#SHADY DEAL SET IN STONE BY A HANDSHAKE WHAT DO I DO

[thefinestbrandofeefa]

wears pin that says “This person does not like physical touch!!” so the evil geniuses who make shady deals read it and respect my boundaries. now I am saved from entering into a morally bankrupt deal that is solidified with a handshake. who’s the evil genius now??

[kingofdirtandnothing]

@polyfacetious big ass Christmas Drabble Extravagaza: Day Three

“Alright handsome, show me what you got.” 

Tony posts up against the back door to the restaurant, arms crossed over his chest. The morning air has a nip of coolness to it, but the heat of the day would be right on its heels. Before long, the sun would be beating down on this place, and the kitchen would end up another twenty degrees hotter than even the humid streets outside.

 His apron, where it hung looped around his waist and tied into double knots at his hip, was crisp and white. It was a brand new day and the fresh linens had been dropped off by the dry cleaners before dawn. The thing would look like he’d been mud wrestling pigs and losing by the time they sent out the last dish from the kitchen tonight, but it felt good to start out fresh and clean. 

There was something hopeful about starting the day with fresh, clean linens. It felt like a promise of things to come. That no matter what happened, the day could go either way. It was a toss up. Tony liked having that kind of optimism on tap. He couldn’t come up with it at home a lot. Depression had a nasty habit of hanging heavy on his shoulders when he wasn’t caught up in his work.

The other thing that made the dawn of a new day optimistic? Fresh seafood. Right from the coast. It made all the difference in his dishes. Tony wouldn’t even work directly with the fish market. It was too far, too much time spent on ice. 

That’s why he had Jack. A “local” fisherman who would bring his catch right to Tony’s back door every morning. 

“Now now, Anthony. You know I only offer my wares to the most polite and upstanding of citizens.” Jack Sparrow had a voice like whiskey. Smooth on the first listen, but something about it warmed you from the inside and burned a little too, in the best way possible. 

It might also be possible that Tony was pining a little bit for his fishmonger. But he didn’t think too hard about that. He’s worked too hard to get Maria’s built up into a destination. It took eight years to get the place up and running. Another two were spent tweaking the menu to get them awarded a Michelin star. 

To say this restaurant was his baby was the understatement of the century. Tony had an emotionally distant childhood followed by tumultuous twenties and two divorces to show for his troubles. No kids though, thank God. He wasn’t the type of man who would ever be good with kids. 

That’s why Maria’s was his one and only baby. And why the seafood being perfect and fresh was the most important part of the menu. Which meant no letting his shower thoughts of the handsome, charming fishmonger get the better of him. Failed relationships were a dime a dozen. Good oysters were hard to find.

And sure enough, Jack is shaking a container full of fresh oysters in front of him, a five gallon bucket nearly half full of the things, clanging together like stones. Tony had to give it to the guy, he knew his audience. “Straight from the sea’s bosom to your plate, mate.” There’s a glint of gold when Jack smiles. It always derails Tony’s train of thought. 

“You know I’ll take them.” Tony waves the oysters over and then hefts the bucket back up onto the step behind him, like he’s worried Jack might change his mind and try to take them back. The oysters and caviar were the most popular things on his menu. It didn’t matter what was seasonally available, it didn’t matter if the sun was baking the cobblestones or the cool breezes of winter were catching in the corridor and sneaking under collars to cause chills. People always wanted their oysters and caviar. 

“What about some tuna? You got any of that?” Jack runs his hands down the front of his jacket, patting his pockets playfully. It was an old joke between them. While fresh tuna was always a big seller, it required a bigger boat than Jack had. It was probably for the best that Tony didn’t have the option to drop ten grand on Ahi tuna in a day. He was an impulse buyer. 

Which was probably one of the reasons Jack came to him first every morning. Tony was always at the mercy of his whims, and Jack always managed to bring him something unique when he was feeling stymied or bored. 

And he was. Tony needed his next great adventure. 

“Fresh out. But I do have something that’ll get your motor running.” Jack reaches behind him and hefts a large styrofoam cooler onto the step in front of him. “Go on. The anticipation is enough to set a man to salivating.” The rings on Jack’s fingers glint in the early morning light as he gestures like a woman on The Price is Right. 

Tony is just about ready to say something to him about it when he opens the cooler, and all the breath is knocked out of his lungs. “You didn’t.” Tony’s own dark eyes are wide eyed as he looks up. 

“I did in fact.” There’s no hiding the smug satisfaction in the way Jack holds himself, though Tony can see a hint of something beneath the surface. “That was all that was there to be had, my friend.” It sounds almost like an apology. 

But Tony isn’t looking for an apology right about now. He’s too busy trying not to whoop with joy so he doesn’t wake up the neighbors. He hops around the cooler, one foot on the first step, the second landing on the other before he careens into Jack, grabbing his face into his hands so he can plant a kiss on each one of his cheeks. 

“Sei un angelo mandato dal Cielo.” For one crazy second, Tony thinks about planting a kiss on those upturned lips in the space between the smacking smooch to one cheek and then the next. But he’s not risking their friendship. Or the chance for him to make this deal. 

“Name your price.” Tony will pay anything. Absolutely anything. He steps gingerly back over the cooler to stand back on the step of the restaurant again. Fourchu lobster was an incredible find, especially in waters like these. It was supposed to be the most luscious and delicious lobster that a person would ever eat. 

The Rolls Royce of Lobster. That’s what he’d read it was called in a gushing review he’d read in a magazine a few short months ago. 

That would make it expensive enough, but when you added in the fact that they were only able to be fished ten weeks out of the year, from May through July, that it made this delicacy even more of a commodity. 

Like hell Tony was going to pass up the opportunity to try these bad boys in his own kitchen. He was already making plans for what he was going to do with them. A little butter, a little lemon juice in the pan. With a taste as delicate as this, you didn’t want to do anything to overwhelm it. Tony could put a call in to a dairy farmer he knew out in the country. Fresh butter would make this even better. 

“Oy. You listening to me?” Tony jumps guiltily from his thoughts of fresh cream and butter, and smashed garlic potatoes to smile sheepishly at Jack. But what he sees when he makes eye contact with his friend is just amusement. “I said the going rate is twenty dollars a pound.” 

Tony spared a look down at the cooler, and the four lobsters scrabbling around inside, trying to gauge their weight by eyeballing alone. The lobsters were probably sitting around a pound and a half apiece. Which meant Tony was looking at about a hundred dollars alone, just for these four guys. 

It was a steal. “Done.” He holds out a hand to shake on it. This wouldn’t be enough to even think about putting it on the menu tonight. But honestly? Between the pats of butter and sweet cream dancing in his head? Tony wasn’t thinking about serving this to customers. 

Jack takes his hand, and after a firm shake, the touch lingers for a second or two before Jack slowly pulls his hand free. Tony finds himself trying to remember if a handshake has ever left him feeling so flustered before. 

“But I have a condition.” Tony holds up a single finger, and bites down on a laugh when Jack squints at him. Yeah, he knows. It’s cheating the system to add pieces to the deal after you already shook on it. But Tony was hoping these additions would be agreed to, easily enough. 

“Shady business deals you’re having today, Anthony.” But Jack was an incurable gossip, and Tony had learned in no time flat of knowing Jack that his curiosity would always get the best of him. So after a moment’s pause and another long squint, he relents. “Alright. Alright. You’ve got me on the hook, go on.”

“Dinner with me, tonight.” Tony gets the words out all in a rush, but it doesn’t do a damn thing for the way his heart is hammering in his chest. So Tony clarifies. “After the front of the house closes. Just you and me.” And he clarifies some more. “You went to all the trouble to find these guys for me. The least I can do is share them with you.”

And if Tony has any chance at all of winning over his jolly sailor bold here, then it was going to be with the Rolls Royce of lobster. This was going to be a menu fit for a king. Tony just wasn’t going to tell him that. Better to keep the pressure off, just in case he screwed something up between now and then. Better safe than sorry. 

“So what do you say? You head inside, drop off your invoice with Pep and get paid, and I’ll see you back here at...ten?” A late dinner, but that meant they’d have the kitchen all to themselves. The staff would already be cleared out for the night. Privacy was the name of the game. 

Tony takes a deep breath, and finally phrases it as the question it should have been from the start, before he talked himself into a pretzel note. 

“You, me and the best lobster in the world. Ten o’ clock. Sound good?”

Jack watches him, and Tony just knows that there’s something more going on behind those intelligent eyes. And he was dying to learn that language, to know what in the hell was going on in that bright, sea swept mind of his. 

Whatever time they spent together, it was always fleeting. Morning haggling over fish prices was the bulk of the time Tony got to spend with Jack. Sometimes, he got lucky and Jack would wander by the back door after the lunch rush, an alley cat looking for scraps. (Five was the one who started feeding him, now there was no getting rid of him.)

This would be at least an hour of uninterrupted time. With good wine and good food, and no risk of overbearing customers or fires in the kitchen, either of the literal or metaphorical sense. All Tony needed was for Jack to say the word. 

It takes everything he has not to squirm under Jack’s gaze. Tony was forty five years old, he wasn’t a teenager anymore, trying to get Carmella DiMarro to go to prom with him. He wasn’t going to get nervous over this. 

Or at least not visibly. 

After another few impossibly long beats of Tony’s heart, Jack comes to a conclusion, nodding and holding out his hand again for another shake to seal the deal. 

“Ten it is, then.”

[mons1erprom]

Here's a scenario. Vera tells Valarie that since her business is growing she should hire someone to help her out, at least just for intimidation. Valarie hires the Wolfpack, since hey, it's a four for one and they're strong and take orders pretty well. This basically leads to a body guard romance.

Oooh, now that’s a juicy set up! Let’s see...

Vera has graduated Spooky High. Her presence on the criminal world has grown, and she’s on a one-way path to being a full on mob boss, a capo of Monstropolis, if you will. But obviously, her biggest threat are rival gangs and the law, so she needs some muscle.

Valerie, who’s happy just being a shady merchant/fence, knows just how to give her sister some back up. She calls in the Wolfpack. Being a bunch of literal gaurd dogs, they’re more than happy to do to a pretty kitty a favor.

So, with all the negotiating and handshakes out of the way, Vera’s got the hounds at her side. Scott won’t be joining them, though. He’s too dumb and too pure for this buisness. The leader of the wolfpack (we’ll call him Alpha) obviously holds the highest rank among the bodygaurds.

But still... Alpha can’t help but feel a little underused. Vera can already turn people to stone and has venomous snakes attached to her damn head! Not to mention she knows how to use a weapon or two, so why even bother with bodygaurds?

During one deal turned sour, one of the rival gangs pulls a knife on Vera. Wanting to actually assert his worth and y’know, be a bodygaurd, Alpha tackles the assailant but suffers a wound.

Cue scene where Vera’s tending to it, calling him an idiot and that he didn’t need to do that. Alpha says he wanted to be useful to her for once. Vera sees that she can let him shoulder the burden every once in a while, she doesn’t have to do everything on her own. And, recalling something Polly once told her “What’s the point of being at the top if you can’t celebrate it with anybody?”

Wow, I really went off. That’s some fanfic material there.

-Mod Frosty