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There are already flurries when Gene rushes between the back door at work and his car. He has a light jacket but hadn't bothered shouldering on the big puffy thing he'd brought in with him in case it really started coming down by the time he was on his way home. It's Friday and he's thinking about whether or not he needs to swing through a liquor store in case he doesn't feel like leaving the house in the storm on his day off.
There's some booze in the kitchen, but he hasn't settled on the level of self-loathing he's going to indulge in for the next 24 hours. A trip for scotch might be in the cards.
It happens fast and exactly the way Gene had always imagined: an unguarded moment where he's slipped so far away from the man he used to be that he forgot to be paranoid.
There are quick footsteps behind him as someone whips out from a dark doorway, and then there's the feeling of something hard pressed into his lower back. If he weren't wearing the jacket, he knows he'd feel the cold muzzle of a gun. Gene goes still and holds his hands up, not bothering to try and look behind himself.
"Soon as I put this down, you're gonna turn to me and greet me like we're friends," the man with the gun says, low and so quick that it takes Gene a minute to catch what he's saying, words threatening to be carried off in the wind. His voice is like gravel, with an accent that says he's not a local. "Big performance for anybody who might be watching. Then we're gonna walk to your car – fast -- we're gonna get inside, and you're gonna drive us away."
"You're the boss," Gene says – and he's already fighting a sob. He'd expected to be scared when the moment finally came – expected to be relieved, too – but instead he is empty and enormously sad.
The sharp pressure at his back disappears and the man steps forward as Gene is turning to him.
"Showtime, Gene," the man says.
Gene's mind is already working fast – not for a way to escape, but for the best way to accommodate the demand. Dredging up the best version of himself to handle the assignment only takes a split second. It'll be Jimmy – likeable but not loud, vulnerable and negotiable.
"Hey there, you! What the hell are you doing back here?" he says, following the order, jovial and holding his hands out and forcing a big smile across his face.
The man is shorter than he is, when he turns – and at first Jimmy is struck by the thought that it's a homeless guy. He's wearing thick, mismatched layers of clothes without a proper jacket, no hat, hair shaggy and unkempt and almost clumped into dreadlocks in some places.
"Gosh, this weather rolling in, huh?" he continues. "Let me give you a ride!"
Jimmy is putting together pieces about his assailant in between his fake small talk. He's gained that serenity that kicks in when you know your life is about to end, where time stretches out in front of you and every sight springs forward in sharp relief. The stranger isn't smiling back at him and that almost makes Jimmy himself smile in how perversely familiar it is: the big, friendly act that society demands but rarely reciprocates. The man's beard isn't as wild as his hair and almost covers all of the scars on his face, and as Jimmy chatters on easily, the man doesn't look up.
And then he does.
Jesse Pinkman is alive.
And then the Jimmy act is up. Gene's gone, too. He doesn't know who he is, or which one of himself he is or which person he's expected to be.
Jesse Pinkman is alive.
"Don’t say it," Jesse warns – and his voice doesn't even sound like him but it is him. Blue eyes cut past Gene – Jimmy – whoever the ghost is that stands now before Jesse – paranoid and searching the empty parking lot.
"The car," Gene says, quietly. He's firmly back to Gene. He can do this.
There's no affection – barely even recognition – in Jesse's face, even as Gene softens. Maybe the kid's still planning on shooting him, mugging him, whatever this is. They're striding forward and Gene has forgotten that he's supposed to be keeping this casual because the chilled air is catching in his throat, sharp and hard like it's freezing there somewhere between mouth and lungs.
They could've sent Jesse to do this, to end this – and wouldn't that be a sick sort of poetic justice, after he'd told Walt that day that they should put the kid down like a sick dog. To do them all a favor.
---
Saul leads them towards a car that Jesse recognizes. He's been watching Saul for a week – trying to decide what to do.
He's known.
About Omaha and Gene and the anonymous house, the life made suddenly so small and then drained of its color and meaning.
Before tonight, Jesse has drifted and he hasn't allowed himself to feel confident enough to make a decision, but he's known where to find Saul and in the past week he's learned enough to understand that Jesse cannot leave Omaha without taking this chance.
They walk past a trashcan and Jesse dips to retrieve the backpack he stashed there before falling back into step behind Saul. The man isn't talking anymore and Jesse prays to anyone who might be listening that if there are eyes on them, they've already bought the old friends act.
He fumbles to unlock the car and Jesse can't help but think about the familiar interior of that long gone cocaine-white Caddy as he leans down into the fabric passenger seat of this cheap import. Saul acts like a hostage, even in the privacy of his own car – no sudden movements, hands on the wheel, looking at Jesse out of the side of his eyes.
Fine. Good.
"Drive," Jesse orders. The cold has his sinuses swollen and his voice sounds strange.
Saul had gotten himself disappeared; Jesse had not.
He can't decide, yet, if this was a mistake or not.
---
They drive for a while in silence, the empty streets a bleak landscape of lights washing orange in even intervals. His glasses are smudged and streaked and the light plays through them strangely. He’s struck for no reason at all with the absurd memory of playing laser tag with the man who’d just pressed a gun against his kidneys, on one of those rare days when they’d both managed to forget that when you stand in the eye of a hurricane, the hurricane around you does not disappear.
It had been innocence and something like a doomed courtship as chaos swirled around them. That day and the night that followed is a memory he’s locked tight because it’s too hard to revisit a time when he thought he -- they -- had a future.
The tires go funny on the icy road and he remembers how far they are from the desert now.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Jesse’s voice sounds timid and at once more familiar. “Seriously, Saul.”
He hasn’t heard the name in so long. He believes Jesse.
Behind the steering wheel, he breaks -- snaps, and he lets his hands slide down the plastic wheel from where he’d had a death grip on ten and two o’clock. He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding and it sounds strangled, making a noise that’s halfway towards crying. He hates himself for what a coward he is, for the relief that he feels, for the idea that even when his existence is miserable, he cannot fight that horrible instinct to survive at all costs.
He drops his right hand down to rub the top of his leg, just needing to do something. His life is going to continue, whoever the hell he’s supposed to be now, and thirty seconds ago that seemed impossible and --
There is a cold hand on the top of his, frigid as a cadaver but moving nonetheless, squeezing and working its fingers down to lace with his. He’s Saul Goodman -- and this is Jesse Pinkman.
Jesse Pinkman is alive.
“I looked for you,” Saul says, and it sounds weak to his own ears, like an excuse.
“I know.”
“I couldn’t -- Jesse. I thought, I figured -- “
“I knew you were here.”
“I thought you were dead," Saul says. "Why the gun, Jesse?”
There’s a snort from the darkness of the passenger seat. Snow is coming down in lazy patterns. Jesse starts to pull his hand away and Saul just follows it until both hands are resting on the plastic console between them. Jesse gives in again and curls his fingers in through Saul's. His hand doesn't feel like it should belong to a corpse anymore.
“I didn’t know if you’d talk to me if I didn’t force you to.”
“Why on earth wouldn’t -- I’ve been trying to find you for --”
“Me being here is a liability. I don’t have any fake IDs that explain away why I’m here. But I couldn’t just… Leave.”
---
His palm against the back of Saul's hand might as well be the expanse of their entire bodies lined up in warm contact. It has been a long time since Jesse touched anyone – even like this – and somehow the few square inches of skin on skin feels like the comfort of a bare chest against his back. It feels like a tether to something other than the life that he's lost.
"How long has it been?" Saul asks after a long pause.
"I found you – I don't know, maybe three months ago?" He feels ashamed to admit it. If Saul had really thought he was dead and was trying to track Jesse down, viewing him in any capacity other than a human loose end, then three months is a torturous amount of time for Jesse to waffle and change his mind in the shadows.
"That's not what I mean," Saul says.
Oh. He thinks.
"Over a year, I guess," Jesse says. "I try not to… y'know. Dwell."
He watches the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers as they fight the little banks of snow that threaten to pile in the corners of their view. He recognizes the turns that Saul is taking, now, because he'd followed behind in his own beat up car for a week.
Saul is taking them home.
"I can call Zach in the morning – no need to get him worked up tonight," Saul says. "He's got a man in Sioux City who can have something for you, probably by tomorrow night if we put a rush on it – assuming this weather clears a little."
Jesse stares at Saul now, finally getting a look at him up close. His hair has thinned and the lines on his face are deeper and the mustache looks vaguely like something from a dollar store – but there's no disguising the way his eyebrows hitch, the slight downturn in the corners of his mouth when he's thinking out loud. But he's not making any goddamned sense.
"We'll get it sorted, either way – and fast, don't worry about that," Saul continues, eyes on the road. "You're gonna need a real jacket though. Hoodies aren't about to cut it here in Nebraska, kid."
"Saul –"
"You're gonna have to get used to Gene," he says, puffing half a laugh out of his nose. "Listen – I didn't choose it, ok? Maybe start thinking of something halfway decent now so I don't end up having to keep a straight face calling you Fernando or something."
"You want me to stay? Here?"
---
Saul can feel his expression falter. He withdraws his hand and Jesse lets him. He'd jumped ten steps ahead and assumed wrong. Jesse is alive but he isn't here to stay – and who the hell would want to stay here. He's embarrassed by how fast he was hitching his wagon to some improbable pipe dream where Jesse Pinkman wants to stay with him indefinitely in Omaha. Saul almost wants to play it off as a joke but the assumption just hangs there, suddenly louder than the noise of the tires on the road.
What a heel he is. To think the kid would want to pick up right where they left off in some dumb fantasy. There's nothing forcing them together anymore.
"I mean, you can crash here as long as you want," Saul says, trying to pick up the jagged pieces. God alive, he's so scattered. "It might be a good idea to get the ball rolling with… you know, being somebody new. It couldn't hurt. And then you can go someplace for you. Get set up -- "
"There's no place," Jesse says. "You know that – like, Christ, you're the only person I know who knows that. There's no place for me."
The memory of that day from before is still at the edges of Saul's consciousness. They'd both been anonymous in the dark -- and when they were illuminated, they were distorted, washed in garish neon and lost in arcade noises. That day, they were themselves to each other and strangers to the rest of the world, cloaked in a moment of security.
They'd laughed and looked at each other's lips and it had felt like a promise they made to each other, even though they lived in a world that wouldn't let them keep it.
Maybe this is the place that will let them. He has to at least try.
"Then there's room for you in my place," Saul says, slowly. "Omaha."
Jesse is looking at him in the dim light, and Saul realizes that he hadn't turned on the heat. He can see the puffs of Jesse's breath going white in the air.
Saul reaches out to the dashboard, turning a knob to start up some warmth – and suddenly Jesse is taking deep and measured breaths, looking around the interior of the car, and scratching his head.
It's a familiar sequence. Saul had seen him go through it so many times before, back in New Mexico: in Saul's office when Jesse had felt trapped, in Saul's bed when Jesse thought he was drifting in a deep sleep, across the lunch table when the conversation had faltered and reality had closed in, hot and oppressive.
He's trying not to cry.
"You should stay here with me," Saul says, wanting to make it perfectly clear what he's asking, now.
Without looking at Jesse, he sets his hand palm-up on the console. There is a long beat, and Saul holds his breath for three blocks.
Without a word, Jesse places his own hand palm down over Saul's.
"But you'll need a jacket."
Jesse lets out a wry sound that could be a laugh as they slow to a stoplight. Saul takes his eyes off the road – and finally they are looking each other in the face, for the first time in over a year. Behind the beard and the ragged hair and the scars, Jesse is biting down a smile and shaking his head in that way that had once been so familiar – the way that communicates you're a moron and I don't know what I'm doing here with you.
God, Saul has missed that. Someone who knows him. Jesse. All of it.
There's nothing they can say. The wreckage of their past lives doesn't deserve a eulogy. This is what they have.
They are all they have.