Chapter 4- Accords

"I have something I need to talk to you about."

Clint looked up, seconds away from firing an arrow straight through Steve's head. "You asking to get hit or something?"

"Yep. Sorry, should I have prefaced this with "I have something I need to talk to you about. Please shoot me between the eyes with an arrow, honey"."

"You're a sarcastic son of a bitch sometimes."

"Language, Clint," Steve smirked.

"What did you need?"

"It's kind of a sticky subject."

"Well as you know, I'm all about sticky stuff."

"Heathen. No, I mean...um..."

"So this is Avengers business? Even though you know that I retired from that shit."

"This is serious, Clint. There's going to be some kind of confrontation."

"Well, yeah, isn't that what usually happens with the bad guys? We piss them off somehow, they come crawling through portals and trying to kill us and then we confront them and send them all packing to whatever Podunk planet they came from."

"This isn't a case of simply fighting bad guys. You know about the whole Sokovia Accords business, right?"

"Of course."

"Well, there's a disagreement amongst us. Some of us want to sign, some of us don't."

"Let me guess. You don't want to sign, neither does Wanda and Sam will do anything so long as it helps you. Nat and Tony want to sign it and wherever Tony goes, Vision and Rhodes will follow him. Tony is trying to get you sign the Accords but you're not backing down and that's how it ends, with this big confrontation that you're talking about."

"You're good."

"I'm not, Nat called me about it pretty much fifteen minutes ago."

"She trying to recruit you?"

"I think so. Not sure what the right decision is. Why aren't you signing it?"

"Think of all the good we've done since we formed the initiative. We saved so many lives in New York, Washington, Sokovia, Lagos, hell the whole world by stopping Loki."

"Lagos? Did you really help people there?"

Steve grew angry. "Don't be like that, Clint. Crossbones was going to kill everybody there if he needed to. We saved more people than we hurt. Wanda already feels bad enough about it without people like you making it worse for her."

Clint held his hands up. "Sorry, sorry."

"No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm just mad about this whole thing separating us. We don't even know where Bruce and Thor are. I could really have used Nat on this one."

"Oh, thanks."

"You know what I mean. She feels bad about the damage to Washington and what's come of leaking the Hydra files."

"That was two years ago, Steve. She can handle it. She's handled worse."

"I get why she decided to sign, but I never thought she'd defend Tony."

"Nat doesn't fight for people, she fights for ideas. Morals. She'll go against all her friends and allies if it means doing what she thinks is right. She's kind of like you in that respect."

"Funny. What's your take on this, anyway?"

Clint shrugged. "I'm retired, remember. I don't get a vote."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Okay, for the sake of time, let's just go with the idea that you're semi-retired but you're gonna jump back into the action to help whoever you think is right for one last battle and then go back into the retirement."

"You see right through me. But why aren't you wondering why I'm not jumping to your side already?"

Steve shrugged easily. "Because you have allegiances on both sides. No matter what's happened, you and Nat always feel like you owe each other something. We're...us, so naturally you'd think about helping me. But that shouldn't matter. Ideally, I want you to fight for the side you think is right."

"Even if that means you're potentially recruiting for the other team?"

"If that's what you want."

"Bullshit, you came here to get me to fight with you and that's all there is to it. You're trying to be a good man by giving me an option when we both know there really isn't one, is there?"

"I'd love it if there wasn't. But I know I have to be impartial here. You're a person outside of our relationship and your choices are important. If you want to sign the Accords, I'm not going to stop you from doing so."

Clint finally made a motion as to his opinion. "I can't sign them. Even if I wanted to, I could never do that. It's not the right thing to do."

Steve smirked.

"Stop that, you're not so innocent in this either. I know why you're not signing them, because of Bucky. And you know that whole situation could go from here to fucked up in a matter of moments."

"So why aren't you signing?"

"Jeez, you'd think you'd be a little more appreciative that I'm on your side, here."

"Clint."

"Fine. I'm not signing because of everything that's happened to me. If I signed the Accords, I'd be admitting that I think we're not doing the right thing by operating as we always have. Even before you were recruited, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been running the same way for years. Like you said, we've saved more lives than we would have planned on. New York was necessary, as was Sokovia. Both of those were world-ending circumstances. What would General Ross have done if we failed? Well, nothing, because he wouldn't be alive to reprimand us."

Steve's smirk had faded and was replaced with a genuine smile of appreciation. He knew that Clint had more inside of him, though.

"Plus, if they'd been operating during the Sokovia mess, they surely wouldn't have let us do what we wanted. Sure, Ultron wouldn't have been a threat either, but it would've only been a matter of time before the next one occurred. There are more...Loki characters in the universe. On Earth and the planets we've never even heard of. What would be stopping them from attacking us if we were disbanded?"

"God I love when you think with your head."

"Amongst other things."

"This isn't gonna cause problems with you and Nat, right?"

Clint shrugged lightly. "This is gonna cause problems with everyone involved. Me and Nat. You and Nat. You and Tony. Me and Tony. Wanda and Vision. The list goes on. You can't have a blowout like this and not expect some rifts to occur.

"And don't worry about me and Nat. We've been through much worse than a squabble over some documents."

"You keep saying that, am I ever going to hear the story of what happened in Budapest?"

Clint's mouth tightened. "Come on, a guy's gotta have some secrets. I told you about my days in the circus, isn't that enough?"

"Not that I didn't appreciate the sharing, but you and Nat in Europe pulling what can only be described as "some illegal stuff"? It's a story for the ages."

"And that's why you don't just get to hear it one day on a whim. You gotta earn it."

Steve slithered closer, in a manner one wouldn't have thought physically possibly for such a broad, tall guy. "Oh yeah? And I haven't...earned it yet?"

Clint breathed in quickly. "Nope," he muttered, trying to maintain his cocky aura and hopelessly failing.

Steve's hands reached downwards and he smirked. "How about now?"

Clint put his hands on Steve's muscled shoulders. "You're getting warmer."

Steve grasped Clint's crotch gently, rubbing after he let go. "Nah, I think I'm good."

Clint swore furiously. "Such a fucking tease."

Steve held up his hands. "Sorry I interrupted your retirement then, I guess."

Clint put down his bow and grinned. "Let's be honest, retirement wasn't ever really an option for me. Fury didn't really agree to it, either, I just kinda fell off the grid."

Steve pulled out his phone and waved it about. "Clint, babe? You're never really off the grid."

"I was afraid of that."