Via IRC fundraiser - Steve & Clint bonding - Steve took Clint at his word immediately after Clint shook loose of Loki's spell - Clint will never forget that.
Steve discovered, his second week in Wakanda, that the fishing there was amazing, and T’Challa had said he could fish so long as he threw the little ones back unharmed and brought his catch to the palace kitchen to be cooked. Nothing was wasted in Wakanda, and hunting was for food, not for sport. (Though T’Challa admitted with a grin that you could have good sport from hunting for food.)
To Steve’s shock, after the jailbreak, Clint actually took Steve up on his invitation to go fishing with him. He wasn’t bad at it, either; by the time the sun was up Clint had landed a big catfish-looking creature, and had helped Steve pull up a second.
“Can I ask you something?” Steve said, as Clint re-baited his line and tossed it out after losing his bait to a fish smarter than either of the ones they’d caught so far.
“Sure,” Clint replied, leaning back in the boat, sipping from a canteen.
“I get why you retired,” Steve said. “Good neutral response to the Accords, and you had a family to think about. But why’d you come down on my side when I called? You didn’t have to.”
“No, I suppose not,” Clint agreed.
“But you didn’t even object. You just saddled up and rode in.”
Clint smiled. “I like that image, me riding in on a horse like the Rohirrim at dawn.”
“Too nerdy?” Clint asked.
“Shockingly nerdy,” Steve agreed.
“I mean...” Clint felt a tug on his line, tested it, then shrugged it off as a current. “I owed you one.”
“From when?” Steve asked, brow furrowed.
“Well, maybe not...” Clint glanced away. “I didn’t owe you one, like, you did me a solid and you’ve got credit. It’s more...you put your trust in me, and I owed you that back again. When Natasha pulled me back from Loki. I said I could pilot a plane. You said okay. You didn’t know me from Adam.”
“Natasha trusted you, that was enough for me,” Steve said.
“That’s what it looked like from your angle, sure. From my angle, Captain America just told me that despite all the terrible shit I’d done, he knew it wasn’t me who did it, and he knew I could saddle up.” Clint smiled at him. “When someone trusts you like that once, you owe it to ‘em to be worthy of the trust somewhere down the line.”
“Huh,” Steve said. “Got you in a hell of a pickle, Clint.”
“Bah, I been in worse,” Clint replied. “It’ll all sort out. In the meantime...” he reached over and hooked a finger on Steve’s line, testing it, “I think you got a bite. Give it a reel, see if we can get one more before we pack it in.”
