holding on to Pepper.
Natasha stops her spinning and skates over to them again, skidding to a stop and ice spray.
Natasha had a wild grin and kissed Maria.
"Come on, lets go."
Maria lets herself be dragged off by Natasha.
"So, Ice Queen Hill, must be nice being in tune with your subjects," Natasha teases, smile forming as they link arms.
"Don't be sassy, I'm surprised your flame hasn't melted the ice," Maria grumbles.
Natasha gives Maria a peck.
"You know, you have another two days before you go back to work. We could leave the kids with Wanda and the others, they'll take care of them. Then, we can go out of the country, have a date, just like old times," Natasha offers.
"Yeah, I'd like that," Maria agrees, stopping to french kiss Natasha at the side of the rink as they came to an abrupt stop.
There's a whistle from behind and they don't break apart, Natasha flipping who was definitely Clint or Yelena or Tony off.
Natasha pulls Maria closer.