Sucker Punches
Rating for language.
Reservoir Dogs belongs to Quentin Tarantino and Artisan Entertainment, released by Miramax films and clearly nothing to do with me. I make no profit from anything.
Four years in the can had tainted Vic Vega's perspective just a little. He supposed it was pretty fucked up anyway, before that, but he didn't think on it very hard. He was still breaking the habits he'd made in there, looking for - and usually locating - the weak spot in everyone he met. Who'd last, who was as good as dead.
As soon as he saw Mr.Pink he knew he wouldn't last five minutes in a place like that without a guy like Vic to take care of him. He thought the same about Orange. White, he figured, would do okay for himself. Blue looked like he might have spent some time there already, water off a duck's back - only it wasn't, no matter who you were - and he'd do okay for himself too. But not Orange. And definitely not Pink. He would have bet that Pink looked just the same in his teens as he did right there, lanky legs crammed under the diner table, startlingly blue eyes never quite at ease. A blur of facial hair and an expensive suit (that he never quite got the shoulders for, after all), were the only markers of fifteen years passing.
Orange, well, he was still a kid. Sallow skinned and hard-eyed, just some punk kid Joe picked up because it was a five man job and not four. Vic didn't like him a whole lot, but Vic didn't like many people a whole lot. He certainly didn't respect him. But he respected Joe, and if Joe trusted him for the job then Vic knew it'd have to do for him.
He knew White was an okay guy, Eddie said so, Joe said so; White was an okay guy.
Brown? Well shit. He didn't know where Joe was finding these guys. He'd been out of the loop for four years, it occurred to him that Joe was hard up for finding guys that'd take the kind of risk he was asking without trying to knife him in the back at the end of the day.
If it wasn't his first real job after being in the can he probably would have turned it down, told Joe thanks but no thanks, these guys were too sketchy, something wasn't right. But it was, and he didn't. And then he didn't consider it anymore, because he wasn't in the can anymore, and he didn't have to: if there was one thing he'd learned in those four years it was that he wouldn't ever go back there.
If White was the rat he deserved a fucking Oscar or something, Mr.Pink figured, because it sure was a stunning performance. He didn't think he'd be smart enough - stupid enough, whatever - to be a cop. Not that he hadn't met dumbass cops in the past, but they didn't give those guys the big jobs. And this was a big job. Pink's ears were constantly straining to make out sirens wailing towards them in that shithole little warehouse, twittery as Hell.
He didn't know shit about Orange. For all he knew, Orange was the rat. Just because someone was dying didn't make them less of a bastard. Mr.White didn't share his point of view.
It was obvious Blonde wasn't the rat. The way he started blasting his way through security and civilians back there in the store told him that much - no cop would ever pull shit like that. It was plain to see he was loyal to Joe anyway; insisting they stay, turning up at the warehouse and making sure they waited around. He wasn't exactly bright, Pink figured, but he was all kinds of useful at causing trouble. At first that made Pink think of a big, dumb (crazy) rottweiler. And he was content to leave his evaluation of Mr. Blonde complete at that. Until, that was, he was on the sorry end of a knee to the gut and had a gun barrel stabbing the air less than half a metre away from his face. Mr. Pink had some vague idea that if he talked less, managed to shut up at opportune times, he wouldn't get kicked across warehouse floors so often. Or he'd at least see it coming. But it was what he did when he got worked up, he figured it meant he didn't need to start shooting everybody he saw when one little thing upset him too much one day. He didn't believe in biting his tongue just so some other guy could sleep better. Mr. White, that impulsive son of a bitch. Schoolkids, he was thinking as he slid his hand across his gun and wrested it from the holster, surrounded by fucking children. He aimed his own gun right back at White, but he was almost certain White's hand was steadier and his eyes just a little more certain. Orange's whimpers had died down, but Pink remembered well enough what they sounded like.
He didn't want to get shot.
Blonde was a welcome intruder upon their fighting, Mr. White quickly remembering that he was more concerned with him than with Pink. It gave him the opportunity to scramble to his feet and put some distance between himself and the other man. He bit his tongue as he realised he was about to whine to Blonde, that asshole fucking kicked me! Got me on the floor and kicked me! That wouldn't sit well for him if he wanted to call them up on their own schoolkid behaviour.
'You boys keep playing so rough, someone's gonna cry.'
And he would have bet his cut of the robbery on it being Pink. He peered over his Ray-Bans at the lanky man, watched him flutter his hands up and down his torso as though he was checking none of his ribs had fallen out. His mouth was going, and Blonde was certain that this guy was never still for more than a second. Questioning, questioning. Mr. Blonde sipped his soda and glanced back to Mr.White, curious about how the fight had come about. Mr.White was an okay guy, everybody said so.
Mr.Pink was a shit, but he wasn't the kind of bastard that rubbed Blonde the wrong way. He'd figured White for the same type. It stopped mattering pretty damn quick though, and he didn't have to think on it anymore.
There was a cop in the trunk of his car.
Mr. Pink knew it was fucked up, to see a man so psyched about tying up a guy to a ceiling beam so he dangled like a meat carcass in a butcher's van. He knew that Blonde was one of those guys you heard about in whispers, never anything louder, down in the seedy places he liked to waste his time taking sips of alcohol he didn't really like. Guys like Blonde were too dangerous, they got outta hand, they did whatever the fuck they wanted and nobody held their leash. Crime wasn't a job, it was a fucking party for guys like Mr. Blonde. People didn't like that. It was unprofessional. Pink didn't like it either, not while it could have gotten him into a tight spot.
Mr.Pink stood back at a safe distance while White and Blonde knocked the cop around a little, trying to piece together how in fuck's name Blonde had stuffed a guy in his trunk without anybody stopping him. Maybe that was just how life was when you were Mr.Blonde. You want a cop? Stick him in your trunk, go on, go for it. You tell someone to do something. They ignore you? Shoot him and every fuck dumb enough to stand within a mile of him. Get away with it all. He pulled at his rumpled tie, recognizing he was a little bit giddy. His mind kept sauntering back to ten minutes ago, and what might have happened if Blonde didn't get back when he did. Pink let his mind wander to what might have happened if Blonde actually liked him. He didn't really care if people liked him as a general rule - and as a general rule, they didn't - but if he found himself in favour with a guy like Blonde? Well he wouldn't feel any reason to complain about that. White would probably be hanging up next to this son-of-a-bitch cop.
His fist collided with the square slab of a jaw that was already broken with a satisfying noise that Pink would, in later anecdotes, try to reproduce with little accuracy. It was too difficult to verbalize the amount of satisfaction the noise generated, the buzz of adrenaline thrumming through him, glassing his eyes. This one, wham, and blood trickled from the bastard's lips, is for this whole fucked up situation - that stupid broad in the car, and the dumb son-of-a-bitch that tackled me in the street, again, boxing his ear that time, that one is for the time I got brought in for trying to buy weed from a cop, hard across the bridge of his nose, that's for how this whole fuckin' mess is like everythin' when I was nineteen- He could have gone on for quite a few years after nineteen as well, but White had shouldered his way past him and decided it was his turn.
Pink shook his hand out, realising now that his anger had subsided that hitting a guy in the face really kind of hurt. He'd never punched a guy full on like that before. It wasn't often that he found himself in situations where they wouldn't hit back - and Pink didn't take long to figure out that he didn't fare well in brawls - he watched the way Blonde had done it and wondered why he wasn't wincing too.
Blonde caught the stare aimed at his red-knuckled right hand and squinted up at Pink through a haze of cigarette smoke.
"You never punched a guy like that before huh?"
"What're you talking about?" he replied sharply, his words quick and tumbling and sour, "A'course I hit a guy in the face before," he snapped, in a way that made for certain anybody listening knew he hadn't. It was a stupid thing to be embarrassed about but he felt a surge of irritation towards Blonde anyway, just for fucking saying it.
"You got your wrist too bent, you're gonna sprain it you hit him like that," Blonde drawled, seeming to take great pleasure in demonstrating for Pink the correct way of breaking somebody's nose.
Pink scowled and turned around, bored with the game already.
"Come on you quitter son of a bitch, hit him, hey," Blonde said, not bothering to raise his voice. He knew that Pink was listening to him, "Mr. Pussy," Blonde continued, his lips quirking upwards as Pink turned around and squared his shoulders. A split-second of looking between Blonde and the trussed-up cop and he was making his way back over there with a furious look on his face. He always looked furious, or scared, or laughing. His face was always animated. Irritable at observing nonsense like that, Blonde put out his cigarette on the back of the cop's neck.
Sure he was easy to rile up. He knew it. He punched Mr.Blonde's face when he knocked that cop's front teeth out, even though the real Mr.Blonde was laughing just off to his left, clapping his hands and grinning like it was the most fun he'd had in four years. And then Mr.Pink felt kind of good because hey, he was one of the guys, he'd made Mr.Blonde laugh, and then the stupendous amount of pain that generally happens when you hit someone hard enough to send teeth everywhere hit him and he was cradling his arm once again,
"It still fucking hurt! Jesus fuckin' Christ, it hurt more!" and he didn't even bother to try to disguise the whine in his voice that time.
He bit the inside of his cheek to hold back from yelling out as the broad palm slapped him square between his shoulders, knocking his head forward with such force his teeth clattered. The only reason he didn't whine was because he recognized, just in time, that this was Blonde being affectionate. Jesus, he was glad he'd never decided to bowl him over and tussle the way he liked to with Eddie. The guy would flatten him, Pink knew it, Blonde knew it, he hoped they never had to have prove it to each other, because a little affection from Blonde went a long way. Pink rubbed the back of his neck, silently wincing, smiling.