Disclaimer: This story contains frequent profanity. You have been warned.
AN: No specific spoilers this time.
Steve Rogers gave Tony Stark a fairly standard "Good morning" as he entered the kitchen. Usually he'd receive an equally standard "Captain." or "Morning." and the two would continue with their morning routines in mostly silence.
This morning however, Tony said neither of those two things. His answer wasn't even normally used as a greeting.
"Morning Stark." Said Steve.
"Fuck you." Said Tony.
"Excuse me?" Steve raised an eyebrow.
Stark had been known to do some pretty outrageous things but as Steve had come to learn through their missions and residence together, there was method to his madness. He usually didn't try to shock people for no reason.
"Have a fucking good morning is what I'm trying to say." Tony explained.
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." Steve replied as he grabbed the milk from the fridge.
"You sure fucking can." Tony replied cheerfully.
"Are you high?" Steve asked as he closed the fridge.
"I fucking am not." Said Tony. He was clearly enjoying the Captain's discomfort.
"Sir is completing a swear-a-thon." JARVIS explained to the perplexed soldier.
"What for?" Steve asked, trying to understand the point of the exercise.
"I will think of a fucking charity to support later." Tony shrugged.
"No, I mean what started this?" Steve replied. Back in his day, marathons were actual marathons that required strenuous physical exercise. This was something else.
"Ms Romanoff does not believe that Sir can do this." Said JARVIS.
"Natasha challenged you to swear your head off?" Steve was still confused.
"So she's Natasha now, huh? What's with that?" Tony asked with intrigue.
"You forgot the f word." Steve pointed out.
"You still can't bring yourself to say it, can you?" Tony laughed.
"So, what were you saying about Natasha, JARVIS?" The Captain asked the AI.
"It's probably easier for me to you what happened." Said JARVIS. "As there are no screens in the kitchen, I will play you the audio recording of their conversation."
"Wait, is everything that we say in this building recorded?" Steve asked, his colour paling.
"Of course it fucking is." Said Tony.
"Everything is recorded but it's usually never retrieved." JARVIS informed him. "Only Sir has access to all the files."
"In other words, you could be holding onto something for blackmail and we wouldn't even know about it." Steve sighed.
"Do I fucking look like I'm into that sort of thing?" Tony tutted.
"Playing the recording." Said JARVIS, ignoring the other two.
"What the fuck?!" Says a loud angry voice that was very obviously Natasha's.
"What's the matter Ms Rushman?" That was Tony's voice.
"He shot me. How the fuck did he see me over there?" Natasha is saying.
At first, Steve was worried that she might have been hurt but her reaction didn't sound like someone who had been shot. He was pretty sure that if he was wounded in battle, his first words would not be "What the fuck?".
"Are you using invisibility as a power up?" Tony asks the Black Widow.
"Yes." Natasha replies.
"Then he's probably using a hack to see you. Just because you have the power up, doesn't mean you should go out into the open." Tony advises.
At this point, Steve was not entirely sure what Natasha was doing but he was sure that she had not been wounded.
"I'll get that fucking bastard." Natasha mutters.
"Do you mind?" Tony replies, exasperated. "Every time you play Combat Arms, I get an earful."
"Stop hacking into my account then and lowering my stats." She replies.
"Me? Lowering your stats?" Tony asks with indignation.
Steve couldn't hold back his smile. Natasha Romanoff would be the one to swear her head off at the loss of a computer game.
"So you don't deny that you've been hacking into my account?" She says with satisfaction.
"I know who is hacking into your account but I'm not going to give you his name though." Tony tells her.
"So it's a he then?" She keeps prodding.
"Not saying anything." Tony replies.
Steve found himself wondering who the culprit might be as well. It wasn't the Captain himself as he didn't know how to operate video games – not because he couldn't; he could always learn and he found himself being able to master machines quite quickly now but he didn't see the point in them. It wasn't Tony Stark because Steve could tell from the audio that Stark was genuinely trying to protect someone. He knew that this someone was not Stark himself because he would have been more flippant if he had been trying to protect himself. It was someone else. He considered that it should be someone who visited the building often – probably even one of the other Avengers. But this was the internet they were talking about, anyone with wifi access on the planet could hack into Natasha's account and be the "fucking bastard" that she was talking about.
"Whoever he is, he fucking shoots like a girl." The Black Widow continues. "No aim at all. And I can say that coz I'm a girl."
"JARVIS, how many f bombs does Ms Romanoff utter in one day?" Tony asks his AI.
"Since she began her residence in this Tower, the highest number of the vulgar form of the verb to copulate that Ms Romanoff has ever uttered was three hundred and eighty seven. The lowest number was sixty five. And the average is around two hundred and fifteen utterances of said verb in a twenty four hour period." JARVIS informs them.
"Wow." For once Tony Stark is stumped for words.
Wow was also reflected in Steve's thoughts. He himself had never been much of a potty mouth, which was ironic because military folk were as famous for their language in the forties as they are today. He knew plenty of guys that could top the Black Widow's record, were they still alive. He usually didn't call them out on it because they were more concerned with not getting shot and blown up than the occasional bad word.
"Hey I'm not that bad." Natasha is saying to JARVIS. "What about his swear count. It's probably higher."
"Excuse me?" Tony says in mock-offence.
"What? Don't tell me you never swear?" Natasha replies in disbelief.
"Not really." Says Tony.
"JARVIS, what's his count?" The Black Widow asks the AI.
"That depends very much on his state of mind." JARVIS replies. "Would you like me to include those times that he has been drinking, Ms Romanoff?"
"Okay, I think we've heard enough already." Said Tony, trying to get JARVIS to switch off the recording.
"No, I want to find out what your count is." Said Steve with intrigue.
"You can always ask me Sir's swear count yourself at a later time." JARVIS suggested.
"Wait, so let me get this straight – so she challenges you to a swear-a-thon and you have to say fuck in every sentence?" Steve asked for clarification.
"You sound so funny when you say fuck." Tony laughed.
"So you're not raising money for charity?" The Captain asked him.
"We've got a week. JARVIS is gonna count our "fucks" and add them together. Then I'm going to pay whatever the total is, times that by one thousand, to a charity of Ms Romanoff's choosing." Tony explained.
"But I thought you two were having a competition. What do you get out of it if you win?" Steve asks.
"Easy. Whoever has the highest count by the end of the week gets to tell the other person to shut up when they hear something they don't like." Tony replies.
"Alright I'm in." Said Steve.
"You really fucking think you can do that?" Asked Tony, bemused.
"Fuck yeah." Steve replied.
"That, Captain Rogers, is the first time that I have recorded foul language coming from your mouth." JARVIS observed.
"First time it's been recorded." Steve smiled. "Not the first time I've said it."
"When was the first time?" Tony asked.
"Long time before you were born laddy." The Captain grinned. "I just have one more question."
"Go on?" Said Tony, already knowing what Steve was going to ask him.
"Who hacked into Natasha's gaming account?" Steve asked.
"Oh, you know that guy. He likes to wear black. He's good with arrows." Tony explained. Then he smiled. "And he's going to be so pissed when he finds out that the Black Widow thinks he shoots like a girl."