The Language Situation
So… he hadn’t meant to start a whole thing when he’d scolded Tony for yelling a curse word into Steve’s ear during the Ultron fiasco… but it happened.
And the whole mess in Sokovia aside, he’d created a monster.
The whole word now seemed to think he was above cussing.
He’d just kinda gone with it, because it was the heat of battle, but… they did realize he was a soldier in a war. Right? In fact he could probably out curse all of them combined.
And for a little while it was irritating, the others mockingly saying ‘Oh he said a bad word’ and ‘Oops, do you not like that word?’
And then he found his solution. Funnily enough he’d overheard a mom saying something and gotten an idea, but it worked so who was he to complain?
A swear jar.
And then it became funny. Funny in the way, that whenever someone cussed around him, he could now call them out on it.
One dollar a cuss word.
Tony basically threw a fit the first couple times he had to do it, because he apparently only carried bills in 100’s. Then after some good natured teasing, he started to carry a bundle of ones with him. He’d come down in the morning, tripping over things and cursing untill he got his coffee, and Steve would be waiting, newspaper in hand while Clint called the man out. “Steve, he said a bad language word.”
“The jar, Tony.” Steve would say with a smile, causing the shorter genius to mutter under his breath, shoving bills into the jar while glaring at Steve.
Clint was always messing up, causing him to mess up more, which made them all laugh.
Bruce and Natasha seemed fairly immune to this, but when the red-headed spy did cuss, she usually had to put at least ten dollars into the jar.
It was a great feeling, swapping out the jar eventually for a milk jug and knowing he hadn’t put a single dollar into it. And at the end of two months, when the milk jug was completely full, he went to local charities and left them nice surprises. One time it was a local homeless shelter, another a humane society.
He liked visiting the dogs.
Steve was eventually going to break Tony’s rule of no pets. It was just a matter of time.
Natasha had dragged him to an interview, stating that if she had to go then he was coming with her. She was in the middle of telling the host about how Clint had switched the sugar for salt yesterday, shocking the hell out of Stark, when she paused. “Darn it.”
Steve shook his head, holding out his hand. “Pay up.”
She slapped a dollar into his hand, and at seeing the host’s curious expression, explained. “Steve doesn’t like that kind of talk. We have a swear jar at the Tower.”
Steve smiled. “It makes sure that Hawkeye and Iron Man give their money to a good cause… This month it’s gonna be breast cancer awareness.”
Natasha nodded in approval, then elbowed him. “Hey, you should run for that! You’d make a ton of money, get a sponsor to dress you in all pink.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but didn’t say anything until Tony greeted him with a grin at dinner. “So, guess who's sponsoring you to run in a pink tracksuit? This guy!”
Steve felt like letting out a string of the worst curse words he knew, but settled for, “Fudge buckets!” In turn causing everyone to either laugh or groan.
The breast cancer awareness cause earned more money in that race than ever, and Steve grimaced at every single picture of him in the pink outfit he came across on the web.
It didn’t help that Tony plastered up one on the wall of the common room and he wouldn’t let Steve take it down.