Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

• The first thing you do when Jesse gets the keys to your new apartment is throw your bags on the floor and run around, poking your heads into all the rooms, pulling open all the kitchen cabinets, and laying like a pair of starfish on the bland carpet of the bedrooms.
• Holy shit, you laugh.
• Holy shit, Jesse laughs.
• You lay there for a long time, waiting for your new lives to feel real.
• Saul Goodman really missed out on being a real estate agent.
• He picked the perfect apartment.
• It’s got heating, for when the cold becomes colder.
• It’s got two bathrooms, with an elephant’s worth of space in each.
• It’s got spacious wardrobes that will eventually be filled with band shirts and beanies and thick, woolly socks, and a fireplace that with time becomes a mantle for you to frame your little polaroid's on, turning fleeting flashes into permanent memories above the cozy flames.
• It’s got everything.
• The first week goes by fast.
• You’re on a high and you won’t come down.
• You and Jesse have become avid thrift shoppers in the wake of your old riches, determined to fill out your home with bits and bobs; knicks and knacks. On every second corner of this mountainous town, there’s a second-hand store bursting with charm. Oh, and someone’s grandpa’s collection of Christmas sweaters. 
• (Yes, Jesse buys one.)
• You also buy a toaster, some sofa cushions, and a big, green blanket that will be perfect for your movie nights. You hit three more on your way back.
• You also go bananas in the local supermarket.
• You sit in the cart and swipe almost every cookie and frozen lasagna you can off the shelves, while Jesse hops on and scoots you both around.
• Your fridge looks like an overstuffed suitcase.
• You use the town library to print off a couple resumes, and some hours later, you re-converge at the same parking lot you started out in, and you both run up to each other and shout —
• I got the job!
• When the population is as small is Bear Creek’s, anything is possible.
• You become a cashier at the supermarket.
• Jesse starts bussing tables at a small steak-and-chips restaurant.
• (They let him spray-paint a mural onto the side of the building. It takes three whole days and two broken ladders, but it’s beautiful, and Jesse walks around now with compliments on his shoulders and a pep in his step.)
• The first week goes by fast.
• A blur of shopping, moving furniture, and movie nights.
• Two kids in a candy store.
• Then, after that  —
• It’s the slow and steady Bear Creek lifestyle.

• Everybody knows everybody in Bear Creek.
• The elderly clerk at the corner store knows the man who walks in with his dog, and the man with the dog knows the lady from the bookshop down the street, and the lady from the bookshop knows you, and you know the guy who busks outside the library, and the busker-guy knows Jesse, and it just keeps going in circles, circles, circles, until it’s all a big web.
• Some years ago, you might have perceived this as danger.
• You might have perceived this community as a reactive entanglement of whispers, and stares, and one rogue phone call to the wrong people.
• But one thing Bear Creek teaches you is how to let go.
• How to let go of glancing over your shoulder.
• How to let go of peeking out the windows at night.
• How to let go of these things that have shaped you into something sharper than what you really are. The person you used to be.
• The same goes for Jesse.
• For a month, he tucks a gun in his pants-line.
• He smokes cigarettes while he scrutinizes your new IDs.
• Isaac and Riley Miller.
• He has three different phones, and refuses to text anybody except you.
• You can hear him, in the night, checking on you from your doorway, like you might’ve disappeared in the ten minutes he’s been in the other room.
• It’s difficult, because old dogs can’t learn new tricks, but Jesse gets better.
• He’s safe enough, now, to revert back to that teenage boy he’s always been at heart, even if he is twenty-nine years old.
• You build lop-sided snowmen together in the apartment complex’s parking lot, and pelt each other with snowballs. It’s a parallel image to your nights back in New Mexico, throwing frisbees in the driveway, except with two completely different people who look like you and Jesse, but have been through and seen so much more.
• You go for walks and shit, like normal, healthy people.
• The DVD store becomes a second home for you.
• You drink hot chocolate out on the balcony and argue over who got more marshmallows while you people-watch.
• You take your sleds down to the edge of the forest, and you coast down the tall mounds of snow and hoot into the trees like happy children.
• Some nights, you lay in bed and wonder about your old life. Are there ghosts of you, back home? Do people think of you?
• Some days, it’s hard to keep looking forward.
• There are just some things you will never be able to forget. Some things you will never be able to look at with the same eyes as everybody else.
• Like how all meat looks like sheep guts.
• And all flies come with a flash of dead eyes.
• And how sometimes, when Jesse reaches to hold your hand, you’re back in that desert and you’re being grabbed, pinned, and shot.
• The days are slow, and they give you time.
• Sure, the apartment is nice and all, but Jesse’s always been your home.
• He’s always there to pet and shush away the nightmares.
• He’s there when you need him, and he’s not when you need space.
• He’s a familiar face. 
• He’s family. 
• He’s your twin, trapped in the same echo of an old nightmare you survived together. He’s someone who knows what you’re thinking whenever you see a grate in the ground, or a bucket, or a paperclip. He understands.
• The days in Bear Creek are slow.
• You spend them painting, laughing, exploring, and living.
• It’s sort of like buying new shoes.
• Uncomfortable, at first, but then it learns to work around you —
• And everything is easy-peasy from there on out.

• Jimmy has a thick moustache, and he can’t handle the cold.
• These are the first things you notice when he shows up at your door, with that strip of carpet above his lip and the three coats he’s shivering in.
• You’re in shock. Jimmy?
• He is not. Are you gonna let me in, you little punk, or what?
• He says he is freezing his nuts off. 
• Jimmy McGill is in your living room. He’s shed all his layers, toed off his boots, and apparently, he’s jet-lagged, so he helps himself to your coffee machine like he’s lived here all his life. You stare at him while he sips it.
• There’s an awkward silence.
• I thought I’d never see you again, you mutter, at this version of an old memory you forced yourself to forget, currently standing in your kitchen.
• Jimmy sets the mug down.
• He looks like he tries to say something, but then he just opens his arms.
• You hug him for the first time in four years.
• You’re an adult, now.
• He must sense this change in you, not just physically but mentally, because when he pulls back, he doesn’t want to let go, and he’s just looking at you and crying, which looks wrong on a guy like Jimmy.
• Why’d you have to go and get all grown up on me, huh?
• Then he demands that you tell him everything.
• You demand he tell you everything, because, How’d you even find us?
• He says he knows a man who knows everything about everyone; someone who can make fake IDs and people disappear. He says it’s how you’re living out here, and you’re reminded of the night you were herded into the back of an electronics store and given a new name.
• Jimmy helped you and Jesse out in the beginning, but only as a voice through a phone line, and then as an invisible force pulling strings.
• Even when he’s 2,800 miles away, Jimmy’s been there for you.
• You tell him about Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez.
• You tell him about the phone call, and the sheep guts.
• Then you try telling him about the desert, and the Welkers, but your voice gets caught in your throat like a fish hook, and he suggests going for a walk instead.
• You trail the sidewalks until you bump into Jesse.
• He’s on his way home from work, and when he sees you, he almost faints.
• Yo, yo, yo, hang on a second, His mouth hangs open. 
• You giggle while they take each other in.
• They even do a bro-hug, because Jesse does things like that, now.
• He tells Jimmy that the apartment kicks ass, man, and that he can’t believe he flew all the way up here just to see you guys.
• Hey, man, Jimmy holds up his hands, I just came here for the waterfalls and the moose. You people were second-to-last on my itinerary.
• You both tell Jimmy to shove it, and then you walk together to the park.
• Just like old times, right? Jimmy asks you.
• These are nothing like old times, but you got your two favorite people in the world back together again — your weird little family — so that has to count for something.
• Whatever you say, You chuckle.
• You see a fire-colored fox sniffing along the frozen lake while you talk about everything that’s changed; everything that’s happened. The people you’ve become. You cry again when Jimmy says he’s proud of you, and Jesse gives you a hard noogie for being such a sap.
• Apparently, Jimmy’s staying in Bear Creek for a while.
• Today’s a good day.

• You graduate college in May.
• It’s been a long struggle, but you made it.
• Jimmy’s there.
• Jesse’s there.
• Your friends are all there, too, in matching gowns and caps.
• You hear your name, Riley Miller, being called, and you step up to the podium with the overwhelming sense of metamorphosizing from one cold husk of a life into a newer, brighter one. One where you have a new name and a new home, but the same old family cheering for you in the crowd.
• You can’t believe how much everything has changed.
• For one, Jesse shaved all his hair off, ‘cause he’s an idiot.
• At least one thing makes you laugh every day, now.
• (It’s usually Jesse shouting bitch at your Xbox, or Jimmy complaining about the people he works with, down at the Cinnabon, because the only young person he can stand to be around is you.)
• It’s been a year since you last had a nightmare.
• You’re back to walking dogs again.
• You’re back to singing in the kitchen.
• You moved into the apartment next to Jesse’s, and he tells you every day how much he doesn’t miss finding your dirty dishes in the sink. But you know he hates that you’ve grown up so fast. He comes around for dinner almost every single night, swaddled in that big, green blanket you bought when you first landed in Alaska, and you’ve upgraded from watching Tinkerbell to old Disney movies. He cries every time at Lion King.
• Jimmy lives ten minutes away, in a proper but small house.
• You know there’s days where he yearns to live on that same pillar of glory he had back in New Mexico.
• He plans on heading back to the states in the coming months.
• He says he’ll miss the crisp air, and the caribou, and watching the snow roll over the caps of white mountains while he eats breakfast croissants with you in quiet cafes, but it’s just not in his nature to stay in one place for too long. You can’t trap a butterfly in a bird cage.
• Besides, he’s basically the poster child for burner phones.
• He’ll find a way to contact you.
• That skatepark seems like a million years ago.
• You throw your cap in the air.
• Now when you spend nights at Jesse’s place, ‘cause the two of you are like teenage girls obsessed with sleepovers, and you warm yourself up by the fireplace, there’s one more photo sitting there, now.
•  Dead center. Ceramic frame.
• The final piece of the puzzle.
• It’s you, holding your degree and laughing while the sun blooms on your shoulder, with Jimmy and Jesse on either side of you, throwing up rock-star hands like they’re at the sickest concert they’ve ever been to.
• You smile to yourself.
• Because you love those fucking idiots.
• And they love you, too.