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When the door of her apartment – no, no, their apartment, their home – slowly opened with a light squeak, Jimmy McGill felt alive again: It’s been a while, he would have probably normally thought, lowering his head with a sarcastic smirk plastered on his face, displaying once again his utter inability to take anything seriously; but there was nothing normal about that night. Dogs still barked and howled in the distance, lampposts electric light still covered the stars, the air still smelled like smoke and dust; and yet, after the desert, everything, everything was different.
Kim, who was standing in the doorway… she was different.
Perhaps it was because she was trembling, a hand on her mouth to hold back her sobs, as she whispered his name, again and again.
But… no. It was something else.
She looked so small, he noticed, and immediately felt uneasy – to him, she’d always been the tallest, an ivory tower of justice, cunning and beauty he never could have dared to climb, no matter how many times he had been invited inside: he’d just admired such a work of art, shyly and shamefully, as if it somehow just… well, wasn’t right, as if he was some voyeur, spying on something he should have never been allowed to witness. And yet, there she was now, wearing a simple sportsy t-shirt and her sweatpants, no make-up on; vulnerable, exposed, so real – so, so real it hurt, so real he felt his heart pounding so loudly and frantically that, for a second there, he genuinely expected for it to burst out of his chest. So real… when he had almost surrendered to the conclusion that he was never going to see her again. She looked so small and so close, and he couldn’t help but feel like it was wrong, all wrong.
She was supposed to be the tallest. She was supposed to be far away.
Far away from Albuquerque, that fiery, dirty hell of poisonous snakes, unbearable heat and constant injustice. Far away from HHM, that schmuck Hamlin, and everyone who had taken her for granted or plainly overlooked her over and over again. Far away from him. His lies. His messes. His game. Saul Goodman.
His shoulders and legs had killed him all day, and his skin had been burning like hell; his mind hadn’t been... at ease as well, to put it mildly. And yet, all of his physical pain, all of those fucking memories from the desert that flashed behind his eyelids every time he closed his eyes, right there and then, were gone. There was only Kim… and she deserved so much more than that.
Without even realizing it, he let go of the bag, that landed on the doorway floor with an almost inaudible thud, and he covered his face with his hands, as sobs came through his hoarse throat stinging it as if little scorpions were crawling out of it, and tears, precious water poured down from his eyes, leaving a wet, almost pleasant track on the burnt skin of his cheeks. After the gun in his face reminding him that he was mortal after all (and not a god in human clothing), the sun reminding him at every new, painful step how insignificant he was and how breakable he was, after everything… he had thought he was never going to feel again, he thought he was done: an empty shell, nothing more, nothing less. But those tears? But, most importantly, Kim? While she’s alive, guess I’m still a human being with emotions and everything, after all, he realized, as sobs shook his body to its core.
“I’m sorry”, he stuttered raspily, cracked lips covered by trembling hands, “I’m so sorry, Kim”. It felt wrong for him to say her name, and yet so right. “Kim, I– I am so, so…”.
Sorry. Sorry that you vouched for me with D&M. Sorry I had never kissed you before that night by the pool, I had suspected for a long time you wanted it as much as I did. Sorry they put you in doc review because I fucked up. Sorry I sometimes don’t like the movies you love. Sorry you had to save my ass when Chuck came after me. Sorry there are still inches of your skin I haven’t kissed. Sorry you had to lie for me over and over again. Sorry you don’t see me for who I am, Slippin’ Jimmy, Saul Goodman, a lowlife, the kind of lawyer guilty people hire. Sorry you thought I was dead. Sorry you had to see Lalo because of me. Sorry you fell in love with me. Sorry I love you. Sorry for everything.
Underneath the cheap fabric of the stupid star-spangled t-shirt he had bought at the truck stop, he felt a flashing pain: Kim’s arms were circling his shoulders, where the straps of the bags had been, and she was drawing him closer. Closer, when she was supposed to be far, far away. He sighed deeply, the sound of his sweet surrender: it hurt so good. She nuzzled her nose in the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent – though he smelled of low-priced soap and sweat, probably – and he felt her shaking lips whispering something against his skin.
“It’s okay”, she said softly. “Jimmy, it’s alright”. A brief pause, long enough for him to savor that moment, the familiarity of those arms around him. “You’re alright”.
Sorry. The word still echoed in his skull, a threat somehow far greater and more perilous than the gun and bullet to his head had been; but he said nothing. Instead, he placed one palm on the small of her back, while the other wandered on her arm, her cheek, her hair – how soft it was, he could barely believe it. He let his index finger gently capture her ponytail, tangle in that perfect golden lock, play with it. His tired head went to rest on her shoulder, but he wondered if it was just a way to avoid looking at her – staring at those big blue eyes he had fallen in love with all of those years ago and realizing with how much complete devotion they looked back at him. Him. Jimmy McGill. Saul Goodman.
A walking, talking, breathing fraud.
No, it wasn’t okay, and no, he wasn’t alright. And he was sorry. So sorry.
But Jimmy – or Saul, or whoever the fuck he was – didn’t let go: he quietly held her in the dim light of that warm Albuquerque night, and let himself be loved. Even though it was bittersweet, even though she deserved so much more and he deserved nothing at all.
He was sorry, yes, and he was a complete mess, but she loved him still. And somehow, he didn’t know what to do with it all.