(As close to fix-it fic as I’m likely to get.)
__
Message in a Bottle
The first time it happens, none of them notice. It’s a pin from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which doesn’t even use pins anymore, attached to the collar of one of the bad guys and Tony only makes a joke about the dude would’ve been better off in the Temple of Dendur. Tony hasn’t been to the Met apart from black tie galas in twenty-five years and Natasha’s never been. At least not legally. Peter goes “Wait, don’t they use stickers now?” but not loud enough to be heard.
The second time, it’s a subway token on top of a box of recovered gamma-irradiated bits and bobs in a lead case outside the Midtown South precinct house and Peter makes a joke about Indiana Jones and archaeology, but Natasha thinks… maybe. At least once one of the cops explains what the hell the thing is, since she’s never seen one and Tony’s never been on the subway. (“Really?” Peter asks, his voice breaking into a squeak.) There are a lot of NYC-based vigilantes these days, however, and Hell’s Kitchen is right next door to Midtown South and who knows which freak found this where.
The third time, it’s a page from a day planner and it’s Peter who gets it. And only Peter because he’s still maybe a little bitter that once upon a time, only the kids from Brooklyn and Queens got off for Brooklyn-Queens Day and he resents that the other three boroughs get to horn in. Sure, Staten Island can use the charity, maybe the Bronx, too, but Manhattan needs nothing and shouldn’t get anything. He swallows the last few words of that protest because the Widow looks at him like he’s talking in tongues.
Tony cloned the phone Steve gave him long ago. Burner phones are all well and good, but they’re like one-time-use pads from Steve’s war and he can do better. So he texts Steve and (a) says thanks for the assist and (b) asks if he’s close enough to come over for dinner if he’s going to be gift-wrapping bad guys on the regular. He doesn’t expect Steve to reply – Barnes stands between them and Tony isn’t fool enough to think that Steve will choose him at this late date.
Steve does reply, indirectly at least. It’s a trip uptown and a scary-looking dude named Luke Cage sitting in front of Grant’s Tomb with three idiots wrapped up like mummies with duct tape at his feet. “A good man said to give you this,” Cage says, handing Tony an envelope before walking – stalking – away.
In the envelope is a string of numbers on a slip of paper and Tony’s about to scan it for FRIDAY to decipher when he gets an idea. “If you were a kid from Brooklyn, what would this mean?” he asks Peter. Who manages to look outraged even under the mask. “I’m from Queens! Us outer borough folk aren’t interchangeable!”
But Peter takes it and and Tony gets a text later that night: “It means ‘we’ll be okay.’”
So good. So inside baseball NYC I’m tagging @cesperanza because yeah.
Tumblr Exodus 