Work Text:
U free? The text from Peggy reads.
Parker sighs. She got Peggy an iPhone but she still insists on using text speak like she’s still stuck on T9.
Yes. What’s up? She sends the two messages rapid fire. Immediately her phone rings.
“Peggy, you okay?” Parker asks, concerned.
“What?” Peggy sounds startled. “I’m fine. I’m catering this event though, and this guy is shifty.”
Parker is immediately on alert. This wouldn’t be the first plot that Peggy Peggy has uncovered, since despite her rocky start at the Embassy bombing, Peggy has gotten good at doing what Eliot calls a ‘Threat Assessment.’ If she thinks someone is bad news, Parker reasons that there’s probably something going on.
“What did he do?”
Peggy says, “He’s been flirting with me.”
Parker works out what she wants to say. “Peggy, just because he’s flirting with you, doesn’t mean he’s evil.”
Peggy says nothing for a long moment. “Anyway,” Peggy says, voice high with fake brightness, “I’m sending you a picture.”
Parker’s phone buzzes and she pulls it away from her ear to check. The photo is blurry. Some people just aren’t ready for the age of the smart phone.
“I need one straight on, can you get that?”
“On it,” Peggy says, suddenly whispering, then cuts the call.
Parker sighs again.
***
When Parker gets the photo, she sends it on to Alec. It’s of some guy, pretty nondescript, wearing a t-shirt that wouldn’t look out of place on Alec.
She doesn’t think much of it, until Alec bursts through the door. “Where did Peggy see this guy, Parker?” He asks, flustered.
“At some job she’s working, why?”
“I put his picture through the databases and it lit up all kinds of alerts. The man’s big into drug smuggling, the pharmaceutical kind. He’s associated with the spread of oxy into the Midwest.”
Parker cocks her head. “I thought that was mostly doctors over-prescribing.”
“Used to be, but now people gotta get it somewhere, and where they’re getting it is mostly Peggy’s man.”
On the one hand, Parker is pleased that her friend Peggy is so good at finding bad guys. On the other hand… her friend Peggy is really good at finding bad guys, and that really sucks for a die-hard romantic.
***
Peggy takes it surprisingly well. Her first question is, “When are you coming?” followed by, “What do you need me to do?” Parker tells her she’ll let her know and then cuts the call and turns to Eliot and Alec.
“Well?”
Alec’s pulled together a briefing. Since Sophie and Nate left these have been extra fun. Sometimes Alec puts little hearts next to Parker and Eliot’s aliases. And they included way more kisses than they used to.
“Peggy is catering the Hugo awards reception at Worldcon this year.” Alec calls up a picture with a rocket.
Eliot groans. “Is this one of your space alien things?”
Alec manfully does not rise to the bait. “Worldcon is a respected science fiction and fantasy convention, and the Hugos are the most prestigious science fiction award in the world, even though the Avengers are nominated this year.” Parker doesn’t want to hear the rant about how the films are butchering the relationship between Captain America and Iron Man again. She looks over at Eliot and they use their eyebrows to agree that they need to change the subject.
“So what’s he after?” Eliot asks.
“It’s unclear,” Alec admits, deflating a little. “But we have to assume, with his background, that some sort of deal is taking place under the cover of the thousands of people coming in for the convention. That means,” he says as he clicks to the next slide, “If we’re going to blend in, we’ll need to dress up.” Parker can do that, she’s learned how to run in heels and everything. “And I’m definitely going to need to hide my identity.”
Eliot looks Alec up and down. “What did you do?”
Alec throws up his hands. “Nothing! Well.” Eliot rolls his eyes -- here it comes. “I may have written a few letters to George R.R. Martin when I was younger.” That doesn’t sound so bad to Parker. “To his unlisted address.” That was slightly bad, cause that was probably some sort of illegal hacking thing. “And maybe his people read them as threats -- which they weren’t! -- and now he might have a restraining order out against me.”
“Goddammit, Hardison,” Eliot growls. Parker nods. If they’ve got his picture on file somewhere, that’s unfortunate.
Alec is pacing a little. “All I did was point out that he’s not getting any younger, which he isn’t.” Parker is familiar with how aging works. “The way things are going, the show is going to get to write the ending and that is unacceptable, you feel?”
Parker is already thinking through the contingencies. She turns to Eliot. “We can keep him in the van?”
Eliot is shaking his head. “We’re already short on this one, we’ll need him.”
“Peggy is going to help.” Parker is certain of this.
Eliot tilts his head. “You sure?”
Parker nods. Peggy helped them out at the Venezuelan embassy, and Parker is used to working with civilians now, after that time Amy had foiled her own kidnapping.
Eliot nods, taking her word for it. “Even still, I’m not sure.”
Alec is vibrating in the corner, trying to get a word in. “That’s what I was saying! We just need to dress up.”
The way he says the words makes Parker pause, but it’s Eliot who asks the question. “As what?” He asks the question the same way Parker would ask if a vegetable is actually edible.
That’s when Alec lays out his plan.
***
Walking into the convention hall in San Antonio, Parker has to admit that they fit in more than she expected given all of the skintight PVC she’s wearing. It’s shiny and black and the fur neck is really soft.
Alec turns to her. “Remember, you’re Black Cat, a Spiderman rival and romantic interest. You think the Gwen M.J. wars are stupid because Felicia is best.” Parker taps her domino in acknowledgement. She can’t believe the convention lets them wander around with masks on. This is a thief’s paradise.
Or it would be, she acknowledges, if she could figure out where the pockets were on most of these people’s outfits. Have they just taped their money to their skin? She knows they have to be carrying, because lots of people have tote bags filled with stickers and posters, which don’t come cheap.
Alec nods back at her and strides off in his Starfleet uniform. She thinks he still looks like himself, but it gives him a reason to be scanning all sorts of things, and the visor on his face does sort of hide his features. He has such nice eyes.
Peggy’s waiting for her just inside the main hall, as they’d pre-determined. Parker slides her an earbud as she brushes by without stopping. The handoff is smooth. Much smoother than the first few times she’d tried this with Alec. If Peggy practiced, she could get pretty good at this!
“All right, Peggy,” Parker says, pretending to browse a table laden with board games, “your job is to stick with the mark.”
“On it,” Peggy says. Her voice changes, “Hi Darryl,” she says, and Parker winces. Peggy is not good at this part of the con. It sounds like she’s trying to be flirty, but like the flirt got put through the garbage disposal and came out kind of gravelly.
But the mark eats it up. “Hi Peggy,” she hears and then tunes it out. She looks at the board game in her hand. “Hanabi,” she reads. It’s got bright colours on it.
Eliot’s been in the main hall for a while. He chose not to wear a costume, but that hasn’t been working out too great for him. Parker’s already heard him get stopped three times and complimented on his excellent ‘Joel-from-The-Last-Of-Us’ cosplay. If he’d just worn the Zuko outfit Alec had suggested, this wouldn’t be happening. And it wasn’t like Eliot didn’t like Avatar, Parker remembers him getting all blinky when Zuko and Iroh hugged at the end.
She picks up another game. “Remember, this may take a while, so just focus on scoping the area. We just need to know if he’s particularly interested in any areas, or if anyone looks out of place.”
“Everyone looks out of place here, Parker,” Eliot says, “I just saw a woman walk by dressed as the TARDIS falling into a vortex and I hate that I recognised that.”
“...so basically if anyone looks as grumpy as Eliot sounds.”
The table guy looks at her, hopefully. “Istanbul won the Kennerspiel, you know,” he says. Each of those words meant something individually...but together? Not so much.
She puts it down and steps away.
Parker barely makes it two paces when she hears Alec’s voice. “Uh. Parker,” he says and Parker starts walking faster. That’s a bad tone of voice. “You know how you said it might take us a while? Well, good news is, I think I found it.” Oh no, if the good news comes first that means “It’s a bomb.”
The bad news is really bad.
“Location, Hardison, dammit,” Eliot says, out of breath.
***
In the kitchen, next to the stove, tapped into the gas line there is unmistakably a bomb. It’s crude, Parker can see the wires and the casing is badly glued together, but it’s definitely ticking.
Eliot has Darryl trussed up in a corner and Peggy resolutely has her back turned on him.
“Why is it always a bomb?” She asks.
“It usually isn’t,” Parker says.
“But it is sometimes,” Peggy counters.
“Well, yeah, sometimes,” she admits. She looks at Alec critically, sees him frowning at it. “But this one doesn’t look too complicated. And thanks to you we found it in lots of time.”
“That’s good,” Peggy says, whooshing out a breath. “So what’s the plan?”
They all look at each other.
Peggy’s the first one to break, stepping away from the rest of them and towards Darryl. Before they can stop her, Peggy yanks the gag out of his mouth. “Tell us how to disarm it,” she yells.
“No! I never will! They rejected my work and now they will pay!” It turns out Darryl’s on a standard petty revenge kick. His self-published novel about a misunderstood drug trafficker in a cyberpunk Milwaukee didn’t make it onto the Hugo ballot this year and he decided that if he couldn’t get a shiny rocket, no one could.
He goes on for a bit and Parker wanders over to listen casually while Eliot and Alec stare at the bomb.
Finally, she shoves the gag back into Darryl’s mouth. “Good initiative Peggy, but he’s a rambler, we won’t get anything useful out of him.” Sophie always taught Parker a lot about the con and now Parker gets to pass it on! They should invite Peggy around more. It doesn’t hurt to have an extra pair of hands to call on.
So that leaves them with Plan B.
“Alec, you got this one?” Parker looks at him hopefully.
Alec puffs out his cheeks. “Maybe?”
“I think,” Eliot starts, then goes quiet. “I’ve got this one,” he finally says.
“Since when are you an explosives expert, Eliot?” Alec sounds affronted, which is pretty typically his reaction when there’s something in the world he doesn’t know.
“I don’t know about this, guys, should we call someone?” Peggy sounds nervous.
“We don’t have time,” Parker says, grim. The timer was already pretty tight and it’s been counting down.
Parker throws a glance at Eliot. “Standard IED, you see them all over.” Eliot turns to Peggy. “I am going to need a lot of porridge though.”
***
Ten minutes later, the bomb is defused and Darryl is moping. He’s not having a good day.
“Guys, we’ve got another problem,” Alec says.
“What is it?” Parker asks. Peggy is glaring at Darryl and Parker is pretty sure that if they weren’t here, she’d be treating him to the wrong end of a ladle upside the head.
Alec is looking at his tablet. “Darryl’s not alone.” Darryl starts wiggling. “When he told us about his novel, it got me thinking. Anyone can get nominated for a Hugo, you just need enough votes. I thought, why get upset unless he thought he had a chance and I looked and he’s part of an internet group called the ‘Sad Puppies’.”
“Really?” Eliot asks. Turns to Darryl, “Really? Get yourself some self-respect.” Darryl wiggles harder. “And stop struggling or I’ll have to come over there.” Darryl stops moving.
“There’s some concerning forum activity, I’m worried they’ve got something else planned.”
“We also need to figure out what we’re going to do with him,” Eliot says, pointing a thumb over at Darryl.
Parker isn’t worried. “We always knew we were going to have to light the Bat-Signal on this one, we’ll just have to light it a little early.” She throws a look over her shoulder to where Peggy is wringing her hands. “You were right, Peggy. Time to call someone.”
***
Agent McSweeten passes Darryl off to Agent Taggert.
“Thanks for calling this one in, Agent Hagen,” McSweeten says with an enormous wink. She tries not to stomp on his foot. “With this bomb,” he holds up the bag of soggy porridge, “and the kilo of oxy we found in his hotel room, he’s going away for a long time.”
Parker can’t imagine being so cocky that she’d bring that much hot merchandise to the scene of her next crime. But then again this man is one sad puppy.
Peggy rushes up. “What about his conspirators?” She demands, then does a double take looking at McSweeten up and down. Parker frowns at McSweeten, trying to figure out Peggy’s interest. He looks like he always does, down to the sunglasses he’s wearing indoors. “Is this the guy you wanted to call? The one we can trust?” She’s whispering but she hasn’t looked away from McSweeten so he can clearly hear what she’s saying.
“Is that what they call me?” He touches his hand to his heart. “Yes, that’s me. The one you call.” He has to clear his throat a few times to get the words out.
Peggy scuffs her foot a little on the floor. “I’m the one who called um, Agent Hagen in.” She’s not sure how either of them ever get through the day with that terrible level of lying ability. With friends like these, who needs anemones. She takes back what she said about it being nice to have extra hands -- Maybe when any of them learn how to lie with a straight face.
“Oh really?” McSweeten says, leaning in, all smiles. “I’d love to hear all about it.” He jumps back a little, bag of porridge swinging. “I mean, for official FBI reasons. I need to take your statement.” He tries to sound stern but a smile is splitting his face.
“Keep the bag still, man, you want to deal with a pipe bomb exploding today?” Eliot growls and McSweeten hastily puts the bag down on the counter.
Peggy only has eyes for McSweeten, though. “You can take my statement anytime,” she says.
She sounds like before when she was talking to Darryl except with way less garbage disposal. Parker thinks: McSweeten is definitely not a drug kingpin or conning her, so by Peggy’s normal standards, this guy is not the worst choice, even though he’s a cop. So Parker says, loudly and to no one in particular, “She’s staying at the Hilton, they’ve got a nice bar.”
Peggy blushes.
McSweeten blushes.
Alec stares at her.
“What?” She asks.
“I -- I’m sure. I’d never --” McSweeten stammers.
“Quit while you’re ahead,” Eliot mutters.
“Right. That is to say --”
“You want to get out of here?” Peggy interrupts. McSweeten nods and she grabs his elbow as they walk out of the kitchen together.
“This means I still have time to get George R.R. Martin’s autograph,” Alec says.
Parker and Eliot groan.