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Walt can clearly discern the sharp, scrawny arc of Jesse’s knee through the excess draping denim of his blue jeans, leg parallel to Walt’s in the next chair, and it’s irksome why such a mundane detail is troubling him considering their current circumstances. The boy’s face is shadowed both from how his head is drooping and with the overhead lights still shut off in the lab.
Then it hits Walt why Jesse’s leg looks so peculiar. Understanding slams into him with an unsettling, disorienting jerk as if he suddenly stepped from an escalator to stable ground: Jesse is absolutely still.
He isn’t scratching or fidgeting or picking at his cuticles. He hasn’t looked or spoken to anyone nor made any indication he were alive aside from the rise and fall of his chest. The last time Walt heard his voice was on the other end of his burner phone. A man has died in the interim.
By god, Jesse is in shock.
The revelation fires off sentiments Walt doesn’t entirely understand, things like wanting to reach out for the boy. Jesse is Walt’s only lifeline here, his only ally, fifty-fifty partner. Mentally speaking, Jesse looks lost at sea, entirely unaware of how assuring his presence is for Walt. The boy is a buoy in an ocean teeming with sharks. He wants to grab on to Jesse with a yearning that is both irrationally persistent and heavy in Walt’s conscious, to tether their seats together because if they take Jesse they’re going to have to fucking drag Walt along with him.
This simply cannot be the end for either of them. They’ve survived too much already. Everything he and Jesse have done will not come down to being gutted with a box cutter in office chairs with goddamn wheels.
From his periphery, Walt can see Gus standing by the rack of hazmat suits, methodically removing his tie, the knife readily at hand.
And Walt seems to be the only one keeping tabs on this. Again, while physically Jesse is close enough to touch, clap his knee or shoulder with little to no exertion on Walt’s part, the boy is otherwise absent: nearly catatonic, unresponsive, and deflated; appearing even smaller than usual in his own clothing. Walt however feels as if he were drowning in their surroundings: the lab’s overhead lights have yet to be switched on despite them sitting here for close to six hours and there is an uncomfortably nightmarish blue glow cast on everyone and everything, Victor has been cooking their product for close to an hour, and Mike is helping himself to coffee brewed by a man who hasn’t been dead much longer than they’ve been fucking quarantined.
Gus is draping his coat on the table next to him, beginning to manipulate the buttons of his dress shirt open and Walt needs to buy them some time.
He targets Victor first. He’d made it clear that he believed he could follow a “simple” recipe, equating Jesse’s and his work to something found on the back of a Betty Crocker box of cake mix. So Walt counters that assumption with variables this person hasn’t taken into consideration. He spews enough scientific jargon to sound like a professor attempting to cut the fat from a bloated four hundred student roster during the first week of lecture; intimidate the weaker ones, thin the herd.
Victor is indifferent, Mike drinking coffee, Jesse still startlingly listless. It had almost been eerie how when Walt tried to engage him in conversation before, touching the boy had caused no response whatsoever. He didn’t jerk back or accuse Walt of licentious intentions, let alone flinch. Walt had even palmed the boy’s leg much too far up his thigh for decency’s sake. He wanted to provoke a reaction. Jesse didn’t move.
Walt changes tactics, dives right into reasoning away why he and Jesse did what needed to be done.
“When you make it Gale versus me or Gale versus Jesse, Gale loses. Simple as that,” Walt says. He pauses and tries to realign his thoughts. “This is on you, Gus. Not me, not Jesse. Gale’s death is on you. What did you expect me to do? To roll over and allow you to murder us? That I wouldn’t—”
“What’s all this us shit?” Victor says, sneering with his gasmask raised to his forehead. “You assholes some kind of faggoty package deal? He like your puppet or something? If you fist his ass hard enough does he actually fucking talk? Think if I shoot him, you’ll bleed too?”
Walt jolts: hot exhale on the side of his face and a searing pain in his inner ear convince him he’s been stabbed. He sees black spots and he reaches up fully expecting to feel the hard plastic handle of the box cutter no longer retracting with the blade severing his ear canal.
He touches nothing.
His wrist is wet from something on the front of his jacket. The substance is warm and slick and smears across the material like a mosquito.
Blood.
Walt has blood flecked on his clothing like the dark obstructions in his vision.
Nothing makes sense, everything chaotic and calm simultaneously, and then he’s bombarded with it all in a muddled rush.
Gus looks only mildly upset. His jaw is clenched and he’s once again fully dressed. Mike is emoting at the same faintly tense decibel, mounting the spiral staircase behind Victor. And Jesse is lying on his back, chair skidded out from under him, his mouth gaping unnaturally wide as if it were forcibly pried apart like the wooden jaws of a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Walt’s eyes drop to the stain on the boy’s shirt, fabric morphing into a deeper shade of red, dye dripping down the length of his arm to weep across his tattoo.
Jesse is weeping, screaming, bleeding.
His shoulder is bleeding.
He’s bleeding.
Walt belatedly registers the pain in his ear as his reaction to a gunshot, and he’s on his feet by the time the footsteps of the other men in the room have all stalled by the exit high above them, lurking like the emotionless, inhuman presence of a gargoyle. Jesse is clutching his shoulder, blood leaking through his shirt, between his fingers, puddling around him.
“I expect you to handle this yourself,” Gus says. “No hospitals, Walter.”
The door slams shut and Jesse lurches from the floor, chest heaving out from his thin frame, hands scrabbling for Walt.
“Mr. White.” His voice is raw and sharp. “Fuck, Mr. White.”
“Try to stay still.”
The advice feels acridly ironic now. Jesse’s shuddering and sparking like a livewire, clawing at Walt’s pants leg, but he has to run by Jesse. He hears a sob that sounds as if it’s been cracked straight from the boy’s breastbone and the sound reverberates painfully in Walt’s own chest like the echoing rattle of a bullet shell casing. Though he heads straight to their collection of cleaning supplies where they store the rags and cloths, thankfully recently washed, and rushes back to Jesse.
Snapping down on his knees so quickly it hurts, Walt’s hands search Jesse’s torso gingerly and desperately as if he were capable of feeling out internal injuries from the surface. It’s nonsensical, particularly with such an obviously critical wound staring at Walt with a runny, pulpy red eye. Jesse’s still holding his hand flat against it and Walt wants to clutch the back of the boy’s knuckles and say, “Yes, Jesse. Hold on.” But the urge quickly leaves as Walt cups the boy’s hips, fragile and trembling.
“Jesse, we need to remove your shirt. It’s soaked. I need to stop the bleeding if—”
The boy struggles to sit as if he could do this himself, and Walt runs his palms up and down his sides over the fabric as if nonverbally reassuring Jesse that he in no way needs to. Sliding his hands to Jesse’s bare lower back where the article has bunched up, Walt pats him there, the motion feeling lewdly intimate even in the thick of this crisis, before gripping the end of his t-shirt.
“I’m going to do this slowly.”
Jesse nods as Walt lifts it up, more than half of the article heavy and wet with blood, and the boy’s gritting his teeth by the time Walt gets the fabric clear off his head.
The boy’s skin is spattered in freckles and goosebumps and gore. The wound on his shoulder isn’t very deep but it’s certainly bleeding profusely. When Walt leans down farther, he sees there are actually two abrasions very close to each other.
He grabs a cloth and presses it firmly against the opened flesh. "It looks as if the bullet passed through your arm, skimmed it really. No bones or major arteries seem to have been hit. That’s good. I’m not sure about nerve damage. Can you wiggle your fingers?”
Jesse winces in concentration, breath hitching as his wrist twitches. Walt lets his hand hover over the joint as if he could help the boy along, but that isn’t necessary as those long, bony fingers extend to wedge between Walt’s. The boy is holding his hand. Walt’s nearly dwarfs his and the size difference is a little staggering.
“Yo,” Jesse says, face crumbling. His Adam’s apple is raised and wobbling with his chin tipped up. “His went out the other side too. Fuck, I’m gonna die…I’m gonna die too Mr. White.”
Walt shakes his head. His palm is wet and his fingers are wrapped around mush. Changing it out for a dry cloth, Walt recognizes his other hand stroking lightly over the boy’s chest. He’s trying to calm Jesse. The boy’s heartbeat needs to level out if he’s ever going to stop bleeding. Walt knows he should say something.
“That’s not how that works, son. I’m sure you didn’t shoot him in the arm.”
Jesse’s crying harder now.
“No…it was in the eye. I shot him in the eye. The…guy didn’t do anything to me, Mr. White. I fucking deserve this.”
Walt clamps his hand down tighter around the wound and squeezes Jesse’s quivering hand with the other. The boy’s words hit Walt with a force that make his lungs feel like they’re caving in. The lenses of his glasses blur.
“No, Jesse. You saved my life,” he says. His grip on Jesse’s hand pulls the skin on the top of his own hand taut. “Don’t…don’t think I won’t do the same.”
Jesse’s fingers flex within Walt’s grasp and Walt is moving his other hand up and down the boy’s chest, in a strictly platonic manner, attempting to smooth out the boy’s anxieties like wrinkles in a dress shirt. He isn’t as frantic and Walt uses this brief moment of composure to again switch his rags out.
In the split second it takes to cover the lacerations, Walt is alarmed by how the gashes are still flooding every material it touches, hardly ebbing in the slightest. It’s then, cursing under his breath almost inaudibly, that he remembers how vital it is for Jesse’s injury to be elevated above his heart. And while Walt is still worried about moving Jesse, it seems to be his only option. The boy looks like some sort of broken toy abandoned in an arcade with the way he’s prone on the floor underneath the blueish glow of the laboratory.
“Jesse, I’m going to sit you up, okay? It will help with the bleeding.”
His head lolls forward more so than Jesse actually nodding and Walt moves so he’s behind Jesse. Firmly sitting on the chilled granite floor, Walt releases his hand and hooks his arm around Jesse so the boy’s slouched back against him, the exposed skin of his back feeling warm even through the layer of Walt’s button-down.
Manipulating Jesse upright takes much less momentum and energy than Walt had anticipated. The boy is so soft and small against Walt, it’s like repositioning a stuffed animal on a child’s bed.
Walt’s additional height provides him with the leverage to get an even closer view of Jesse’s injury. The boy is grasping onto his leg with one hand while the other finds Walt’s with an easy grip that seems much less urgent, more comfortable. And once Walt isn’t shifting anymore, Jesse sags back into Walt’s chest with a sigh.
Walt subconsciously mimics the action, unintentionally inhaling a deep nostril-full of the boy. He smells the same: musky aerosol body spray and cigarettes. Taking in another breath, he notices Jesse’s breathing has slowed considerably almost as if he were drifting off.
He jostles the boy.
“Jesse,” he says, shaking him. “Jesse, you need to stay awake. You hit your head pretty hard when you fell. You could have a concussion. Jesse.”
“But if I go to sleep…the pain will go away.” His voice is distant and dull and watery. “It fucking hurts too much.”
Walt doesn’t want to read into the other implications of that sentiment, how this is all slicing into the boy emotionally just as severely as Jesse’s physical wound, but ignoring it is impossible. He desperately tries to think of anything that would help and almost feels nauseous once their current location seems to spawn an idea.
Swapping out another dry rag for the red, sodden one in his hand, Walt attempts to keep his voice as even as possible.
“Jesse, I’m not accusing you of anything. These past twenty-four hours have been…an ordeal. No one would blame you…for backsliding. Do you…have anything on you?”
Jesse is silent and Walt wants to believe the answer is no, but eventually the boy nods.
“In my pocket,” Jesse says.
Walt almost wishes he hadn’t asked. Jesse’s been so committed to his sobriety. But Walt needs Jesse awake. He needs Jesse alive. Walt needs Jesse.
He waits for Jesse to withdraw whatever it is but he hasn’t even moved his head from Walt’s chest. He’s still holding on to Walt’s leg and his hand.
“Can you…take it out? I…I don’t want to like let go or whatever. ‘Cause if I do”—he hiccups, exhaling sharply like he’s crying again—“I feel like I’m gonna go away.”
Walt rubs Jesse’s unscathed shoulder, shushing him, a little uncertain of the logistics of going about this. He’s never retrieved anything from another man’s pocket. Though with the way the boy is sitting almost in his lap he figures it shouldn’t be as cumbersome as it could.
Having to disentangle his fingers from the boy’s, Jesse’s drop to grip tight onto Walt’s other leg. Cautiously slipping his palm down the left side of Jesse’s thigh, Walt’s fingers wedge between denim and feel around to fish out a lighter, glass pipe, and a baggie of their product that’s completely full all the way up to the seal. He tells himself it’s from an old stash or bummed from one of Jesse’s friends.
Regardless, he now realizes he’s going to need full mobility to continue. He changes the dressing again, this time using an extra cloth to tie the first around Jesse’s small bicep. When it’s tight enough to stay secure but loose enough to slip a few fingertips inside, Walt pops the seal on the bag and pinches out enough of the blue crystalline pieces to almost fill the pipe.
He has to maneuver himself a little in order to fully see what he’s doing before he finally finds a position that allows him a clear view of Jesse’s face, though the angle in his neck is somewhat strained. It’s miniscule compared to what Jesse must be experiencing, and that’s what Walt attempts to focus on as he flicks the lighter alive and heats the base of the transparent, bulbous head of the pipe, blue flame flickering. He’s never actually witnessed anyone smoking methamphetamines but its paraphernalia is more than a little telling.
By the time he has the substance at a liquid state—and really thinking of this in terms of chemistry is truly helping—Walt gingerly brings the glass tip to Jesse’s mouth.
The boy opens up readily like a hungry child waiting to be spoon-fed. And Walt lets it slip between his lips before they suction around the base: pink and puckered. Jesse’s eyes shut as he takes a deep pull.
Walt has both arms extended and his elbows bent to allow proper mobility in assisting Jesse. But it also means when Jesse leans back to exhale, he’s essentially wedged between Walt’s arms. Though the boy doesn’t seem too concerned with practically trapping himself within such close confines. He actually looks rather docile as his lips part and steam slinks and curls out from him. And there’s a pregnant pause where Jesse does nothing but let his mouth hang open around the haze even once it’s cleared.
Grunting, Jesse shudders before he sucks back on the pipe again. This toke is languid and prolonged, Jesse drawing in with his lungs powerfully enough for the movement to subconsciously signal for Walt to breathe in as well. Jesse’s cheeks are pallid craters, hollowed almost, and the change in his countenance is instantaneous. Jesse’s muscles feel slacker and his expression is a little moony.
He releases another puff with a slick popping sound, shifting back in sharp spasms as if to grind the curvature of his spine against Walt’s chest. Walt understands people can develop involuntary ticks when under the influence, but Jesse’s movements feel eerily similar to the beginnings of someone thrashing and struggling from being asphyxiated. It’s as if Walt’s helping the boy self-inflict himself with internal scars, damage major organs, and it unsettles Walt enough for his thumb to slip.
Though it’s easy to regain his grip, much more so than helping Jesse poison himself. While Walt has been selling narcotics for close to a year, observing something like this take place in front of him by someone he cares for is disturbing. For whatever inexplicable reason, it brings to mind a scenario of a one of the CEOs of McDonald’s having to watch his own child inject himself with insulin. Walt’s responsible for this venom. It’s his own goddamn recipe.
And Jesse’s eagerly drinking it in, taking another drag the second Walt refills the pipe and strikes the flame beneath the bowl.
The boy’s face looks especially delicate from this downward perspective, particularly with his eyes closed, blue lights saturating his pale complexion. The lean muscles of Jesse’s back couldn’t possibly be any flusher or warmer against him. Walt isn’t sure what he’s feeling now, something perhaps innately paternal stirring up. All he knows is there are too many emotions stacked on top of one another that if he tried to examine one he might completely collapse. That isn’t an option right now. So he just mentally shoves it among the pile as Jesse only momentarily disengages before opening back up for more.
His eyelids flutter and he inhales through his nose—a high-pitched, whining hitch to his breath like a child in distress, like Walt is hurting the boy—and Walt’s fine motor skills give out on him. He fumbles for the lighter just as he feels it slipping. But that only gives the thing more momentum to launch from his grasp, skating across the red granite to a clattering stop a good three feet away.
“Shit,” Walt says.
Jesse gently thumbs Walt above the knee.
“’S okay. It’s okay, man. We don’t need it.” While his voice has loosened and thickened, the rate at which he’s talking is somewhat manic. “Just—just like crush it up some more.”
Jesse’s left thigh is jerking up and down against his and Walt can feel the boy’s heartbeat thudding flush against his chest, reverberating out from his back, as if Walt’s clothing and Jesse’s ribcage weren’t even part of the equation.
Jesse tilts his head back and it stirs Walt into action.
He presses the heel of his hand into the shards through its plastic casing and pulverizes the stuff down into a fine powder. Not having anything truly suitable at his disposal, he supposes the inside of his wrist is as good a place as any as he tips out an irregular sort of line. And he’s hardly raised his arm before Jesse’s leaning the rest of the way down and inhaling it all in one go.
Exhaling rapidly and hotly against Walt’s pulse in a series of inhuman sounds, Jesse groans out, “Yo, one more. Just one more, Mr. White.”
Walt empties the baggie along the same place on his wrist and the line disappears so rapidly it’s as if Jesse absorbs it. And with no more remaining in the bag, Jesse seems to hover a little longer, nuzzling into the last traces along the raised lines of Walt’s veins. Walt can even feel a wet dab of tongue searching for any remaining crumb. Walt’s pulse pounds faster at the contact, and it’s staggering how exposed Jesse is right now: bare from the waist up, flesh literally ripped open, voluntarily losing his inhibitions. He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Jesse’s head is propped back against Walt’s shoulder.
Walt momentarily stares at the residual particles still coating the tip of his index finger like blue sugar. Then he brings it in the line of Jesse’s vision, pauses, and cautiously slips it between the boy’s parted lips to smudge across his gums below his bottom row of teeth. It’s nearly a direct shot to his blood stream and Jesse seems to appreciate it, even licking at Walt’s retreating fingertip.
“Fuck,” Jesse says, gritty voice laced with appreciation. “I’m not gonna like fall asleep for like a fucking week.”
Walt isn’t sure how to respond.
“Yo.” Jesse snorts, head down. “I fucking bled all over your clothes.”
“Thank god we work under a laundromat. Otherwise they’d be ruined.”
Jesse becomes rigid, and Walt thinks he’s crossed a line with a joke like that until the bounce in the boy’s leg returns, even more spasmodic perhaps, and Jesse snickers.
“Fucking asshole.” It’s spoken lightly and then he’s twisting his neck back. “It stopped, yo!”
He says this as if he were excitedly declaring he could go out on his bicycle now that the rain had let up, as if Gus where no longer a threat, as if everything were suddenly fixed. And while Walt knows fully well that isn’t the case, he can’t help but feel just as exceedingly relieved. Jesse’s makeshift bandage is still dry to the touch and unblemished for the most part.
It seems as if every part of the boy is vibrating with energy now and Walt doesn’t know if that’s necessarily a good sign or not. Though he’s making no indication of wanting to stand or move away from Walt, and he still hasn’t let go of Walt’s legs despite his fingers erratically tapping and stretching out. Walt would think he would feel more uncomfortable, but he doesn’t.
“Pain wise, how are holding up?
“Like, scale of one to ten?” Jesse moves his arm a little too quickly, and he cries out a noise that transitions into a low sort of chuckle. “Gonna go with like a fucking hurts-like-a-bitch ten.”
“We might have some ibuprofen in the break room,” he says. Walt knows that’s like offering a beer to someone asking for morphine, but his resources are low. “Unless you…have anything else? Anything else that might help with the pain that is?”
He doesn’t respond and the jitters in his muscles seem even more violent when the boy’s silent. Jesse’s hands tense around Walt’s thighs.
“Yo, fuck Tylenol and shit. I’m just…cold now.” Jesse sniffs and shudders. “Like real fucking cold.”
“We need to raise your body temperature. That means we’ll need to get up,” he says. “I’ll help you.”
Walt scoots back and puts some weight on his palms to assist himself in standing before he leans down, tucks his hands under Jesse’s arms—mindful of his injury—and gently plucks the boy up in almost the exact same way he used to take Walt Jr. out of the bathtub. Once Jesse’s upright, he leans heavily against Walt’s side as Walt steadies him with a hand between his shoulder blades and guides him back into the break room.
Aside from a hiss or two between clenched teeth, Jesse seems to be holding up alright, though he swears under his breath when Walt deposits him on the sofa.
With Jesse stable and off his feet, Walt makes quick time out of popping open the lid of the first aid kit and removing the space blanket inside. While eyeing Walt very skeptical, Jesse still leans forward from the back of the couch so Walt can drape the blanket over his shoulders. And Jesse pulls both ends together at his chest, sealing himself inside, body still twitching in jerks that Walt can feel vibrating along his lumbar from where he drops down next to the boy.
“Yo,” Jesse says, shivering. “Is it just me or do I look like I’m a fucking baked potato you’re about to like shove into the oven?”
Walt casts Jesse a wary glance. “Is that your way of telling me you’re still cold?”
“Fuck if I know,” he says with a snort. “I usually…usually don’t do so much at like one time or whatever.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Walt can hear how idiotic that question must sound to a drug addict, but Walt can’t help feeling personally responsible. He has no intention or desire to witness another overdose.
Jesse shrugs with his head low. “I uh…didn’t want you to like…stop. You were warm and shit. And like…like I didn’t want to”—he rubs his eye with the heel of his hand—“float away…not by myself. Shit.”
He presses his palm against his other eye though it doesn’t do much in terms of covering up how hard he’s started to cry.
Walt tries to come up with something to say. But, Jesse lurches forward, hands finding the front of Walt’s shirt with his cheek against Walt’s shoulder. The blanket begins to slip and Walt needs to fling his arms out around Jesse to catch it before it drifts to the floor. Its metalized polyethylene terephthalate material crunches and wrinkles as Walt cautiously brings Jesse closer to his chest
He can feel Jesse’s pulse, each sob, the rise and fall of his breathing.
Jesse hiccups, trembles, and then he’s gone quiet.
Walt cups the back of Jesse’s neck. “You still with me?”
“Yeah,” Jesse says, voice water-logged, adjusting himself so he’s not looking at Walt despite resting the side of his face nearly in the crook of Walt’s neck. “Yeah, man. I’m with you. Don’t let go.”
Walt makes a hum of acknowledgement, not wishing to embarrass Jesse by coming across as overly sentimental while simuleteonusly feeling a little strange himself holding Jesse like this. He seems to be still weeping but not nearly as fitfully.
Walt’s left hand lifts from Jesse’s shoulder and before Walt can fully understands what he intends to do, he brings it down to rub the back of the boy’s head. His hair is damp with sweat but still soft and Walt can’t believe it, but there’s something about the small, repetitive motion that’s comforting.
His arms feel even fuller of Jesse than they had before.
Even in the basement of a goddamn laundromat, Walt feels this bizarre involuntary sensation of stepping barefoot along warm sand, sunlight above him on the beach. The impression is soothing, a welcome grounding, stability among the waves of anxiety. Walt has no plans of letting Jesse go. And maybe in the roaring and spiraling of this shit storm that’s been pummeling him for so long, beating down on the both of them, however unhealthy or transitory this feeling of peace may be, Walt finally feels like he’s no longer lost in the depth of it all.
Or maybe he is, still marooned, stuck. Maybe everything’s worse.
But Jesse is still here. He’s still with Walt.
And maybe that’s enough.