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Gus was still inside the vestibule of the nursing home, had gently insisted on making a phone call, so Jesse stood outside and kicked at gravel in the driveway.
The past forty-eight hours felt unreal, god, and not like the entire past year of his left felt any more real, but the whole Mexico thing specifically, he had no idea how to process. It was like a dream. It must have been some crazy, fucked-up kind of dream. He used his foot to shove the beige rocks to one side and the grey rocks to the other. There was a woman in a wheelchair, flanked by an attendant, thirty feet away from him, staring. Jesse ignored them both. He stopped taking in his settings completely when it dawned on him that this—this and Mexico, he meant—wouldn’t necessarily have been the kind of dream you forced yourself to wake up from.
In his defense, it had objectively worked out pretty okay. His priority down there had been getting Mike and Gus to safety. He’d done a good job of it, and if that meant offing the last Salamanca in the process, then that was okay. Except it was weird. It shouldn’t have been okay. Every time someone died it was a million years from okay, let alone if Jesse was the one who pulled the trigger on them. Every death he’d witnessed, every death he’d somehow caused in the last eight months, had wrenched at his stomach in a charring, sickening way. Jesus, even Krazy-8, and Jesse had known how much of a dick Krazy-8 was.
Then there were these cartel guys, and the revenge Gus had wrought in that brilliant, terrifying way of his, and the fact that Jesse didn’t feel even a little bit bad about any of it. Worse, he had felt, he still felt, a strange kind of breathless exhilaration.
It hadn’t started right away, how could it have, when men were dropping like flies around him and he was still trying to piece together what the fuck was going on; he remembered the exact moment the feeling kicked in, when he’d slung an arm around Gus to keep him upright, when he’d slung an arm around Gus to keep him upright and felt Mike there on the other side. Something like importance. Or usefulness, or acceptance, or an unspoken agreement between the three of them that Jesse was the right person in the right place at the right time.
And yeah, he was still terrified of Gus, but there had been something in that moment that had stayed with Jesse, even now, as he tried to keep his balance walking on the edge of the cement. Gus trusted him enough to lean on him. Mike trusted him enough to let him help. He wasn’t where he had been, on the receiving end of that scathing Fring glare; Gus looking at him like he looked at the cartel members felt worlds away, and Jesse felt the change deep down, somewhere he couldn’t reach or touch or understand. He couldn’t explain it any more than he could explain how lightheaded he’d felt when Gus had briefly put an arm around him to guide him out of the medical tent in Mexico.
Jesse jumped when his phone vibrated in his pocket, lost his balance and stumbled onto the asphalt. Somehow the adrenaline was still pumping through him, even after six miles of walking it out and two days of waiting for it to fade. After taking a second to breathe but not taking another one to look at the ID, he answered.
“Yo.”
“Hey, kid,” a gruff voice replied from the other end. “How’s Albuquerque?”
Relief flooded through Jesse from ears to fingers to toes. It was like letting out a breath he’d been holding since as long ago as he’d first met Mike. He hadn’t realized, really realized, until now how worried he had been, how fucking devastating it would be to lose him. “H… Hey,” he said, forgetting to answer the question, because wow, Mike was gonna be okay.
After a moment’s silence which Jesse was pretty sure meant Mike was rolling his eyes, he added tentatively, “You, uh… you sound like you’re doin’ better?”
“I’ve been shot at plenty. You shouldn’t’ve wasted your time worrying.”
Jesse realized he was smiling—jesus, he couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled—but didn’t dwell on it. “Yeh… I wasn’t worried, per se, it just… it coulda been bad, y’know?”
“It certainly coulda been worse.” Mike paused. “He talk to you at all about what happens next?”
Jesse shifted his weight from one foot to the other. There was no need to clarify who ‘he’ was. “A little.”
“Care to fill me in?” Mike prompted slowly.
“What, he didn’t…” Jesse turned around to look back at the nursing home. Gus was still standing behind the glass door, on the phone, seeming smaller than he had in Mexico, like he could have been Jesse’s height, even. When he saw Jesse looking his way, he very slightly raised his free hand, as if to say ‘one minute.’ Jesse nodded quickly. “He didn’t tell you himself?”
“Yeah, but I’d like to hear it from you.” Another pause. “Listen, kid, I have to make sure we’re all on the same page. With what you want versus what he wants from you.”
Three, even two weeks ago that would’ve had Jesse on his guard. Not to say it didn’t, now, but the feeling was different. He could hear the concern in Mike’s voice. That thread of protective instinct Jesse knew he was trying to conceal, it seeped through the receiver in a way that swallowed Jesse whole. Mike was looking out for him. Mike was looking out for them both, and something about knowing that almost made Jesse stop worrying about what Mr. White would think if he knew where Jesse was and what he was doing right now.
He ran a hand over his short crop of hair. “I mean, like, I got some conditions we still need to go over.” And he did, but they were the furthest thing from his mind right now. “You know, other than that, though…”
He trailed off. Mike was silent for a minute, a long minute during which Gus broke into that restaurant-manager-smile, said something undoubtedly polite and hung up the phone. Jesse couldn’t even think to look anywhere else. Gus buttoning his jacket. Gus opening the door to the parking lot. Gus stepping outside and taking a moment to adjust to the cold air.
“I’m glad to hear it, kid,” Mike said finally, truthfully, fondly.
And there it was, with his eyes on Gus and his ears ringing with Mike. That warm lightheadedness. That almost giddy feeling that Jesse didn’t really have a way to justify, wouldn’t have been able to justify if Mr. White had somehow, for some reason, demanded an explanation for it. Usefulness, or acceptance, he might have said, or belonging, or nothing you ever thought to try and make me feel.
Before he had a chance to reply, the call disconnected. Mike wasn’t one to linger for no reason. Jesse knew that because he knew Mike, he realized. It didn’t put any kind of damper on the moment.
Gus was there just as Jesse put the phone back in his pocket. Jesse looked up more eagerly than he had necessarily intended. “What’s up?”
“Go home. Get some rest.”
Jesse blinked. “That’s it?”
As usual, Gus was so still he could have been carved out of granite. There was something different about his eyes now, though, a kind of softness that Jesse was unfamiliar with. Not just from him, but from anyone. He couldn’t remember anybody looking at him so softly since the last time he’d seen Jane alive. Mike, maybe.
And then in one wholly unexpected gesture, Gus reached out and placed a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. The motion was so sudden, his touch so light, that Jesse almost fell backwards. “Jesse,” Gus said. “You have not slept for quite some time.” His voice was as soft as his eyes, which never left Jesse’s. “Please.”
Mr. White must have put his hand in that same place a thousand times, but this was the first time in Jesse’s life it had ever felt anything like it did now, like welcoming.
Jesse finally nodded, warmth pooling in his chest and spreading through his veins. He couldn’t figure out a way to ask Gus to leave his hand there forever, to never pull his gaze away. Instead, he said, “I’ll hear from you?”
“You will.”
As if on cue, Tyrus’s car pulled up at the other end of the driveway. Jesse let himself blink for a moment and Gus was gone.
They could negotiate the whole Mr. White thing tomorrow, Jesse thought, sliding his hands into his pockets as he walked away in the other direction.
He used money that Gus had given him to hail a cab home, rolled down the windows in the backseat like he always wanted to but never got to as a kid. Then he rolled them up, then down again, surprised at how much the experience lived up to his childhood expectations. It wasn’t until he was already halfway there that he realized the idea of going home no longer frightened him.