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Mr. White has cancer. It’s still almost impossible for Jesse to wrap his mind around. Even when he manages to focus all his attention on the cook, it feels like there’s a big, black cloud lingering in the back of his mind. It’s an all too familiar feeling that sends him right back to when Ginny had been diagnosed, imposing and devastating and so very surreal. Catching a glimpse of that mark right in the center of his chest had felt like seeing something forbidden, a target made of radiation and malignancy for death to bury itself in.
Mr. White has cancer. Mr. White is going to die. Mr. White is eventually going to leave Jesse in the most fucked up way somebody can go, and he’ll be all alone. Again. He doesn’t know what hurts more, the truth of it all or the fact that it was kept from him. How many times is he supposed to go through this?
Jesse does eventually manage to finish the cook all on his own, but any pride he’d be feeling for it is overshadowed by the crushing realization that this won’t last. Nothing lasts forever, but there is something Jesse enjoys about driving way out into the boonies while bickering with Mr. White, nothing but flasks and pseudo and their piece of shit RV to keep them company. It’s dangerous and exhilarating and nothing you would expect from some old-ass chemistry nerd and Jesse doesn’t want it to end.
But it will. It’s only a matter of when.
Jesse yanks the gas mask off his face as he steps out of the RV, peering over to where Mr. White still sits in the lawn chair, rubbing his temple with one hand and fanning himself weakly with the other. Now that Jesse knows, it seems obvious. He’s lost weight, he seems paler despite how much time they spend in the desert sun, and… is his hair thinning? At least he seems to be handling it better than Ginny had. The fact that he even has the energy to endlessly bitch at Jesse in the way he does is a strange comfort.
“You good?”
Mr. White looks up a bit startled, like he hadn’t heard Jesse approach, but who could blame him? He’s no doubt got a lot on his mind. He coughs a bit and pats his chest, straightening up with a nod.
“Yeah. Better. You finished in there?"
Jesse nods and pulls the apron off over his head. “Yep, batch is cooling. You can check it out if you want to make sure it’s up to your standards for an acceptable product.”
Mr. White just gives a weak chuckle and waves him off. “I’m sure you did fine, Jesse. You’ve been improving.”
The compliment makes Jesse’s chest warm, but it only reminds him of the fallout that must be festering inside Mr. White’s lungs. He offers the older man a helping hand as he gets up out of the chair, but Mr. White brushes past it without a glance. It’s obvious he’s the kind of guy who can’t accept help, even when his life quite literally depends on it.
“Don’t forget your magazine,” Mr. White calls behind him as he shuffles back to the RV, dabbing at his forehead with the back of his hand. “Interesting taste.”
Shit. Jesse scoops his porn mag up off the ground, face heating from more than just the sun as he rolls it up and sticks it in his back pocket. So what if he likes the over 40 shit? Mr. White certainly doesn’t have any room to speak. Whatever.
They make quick work of cleaning things up and making sure their product is safe and secured. Beakers go into boxes, aprons and gas masks get stowed away under the counter, and they have a fairly full bin of perfectly clear crystals by the time the sun is reaching toward the center of the sky. They take their respective seats at the front of the RV, but Jesse still doesn’t feel ready to leave yet. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to act like nothing is wrong after learning the real reason why Mr. White has suddenly decided to break bad.
Jesse turns the keys a few times before the RV finally decides to roar to life, but he doesn’t pull away just yet. “Yo, you, uh, got anywhere to be later today?”
Mr. White shrugs and gives him a suspiciously raised brow. “Not exactly. Why?”
“Do you wanna, like, I don’t know, do something?”
“...Do something.”
“Yeah. Hang out. Together.”
“I… don’t know if that’s the best idea.”
“Why not?” Jesse turns in his seat and gives him a disbelieving look. Sure, he’s probably not Mr. White’s idea of good company, but he’s here and he’s offering. “Come on, man, there’s nothing you want to do? Just cook your meth and count your money? Nah, there’s gotta be something, I mean, you only got so much time left, right-”
“Jesse, please-”
“-and what if you get to a point where you, like, can’t do anything? You’re gonna miss out, and then you’ll be- you know-!”
“Jesse!”
He startles at a warm hand being placed on his shoulder, so caught up in his runaway train of thought he had almost forgotten there was a purpose to it.
Mr. White sighs. “It’s alright. We can do something.”
“Oh. Okay. Cool.” Jesse sits back in the driver’s seat as Mr. White takes his hand away, a little embarrassed for having gone off on some impassioned tangent, but, fuck, what is he supposed to do? Not worry? “Anything in mind?”
“Actually, yes. It may not be your speed, though.” Mr. White digs into the glove box and pulls out an older, haphazardly folded map of New Mexico that had been in there when Jesse bought the RV. He taps on Los Alamos. “There’s an exhibit at the visitor’s center here showcasing the Mars rover photographs. I hear they’re really something. Up for it?”
Space. Okay, yeah, Jesse likes space. He doesn’t know much of anything about Mars or the rovers on it or the pictures that they take, but it sounds pretty cool, all things considered. He figured Mr. White would want to do some boring old man shit, but he’s fine with it. As far as science goes, it could end up being interesting.
Jesse nods. “I can dig that. You think they found aliens?”
Mr. White just gapes a bit at Jesse before shaking his head, no real malice behind any of it. “Just drive, Jesse.”
He does as he’s told and pulls off onto the dirt road, taking directions from Mr. White to head toward Los Alamos instead of back into the heart of ABQ like they typically do. It doesn’t escape Jesse that Mr. White is no doubt blowing off his wife in exchange for spending the evening with his partner in crime, and it fills him with an ugly concoction of satisfaction for coming out on top, remorse for stealing away someone’s dying husband, and annoyance that this could be considered stealing in the first place. He doesn’t want to think about what any of it means.
It takes almost three. Fucking. Hours. Three hours before anything close to civilization appears over the horizon. Jesse groans in relief when actual buildings and other cars finally start to pop up around them, Mr. White rolling his eyes all the while. He had gotten sick of all the How much longer?s from Jesse pretty quickly, not that it stopped the impulse he had to ask. He knows they’re both happy to finally be at the Visitor Center.
“So,” Jesse starts as he hops out of the RV, “What’s supposed to be so important about these pictures anyways?” He notices one of the pieces of duct tape on the door starting to peel off and smooths it back into place over the bullet hole. The last thing they need is to get noticed for that when they already stick out like a sore thumb.
“It’s not so much the pictures as it is why the rover is there to take them,” Mr. White explains, easily slipping into scholar mode with a half-smile. It’s gotten easier and easier to detect these subtle shifts from Partner to Teacher and back again the more and more time Jesse spends with him. “They found water, can you believe it? Water on Mars.”
“Doesn’t sound that special to me.”
“Water is life, Jesse.” Mr. White holds the door open for them as they enter the Center, the bored teenager at the information counter barely sparing a glance as they head back to the exhibit. “And life is special. Anywhere you can find.”
Jesse can’t really argue with that, can he?
A banner reading Follow The Water is pinned to the wall above a small showcasing of both color and greyscale photographs, each with small descriptions captioning them. None of them look very enticing to Jesse, most being of barren landscapes or the rocky Martian floor or are otherwise indistinguishable from the strange angle they’ve been taken at. Mr. White, on the other hand, lights up when they enter the room. It’s the first time Jesse has seen him, like, actually be in a good mood since they started working together, and it makes his own brighten a bit. The guy deserves a little happiness, even if it’s because of something dorky like this.
Mr. White is in his own little world almost instantly, examining the first photo on the wall with his hand on his chin as if there’s a puzzle to be solved in it, and shit, maybe there is. It’s not like Jesse would know, but he’s certain Mr. White could figure out the answer with his big brain if so.
He wanders around the room, giving each photo a once-over without bothering to check the descriptions. The only one that catches his attention is of the actual rover from a bird’s eye view, a little plaque titling it Pheonix Lander Self Portrait, and even that he doesn’t study for more than a minute. It’s a little funny to think of a rover bothering to take a picture of itself. By the time he’s already made his way around the room, Mr. White is barely moving to the second photograph. Jesse huffs a little laugh and ambles over, curious as to what’s so damn interesting.
Mr. White doesn’t even look up as Jesse comes to a standstill next to him. Their biceps brush and neither of them move away from the contact. It feels hot even through the numerous layers they both wear. The older man is looking at a side-by-side comparison of brown terrain, white streaks atop the hills.
“What’s that supposed to be?”
“This,” Mr. White points to the white, “is ice. Pretty much all you’re going to find in terms of water because of how cold it is there. Did you know the hottest day on Mars wouldn’t be much worse than about 70 degrees Fahrenheit? It used to be warmer, which is where the potential for life comes in. Anyways, this here shows the evaporation process, which took,” he leans in a bit closer to check the caption, “four days. Interesting.”
By the time Mr. White is finished speaking, Jesse realizes he’s barely even heard a word the guy has said. Besides not even having that much interest in the topic anyway, he finds it way too easy to be distracted by the low, steady cadence of Mr. White’s voice, how he moves his hands about in time to his words, the wistful lilt that proves he’s so into whatever he’s saying that he doesn’t even notice how far Jesse’s attention had strayed. It reminds him a little bit too much of high school.
Jesse just shrugs. “A lot can happen in four days.”
Mr. White hums absently and steps over to the next photograph, hunching over a bit to get a closer look at it. This one is even less interesting, a black and white still of nothing more than a bunch of rocks. Jesse raises an eyebrow, and when Mr. White doesn’t explain, he prompts, “You gonna tell me that’s ice too?”
“Actually,” Mr. White starts with a smirk, “it is. In a way. This is one of the first pictures the rover took where it landed in the northern polar region. The latitudinal equivalent to our very own Alaska, in fact.” He reaches out toward the photograph and traces his finger over the cracks in the ground. “This cracking right here is very similar to what you might see in Earth’s low-temperature environments. It’s caused by the expansion and contraction of ice in the soil.” He clenches his hands into fists and then flares them out in time to his words as a demonstration. “Fascinating to see water behave the same way on another planet as it does here.”
Sure, fascinating. The guy does seem pretty damn fascinated by the pictures, as simple as they are, and there’s just as much of a sparkle in his eye as when he’s explaining the chemical concepts of their cook. It’s something Jesse could watch forever, even with as little information as he absorbs.
There’s something about the way Mr. White gets when he’s teaching that makes him seem like a whole new person. Jesse thought he hated being a teacher when he was in school, but now, not so much. He’s obviously got a talent for it, and a little bit of guilt tugs at Jesse when he thinks about how he, and every other class clown Mr. White must’ve had to deal with, were the ones making him such a miserable bastard in the first place.
At least he can make it up to him now.
“I didn’t know you had such a hard-on for all this space shit, too.”
Well, try to. Jesse has never claimed to be a very good student.
Mr. White straightens up and gives him an exasperated look. “And you wonder why I think you’re an idiot.”
“And you’re an asshole.”
The exchange holds only something relative to fondness.
Jesse follows Mr. White close behind as he makes his way through the exhibit, commenting here and there on what they see. It seems like he’s already done some research before coming here, based on how much information he knows about everything. Jesse is much more captivated by the enthusiasm than any of the displays. He probably wouldn’t be able to pass any sort of quiz on the slough of information being relayed to him, but he thinks he could sketch out Mr. White’s smile from memory now.
“So they kinda did find aliens,” Jesse points out as they near the end of the exhibit, this time with a little bit more of an appreciation for the boring ass pictures and what they represent. Not that he’d ever say it.
“I suppose it would be alien life if they did find anything, but there’s no way of knowing yet. And it would only be-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, just bacteria. Not as cool as little green guys with ray guns, but still cool.” Jesse playfully nudges Mr. White’s shoulder with his own. He’s not sure why.
“It is, isn’t it?” Mr. White glances over with a smile Jesse has never seen directed at him before, one that could be called besotted if he was delusional enough to believe it.
It’s gone in a split second.
Mr. White looks away and gives one final nod at a panoramic of the Martian horizon before turning on his heel to head towards the exit. The suddenness of it leaves Jesse floored and he almost stumbles in his haste to catch up, barely managing to slip through the doorway to the Visitor Center as Mr. White lets it fall shut behind him.
“Yo, slow down! You already wanna leave?”
With his hand on the handle of the RV, Mr White looks towards the setting sun. “We saw everything and it’s getting late.”
“Well, yeah, but- we came all this way. Maybe we could… get a drink or something? Before I take you back?” The light-hearted mood they’ve managed to cultivate feels in very real danger of shattering, and Jesse doesn’t want to lose it. He knows that if they part ways now, they’re going to go right back to butting heads the second they come together again.
Mr. White sighs heavily and clenches his jaw, another uncomfortable throwback to junior year. “Jesse, I’m late enough as is. I know you know my wife is waiting for me.”
Jesse can’t forget. Guilt nips at his heels once again and he shuffles uncomfortably, the evening desert wind flapping his jacket up around him. He rubs the back of his head gingerly and looks away. “No, yeah, I just- it’s cool. We can head home.”
The energy is much more subdued as they quietly take their seats, but Jesse is startled by a hand locking firmly around his wrist as he reaches out to turn the key in the ignition. He looks over to see Mr. White staring at him so intensely that it’s honestly a little scary. The older man must see the apprehension in his eyes and lets go of him like his skin scorches, but doesn’t look away,
“Thank you for today. I mean it. I… I really needed this.”
Jesse lets out a breath of relief he didn’t realize he was holding. There's a phantom squeeze around his forearm he can't shake. “‘Course. You should have some leisure in your life, right? Especially after…” He swallows hard and vaguely shrugs a shoulder like speaking the words aloud will make Mr. White drop dead right then and there.
Jesse’s throat tightens thinking about that image. There’s been enough extinction in the RV already, and he’s not good with dead bodies.
“Skyler wasn’t exactly thrilled that this is how I wanted to spend my free time,” Mr. White explains, mercifully yanking Jesse out of his waking nightmare. “Not that I can blame her.”
They’re quiet for a moment. Jesse has no right to speak on a marriage that isn’t his own, but he wonders how things are between them. Who the hell gives their dying husband shit about wanting to go to some dumbass exhibit? Unless…
“She doesn’t know, does she?”
“No. She doesn’t.”
“That’s fucked, man.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
When Jesse realized that there was more to Mr. White’s sudden interest in cooking than a midlife crisis, he was hurt that the diagnosis was kept from him. He can’t imagine how Mrs. White will feel once she finds out. It feels wrong to have this piece of information that even the guy’s wife isn’t aware of, and probably won’t be for a while if Mr. White’s behavior is anything to go by. Jesse figures he sees a side of him nobody else gets to, the worst of him, but the weight of that hadn’t really hit him until now.
Jesse starts the RV and pulls out of the parking lot. It’s none of his business, anyway. They make idle conversation on the way back and ignore the sputtering coughs Mr. White can’t help but let out every once in a while, like it’s allergies or a cold instead of death incarnate. Halfway through the drive, Jesse puts his sunglasses on despite the gentle orange glow of the sky behind them.
He doesn’t know how things will end. Hell, he hardly even understands how his life has gone in this direction in the first place, but there’s no turning back now. Mr. White is his partner, imminent threat of death or not, and all Jesse can do is stay by his side for as long as he possibly can. He just hopes Mrs. White doesn’t have to find out about the cancer the hard way. Going to bed with somebody and then waking up alone isn’t something Jesse would wish on his worst enemy.
Jesse stops the RV next to Mr. White’s car right outside his house, smirking a little at the ugly green. He used to hate seeing it parked in the lot during school, a promise of narrowed eyes aimed his way for all of fourth period. It looks like it was practically made for a grouchy old guy like Mr. White to drive around.
Mr. White is just about to step outside when, from the corner of Jesse’s eye, he spots their half-empty case of water bottles on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Without really thinking, he gets up and grabs one, flipping it in a circle before grabbing Mr. White’s shoulder to catch his attention. It doesn’t escape his notice how small his hand looks when he does.
“Yo. Take this. You gotta stay hydrated.”
Mr. White takes the bottle gingerly and offers a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Thank you, Jesse. I’ll see you around.”
Jesse sure fucking hopes so.