#i just wanna smash my barbie dolls into yours idka

[goldblumstandard]

@euphoriabled said we’re friends so now she’s stuck with me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There’s always a long, tense moment with Jake after he loses one of these friendly little shoot-outs of theirs; if Mickey’s being honest, it’s one of the leading reasons he’s been considering getting out of the game. That and things had gotten awfully dull in Vic’s absence. Even these little games felt like less fun than they had been a few years ago! Jake’s reaction is the same as it’s always been, though. Give the cooling body a hundred-yard stare as if that’s gonna magically retract the bullet and patch up the hole, gives Vic Jules, now, a mechanical handshake, turn, and leave the room. Jules and Mickey will sit a second longer with the ex-competitor and then Dianna will show up and they’ll follow her back out.

So they all hear the sharp click of high heels quite clearly, and long before Jake’s anywhere near the stairs. Jake snaps out of his post-failure fugue, sharpening up at the noise draws closer, and Jules tenses and curses every idiot on this strip for insisting only the draws get to carry as the sound stops echoing, the source drawing nearer. Nobody says maybe it’s Dianna because it isn’t fucking Dianna. To Jules and Jake she’s quiet as a cat no matter what she’s wearing; to Mickey, on the other hand, it’s an entirely different matter altogether. He’d know Dianna’s ginger step anywhere, in any pair of heels, which incidentally she is not wearing tonight.

Only Mickey remains cool and composed, still seated behind the desk, gun on the table. He sighs, the sniffs with a shrug, reaching into his pocket coat on the opposite side of his holster. His cigarette case is out and on the table by the time the door upstairs opens. Jules sucks in a breath as if burned by the sight of whoever was on the top of those stairs, but Jake didn’t make a sound. Whoever it is, it isn’t the right person—isn’t Emily Grace or Vic himself—so Mickey can’t altogether say he cares. He fishes his lighter out as Dianna moves in front of whoever their guest is (he can hear the crinkle of her stiff skirts) so she can do at least part of her job. Although she’s probably lost that now, since what good is a lookout who can’t turn a single woman away? Mickey lights up, then turns to given the women his full attention.

“Uh—welcome to the boys’ club, ladies. As…I’m sure you heard for- yourselves…you just missed the last round of the season. But—please!—uh,” gesturing vaguely in the man’s direction, and almost as an afterthought, he says, “Jake’s a regular. It’s been…gosh, almost five years now, wouldja believe that?…and he hasn’t missed a season. Jules is handling my bookings. I think…we can do business later, yes?”