Perishable

Thursday Vignettes Forum. This story is for the November 1st prompt.

This is complete crack. I was working on something spooky and, well, this happened.

– – – –

Tony opened the door to his condo and knew immediately that someone else was within. He pulled his gun but spotted a tell-tale jacket draped over the back of a chair and rolled his eyes.

Ignoring his unexpected houseguest, who was literally perched on the dining table, he secured his sidearm in his lockbox lest he be tempted to shoot someone in the next five minutes. After divesting himself of his coat, tie, and shoes, he went back into the living room and stood in front of the intruder, hands on his hips.

“Fingers. You sent me a box of severed fingers.” He clenched his jaw. “At work!”

“Too much?”

Tony took a breath while counting to ten. “You figured out who went after me last week and instead of telling me, you killed them?”

“One of them might still be alive, hard to say since I’m not actually there. Because I’m here. As you can see. Besides, I’m all pardoned.”

“Gah!” Tony threw up his hands. “You got a pardon for your past deeds, provided you became an Avenger. You don’t have a pardon for future deeds!”

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

“No, you don’t! And why would you send them to me at work?!”

“You don’t like it when I send perishables to the house.”

“That was a goldfish, not a perishable. And I was in Kuala Lumpur at the time, and the whole condo reeked when I got back three weeks later. You know what? I can’t even with you right now. My boss wanted to put me in protective custody!”

“Oh.”

“Are you pouting? No, you do not get to pout when I’m the one who spent the day playing dumb about a box of fingers.”

“Are you saying I should have let it go because I’m pretty sure when my boyfriend gets kidnapped and beaten up that I’m allowed to take fingers.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not. I’m a federal agent, I don’t get to indulge in revenge. And literally no one in this country is allowed to take fingers.”

“That’s limiting.”

“And I’m not your boyfriend!”

“Harsh!”

“Truth! You have a girlfriend. Who I like! Who’d kick my ass if I so much as looked at yours.”

“Not true! She said we could totally bang whenever we want as long as she gets to watch. I’m not sure if she meant live or if I just have to record it for posterity.”

Tony’s mouth fell open. “Vanessa said we could have sex? Never mind, just forget I asked.”

“She also said she’s not at all averse to a threesome?”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I would never! Well, I’d fuck you, but not kid about fucking you. Besides, have you seen you? You’re smokin’ hot. In the movie of your life, you’d totally be played by Michael Weatherly.”

“What?”

“Too much?”

“Wade, there’s not going to be a TV show about my life. Please explain the threesome. I mean, the fingers! The fingers, the fingers! Why did you send me fingers?”

“Because, I wanted you to know that if anyone ever hurts you, butternut, I’d totally take care of it.”

“I’m vetoing butternut. It’s an unacceptable nickname.”

“Aren’t you paying attention? It’s an endearment.”

“It’s not endearing.” He pointed at Wade. “The fingers!”

“They took you and I got all twisted up inside, thinking about them and all the touching. You barely let me touch you.”

“That’s because you grab my ass.”

“You have a great ass.”

“Vanessa is gonna kill you. And then me.”

“Nuh-uh. Not if I bring video evidence. Or just you. She’d be fine with you and then we can make the video. She’d love to be the director. And if you agree to the threesome, I’m totally calling dibs on using the strap-on on you first. I found you and groomed you, I get to peg you before her.”

“Wade… There’s so much wrong with that. First off, you didn’t groom me.”

“I did so! When we met, you told me to fuck off, and now you’re considering letting me fuck you with a strap-on. I groomed the fuck out of that.”

“Grooming doesn’t mean what you think it means, Wade. It’s not a good term. Delete it from the memory bank. And…why the fuck do you need a strap-on? Is there something wrong with your dick?”

“You’d let me fuck you with my dick? That’s amazing. I told you the grooming worked.”

“It didn’t work because there was no grooming. Stop it!” Tony took a breath, praying for patience. “Explain the fingers!”

“I told you! I kept thinking about the touching! And then every time I fell asleep, I dreamt about just, like, hands. And sometimes there’d be this alien landscape and these moons, and then just these hands. Like floating there, taunting me, saying ‘I hurt Tony.’ And I’d think about how those hands had been on my butternut, and they needed to be relieved of their hands!”

Tony groaned, wanting to beat his head against the table. “You are stuck on why you did it, but I want to know why you mailed them to me? Am I going to get the rest of the hands tomorrow?”

“Nah…I tossed the rest. You just can’t fit as much into a flat rate box as you used to.”

Tony’s laugh was bordering on hysterical. “Okay. Let me see if I’ve got this right. You were upset by my abduction and started dreaming about hands touching me—”

“No, just hands. They were enormous, disembodied hands, but I knew where they’d been. And they probably hadn’t even washed.”

“Ew. Wade, no one put hands anywhere on me that would require washing.”

“Washing is important.”

“Yeah. Moving on. So you started having a nightmare about hands, so you tracked down the kidnappers that the FBI missed and relieved them of their hands, but the hands wouldn’t fit in a box, so you just sent the fingers.”

“Most of the fingers.”

“Well, that would explain why some of the sets were incomplete.”

“I kept all the ring fingers.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“I don’t think we’re there in our relationship yet.”

“We don’t have a relationship.”

“We’re negotiating the use of strap-ons, we so have a relationship.”

Tony’s eye twitched. “Wade, why at work?”

“Because that’s where you are when the postal service is delivering, and after the fuss you made about the stink the last time I sent something to the house, it seemed prudent to send it to where you would be. You didn’t have to show anyone, though I’m glad you liked them well enough to share with others.”

“Wade,” Tony said slowly, “I didn’t share them. The package was x-rayed, and the presence of human fingers means I was rounded up and held for my own protection while the FBI was called out to investigate the threat against a federal agent.”

“Oh.” He scratched the back of his head, the mask barely moving. “And here I thought I was being like your fairy godmother, sending you parcels of good cheer. Like Helena Bonham-Carter only with a better ass.” He stood up on the table and looked back at his own ass. “I do have a better ass, don’t I?”

“Did you slip me some mushrooms?”

“I would never! Not without finishing our relationship negotiations first! Drugs are a critical part of the checklist.” He pointed to his butt. “It’s better, right?”

“I’d say you have a one-track mind, but you really, really don’t. And it’s apples and oranges. I can’t compare your ass to hers.”

“You are so tetchy. So you need two similar fruits…”

“The fruit part is right.”

“What about that actor?”

“That was specific.”

“The Canadian one.”

“There’s more than one actor in Canada.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s only one.”

“Wade.”

“No, that’s not his name.”

“Wade!”

“Fine! That Ryan Reynolds guy. I have a better ass, right?”

Tony sighed. “Yes, Wade, you have a better ass than Ryan Reynolds.”

“Yes! Okay, so, now that we’ve determined the superiority of my ass and that you don’t want perishables at home or at work, I think we should wrap up our fucking negotiations.”

“We’re not having fucking negotiations because I’m mad at you.”

“You’re mad at me?”

“You sent me fingers!”

“You keep saying that.”

“Wade… Don’t you get that the FBI is investigating, and if they figure out it was you, you might go to jail.”

“Nah, I have immunity.”

“No, you don’t! Past deeds, Wade, past!”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how that works. But if you’re so worried about it, why don’t you take Stark up on his offer to come be the handler for the team? Then we could work together and fuck whenever we wanted. Providing we get video for Vanessa. Ooh! We could livestream on lunch breaks.”

“Wade. Stop sending me stuff. People are going to be looking at me funny for years.”

“They look at you funny? Like bad funny?”

“Oh my god! Do not remove anyone’s eyes! Don’t remove anyone’s anything. Stop removing anything attached to anyone else!”

“Killjoy.” Wade settled into a cross-legged position. “Would you just come home with me so we can have sex already?”

“Let me see if I can get this to sink in… My day included severed fingers. I am not having sex. At all. Because there were body parts in a box that I had to try to explain, and then I had to talk the feebs all damn day. I cannot stress enough how much of a hard-on killer those things are.”

Wade was silent for so long, Tony wondered what the fuck he was thinking. Not for the first time, he wished Wade would take his mask off more often. “I murdered your boner? That may be the most awful thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“Before we get into another round of strap-on bingo or you try to persuade me that you have immunity for future amputations, I am going to make dinner and have a huge glass of wine and try to forget.”

“Dinner for two?”

“I’m a little peeved at you.”

“But you said I was always welcome.”

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“I’d love it if you’d hurt me.”

“Get Vanessa on the phone. On speakerphone. I want to hear this threesome business for myself.”

“OMG!”

“You can’t verbalize an acronym!”

“I think I just did, so I obviously can. But after we talk to the boss lady, I can fuck you, right?”

“No. I need at least five days between severed digits and fucking.”

Wade made a sound like a raspberry. “We’ll wear you down! I’ll send you a sex video of me and Vanessa to help sway you to the dark side. That’s not at all perishable. What are the firewalls like at Homeland?”

“Wade!”

– – – –