"Separate Rooms"
Wow, it's been awhile. What the hell have I been doing this whole time?!?!?! Tch, what do you think? :D
Dated: Begat in September. Concluded in September. Concluded for real tonight.
Title: Separate Rooms
Rating: M for language and situations
Summary: "We have to cook clear to next Tuesday."/"Tuesday. Four days straight."/"Like it or not, we have no choice."/"Yeah? And why exactly is that?"/
Acknowledgment: First beta'd fic ever, done courtesy of the wise and mighty readishmael . The proof is in the writing, people.
** Slash **
The RV has become something of an oven as Jesse throws another two pounds of product into the bin and Walt reels off the total. It sounds good to his ears - good, but not enough. Although watching Jesse celebrate a victory that isn't quite theirs yet does make Walt more aware of his own exhaustion, and he briefly joins this moment of non-triumph.
"We're done cooking!"
Ah, that was a mistake. Walt tries to get them back on track, but Jesse's head is already elsewhere, and he starts ticking off reasons to get out of the desert for the night. Jesse can clearly tell when he's beginning to win; a smile is spreading across his face.
"Grand Slam? Hot shower? A bed?"
The thought of a mattress is the coup de grâce for Walt's determination...because they've already been out here too long. Far, far too long. The sweat collecting behind Walt's ear starts to run down his neck as if on cue, and he gives in.
And, just in case: "Separate rooms."
Jesse's much too elated by the prospect of motels and fast-food on his horizon to indulge in calling Walt gay this time. Instead he laughs a little, in better spirits than is normal for him to be in Walt's company. "Uh, yeah, that's a given."
Was it, though?
These thoughts, the good spirits, and even the high-five (maybe especially the high-five) are all jinxes. The key turning in the ignition does nothing and Walt is reminded immediately of his failing body. And now this. A Denny's breakfast might as well be a million miles away.
*
The taste of gasoline lines his throat and nothing works. The relief from the heat is short-lived as the temperature drops below man's ability to tolerate. Walt tucks himself away in some of Jesse's giant clothes. The fabric stinks like weed and cigarettes that smell almost like cheap perfume.
She's not a stripper.
Perhaps it is perfume.
All of their possible escapes are systematically taken away. The phone dies just as one of Jesse's boneheaded friends reveals the vast depths of his imbecility, and the light from their last working lantern begins to sputter until it, too, dies.
Dying and dying.
In the dark, he can still hear Jesse asking him what to do next.
*
"Apply a little elbow grease...it'll take longer, a lot longer, but theoretically it should work."
"Oh. Theoretically."
Jesse is easiest to fool when he wants to be fooled. Walt knows the odds of this last plan of his succeeding are small, maybe even nonexistent, but Jesse is supposed to believe in the ridiculous and the improbable.
He'll stay onboard a little longer at least, until the inevitable failure, when he'll probably freak out and go running off into the desert, never to be heard from again. A disappointing outcome, but a likely one.
*
Impossibly, the day keeps getting hotter. Walt runs his fingers over the sweat on his scalp and wishes that he were alone so that he might strip the rest of his clothes away, because right now all they're doing is making a bad situation worse. But if he did that, Jesse would probably have his freak-out a lot faster than expected.
He looks over at Jesse just as he peels off the second-to-last of his dozen or so over-sized shirts. He takes a particularly invasive look at the skin that is briefly exposed when the remaining shirt is hiked up to the breastbone. He feels like Jesse notices him doing it.
It's pointless.
He and Jesse are one more collapsed scheme away from a horrible death, the shirt rolls back down over Jesse's spine, he keeps turning the piston engine and... It's pointless.
*
He doesn't stay to watch it die. He thinks Jesse's face would be too much.
He can't feel mad, annoyed, depressed, anything when Jesse follows him again. Part of him still wants to yell at Jesse. He wants to blame him until there's no blame left in him. But that would be pointless too.
Besides.
Jesse extends a hand to him. "Come lay down, Mr. White. You're making it worse sitting out here."
He seriously considers rejecting the hand, and telling Jesse to go away, go die somewhere else, somewhere Walt can't see him. Finally he takes the kid's hand without wiping his own, smearing the blood between their palms.
*
Inside the RV, Jesse pushes the cots together.
Pointless, Walt reminds himself.
He fills the air with pity for himself until Jesse can't listen to him anymore. And then, out of the blue, there is a shard of genuine hope let into Walt's shattered outline of how all of this was supposed to work. Mixed in with that is a much larger barb of self-reproach for not having come up with the idea himself. So while they work, build, he is simultaneously disappointed by Jesse's shortcomings (Oh, wire) and viciously pleased with them. Walt will always be the brains of the operation, even if Jesse has a fluke stroke of idiot-brilliance now and again.
Still, Walt's doubt is surprisingly small as he socks the key into the ignition, pretending not to notice how Jesse progressively withers as each turn does nothing. Twice, three times, then again. It has to work. It's their last chance and it has to work, Jesse would not have gotten the idea to build a new battery if it wasn't going to work.
It doesn't.
Walt keeps turning, over and over, now knowing nothing will happen, quietly begging the RV to start, please, please, be good to him and start.
"Well, better get comfortable," Jesse says in a high, funny voice. Walt looks at him; his eyes are bright and moist. He's edging dangerously close to hysterics. "Got any cards, Mr. White? Maybe we can play rummy for a few dozen hours."
"I don't have any cards," Walt says dimly, vaguely alarmed in the face of Jesse's sharpened and unstable emotion, not wanting to set him off, not sure how to avoid it.
Jesse cackles at this for some reason. When he gets up Walt thinks he'll go for the door, throw it open, and then charge out into the desert, let nature do what it will to him. Instead he lays down on his cot and shuts his eyes. After a minute Walt lays next to him. They don't say anything to each other for the rest of the day.
*
Walt wakes in the night to find the cot next to him is empty. Again his mind immediately supplies him with the idea that Jesse has decided to take his chances walking after all. Walt raises his head slightly, thinks that he can see the RV better than he should be able to, considering the hour, and he can't figure out what the source of light is.
When his eyes reach the front of the vehicle he drops his head and pretends to be sleeping. Jesse had not gone barreling insanely out into the wild; he had moved to the front of the RV and opened the curtains, letting desert moonlight in. Then he sat down between the pilot and passenger seats and-
Walt cracks an eye again. He tells himself that it's because he isn't completely sure that he was seeing it correctly, not because he's leering or anything else unseemly. It's a double-check, that's all. He slowly turns his gaze that way, and confirms that he was not mistaken: Jesse is masturbating.
Instead of resuming his fake sleep, though, he keeps watching. He's never thought himself a voyeur in the past and once or twice he shuts his eyes long enough to convince himself that he's stopped looking...but he never completely does.
Not voyeurism, he thinks again. No, of course not. He's acting as little more than an observer; a judge, actually, would be the best descriptor. Jesse is quiet and hasn't seen Walt, leaving him open room to measure Jesse's performance. His strokes are quick and short and don't look quite right, but Walt keeps his peace until he realizes he could probably watch right up until Jesse finishes.
With that thought he becomes so flustered that he has to do something to interrupt it.
"You're doing it wrong," he says suddenly. Very smooth. He should have just tried to go back to sleep. That would have made more sense.
Jesse jumps and hastily pulls his shirt down over himself when he sees Walt's raised head in the dim bluish light from outside. "You were watching me? What the fuck, Mr. White?"
"If you wanted it to be secret, you should have taken it outside," Walt scolds idly, containing his own embarrassment in outward disparagement.
Jesse only stares, and for a relief-filled moment Walt thinks Jesse is going to let the breach of his privacy slide, leave it to become awkward and unmentionable in the light of day. He's about to lower his head again...then Jesse speaks, and the rest is settled.
"Pervert." Jesse shakes his head, rocks his knees from side to side, evidently still plagued by a hardness that didn't wilt upon being discovered. "And what do you mean I'm doing it wrong?"
It feels more like an invitation than a question.
"I meant," Walt begins, rising, "that you're not doing it right."
This is no different from showing Jesse how to build a battery, or lecturing him on the ridiculousness of putting chili powder in the product. This is a lesson, simple and necessary.
"Dude, don't even," Jesse says as Walt approaches. But he can't hide anything when Walt is this close, and when he pauses and gives Jesse a moment to decide on it, Jesse shrugs. What the hell, we're gonna die anyway, that shrug says. Or maybe that's just Walt's mind trying once more to remind him of where they are right now. "Whatever, go ahead if that's what you wanna do," Jesse says, sounding indifferent for all it's worth, but he doesn't meet Walt's eyes at first. "It's not like anyone will ever know."
The impending death eliminates the point to, it doesn't contribute it. Walt knows this, has known it, but if there can be something good - anything good - in this, then that has to be enough.
Walt sits on the other side of Jesse, who sighs when Walt reaches between his legs. Jesse tilts his head back, his throat a flash of white in the illumination from the moon, and Walt wraps his free arm around Jesse's waist, a little amazed by the smallness of it; you'd never know for those huge clothes he's always wearing.
He makes a loose fist around Jesse's erection and begins to tug gently. Jesse starts to make a strange humming sound, not moaning yet, and that's okay, but Walt doesn't like the dazed look about him, the way his eyes are closed.
He asks offhandedly: "What's her name?"
"Jane," Jesse answers dreamily. Walt squeezes and Jesse gives a startled yelp, his eyes snapping open. "What was that for?"
"Pay attention," Walt rebukes.
"What, to you?"
Walt gives him a look and squeezes again.
"Ow! Jesus! Okay, okay."
So he tries to stay focused for a minute, going as far as to actually watch Walt's slow, loping strokes. That wasn't quite what Walt had meant, but that's fine too, he supposes, as long as Jesse stays in the moment.
"You're going too slow," Jesse whines, biting his lip. "Why are you going so slow?"
Walt keeps his concentration. "Quiet." The noises he wants to hear are not words of complaint, although there is something pleasing about those as well; it means that Jesse wants more than he's giving.
"Oh, come on, be cool," Jesse pleads. He moans once, low from his chest, and puts his head on Walt's shoulder. Walt decides to alter the tempo for him sooner than he had planned to, switching at last from those deliberate strokes he knows to be excruciating.
Jesse gasps, and then starts giggling into Walt's shirt. "Is this why you wanted to get separate rooms?"
Walt barely hears this. He draws his fingers tighter, sliding them slowly up Jesse's length and then bringing them down in a hurry. He doesn't remember when he perfected this method but it's been a personal favorite and he can tell that Jesse's fond of it too. He stops his joking and sits compulsively straighter, his moaning consistent, raptured. His hand clutches Walt's leg and Walt tips his head to kiss Jesse's neck, although that hadn't been part of the original program, and he can feel the exact moment Jesse slides over the edge: it's when his Adam's apple stiffens and stills against Walt's lips.
"Ah shit, oh fuck, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, Mr. White, I'm gonna-"
He does before he can get the words out, his hips bucking upward in a movement that isn't completely voluntary.
Jesse leans against him again while he gathers his breath, and suddenly the nearness of him, the shape of him, the energy of him, young and firm and alive, is vital to making this fate bearable.
"Now what?" Jesse pants, taking a final big gulp of air into his lungs before his breathing evens out. "You want me to do you, right? A little reciprocation?"
"Word of the day?" Walt asks casually, momentarily ignoring his own hardness that Jesse is surely aware of. Jesse blushes; Walt can see it even in the near-darkness. He smiles. "Anyway, you don't even know how to do it."
"Screw you, it works!" Jesse protests, and everything else about Jesse notwithstanding, Walt can always appreciate the way he responds to a challenge. "Quit feeling so superior about your years of jerking-off experience and I'll show you how it's done."
He's got his hand in Walt's sweatpants before anything more can be said, and his long, cold fingers are a jolt to the older man's system. He moves somehow closer, shoving Walt's knee out of his way and setting to work. For a second he tries to imitate how Walt had done, and it's so pathetic and cute that Walt actually laughs.
"Oh, shut up," Jesse mutters. He turns his hand at an angle and drags his nails along Walt's shaft, not with the degree of force necessary to seriously hurt - it's more bizarrely wonderful than tinglingly awful, and Walt's laughter stops as his breath catches. "You shouldn't laugh at the guy who's got his hand on your junk," Jesse informs him. It's good advice, and Walt heeds it.
"So are you going to show me how Jesse Pinkman does it?" he asks, as derisively as he's capable of with Jesse's hand down his pants.
"Yeah, that's kinda the whole reason I'm handling your nutsack right now," Jesse answers, sounding wise and solemn.
Now Jesse's pumping quickly, a fast, unbroken pace, the same short strokes he had been using on himself before Walt woke up. Walt opens his mouth to voice some criticism and finds that the only thing that comes out is a breath that could almost be a moan.
Dammit.
"Told you," Jesse says victoriously, and just to prove him wrong Walt tries to hamper his own enjoyment. His expression briefly holds a scowl, then drops at the same time his chin does, onto his chest. He puts his clean hand clumsily on Jesse's shoulder, feeling it shake with the rhythm of his arm.
"Okay, point made, point taken, Jesse," Walt starts to babble. "I get it, I get it, you can stop now-"
To his horror, he realizes he's even not going to last as long as Jesse did, but there's nothing he can do to prevent it. He moves in harmony with Jesse's hand, nearly growling in painful frustration every time Jesse holds back for even a second.
"No," Jesse shakes his head, smiling devilishly. "I don't think you get it yet."
Again Walt tries to hold it down, hold it in, and he can't, he doesn't even come close. Jesse shifts nearer still, and Walt moves his hand to cup the space behind his ear, meeting his eyes and seeing that look of triumph and not completely resenting it. His eyes are bluer in moonlight. Pretty.
"Jesse-" Walt's eyebrows knit together like a man who is greatly puzzled, his eyes fall shut, and he comes. It is not brief and joyless, as he might have suspected on a different day, if he'd taken the time to consider this scenario. Tremors run through him even as his hand bears down on Jesse's skin, feeling himself spilling out in a brutally pleasant spasm.
"Too bad we don't have-" Before Jesse can say something stupid like a stop-watch, Walt relaxes the hand on his neck and uses it to pull him closer and press their lips together.
Jesse draws back sooner than Walt would have liked, and he sticks his tongue out in an age-old gesture of disgust.
"Ew," Jesse says. Then he sees something on Walt's face and, in almost saintly consideration, explains: "Chill, Mr. White. It's just that your mouth tastes gross, from the gas."
It's difficult to hide his relief under flippancy. "You're not exactly minty-fresh either," he denounces.
"No shit, but I wasn't trying to stick my tongue down your throat."
Walt allows this verbal victory for the sake of everything. "Touché."
Jesse favors him with a roguish smirk, and Walt thinks he must now be seeing him as his lovers have seen him... As Jane sees him. Jesse links his hands behind Walt's neck, his next words coming out in a secretive whisper.
"But I'm sure there's, you know, other things you could do with your mouth."
*
He dreams of nothing. Washes of faded colors drone in and out in a random sequence that feels like it won't ever end. He doesn't really expect it to.
At some point the shoulder under his arm is pulled out and away from him, and he starts to wake again.
There are voices. One is Jesse, the other is someone sort of known, kind of familiar.
"Jesus! I thought you were dead," the other is saying, sounding childlike in its fear and sincerity.
"How the fuck did you get here?" Jesse asks, his voice thick.
There is a pause and in it Walt understands who Jesse is talking to. It's the idiot they had staked their lives on, pausing now, possibly out of embarrassment for muddling simple directions and almost blowing the fairly easy task he'd been entrusted with.
"I drove around all night, man," this person says, in excuse of his stupidity. "You said I went the wrong way but then you got cut off or somethin'. I was all over that highway lookin' for that white sign with the three on it. You know what, I passed it like fifteen times but I thought it was an 's'!"
Even Jesse is baffled by this. "Holy shit, dude," is all he can say.
"You want some water, bro?"
Water, dear God. While Walt is forcing himself to get up again he can already hear Jesse promising his friend rewards of free product, promises he probably wouldn't have dared to make if Walt had woken up sooner. It's too bad, but right now his thoughts are dominated by the water, and there's no room for anything else.
"Yo, Heisenberg! Get up!" A bony hand digs into his shoulder and he shakes it off.
"I am up," Walt says, finally verifying this by rising. Jesse is a couple feet away from him, looking thinner and more sickly than Walt thinks he'll ever see him again, taking desperate, liberal drinks from a bottle of water.
"Gimme that," Walt demands without empathy.
"I got a whole case in the car," Jesse's friend placates.
Jesse gives over his bottle anyway, and Walt finishes what's left in it. It's like salvation on his tongue. It starts to dissolve the film of gasoline...and it washes the taste of Jesse away. This last fills him with a strange, unexplainable melancholy.
He drops the empty bottle, and for a moment the only sound is the hollow rattling as it rolls away.
Jesse's friend is looking at them. Scrutinizing, confused, wondering, nervous. Walt realizes that he must have seen them as they had fallen asleep, carelessly spooned together on the assumption that they wouldn't be found.
And Walt, who is becoming a facile liar, has nothing to say in their defense.
"It gets really fucking cold out here at night, Skinny, we had to sleep like that," Jesse says, startling Walt both with the swiftness with which the lie is delivered and the convincing note in Jesse's voice. "Or we could've froze to death, since your dumb ass took so long to find us."
As Jesse talks Walt can see the dumb ass's expression changing from skepticism to belief. Walt is glad. It's not likely that he'll tell the others in the crew about it either, out of fear of Jesse and "Heisenberg", and maybe even just for his own discomfort at having seen them, even if he does believe that they had only been huddling for warmth.
"Sorry 'bout that, Jesse," he says, looking sheepish and shrunken, buckling under the abuse instead of being indignant at the ingratitude.
"Whatever, don't worry about it," Jesse says, and he's immediately warmer in his manner as he stands. "Thanks for coming all the way out here, Skinny, seriously. I thought you woulda given up looking."
"I almost did but- Whoa!" His eyes fall on their container of product and widen instantly. "You guys made all this?"
"Yeah. Help me carry it."
Walt follows them out into the warm, open air, a large bin of his bright blue cash cow clutched between them. They heave it into the backseat of the car - a nice car, he thinks, a Thunderbird - then Jesse's friend goes around and slides in on the driver's side.
Before they get in with him, Jesse turns to Walt, surveys him up and down, and offers him a wan smile. Even though Jesse knows that this is probably the last cook they'll ever have to do, he can't resist the quip: "Just day-trips from now on, okay?"
He slips his hand over Walt's ribs and suddenly Walt can't think of anything witty to say back. "Nothing happened?" he asks.
Jesse's hand drops. A feeble ache starts in Walt's chest, and he's not fully able to persuade himself that it's only the cancer. He thinks of Skyler, and Junior, and forces it to go away.
"Nothing happened," Jesse agrees, and opens the passenger door.
Dated: Begat in September. Concluded in September. Concluded for real tonight.
Title: Separate Rooms
Rating: M for language and situations
Summary: "We have to cook clear to next Tuesday."/"Tuesday. Four days straight."/"Like it or not, we have no choice."/"Yeah? And why exactly is that?"/
Acknowledgment: First beta'd fic ever, done courtesy of the wise and mighty readishmael . The proof is in the writing, people.
** Slash **
The RV has become something of an oven as Jesse throws another two pounds of product into the bin and Walt reels off the total. It sounds good to his ears - good, but not enough. Although watching Jesse celebrate a victory that isn't quite theirs yet does make Walt more aware of his own exhaustion, and he briefly joins this moment of non-triumph.
"We're done cooking!"
Ah, that was a mistake. Walt tries to get them back on track, but Jesse's head is already elsewhere, and he starts ticking off reasons to get out of the desert for the night. Jesse can clearly tell when he's beginning to win; a smile is spreading across his face.
"Grand Slam? Hot shower? A bed?"
The thought of a mattress is the coup de grâce for Walt's determination...because they've already been out here too long. Far, far too long. The sweat collecting behind Walt's ear starts to run down his neck as if on cue, and he gives in.
And, just in case: "Separate rooms."
Jesse's much too elated by the prospect of motels and fast-food on his horizon to indulge in calling Walt gay this time. Instead he laughs a little, in better spirits than is normal for him to be in Walt's company. "Uh, yeah, that's a given."
Was it, though?
These thoughts, the good spirits, and even the high-five (maybe especially the high-five) are all jinxes. The key turning in the ignition does nothing and Walt is reminded immediately of his failing body. And now this. A Denny's breakfast might as well be a million miles away.
*
The taste of gasoline lines his throat and nothing works. The relief from the heat is short-lived as the temperature drops below man's ability to tolerate. Walt tucks himself away in some of Jesse's giant clothes. The fabric stinks like weed and cigarettes that smell almost like cheap perfume.
She's not a stripper.
Perhaps it is perfume.
All of their possible escapes are systematically taken away. The phone dies just as one of Jesse's boneheaded friends reveals the vast depths of his imbecility, and the light from their last working lantern begins to sputter until it, too, dies.
Dying and dying.
In the dark, he can still hear Jesse asking him what to do next.
*
"Apply a little elbow grease...it'll take longer, a lot longer, but theoretically it should work."
"Oh. Theoretically."
Jesse is easiest to fool when he wants to be fooled. Walt knows the odds of this last plan of his succeeding are small, maybe even nonexistent, but Jesse is supposed to believe in the ridiculous and the improbable.
He'll stay onboard a little longer at least, until the inevitable failure, when he'll probably freak out and go running off into the desert, never to be heard from again. A disappointing outcome, but a likely one.
*
Impossibly, the day keeps getting hotter. Walt runs his fingers over the sweat on his scalp and wishes that he were alone so that he might strip the rest of his clothes away, because right now all they're doing is making a bad situation worse. But if he did that, Jesse would probably have his freak-out a lot faster than expected.
He looks over at Jesse just as he peels off the second-to-last of his dozen or so over-sized shirts. He takes a particularly invasive look at the skin that is briefly exposed when the remaining shirt is hiked up to the breastbone. He feels like Jesse notices him doing it.
It's pointless.
He and Jesse are one more collapsed scheme away from a horrible death, the shirt rolls back down over Jesse's spine, he keeps turning the piston engine and... It's pointless.
*
He doesn't stay to watch it die. He thinks Jesse's face would be too much.
He can't feel mad, annoyed, depressed, anything when Jesse follows him again. Part of him still wants to yell at Jesse. He wants to blame him until there's no blame left in him. But that would be pointless too.
Besides.
Jesse extends a hand to him. "Come lay down, Mr. White. You're making it worse sitting out here."
He seriously considers rejecting the hand, and telling Jesse to go away, go die somewhere else, somewhere Walt can't see him. Finally he takes the kid's hand without wiping his own, smearing the blood between their palms.
*
Inside the RV, Jesse pushes the cots together.
Pointless, Walt reminds himself.
He fills the air with pity for himself until Jesse can't listen to him anymore. And then, out of the blue, there is a shard of genuine hope let into Walt's shattered outline of how all of this was supposed to work. Mixed in with that is a much larger barb of self-reproach for not having come up with the idea himself. So while they work, build, he is simultaneously disappointed by Jesse's shortcomings (Oh, wire) and viciously pleased with them. Walt will always be the brains of the operation, even if Jesse has a fluke stroke of idiot-brilliance now and again.
Still, Walt's doubt is surprisingly small as he socks the key into the ignition, pretending not to notice how Jesse progressively withers as each turn does nothing. Twice, three times, then again. It has to work. It's their last chance and it has to work, Jesse would not have gotten the idea to build a new battery if it wasn't going to work.
It doesn't.
Walt keeps turning, over and over, now knowing nothing will happen, quietly begging the RV to start, please, please, be good to him and start.
"Well, better get comfortable," Jesse says in a high, funny voice. Walt looks at him; his eyes are bright and moist. He's edging dangerously close to hysterics. "Got any cards, Mr. White? Maybe we can play rummy for a few dozen hours."
"I don't have any cards," Walt says dimly, vaguely alarmed in the face of Jesse's sharpened and unstable emotion, not wanting to set him off, not sure how to avoid it.
Jesse cackles at this for some reason. When he gets up Walt thinks he'll go for the door, throw it open, and then charge out into the desert, let nature do what it will to him. Instead he lays down on his cot and shuts his eyes. After a minute Walt lays next to him. They don't say anything to each other for the rest of the day.
*
Walt wakes in the night to find the cot next to him is empty. Again his mind immediately supplies him with the idea that Jesse has decided to take his chances walking after all. Walt raises his head slightly, thinks that he can see the RV better than he should be able to, considering the hour, and he can't figure out what the source of light is.
When his eyes reach the front of the vehicle he drops his head and pretends to be sleeping. Jesse had not gone barreling insanely out into the wild; he had moved to the front of the RV and opened the curtains, letting desert moonlight in. Then he sat down between the pilot and passenger seats and-
Walt cracks an eye again. He tells himself that it's because he isn't completely sure that he was seeing it correctly, not because he's leering or anything else unseemly. It's a double-check, that's all. He slowly turns his gaze that way, and confirms that he was not mistaken: Jesse is masturbating.
Instead of resuming his fake sleep, though, he keeps watching. He's never thought himself a voyeur in the past and once or twice he shuts his eyes long enough to convince himself that he's stopped looking...but he never completely does.
Not voyeurism, he thinks again. No, of course not. He's acting as little more than an observer; a judge, actually, would be the best descriptor. Jesse is quiet and hasn't seen Walt, leaving him open room to measure Jesse's performance. His strokes are quick and short and don't look quite right, but Walt keeps his peace until he realizes he could probably watch right up until Jesse finishes.
With that thought he becomes so flustered that he has to do something to interrupt it.
"You're doing it wrong," he says suddenly. Very smooth. He should have just tried to go back to sleep. That would have made more sense.
Jesse jumps and hastily pulls his shirt down over himself when he sees Walt's raised head in the dim bluish light from outside. "You were watching me? What the fuck, Mr. White?"
"If you wanted it to be secret, you should have taken it outside," Walt scolds idly, containing his own embarrassment in outward disparagement.
Jesse only stares, and for a relief-filled moment Walt thinks Jesse is going to let the breach of his privacy slide, leave it to become awkward and unmentionable in the light of day. He's about to lower his head again...then Jesse speaks, and the rest is settled.
"Pervert." Jesse shakes his head, rocks his knees from side to side, evidently still plagued by a hardness that didn't wilt upon being discovered. "And what do you mean I'm doing it wrong?"
It feels more like an invitation than a question.
"I meant," Walt begins, rising, "that you're not doing it right."
This is no different from showing Jesse how to build a battery, or lecturing him on the ridiculousness of putting chili powder in the product. This is a lesson, simple and necessary.
"Dude, don't even," Jesse says as Walt approaches. But he can't hide anything when Walt is this close, and when he pauses and gives Jesse a moment to decide on it, Jesse shrugs. What the hell, we're gonna die anyway, that shrug says. Or maybe that's just Walt's mind trying once more to remind him of where they are right now. "Whatever, go ahead if that's what you wanna do," Jesse says, sounding indifferent for all it's worth, but he doesn't meet Walt's eyes at first. "It's not like anyone will ever know."
The impending death eliminates the point to, it doesn't contribute it. Walt knows this, has known it, but if there can be something good - anything good - in this, then that has to be enough.
Walt sits on the other side of Jesse, who sighs when Walt reaches between his legs. Jesse tilts his head back, his throat a flash of white in the illumination from the moon, and Walt wraps his free arm around Jesse's waist, a little amazed by the smallness of it; you'd never know for those huge clothes he's always wearing.
He makes a loose fist around Jesse's erection and begins to tug gently. Jesse starts to make a strange humming sound, not moaning yet, and that's okay, but Walt doesn't like the dazed look about him, the way his eyes are closed.
He asks offhandedly: "What's her name?"
"Jane," Jesse answers dreamily. Walt squeezes and Jesse gives a startled yelp, his eyes snapping open. "What was that for?"
"Pay attention," Walt rebukes.
"What, to you?"
Walt gives him a look and squeezes again.
"Ow! Jesus! Okay, okay."
So he tries to stay focused for a minute, going as far as to actually watch Walt's slow, loping strokes. That wasn't quite what Walt had meant, but that's fine too, he supposes, as long as Jesse stays in the moment.
"You're going too slow," Jesse whines, biting his lip. "Why are you going so slow?"
Walt keeps his concentration. "Quiet." The noises he wants to hear are not words of complaint, although there is something pleasing about those as well; it means that Jesse wants more than he's giving.
"Oh, come on, be cool," Jesse pleads. He moans once, low from his chest, and puts his head on Walt's shoulder. Walt decides to alter the tempo for him sooner than he had planned to, switching at last from those deliberate strokes he knows to be excruciating.
Jesse gasps, and then starts giggling into Walt's shirt. "Is this why you wanted to get separate rooms?"
Walt barely hears this. He draws his fingers tighter, sliding them slowly up Jesse's length and then bringing them down in a hurry. He doesn't remember when he perfected this method but it's been a personal favorite and he can tell that Jesse's fond of it too. He stops his joking and sits compulsively straighter, his moaning consistent, raptured. His hand clutches Walt's leg and Walt tips his head to kiss Jesse's neck, although that hadn't been part of the original program, and he can feel the exact moment Jesse slides over the edge: it's when his Adam's apple stiffens and stills against Walt's lips.
"Ah shit, oh fuck, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, Mr. White, I'm gonna-"
He does before he can get the words out, his hips bucking upward in a movement that isn't completely voluntary.
Jesse leans against him again while he gathers his breath, and suddenly the nearness of him, the shape of him, the energy of him, young and firm and alive, is vital to making this fate bearable.
"Now what?" Jesse pants, taking a final big gulp of air into his lungs before his breathing evens out. "You want me to do you, right? A little reciprocation?"
"Word of the day?" Walt asks casually, momentarily ignoring his own hardness that Jesse is surely aware of. Jesse blushes; Walt can see it even in the near-darkness. He smiles. "Anyway, you don't even know how to do it."
"Screw you, it works!" Jesse protests, and everything else about Jesse notwithstanding, Walt can always appreciate the way he responds to a challenge. "Quit feeling so superior about your years of jerking-off experience and I'll show you how it's done."
He's got his hand in Walt's sweatpants before anything more can be said, and his long, cold fingers are a jolt to the older man's system. He moves somehow closer, shoving Walt's knee out of his way and setting to work. For a second he tries to imitate how Walt had done, and it's so pathetic and cute that Walt actually laughs.
"Oh, shut up," Jesse mutters. He turns his hand at an angle and drags his nails along Walt's shaft, not with the degree of force necessary to seriously hurt - it's more bizarrely wonderful than tinglingly awful, and Walt's laughter stops as his breath catches. "You shouldn't laugh at the guy who's got his hand on your junk," Jesse informs him. It's good advice, and Walt heeds it.
"So are you going to show me how Jesse Pinkman does it?" he asks, as derisively as he's capable of with Jesse's hand down his pants.
"Yeah, that's kinda the whole reason I'm handling your nutsack right now," Jesse answers, sounding wise and solemn.
Now Jesse's pumping quickly, a fast, unbroken pace, the same short strokes he had been using on himself before Walt woke up. Walt opens his mouth to voice some criticism and finds that the only thing that comes out is a breath that could almost be a moan.
Dammit.
"Told you," Jesse says victoriously, and just to prove him wrong Walt tries to hamper his own enjoyment. His expression briefly holds a scowl, then drops at the same time his chin does, onto his chest. He puts his clean hand clumsily on Jesse's shoulder, feeling it shake with the rhythm of his arm.
"Okay, point made, point taken, Jesse," Walt starts to babble. "I get it, I get it, you can stop now-"
To his horror, he realizes he's even not going to last as long as Jesse did, but there's nothing he can do to prevent it. He moves in harmony with Jesse's hand, nearly growling in painful frustration every time Jesse holds back for even a second.
"No," Jesse shakes his head, smiling devilishly. "I don't think you get it yet."
Again Walt tries to hold it down, hold it in, and he can't, he doesn't even come close. Jesse shifts nearer still, and Walt moves his hand to cup the space behind his ear, meeting his eyes and seeing that look of triumph and not completely resenting it. His eyes are bluer in moonlight. Pretty.
"Jesse-" Walt's eyebrows knit together like a man who is greatly puzzled, his eyes fall shut, and he comes. It is not brief and joyless, as he might have suspected on a different day, if he'd taken the time to consider this scenario. Tremors run through him even as his hand bears down on Jesse's skin, feeling himself spilling out in a brutally pleasant spasm.
"Too bad we don't have-" Before Jesse can say something stupid like a stop-watch, Walt relaxes the hand on his neck and uses it to pull him closer and press their lips together.
Jesse draws back sooner than Walt would have liked, and he sticks his tongue out in an age-old gesture of disgust.
"Ew," Jesse says. Then he sees something on Walt's face and, in almost saintly consideration, explains: "Chill, Mr. White. It's just that your mouth tastes gross, from the gas."
It's difficult to hide his relief under flippancy. "You're not exactly minty-fresh either," he denounces.
"No shit, but I wasn't trying to stick my tongue down your throat."
Walt allows this verbal victory for the sake of everything. "Touché."
Jesse favors him with a roguish smirk, and Walt thinks he must now be seeing him as his lovers have seen him... As Jane sees him. Jesse links his hands behind Walt's neck, his next words coming out in a secretive whisper.
"But I'm sure there's, you know, other things you could do with your mouth."
*
He dreams of nothing. Washes of faded colors drone in and out in a random sequence that feels like it won't ever end. He doesn't really expect it to.
At some point the shoulder under his arm is pulled out and away from him, and he starts to wake again.
There are voices. One is Jesse, the other is someone sort of known, kind of familiar.
"Jesus! I thought you were dead," the other is saying, sounding childlike in its fear and sincerity.
"How the fuck did you get here?" Jesse asks, his voice thick.
There is a pause and in it Walt understands who Jesse is talking to. It's the idiot they had staked their lives on, pausing now, possibly out of embarrassment for muddling simple directions and almost blowing the fairly easy task he'd been entrusted with.
"I drove around all night, man," this person says, in excuse of his stupidity. "You said I went the wrong way but then you got cut off or somethin'. I was all over that highway lookin' for that white sign with the three on it. You know what, I passed it like fifteen times but I thought it was an 's'!"
Even Jesse is baffled by this. "Holy shit, dude," is all he can say.
"You want some water, bro?"
Water, dear God. While Walt is forcing himself to get up again he can already hear Jesse promising his friend rewards of free product, promises he probably wouldn't have dared to make if Walt had woken up sooner. It's too bad, but right now his thoughts are dominated by the water, and there's no room for anything else.
"Yo, Heisenberg! Get up!" A bony hand digs into his shoulder and he shakes it off.
"I am up," Walt says, finally verifying this by rising. Jesse is a couple feet away from him, looking thinner and more sickly than Walt thinks he'll ever see him again, taking desperate, liberal drinks from a bottle of water.
"Gimme that," Walt demands without empathy.
"I got a whole case in the car," Jesse's friend placates.
Jesse gives over his bottle anyway, and Walt finishes what's left in it. It's like salvation on his tongue. It starts to dissolve the film of gasoline...and it washes the taste of Jesse away. This last fills him with a strange, unexplainable melancholy.
He drops the empty bottle, and for a moment the only sound is the hollow rattling as it rolls away.
Jesse's friend is looking at them. Scrutinizing, confused, wondering, nervous. Walt realizes that he must have seen them as they had fallen asleep, carelessly spooned together on the assumption that they wouldn't be found.
And Walt, who is becoming a facile liar, has nothing to say in their defense.
"It gets really fucking cold out here at night, Skinny, we had to sleep like that," Jesse says, startling Walt both with the swiftness with which the lie is delivered and the convincing note in Jesse's voice. "Or we could've froze to death, since your dumb ass took so long to find us."
As Jesse talks Walt can see the dumb ass's expression changing from skepticism to belief. Walt is glad. It's not likely that he'll tell the others in the crew about it either, out of fear of Jesse and "Heisenberg", and maybe even just for his own discomfort at having seen them, even if he does believe that they had only been huddling for warmth.
"Sorry 'bout that, Jesse," he says, looking sheepish and shrunken, buckling under the abuse instead of being indignant at the ingratitude.
"Whatever, don't worry about it," Jesse says, and he's immediately warmer in his manner as he stands. "Thanks for coming all the way out here, Skinny, seriously. I thought you woulda given up looking."
"I almost did but- Whoa!" His eyes fall on their container of product and widen instantly. "You guys made all this?"
"Yeah. Help me carry it."
Walt follows them out into the warm, open air, a large bin of his bright blue cash cow clutched between them. They heave it into the backseat of the car - a nice car, he thinks, a Thunderbird - then Jesse's friend goes around and slides in on the driver's side.
Before they get in with him, Jesse turns to Walt, surveys him up and down, and offers him a wan smile. Even though Jesse knows that this is probably the last cook they'll ever have to do, he can't resist the quip: "Just day-trips from now on, okay?"
He slips his hand over Walt's ribs and suddenly Walt can't think of anything witty to say back. "Nothing happened?" he asks.
Jesse's hand drops. A feeble ache starts in Walt's chest, and he's not fully able to persuade himself that it's only the cancer. He thinks of Skyler, and Junior, and forces it to go away.
"Nothing happened," Jesse agrees, and opens the passenger door.