Chapter Text
It wasn’t hard to tell that Natasha wasn’t happy right now. For one, she had been scowling for the entire meeting, for two, she narrowed her eyes and shook her head every time you made eye contact. She wasn’t mad with you, but your attitude probably wasn’t helping.
You always had a solution though, and that took the form of the land shark on your lap. “Go cheer up Nat” you whispered to Jeff, hoisting him up and lowering him to the ground. He squirmed the whole way down until his feet managed to graze the floor, at which point he calmed down and strolled over to Natasha. She had turned her attention back to Tony so he nudged her leg, prompting her to look back at him and lift him up. A small smile broke on her face due to the actions of the baby land shark, until she started listening to the meeting again.
Apparently, the Avengers’ reputation had taken a hit, again, and it had been left to Tony and his promotional team to get it back on track. His cunning solution? Making each person on the team get a social media account, because sharing facts about your personal lives made you more ‘relatable’.
For you, that was fine. You already had an Instagram account of your own volition, and you kept it active because you were in a follower war with Tony, your respective follower counts consistently overtaking each other every month or so.
For Natasha, however, the orders were a bit more unpleasant. “As a spy,” she protested, “my whole job relies on making sure the public doesn’t recognise me. This would be a hindrance to that.”
Unfortunately for her, Tony was quick to shut down her complaints, pointing out that she was already a well-known public figure due to her Avenger status, having done photoshoots and public Q&As. She begrudgingly accepted it, though not without many more complaints. It got to the point where you threatened to call Yelena; her sister could always prove that point.
You knew Natasha wasn’t truly mad at you because she stuck with you after the meeting had ended, following you into the kitchen. Despite that, she still gave it her best shot to throw you dirty looks whenever your eagerness became too apparent. But even then, the grumpy persona was muted due to the fact that everyone’s favourite land shark was having the time of his life clinging onto her shoulders. You slowed your pace down once you noticed it, forcing Natasha to slow down too, and making it less likely for Jeff to fall off. Although he was doing a superb job hanging on by himself.
You got to work on a peanut butter sandwich as soon as you arrived in the kitchen, knowing you were going to need to hand one over to Natasha as soon as you said your next line.
“The whole team has to do it, you know, there’s no point being grumpy about it”
“It’s just so stupid, why would knowing about our private lives make us more likeable? And it’s called a private life for a reason” she grumbled, snatching the sandwich from you before you could even offer it over.
“You’re welcome” you muttered, loud enough for her to hear and thank you, though not without an eye roll.
“It just makes you seem more relatable to the public, an actual person rather than just some hero with no personality. Besides, you only share what you want to share, I can help you with that, I’m a pro”
“You can help if you want, but I’m going to be doing the bare minimum posting” she stated between bites. You shrugged. That’s what she might think, but you also knew Natasha was competitive, once she actually got the account set up and started gaining followers, Tony would certainly annoy her enough into joining the competition.
Sometimes, it felt like she could read your mind, because the second she locked eyes with you, she was shaking her head again, dipping it to the side. “I’m not joining your follower count competition.”
“You always want to beat Stark. And I almost have more followers than him, I’m second out of the Avengers! Therefore, you can’t escape the competition.”
The assassin was quiet for a moment, eyes lowered towards the table counter in contemplation. “Did you seriously just say you were second of the Avengers?” she sighed at last, “Y/N, I love you but… you and Stark are the only ones with Instagram, you’re second of the two Avengers on Instagram?”.
Even Jeff looked disappointed in you now that Natasha had said that. She had always been his favourite, despite everything you’d done for him.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” you sulked, “I’ll still be up high when all the rest of you join”
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Wanda accompanied Natasha for your lesson on account set-up. They both had to do it, so it made sense for you to check that both women did it correctly at the same time. There had been some rules set by the publicity team; namely that their names and bios couldn’t be anything original or funny (which really ruined most of your ideas), so it was just their names and their bios stating their occupation as Avengers.
The team had done plenty of photoshoots over the years, so there was no shortage of options for Wanda and Natasha’s profile pics, it was just the first post that was tricky. The given advice for success had been to post a new photo, something the public hadn’t seen, something that would garner attention from the media and from Instagram users. Wanda had one ready, a photo Peter had taken during training a few days prior, her back to the camera and her arms in the air, surrounded by scarlet magic.
Natasha, however, had more of a struggle. “I don’t have any photos of myself on my phone” she complained.
“I have so many of you” you muttered, already scrolling through your own camera roll for some.
“You don’t have any selfies?” Wanda asked with shock
“Why would I?” is all she was met with. It only took a second of eye contact for you and Wanda to know what you had to do.
“You’re taking one right now, go on” you prompted. Once she was taking the photo you practically vaulted over the sofa to get in the background, while Jeff had the same idea, jumping onto her lap and tilting his head up, so the tip of his nose just about got into the image.
“I would’ve just taken the photo with you two in it if you’d have asked” she huffed, but you waved her off,
“It’s more fun this way, how does it look?”
The photo caught Natasha’s widened eyes at the surprise, and the beginnings of her laughter. It had you skidding past in the background, and Jeff was trying desperately to be in it too.
“It’s a good photo, actually” Natasha commented.
Wanda came around to approve it as well, “it’s exactly what Tony wants the public to see”. Natasha nodded, all of you in agreement, and posted the image, finishing their account set-ups.
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Within a week, Natasha already had half the followers you had taken years to gather. Her posts made the public go wild, easily accomplishing the task of garnering trust and support for the team. Just as you had anticipated, it spurred her on to keep taking photos and accompanying them with comments about the day to day life with the Avengers, much to Jeff’s chagrin.
You took Natasha and Jeff to the park for a picnic, the little land shark having to wait patiently while you and Natasha kept trying to sneakily take photos of one another.
“Mrrr” he whined, nudging the food basket.
“Give us a sec Jeff, we’ll eat soon,” you promised. When he looked up, you tilted your phone towards him, showing him the photo you’d just taken of Natasha hiding behind her phone. “What do you think of this one buddy?”
“MRRR!” he snatched the device from your hand and ran off, leaving you scrambling to stand up and chase him. By the time you had caught up, he had stopped, your phone half a metre in front of him and he was glaring you down, as if daring you to take it back.
He approached it again, letting you do nothing but watch. Somehow his nose registered as a tap, opening Instagram. It took some trial and error, but he made it onto your profile, looking up at you just before he hit ‘add account’.
“Oh,” you sighed, “that’s it? You just want your own account?”
“Mrrr” he affirmed, nodding his head for good measure.
“You could have just said that” you shrugged, walking up to Jeff and retrieving the phone. He trotted beside you as you walked back to Natasha, then, once you had sat down, he whined and clambered onto your lap to remind you of the agreement.
Natasha tilted her head, silently asking what had just gone down.
“Jeff would like his own Instagram,” you explained, “so I’m setting one up for him”
Her eyebrow raised, but ultimately she let you be, nodding and setting up the food while you took care of Jeff.
“What do you want your account name to be, Jeff?”
“Mrrr”
“Jeff, underscore, the, underscore, land, underscore, shark-” you spoke as you typed, but a choked cough from Natasha cut you off. She was trying not to laugh when you looked up, lips pressed tightly together to contain it. It hadn’t been a particularly funny name, or so you thought, so now it was your turn to silently question your girlfriend.
“You got all that from a mrr?” she smirked, flicking her eyes between you and Jeff. The land shark tilted his head at you, and you did the same to him.
“That was what you said, wasn’t it Jeff?”
“Mrrr” he nodded, leaving Natasha muttering something under her breath about the ‘impossibilities of that being a language’. Either way, you ignored her, moving on to select Jeff’s favourite photo of himself as a profile picture. He looked back at Natasha when it came time to pick his bio, then towards you with a ‘mrrr’. He wanted it to be like Natasha’s, he explained.
“You aren’t technically an Avenger though Jeff”, you commented, immediately regretting it when his eyes drooped and his whole body disheartened. You tried to save it, “I mean, obviously we’d have you when we need, how about part-time Avenger?” you suggested.
Jeff accepted it with a nod. After a pause, he added another mrrr. “And full-time land shark” you translated, for Natasha’s benefit, the redhead smiling widely at the interaction. “Okay, part-time Avenger, full-time land shark? Sure thing”
Jeff grinned, hopping around in circles of excitement… until he realised that Natasha had lain out the food. You had to grab him mid-air once he saw that, stopping him while he dove towards the meal, otherwise there would be nothing left for you.
You had two thoughts; his excitement for food would always overpower social media, and you were going to need to get Jeff a phone of his own.