Resdogs Drabbles
Fandom: Reservoir Dogs
Pairing: Orange/White, some gen, teensy smidge of Eddie/Blonde
Rating: Nothing graphic, some stuff slightly suggestive
Disclaimer: Clearly not mine
Summary: Grab-bag of 27 drabbles of various lengths, longest around 300 words. Not in chronological order.
Warnings: none
1.
The general consensus, given the very nature of the job, was that the moment the heist was pulled they’d all be gone and out of the warehouse and then the country, in different directions, like rats from a sinking ship- so White wondered why a man with a wedding band would want in.
***
2.
Hero worship was nothing new- Pink himself having idolised Joe back when the racket was new to him (well, within a career capacity, at least). He knew, however, that every line fed to him about how White was just ‘looking out for the new kid’ was a bare faced fucking lie.
***
3.
He raced desperately through a mental back catalogue of words and actions- what had he done in the club that night to encourage the lingering handshake, and then the arm slung around the back of his chair, the way Mister White leant in so close to speak to him that he felt warm breath on his neck?
***
4.
As he slid into White’s car, Orange’s eyes fell to cardboard box wedged against the windscreen.
“What’s in there?”
“Bear claws. You like ‘em?”
Oh yeah, he liked them. He sat and ate them with the guys, sometimes hanging out in the patrol cars with them, feet up on the dash.
He wasn’t so sure he wanted any.
***
5.
He’d never run so fucking fast before in his life.
He’d fucked it up. Somehow, he’d managed to fuck it up. The whole thing had gone to shit, and just because he hadn’t been the one holding the gun didn’t mean it wasn’t his fault that people in that building were dead.
As he gunned it out of the place, wearing down the soles of his new $125 shoes on the sidewalk, he could do nothing but let the weeks of mounting tension explode into unadulterated panic. If he didn’t get fucking killed, they’d never trust him with another job again! They’d dismiss him! They might fucking arrest him!
He was almost positive his knees were about to give as he rounded the corner to where Brown was parked, but then he felt a familiar hand clapping against his shoulder, giving him just a little solidarity, just like it always had.
***
6.
You’re just going to have to wing it, Freddy, he told himself. No fucking sweat. But he hadn’t factored this into the equation. He often caught himself finding it exciting, and he really didn’t like that.
***
7.
So, he’d been shot. It felt like falling into a swimming pool in January.
Beneath the supernova of pain moving through him, he was freezing. Beneath that, he had only one coherent thought, and that was Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry.
Somehow (a half hour later he really wonders how, and he has no fucking idea) he managed to ask White what his name was, because- God alone knew why- he still had his job in the back of his mind as though it still mattered, but he needed to say it aloud-
“LarryLarryLarryLarryohfuck-”
He was still frozen, and he was seeing himself moving and thrashing around without feeling it, but it helped, a little.
“Larry, Larry- Larry- oh God- Larry-”
***
8.
Mister Orange wasn’t some loud-mouthed, piece-flashing womaniser. Mister Orange was who Freddy could quite easily have become, had he not spent half of his life working towards a career in the police force, worrying about what he should and shouldn’t be doing. It was beginning to affect him, the new persona he’d created. The problem with it, he thought, was that it was too much like himself, and the line between the two was beginning to blur.
Case in point- stopping the general store across the street in the morning, Freddy found himself buying outside of his regular brand. Back at his apartment, he wondered why he was smoking Red Apples, until he remembered who else smoked them, and how they’d given him probably half a pack when he’d run out of his own on the night they’d met, at the club, when Freddy had earned his place on the heist but was still wound up so tightly that he was sparking up every ten minutes.
Case in point- Freddy stayed up late, by himself, writing reports and jotting down conversations, scouring mugshots and elaborating upon his fictional character’s life, eventually taking himself to bed, undressing carefully and sleeping fitfully.
Mister Orange fell asleep on the couch, when he had been out late with the boys and had stumbled home exhausted, tense, passing out on the nearest appropriate surface, not giving a fuck.
Case in fucking point- at eleven-thirty at night, Freddy Newendyke would take himself to bed and begin to coolly- dispassionately- think of all the women he knew. Mister Orange, it seemed, would fight exhaustion and think of a man he didn’t know at all and jack it furiously, driving back the inevitability of dreamless sleep, reckless and desperate.
***
9.
“Yeah, you can take me out. I had cereal for dinner last night.”
“You had cereal for dinner?” White laughs. Orange is at first embarrassed, but then smiles and shrugs.
“Fruit Brute,” he admits.
“What do you drink with that?”
“I had a rum and coke.”
***
10.
Breathless, he hoisted himself up onto his elbows, looking past Larry and to the glow of the clock beside his head.
Jesus Freddy, he told himself, do you know how late it is?
***
11.
Orange’s smoke rings. He was a pro.
It was perfectly clear that Orange had learned that skill a long time ago. He smoked often, comfortably, and blew them when he thought. And yet, when he knew that White was watching, his boyish lips opened wide slowly, thoughtfully. The dark zero of his mouth hung open. Once or twice the kid had French inhaled for him (for him, he knew, because the kid was watching him back) and he caught a glimpse of pink tongue before the column of smoke had risen out of his mouth.
***
12.
He’d gotten the impression- from White’s shirts, probably- that the sheets would be silk. They were just cotton though, of course, like a normal person’s. He pressed his face against the bed, breathing.
***
13.
“When I was a kid I wanted to be a cameraman. Or a director.”
“A cameraman? What?”
“The fuck are you talkin’ about, Brown?”
Those who were interested turned and watched as he added cream to his coffee.
“When I was a kid I wanted to be a cameraman or a director so I could make porno movies.”
“When you were a kid? How old we talking, here?”
“Maybe nine or ten. I’d get to watch porno, for free, all day, and get paid.”
“That’d get real repetitive.”
“Yeah, I figured that out.”
“Obviously.”
“Yeah, obviously.”
“When I was a kid I wanted to be James Dean.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“You wanted to be James Dean when I met you, Blondie.”
“And you wanted to drop ten pounds. But some things never change, huh?”
“I wanted to be The Silver Surfer.”
“That doesn’t count. It has to be a profession. The first actual career you wanted.”
“You’re a spoilsport, Pink.”
“When I was six I wanted to be a rocketship, but obviously that doesn’t count. Neither does becoming a fictional character.”
“Alright, smartass, what was the first career you wanted to enter into?”
“I wanted to be a fireman.”
“A fireman?”
“Yeah, a fuckin’ fireman. Silver Surfer don’t count, Orange. What did you want to be?”
“I wanted to be a cop.”
“You wanted to be a cop?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, man, what happened?”
***
14.
He shouldn’t have pulled an all-nighter. As soon as he'd gotten into the car he'd fallen asleep, and even now he kept dozing off, his head bobbed about stupidly, his heavy eyelids felt gritty.
Towards the back of his mind, he registered the car slowing to a stop, and a hand on his wrist.
“You can’t burn the candle at both ends, kid.”
“I can try.”
Lazily he moved his arm, so that the hand that rested on his wrist fell over his own. There, that was nice.
"I should have taken you home, but I don't know where you live."
“It’s fine.”
He felt himself dozing off again.
***
15.
Sometimes Orange wanted to just take him off somewhere and suck his dick.
He was never not attracted to White, no matter how conflicted he felt about it, but sometimes, sometimes the cumulative effect of White’s staring, flirting and oddly sincere chivalry meant that lust hit him like a goddamn sledgehammer.
He’d never sucked a dick before but he’d had his own dick sucked a lot, and he was more than fucking willing, and that had to count for something. And the boys on the force all said he had a big fucking mouth, so he had to be pretty good at it, right?
***
16.
“Somebody- please- put some fuckin’ music on, eh?”
Orange was beginning to get the hang of Eddie- he’d turn heads on way or another when he entered a room. He threw up his hands as he insinuated himself behind the bar.
At the head of the table, Blonde shuffled the cards, cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“You do it.”
“Daddy shut up shop here so we could have a good time before the job,” he warned. “Somebody better fuckin’ do it.”
“I got it,” Orange called. Steadying himself with a hand on White’s shoulder, he got up and headed for the jukebox.
“What’s everybody having?”
“Whiskey.”
“Gin and tonic.”
“Do you have Irish crème liqueur?”
“Two whiskeys.”
“Uh... get me a martini. Don’t forget the olive.”
“Get fucked, James Dean.”
“Vodka and coke, then.”
The juke was full of oldies, and dated pop. Cash, Van Zandt, Connie Francis, Tiffany, Madonna.
“...I can’t carry all that. Fuck it. You’re all settling for beer.”
Freddy sat back down beside White, who was trash talking Blue. Brown and Pink were shooting the shit. Blonde, who was done shuffling, kicked a chair out for Eddie as he carried crates of beer to the table.
The bar was a dive, and the company was lousy, but Freddy felt at home.
***
17.
For the past half hour the guy had been fishing ice cubes out of his glass and chewing on them.
It was fucking annoying.
It was a habit that annoyed him at the best of times, but he was trying to play cards, and he was down three hundred already, and the kid was kibitzing and looking over his shoulder and crunching fuckin’ ice cubes in his ear.
It was a distraction. Orange held his hand under the table, and it was wet and freezing, and that was a distraction too because he couldn’t fucking think about anything else. And he wasn’t sure if Blue and Blonde were smirking like assholes because they knew he was going to lose or because they knew he was trying to warm the kid’s hand up.
***
18.
“We need to- we need to, uh-”
Orange slapped a palm on the table as got to his feet, unsteady. The ice in Pink's gin and tonic clinked around as the glass wobbled.
“You’re drunk, buddy boy.”
***
19.
He’d never understood what it meant before, to be falling for somebody- he understood, of course, but didn’t understand the turn of phrase, that was it. Freddy’d never really gotten that before.
He got it now though. And he really wanted to see it all as unacceptable, inconvenient even- that would do- but he could only find it in himself to see it as fine, really. He’d even gotten over the fact that the guy was way older than him. He was getting over the fact that it was a guy.
He was going native, he knew that, but he didn’t know what he could possibly do to stop it and he was so far gone he didn’t even want to anymore.
He didn’t think about the job- his real job, that is, the cop thing- when he let White lay a hand on his thigh at breakfast when they went to get pancakes, when White fucked him (with increasing familiarity) in one bed or the other, or when Nice Guy Eddie began referring to them as ‘you two’.
He got that whole falling thing now though, because whenever White walked into the room he felt as though he were falling off the roof of his apartment building.
***
20.
“Shit,” the younger man breathed, catching sight of the time as he handed White his Rolex. He began to fumble around for his tie with one hand, while the other popped his collar. “I was supposed to- I needed-aw, fuck-”
He was a half hour late already. Holdaway was going to be fucking pissed.
***
21.
The young man had stood before him and had started to undress, unabashed. He’d made no fuss about it, despite being quite obviously inexperienced-in the way his biceps tensed under his shirt when they were touched, the way he’d slugged back that nightcap, the way he didn’t know where to put his hands. Even that was worryingly attractive.
But he didn’t want to be attracted to the kid’s hapless goofing around. White attempted to brace himself, sticking a hand in his pocket, feeling his pack of cigarettes. It was when a person found that naive inexperience alluring that people started acting like assholes, and then people made mistakes, but even the way he half folded his shirt before he tossed it to the coffee table was just maddeningly endearing.
The kid’s head fell forward, landing in the crook of Larry’s neck as hands slid around his back and untucked the shirt, hovered around the waistband of his pants.
“Christ,” he breathed.
***
22.
“Vincent’s in... Amsterdam now, right?”
Vic’s apartment was cold, and dark, having not been lived in for a good, long while. When Eddie had gotten there he’d tried to ignore it by flicking on the light and throwing himself onto the couch like he usually did, or, had done before, but it hadn’t really worked. The place was still dead. The bulb in the living room needed changing, and there weren’t any, and Vic didn’t give a good goddamn either way, so they sat in the dark, faces lit up by the TV.
Eddie didn’t really give a shit about whatever it was Vic was watching, so he let himself think about the job. As he lay on the couch, head and Nikes hanging over the arms, he absently stuck his fingers into the beer bottles he’d left on the floor.
“Vic?” he muttered, looking over. The guy looked almost as vacant as the apartment felt. The TV light made his face hard to read. “Vincent’s in Amsterdam, right?”
“Yeah,” said Vic dispassionately. “Vincent’s in Amsterdam.”
“I was thinkin’, we should go there,” said Eddie, eyes trained on the other, hoping to gauge a reaction. There wasn’t one. “Go and see the hash bars? Huh?”
Eddie shut up, momentarily, letting the TV fill the silence.
“That’s not really my scene, Nice Guy.”
“Well, it ain’t really Vincent’s scene either, but I was figuring he’d point us to where we needed to be. Been a long time since I last saw your brother, you know?”
“Yeah,” said Vic, and for a second or two Eddie thought that he might have been mulling the idea over. “I’m not pissing away my cut in a hash bar with Vincent.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows in the closest thing to a shrug he could manage, lying down, half toasted. He didn’t press the issue.
***
23.
The suits were about as formal as he’d ever been. He’d worn a suit to his senior prom, one that his mom had paid for, when she was alive, but that was rented and smelled of mothballs.
These suits were not only fucking formal as hell but a uniform. Upon finding that out, Mister Pink had asked what would happen if he decided he didn’t actually want to wear the fucking thing, and Joe had levelly told him that he’d be off the job. Freddy couldn’t tell if he was joking. Neither could Mister Pink, apparently, because he was wearing his.
The suits were also a fucking formal pain in the ass to take off. God forbid he fell asleep in it again, and got creases in the back, and got dirty looks at breakfast. Oh yeah, that had happened. He hadn’t known if it was a criminal thing, a Joe Cabot thing, a grown up, living-in-the-real-world kinda thing or what, but he felt pretty sheepish about it.
***
24.
Back when they’d been younger they used to cruise around in the Cadillac and pick up chicks.
They did it all the time, back then- this was before Eddie worked full time for his Daddy, and before Vic got sent down, and before Vincent left the country and all of that.
So they’d cruise around downtown California, find a couple of chicks and then cruise on back to Vic’s place.
Vic already knew that Eddie tended to laugh inappropriately while he was getting laid, but the girls they brought back didn’t. On occasion it had scared off one, or the other, or both. One time Vic had almost set the fucking place up in flames though, smoking and fucking at the same time, so Eddie didn’t feel too bad about it.
***
25.
Holdaway had dropped them off earlier- the mugshots. He’d carried them through the door in these huge duffle bags, taken a look at the place and then had just sort of left. That was fine though, Freddy thought. They were on a job, after all. He couldn’t exactly be entertaining when he had stuff that needed to be done, so he’d grabbed a beer for himself and then sat down, and pulled a few of the albums out.
He stared at them for a while, sipping at his beer. He had five faces to look for in there. Certain faces had priority, of course.
It was just that Freddy kept thinking about that thing that farmers are rumoured to say- about animals they sent to slaughter- you don’t give them a name. Because it was when you gave something a name that you got attached, and it was when you got attached that you couldn’t do your goddamned job, and you were your goddamned job, so Freddy was goddamned if he wasn’t going to do it.
Freddy was already attached, though. He’d become attached the moment he realised he had to actually pal around with these guys in order to seem credible.
And there were a lot of mugshots to look through.
It might have been easier if he had somebody to look through them with him, he thought bitterly. It might help him think straight.
Was it this difficult for everybody?
***
26.
The gravity of the situation hit him immediately. The way Holdaway was looking at him. The Ford that had been parked outside his building all last night.
“So,” he said, levelly, staring, “You getting enough sleep lately, Newendyke?”
***
27.
“It’s curtains.”
Did people really say that?
Well, Freddy hadn't thought so, but he hadn't really thought Holdaway would sent guys to tail him every waking moment of every day either.
If it hadn't been for those guys he wouldn't have been in this kind of a sticky situation. Holdaway wouldn't have known about those lazy mornings with Larry in the temporary apartment he'd been given, and Freddy wouldn't have been slumped in the back of Holdaway's Merc, listening to the guy talk about sides, and morals, and going native, feeling like his sixteen year old self again.
"If you do this shit- which I had no idea was your kind of shit, man, by the way- if you do this shit and something goes wrong, it's fucking curtains, man," said Holdaway, one hand coming off the steering wheel to stab at the air.
Freddy was trying not to listen, but that was difficult. It was too hot. The air inside the Merc was close. His superiors all knew that he'd let himself be fucked by another man- a career criminal, who he was supposed to be selling down the river in only a short amount of time.