#anyways to anyone who read this i apologize for making u experience the equivalent of an ap lit presentation that went 20 minutes too long
Note
Hey idk how many asks ur getting but I hope ur not being bombarded or anything. If u could, would u write a scene where jack loses little!matt cuz oops Matt just ran off during errands. He runs into various NYC heroes/vigilantes and in the end Matt has them all trailing him as they try to find jack together. Meanwhile jack panics and anxiety.
This got long and definitely wasn’t quite what you were thinking of, but I think it’s still pretty okay.
I’m putting the 2nd half under the cut since it’s so long (sorry mobile folks)
—
There was a huge fanfare in the streets; some guy with money was apparently strolling through the Kitchen and folks had come out to stare back at him when he started eyeing up their buildings, as was their way. Santiago’s was helping this by leaving a couple of folding tables outside the restaurant doors with ‘Make Peace Not Weapons’ fliers on it next to a couple of flats of eggs.
What was to be done with said eggs was not stated. People around here just knew.
None of that had ever been Jack’s bag, honestly. He was busy. Politics had always been background noise to his daily scrounging and scraping and really, this crowd was going to be the death of him.
He caught Rudy and the others crowded around the doorway of the gym and scream-asked over the noise of the crowd gathering around the edges of the streets if they’d seen Matt.
No, they hadn’t. He wasn’t out playing with Rudy’s kids; they were at their grandmother’s.
Rudy told him to try the church’s playground. A lot of the local kids had climbed up on the fence over there to watch the protest.
Aigh.
Matty knew better than to go that far without asking, but Jack went anyways.
Normally, he’d be panicking, but these were the streets that Matt grew up in; that he himself had grown up in. Th folks lining the pavement here knew him and his kid. They’d keep an eye out and make sure Matt didn’t get kidnapped or anything like that.
He got to the church and saw that Grace was standing outside, shaking her head at all the kids lining the top of the fence. He made wide gestures to catch her attention. She met him at the front of the church with a frown.
“No, he’s not here,” she said. “I saw him go past, though, with the McKenzies’ girl. They’re alright. They went and found a football, the two of them.”
Ahhhhh.
That was 100% Mrs. Green’s doing. She’d had a yard sale for her kids’ shit the other day. Jack had seen a couple of basketballs and footballs in among the stuff. She must not have gotten rid of all of it.
Grace waved him in the direction of the green lot the next street up. It was where most of the neighborhood children spent their time—in the daytime, playing and in the nighttime, for the older ones, experimenting.
Jack struggled through the crowd that way but got caught up in a mass of jeering and jostling when Mr. Moneybags, Whoever finally got out of his car.
Are you serious, y’all?
He called over folks to move, that he was after his fuckin’ kid, and they tried as best as they could to let him back.
Finally, blessedly, he stumbled back out on to the pavement and blew out a breath. Then headed off towards the park.
Sure enough, Matt was there, holding a football that was way too big for him with Perry, the MacKenzies’ girl. They’d evidently been playing the first-grade equivalent of tackle football, if Jack was reading the color in their faces and the dried grass all over them right.
He started that way and was so preoccupied with planning out the conversation he and Matt were about to have that he didn’t hear the folks shouting behind him. Matt saw him and perked up. He handed off the football and met Jack at the water fountain in the middle of their paths. He knew he was in trouble.
Jack put his hands on his hips to emphasize it and was validated at the guilty dropped eyes he got in return.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “That’s what I thought. Come on, then. You know what comes next.”
Matt scowled and dropped his face, mumbling out excuses.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” Jack said.
Matt pouted.
“Hey, you’re in the way,” a new voice said. Jack stood up straight and glared over his shoulder.
“You got the whole pavement, asshole. Go around,” he snapped.
And the next thing he knew, there was a man in a suit manhandling him off the concrete onto the grass.
“You need to move,” the guy growled.
Oh hell no. Not in this neighborhood, pal.
Jack shoved him back; the guy wasn’t prepared for that, it would seem. He fell back right on his ass and stared up, stunned.
“Who do you think you are?” the man babbled, struggling up. He had some kind of thing in his ear, like a secret service man.
Jack huffed at him and went back to collect Matt. They evidently couldn’t have this discussion here.
“HEY. I’m talking to you.”
The second the hand hit his shoulder, time fast-forwarded and Jack came back to himself with the dude with a bloody hand slapped over his face and a fucking roaring crowd of neighbors all around him.
Oh, shit.
“Shit,” he said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” the asshole snarled, ripping his hand away from his mouth to reveal a split lip. “You come out here to assault one of Tony Stark’s bodyguards, huh? You one of these fuckin’ low lives who think they own this city? Hit me again, pal. We’ll see who’s the real winner in the court of law, huh?”
Woah.
Hey, now. Jack had just been trying to apologize.
“FUCK ‘IM UP, JACKIE,” Someone shrieked from the middle of the crowd in the street.
“Jackie? Your name’s Jackie? Jackie what? Full name and address, asshole, give it to me,” the suit demanded.
This.
Was not excellent.
“Listen man,” Jack said as calmly as the roiling, bubbling heat in his chest would allow. “I’m just trying to pick up my kid, alright? So why don’t you fuck off and we both pretend like none of this ever happened?”
The suit scoffed.
“Sure,” he jeered, “Yeah, you pick up your little bitch and clear out. Why don’t we do just that?”
Um.
Oof.
Mm.
“Daddy?”
MMF.
Jack could not break this man in half in front of his son.
He could not make this man beg for mercy in front of his son.
No. That wasn’t true. He could. But he wouldn’t. He had an example to set.
“Yo, what’s going on here? Will, is everything alright?”
The suit suddenly broke eye contact with Jack and turned to a short dude dressed in an obnoxious hoodie and flip flops.
“Everything is just fine, Mr. Stark,” he said, all prim and proper. “This guy’s just impeding the walkway.”
Mr. Stark—fuck, that explained a lot—had to be around Jack’s age. He had dark eyelashes and was probably pretty in other parts of the city. But here? Nah, a pretty man was a working man and this guy, for all his unshaven jaw and tousled hair, was not it.
“Alright, so move, man,” Stark said towards Jack. “It’s public property. You don’t own it.”
“You don’t either,” Jack pointed out to another uproar in the crowd.
Stark chewed on his tongue and chuckled.
He held his hands up.
“That’s fair,” he said. “Leave it, Will. He’s not bothering anyone.”
Will the Suit blustered all over.
“He’s assaulted me, sir,” he said, pointing at his lip. “Not to mention, he’s obviously out here to rile up the crowd.”
“I’m just out here to pick up my son,” Jack snapped.
“So pick him up and get out of the fuckin’ way already,” Will growled.
Ho, ho, motherfucker.
Jack did not move. He held the guy’s eye.
“Daddy.” Matt’s little hands found their way to his wrist.
He was scared. And the thought sent another ripple of heat through Jack’s body.
This was their neighborhood. This was Matt’s home. Jack’s home. And he wouldn’t be treated like shit in it. He wouldn’t teach Matt to bow his head to people with more money.
“You heard your kid,” Will the suit said, “Good to know the next generation here’s got some kinda brains in their heads. Lay off.”
“You ain’t better than us,” Jack spat. He stood up tall and breathed slow. “None of you. This is our city, not yours. So get the fuck out. We don’t need your fuckin’ money, Stark.” He twisted his head to make direct eye contact with this man and his tousled hair and eyelashes.
This wasn’t about some shithead in a suit anymore.
Stark tipped his own face slowly to the side.
“You got guts,” he said. “But honestly, man, you all actually could use my money. You got holes in your shirt, friend. You think—”
“We’d rather have a park than a store we can’t afford to buy from,” Jack said.
“So shop somewhere else,” Stark replied with wide hands. “But this isn’t about a store, you know. This is about an office; a whole five floors of new jobs—”
“Yeah, as janitors,” A gal with a sign on her shoulder said, squirming out of the crowd. “As service people to the rich lapdogs you drag in here to do your business for you.”
“You’d have new patrons for your fine establishments,” Stark said calmly to her.
“Oh sure, I bet they’d flock here, yeah,” the gal drawled. “Them and their pretty white families, with all their pretty, GAP clothes. And you know what they’d do, Stark? They’d start complaining about the quality of our ‘fine establishments.’ They’d start demanding shit we can’t afford, to the point where we’d have to find ways to afford ‘em, just so that we could make an honest living—and by then, our own moms and neighbors wouldn’t be able afford to pay for our so-called fine services.”
“So they would go somewhere else, and you would still be making a profit,” Stark reasoned.
“I should be able to do laundry at the laundromat closest to my house,” the gal pointed out to a chorus of support. “It’s not about money. It’s about community.”
Stark huffed.
“And what a community it is,” he said sarcastically. “You got this guy out here, punching people on the streets ‘cause he can’t keep his kid under control, you got used needles on every corner, trash piling up in the gutters—you call that ‘community?’”
“I call it poverty,” the woman said.
“Business and investment will help alleviate—”
“Mr. Stark,” the woman interrupted, “For all them brains in your head, you sure aren’t good at thinking. Or listening. So why don’t you just take a moment for the next minute and practice. Just listen. Look at me—really look, sir.”
Stark did, but he made it real clear that he was doing it out of the kindness of his heart.
“If you really cared about poverty,” the gal said slowly, “You and all your war money and all your millionaire and billionaire friends would fund community programs. Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t need new businesses, Mr. Stark. We have plenty of our own. What we need are services. Better services. More services. We need people who want to help us as people. Not clients. Not customers. As a community of human beings. And until you really, truly understand what that means, you and your friends aren’t welcome here in Hell’s Kitchen. So, sir, what do you say?”
The crowd fell silent. Jack lifted his chin and stared down at Stark around it just in case he or his security detail got any ideas.
Stark glanced up at him, then back at the woman and then, for the briefest second, at Matt barely peeking out from behind Jack’s hip.
He cleared his throat.
“Well, I see that we’re not welcome here,” he said. “Perhaps we can table this discussion for now due to community concerns, which I’m sure we can overcome in the future. What do you say, Miss?”
“Mrs,” the woman corrected. “I say you’re welcome to try as many times as you want.”
Stark looked her over and scoffed.
“Oh, I will,” he said, “I got this little thing called ‘spite’ in me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the woman said peacefully.
Stark didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. He puffed himself up and told his guards that he was ready to go. This visit was not worth extending.
The crowd parted to let him and his suits through and was more or less quiet as they all watched him get in his fancy car and drive away.
Jack felt the tension in his shoulders settled down. He stroked a hand over Matt’s hair.
“Thanks for the rescue, Bess,” he said.
Bess beamed up at him.
“Anytime, Jackie,” she said. “Anytime.”
—
AHEM.
Bess Mahoney was Hell’s Kitchen’s main superhero before DD. Thank you and good night.
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