The Trail Away From Doom

by Kayliana

Summary:

The words are on the tip of Walt's tongue—found him—but he hesitates. He's losing everything else—he can't lose Jesse too. So he swallows the words instead, and that changes everything.

(in which Walt never says "found him" in Ozymandias, and they both go to the cabin in New Hampshire)

originally for WaltJesse Week 2023 - day 7, prompt: empire or starting over. Later chapters fulfill prompts for WaltJesse Week 2024 :)

Notes:

Together we trace out the trail away from doom. There isn’t hope, there is a trail. I follow you.
~ from "War of the Foxes" by Richard Siken

For WaltJesse Week 2023 - day 7, prompt: empire or starting over.

Chapter 1

 

*

“If you can find him, we’ll kill him,” Jack says.

Walt is still reeling from grief and fury and betrayal as he keeps his eyes locked on his Chrysler and what’s hiding underneath it.

The words are on the tip of his tongue—found him—but Walt hesitates, holding them in his mouth and tasting them like an unfamiliar wine, a bitter one he quickly decides he doesn’t like. Bitter like decay. His empire is crumbling into a colossal wreck in front of him and he realizes he can’t watch Jesse die too. He can’t lose anyone else right now, can’t be the cause of another death in his family—and Jesse is still family, despite everything.

Found him he thinks again, the words perching precariously behind Walt’s lips, still bitter and ready to oxidize and turn to poison if allowed to fall free. Walt swallows the words to get their taste out of his mouth, keeps the poison inside himself where it belongs.

“No. Just forget it. Cancel it,” he says instead, a cold command.

Clemency instead of wrath, like a merciful king.

 

*

Jack and his men leave Walt with one barrel of his money and they steal the rest. They leave Walt his Chrysler and load the barrel into it for him. Walt holds his breath until the moment their cars are all out of sight.

He glances down at the watch Jesse gifted him for his birthday and he gives it another minute in case any of Jack’s men come back. Then another minute. Another two. Another five.

Then he deems it safe enough and he kneels in the sand beside his Chrysler and peers beneath it.

Jesse is still hiding under Walt’s car, his blue eyes a storm of terror and anger and betrayal.

“Jesse, they’re gone,” Walt tells him, voice dry and heavy. “You can come out now.”

“Why? So you can kill me yourself?” Jesse sounds furious and scared and near tears.

“I don’t want you dead,” Walt says, and he means it. He’s lost nearly everything else—he’s been backed into another corner and now he has to run, to disappear for a while to regroup, and the thought that he might’ve had to disappear alone is chilling. The thought that he had almost lost Jesse too—and by his own action—is unbearable. The thought that he’d let Skyler and Saul and all of them get in his head and convince him to have Jesse killed is equally nauseating and infuriating now that he’s snapped back to his senses. He would’ve regretted it immediately. He’s relied on Jesse too long, cared about him too long—it would’ve been like cutting off one of his own hands.

“Bullshit,” Jesse says.

“I don’t want you dead,” Walt repeats, his eyes locked on Jesse as he wills him to hear the sincerity in his voice, to see the despair in his eyes at the mere thought of what he’d almost done. “Now come out from there. We need to go.”

Jesse stares at him a moment longer and Walt sees it in his eyes the moment Jesse decides to obey. He still doesn’t look like he believes him, but he obeys anyway.

Jesse crawls out from under the car.

There’s a moment when he first stands up that Walt thinks he might run for it—Jesse seems to think he might run for it too—but Walt locks eyes with him and something in his expression manages to hold Jesse there, like gravity. Like magnets. Like a chemical bond.

“Get in the car,” Walt tells him, trying to gentle his tone just a little. Just enough.

Jesse gets in the car.

 

*

The car makes it maybe a mile before dying on the dirt road, gas leaking out from a stray bullet hole.

“Great,” Jesse mutters as they both climb out.

Walt retrieves the barrel of money from the trunk.

“We’ll take turns rolling it.”

Jesse scoffs but doesn’t argue.

They walk.

It’s open desert for miles.

It’s hot and dry and miserable. It’s tense and quiet and fraught the same way the atmospheric pressure grows fraught before a thunderstorm.

It stays hot and dry and miserable because the thunderstorm is not a thunderstorm and it’s only in Walt’s heart, it’s not the kind of storm that can bring rain or relief.

They keep walking.

This is an image reflected, Walt thinks. Almost chiral. Another walk through the desert, the two of them trekking back to civilization after a scrape with death. The first time—after Tuco—bonded them closer. This time might’ve broken them, might’ve stripped away a crucial electron and ruined their covalence. It remains to be seen.

The tension lasts but not the quiet.

“So how long?” Jesse asks during one of his turns rolling the barrel, not looking up from his task.

“Hm?” Walt asks, because he isn’t going to waste words replying to such an unclear question.

“How long ‘til you kill me.” Jesse’s tone is dull, flat, resigned—like it’s a foregone conclusion.

“I don’t want you dead,” Walt tells him again. Maybe if he says it enough times Jesse will believe it.

“I don’t believe anything you say anymore,” Jesse says back.

Maybe that’s fair. Maybe Walt deserves it.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he tells him anyway.

“Whatever.”

Jesse hasn’t once looked up from the barrel.

 

*

They stumble across a secluded homestead out in the desert and Walt buys an old truck with a handful of cash from his barrel.

Walt and Jesse load the barrel into the back.

They drive in silence for a long time.

Finally Walt sighs and says, like a peace offering, an olive branch, “Jesse… what I said on the phone earlier—just think about it, okay? You know me. Probably better than anyone else ever has. My calculations were meticulous—Brock was never going to die, all right? And the risk of any kind of lasting damage was so incredibly miniscule—”

Jesse scoffs and glances over at him with a steely glint in his blue eyes, and says, “So you really think that makes it okay? Poisoning kids is fine as long as they survive?”

“What else was I supposed to do, Jesse? I needed you to help me get rid of Gus—to protect both of us—but you wouldn’t, so I had to take drastic measures.”

Jesse looks away at that as if Walt had slapped him.

They both go quiet for a moment, nothing but the road noise and heavy silence between them. Walt keeps his eyes on the road. Out of the corner of his eye he can see that Jesse still has his head turned sharply to the right, staring determinedly out the passenger window.

“Why are we even still talking about this?” Walt asks after a moment. “It’s in the past, and everyone survived—except Gus, which was the whole point.”

Jesse scoffs but doesn’t look away from the window, and he mutters back, “If you have to ask…”

Walt does have to ask. That’s exactly why he did ask, but he’s not going to make a fool of himself by asking again if Jesse’s just going to be childish about it and refuse to answer.

So Walt just shakes his head and keeps driving in silence.

 

*

When they arrive at the vacuum repair shop, Saul is still there in the room in the basement waiting for his own relocation. Cinnabon in Nebraska, he says, and Walt feels confident Saul is going to hate that if it’s really where he’s headed.

“So, hey, dynamic duo back together, huh?” Saul asks through a fake-looking grin, but he throws a subtle nervous look at Walt right after that seems to ask the silent second question of is he going to be a problem for me or you?

Jesse scoffs and ignores him.

Walt answers the spoken question with, “That’s right,” and the unspoken one with a glare meant to convey I’m handling it and he’s mine and if you interfere you’ll regret it.

“Well all right then,” Saul says. I hope you know what you’re doing, Saul’s eyes say.

Jesse doesn’t speak to either of them and eventually falls asleep on one of the beds, lying on his side facing the wall.

It’s getting late and Saul is sitting on his own bed across the tiny room and Walt is sitting on the edge of Jesse’s bed at his feet because there isn’t a third bed.

Saul starts talking about time travel when he really means to talk about regrets, and Walt calls him on his bullshit because he's so goddamn sick of people not just saying what they mean to say.

So they talk about regrets. Walt talks about Gray Matter but he looks at his watch and thinks about that moment in the desert when he’d almost handed Jesse over to be murdered by a gang of neo-nazis. He thinks that if he would’ve actually followed through with that, the regret would’ve crushed him. It was Jesse. No matter what he’d done, no matter how he’d screwed up, no matter how he’d betrayed Walt out of fear or guilt or some misguided moral impulse—it was Jesse. His Jesse. And Walt had almost—

Each tick of the watch sounds like an accusation. Jesse had trusted him. Jesse had been so incredibly loyal, at least until he found out about Walt poisoning Brock. Jesse had given him a six-thousand-dollar watch for his birthday. What has Walt given him lately? Lies. Manipulation. Almost a death sentence.

He can’t stand it all of a sudden.

Walt puts one hand on Jesse’s ankle to reassure himself that his partner is alive and really there next to him. It’s gentle enough not to wake Jesse but possessive enough to earn Walt a raised eyebrow from Saul.

Walt leaves his hand where it is.

He makes a silent promise that he will fix this. He’ll win Jesse’s loyalty and trust back somehow.

He’s lost everyone and everything else, he can’t lose Jesse too.

 

*

Five AM the next day, Ed comes down to tell Saul his new life is ready and it’s time to go.

Jesse is still sound asleep, passed out from exhaustion most likely. Walt’s shoulders and back are screaming at him—he slept sitting up on the end of Jesse’s bed with his back leaned against the wall.

His hand is still on Jesse’s ankle like it’s his tether to reality. Maybe it is.

Saul leaves.

With Saul gone, Walt could move to the other bed but he doesn’t.

Ed returns about an hour later to discuss options with Walt while Jesse still sleeps on.

Ed recommends splitting the two of them up and sending them to opposite ends of the country. From a completely objective standpoint, it's the smartest thing to do.

Walt flat-out refuses.

He tells Ed to do whatever’s necessary to keep the two of them together.

Ed has a lot of valid reasons as to why that's a bad idea. Walt ignores every single one of them.

"Yes I know it’s riskier, but it’s my money we’re paying you with and I’m asking for you to make this happen. Keep us together."

Ed makes it happen.

 

*

Walt halfway expects Jesse to yell and argue and refuse to go with him and maybe even throw a punch at him when Ed informs him of the plan later on that morning.

Jesse does none of that.

Jesse just looks from Ed to Walt with an almost betrayed expression, and asks in a quiet and resigned-sounding voice, "So, what, I don’t even get a say in this? What if I'd rather go by myself to, like, fucking Alaska or something?"

"Everything's already been arranged, Jesse," Walt tells him. "This is the plan. You’re coming with me and that's final."

Jesse looks down at the floor with a bitter and humorless smile, and doesn’t say another goddamned word to him.

Literally not another word—he's completely refusing to speak to Walt.

Jesse keeps up the silent treatment throughout all of their preparations to leave—he’ll speak to Ed but not to Walt, like he’s making some kind of a point. Like a rebellious teenager who thinks he's making a stand.

Even when Walt asks him a direct question or asks his opinion on something—nothing. Jesse refuses to talk to him.

It’s infuriating, but Walt tries to act unbothered. Clearly Jesse’s doing it to annoy him, so Walt tries not to let on that it’s working.

 

*

New Hampshire is cold and the cabin is tiny. Barely big enough to hold one person, let alone two and all of the baggage and tension between them. It’s almost nightfall by the time they arrive and start carrying in their supplies.

“There’s only one bed,” Jesse points out—to Ed of course, not to Walt—in a tone that manages to sound scandalized and resigned at the same time.

“Typically I only send one person up here but it was the best option available to get you two somewhere quickly. And as you can see there isn’t room for another bed.” Ed says, like that’s the end of it.

“Is there at least a fucking air mattress or something?”

“Indeed there is,” Ed answers.

“Thank god,” Jesse says under his breath.

Ed helps them carry in all of their supplies—food, bottled water in case the pipes freeze, clothes, some wood for the furnace—then he retrieves an ancient-looking cardboard box from the hall closet, which contains the folded up air mattress and a hand pump to inflate it.

“I’ll plan on being back up here around this time next month with more food and supplies,” Ed tells Walt on his way out the door. “Might be able to get my hands on some chemo for you by then.”

Jesse glances over at that but still doesn’t deign to speak to Walt.

“Thank you,” Walt tells Ed.

Ed nods. Leaves. Drives away.

It’s just Walt and Jesse and this tiny cabin now, and the snow. Endless snow outside. Nothing like the desert.

“I wasn’t lying about the cancer being back,” Walt tells Jesse.

He waits for Jesse to say good, to spew some kind of invective like Skyler had the night she’d told him she was waiting for the cancer to kill him.

But Jesse still stays silent.

Jesse drags the air mattress out of its box, unfolds it in a symphony of plastic creaks, then connects the manual pump and starts blowing it up without a word.

The air mattress is a smaller one, a twin size by the looks of it. The only place in the cabin with enough floor space for it—enough floor space that isn’t also right next to the drafty front door or too close to the wood-burning stove to actually be safe—is on the floor right next to the bed. So that’s where it goes.

 

*

The air mattress has a slow leak and deflates in the night. Walt wakes up to Jesse’s frustrated huffs of breath and the sound of him working the handheld air pump.

Walt doesn’t move to help, doesn’t offer to share the bed—he’ll hold onto that bargaining chip for now so that maybe he can use it to make Jesse speak to him again. He’ll wait for Jesse to silently hint at it, or for him to try to climb in and then Walt will tell him no, Jesse, if you want to share the bed you’ll have to say the words and ask me, something like that.

Jesse doesn’t ask, doesn’t even acknowledge him—he just tears two strips of duct tape off a roll that he must’ve found lying around, patches a big X over the leak when he finds it, and pumps the mattress back up.

It goes down again by morning—must have another leak hiding somewhere. Probably in one of the seams. Probably not fixable.

Jesse just sighs and pushes the flattened air mattress under Walt’s bed to get it out of the way. He throws his blankets on a chair.

He still doesn’t say a word to Walt.

 

*

The silent treatment can’t last forever, Walt tells himself the next day.

It doesn’t come naturally to Jesse, who’s normally loud and expressive and social. It has to be a constant taxing effort for Jesse to be this quiet and cold and to keep holding everything in, and he will break eventually. He’ll cave. He’ll talk to Walt, even if just to scream at him. Walt would welcome it, honestly.

Jesse doesn’t ignore him completely—that would be almost impossible in such a confined space—so Walt gets an occasional glare, and if he asks Jesse to put another log in the fire because he’s closer Jesse usually does it, but he still won’t talk to Walt.

Walt tries to trip him up and trick him into saying something, anything.

It never works.

“I meant to tell you, a car went through the carwash a couple weeks ago that looked just like that old Nova you used to have. Same shade of red and everything, just, completely identical,” Walt tries, knowing damn well that the car Jesse had before it got shot up when Tuco kidnapped them was a Monte Carlo, not a Nova. But Jesse doesn’t correct him, doesn’t say a word.

On another day he tries, “Who is that sings that one song, it’s like—lose yourself in the music, own the moment, something something—you know that song? It’s stuck in my head. Vanilla Ice or somebody, isn’t it?” He knows it’s Eminem only because Junior loves that song but Skyler hates Eminem with a passion and doesn’t like Junior listening to him. Walt knows he’s one of Jesse’s favorites too, and he’s waiting for Jesse to call him old and uncool and berate his knowledge of contemporary music. But it never happens. Jesse stays quiet, and Walt’s never been this disappointed over not being insulted before.

One day Walt gets extra pathetic and decides to fake a big sneeze every twenty minutes or so, hoping maybe Jesse will automatically say ‘bless you’ out of habit. It’s not what he really wants but it would be words, spoken by Jesse to Walt. It would be something. That doesn’t work either though, but after the seventh or eighth fake sneeze Jesse goes and digs a bottle of allergy pills out of the bathroom cabinet and pointedly sets them down next to Walt before going back to the other side of the cabin to finish watching his dvd in silence.

 

*

Being friendly and being pathetic to get Jesse to talk to him doesn’t work at all, and after a week of trying those tactics Walt feels like he’s losing his mind, and he’s pissed off enough to try being an asshole instead.

So he starts bitching at Jesse at every possible opportunity, but he tries not to make any of it too cruel—the end goal is still to reconcile with Jesse, after all. He just has to get him talking again first.

“We’re going to get ants if you keep letting plates sit in the sink with food on them,” Walt says upon noticing approximately ¼ of a teaspoon of instant mashed potatoes still clinging to the corner of Jesse’s empty plate one day. It’s too cold for ants here and Walt knows that—Jesse has to know that too, but he doesn’t snap back at him or call Walt on his bullshit. Walt hates it.

“Don’t drink straight out of the milk jug, Jesse, that’s unsanitary,” he says. Walt doesn’t actually care. Walt does it too sometimes, and he knows Jesse’s seen him do it. He hopes Jesse will call him out on the hypocrisy but he just ignores Walt and silently puts the milk back in the fridge when he’s done.

 “Turn the volume down on that, it’s obnoxious,” Walt says while Jesse’s watching Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium for the tenth time. It isn’t loud at all, but Jesse turns the volume down anyway, without talking to or looking at Walt. Walt considers bitching about it again, but it’s down so low now that he can’t even hear it across the cabin. He sighs and gives up for the night.

“Quit leaving the caps open on the shampoo and body wash, Jesse, if something gets knocked over in the shower it’s going to spill out and go to waste.”

“Can’t you pump the mattress up quieter? Some of us are trying to sleep here.”

“You know, if you would just wash your dishes right after you use them the food wouldn’t get dried on and we wouldn’t have to waste so much water soaking everything before washing it.”

“You’re going to use up all of our milk way before Ed comes back if you keep eating cereal for dinner like a child.”

“You’ve been spending way too long in the shower, it’s going to overwork the water pump and then what are we going to do if it stops working?”

“Aren’t you going to eat some real food instead of that pre-packaged junk all the time?”

“Do you have to chew so loud?”

“Are you seriously watching that asinine movie again?”

And so on.

But three full days of the Be An Asshole routine produces no results other than leaving Walt more frustrated than ever, so he gives it up. Clearly it’s not working and if he keeps at it he’ll probably just end up making Jesse hate him even more, which is the opposite of his goal.

 

*

To finish off the last four days of their second week at the cabin—which is also Jesse’s second week of silence—Walt decides to try ignoring Jesse right back.

Not just by not talking though—Walt takes it a step further and pretends Jesse isn’t even there. Doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t talk to him. Stops making enough coffee and breakfast for two people so Jesse has to start making his own. Takes advantage of there being no lock on the bathroom door to casually barge in there to take a piss while Jesse’s in the shower. Walks out of his own showers completely naked and gets dressed beside the bed as if he’s the only one in the cabin. Things like that.

Walt thinks he catches a few glares from Jesse out of the corner of his eye now and then but he doesn’t look directly at him to check.

For the first two days, Walt thinks this might be what finally gets through Jesse’s stubborn streak and gets him to just talk to Walt. Maybe Walt was going about it all wrong at first, because by trying to get Jesse to talk to him by being nice or being an asshole, he was still giving Jesse plenty of attention and a one-way interaction. Cut that off, and maybe Jesse will get lonely or attention-starved enough to cut this shit out and talk to Walt.

But then Jesse starts pretending Walt isn’t there at all too.

Walt wants to scream, wants to grab him and shake him, wants to slap him in the face and force Jesse to stop ignoring him.

Walt doesn’t do any of those things. He keeps ignoring Jesse and he silently fumes, and he plots.

He starts considering doing something drastic—perhaps staging an injury, perhaps accidentally-on-purpose cutting one of his own fingers while making dinner. Something Jesse couldn’t ignore.

The only thing that stays Walt’s hand is the possibility that Jesse would ignore it anyway, the possibility that Jesse truly is so far past caring about Walt that he would ignore him as he bled and not make a single move to help him. That would hurt worse than the silence. It would hurt worse than the cut itself, he imagines.

 

*

There’s a routine at night, one which hasn’t varied much despite their shifting mind games with each other.

Walt always goes to bed first and takes the actual bed. Jesse’s sleep schedule is more sporadic but he’s usually at least two or three hours later than Walt—Walt knows this because the whoosh-and-clack sound of the handheld air pump inflating the mattress twice a night tends to wake him. Walt usually glances at the clock, ignores the noise, and goes back to sleep. Three to four hours later the noise of Jesse working the air pump wakes him up again, because that’s the amount of time it generally takes the air mattress to fully deflate again and for the discomfort to wake Jesse up. Another three to four hours later when it deflates a second time, Jesse just gets up for the day and shoves the air mattress under Walt’s bed.

Sometimes Walt sleeps through the middle-of-the-night re-inflation. Sometimes Jesse doesn’t wake up after the first deflation and spends the next day rubbing his back and wincing because he slept half the night essentially on the hard floor.

One night, early on in their third week at the cabin while they’re both still ignoring each other’s existence, something different wakes Walt up.

A slick repetitive sound of skin sliding on skin, hitched breath, the beginnings of a moan quickly stifled.

Walt knows exactly what he’s hearing after about five seconds of listening.

He listens for another thirty seconds or so, licks his lips, and considers touching his own cock to the sound of Jesse’s choked-back moans and whimpers. He decides against it—not because he doesn’t want to (he does), not because he isn’t attracted to Jesse (he always has been), but because this is too good of an opportunity to waste.

Clearly Jesse either thinks Walt is asleep, or he forgot Walt is there. He thinks he has privacy right now. He's horny and probably half-asleep and his guard is down and maybe Walt can at least shock him into swearing or yelling at him.

Walt licks his lips again, then says in an amused tone, “Really, Jesse?" 

The sounds stop, and there’s a sharp inhale like a gasp from Jesse’s mattress on the floor. No words though.

Walt adds, "If you want to scandalize me, you’ll have to try harder than just masturbating next to me.”

Jesse still doesn’t say anything.

Walt realizes he’s broken his own no-speaking streak but that’s never really been his game anyway, it’s Jesse’s. Walt’s game is to get Jesse to speak to him by any means possible.

Jesse still doesn’t speak though. Doesn’t in any way acknowledge Walt.

A minute ticks by in silence. Walt waits patiently.

Jesse doesn’t say anything.

The slick sounds start up again.

Walt huffs out a laugh.

“Okay,” Walt says, deciding fuck it and sticking one hand down his pants to wrap around his own stirring cock. “You don’t mind if I join in, right? If you do, just say so,” Walt adds in an almost cruelly amused tone. It's a perfect opening for Jesse to hurl a homophobic slur at him, and Walt’s hoping he will.

But Jesse doesn’t say anything.

The slick sounds don’t stop. Walt adds his own slick sounds to them, pushing down his pajama pants and underwear to free his cock for better access.

He listens closely for the little half-moans and stifled whimpers Jesse can’t seem to hold in. They have Walt’s dick rock-hard in record time, and he wonders what Jesse would do if Walt joined him on the floor and got on top of him, if he pressed their lips together and pressed their cocks together, kissing him and jerking them both off at the same time. Jesse wouldn’t be able to ignore him then.

Instead of doing that, Walt strokes himself and listens to Jesse’s noises and waits until he thinks Jesse might be getting close.

Then, deliberately and with all the grace and subtlety of a bucket of ice water, Walt gives it one last try and asks breathlessly, “Who are we imagining right now—Andrea or Jane? Just want to make sure I’m on the same page with you here—”

The noises stop abruptly and then something soft and cloth-covered hits Walt in the face hard—Jesse’s pillow—and then there are angry footsteps stomping away, then the slam of the bathroom door.

Walt lets out a breathless laugh—finally, a fucking reaction. Still no words but something. It's a start. 

Walt doesn’t move the pillow off of his face, doesn’t stop stroking his cock. He inhales deeply, stealing Jesse’s scent from the pillow and then biting into it as he comes.

*

Chapter 2

Notes:

heads up for Walt fantasizing about dub-con, as well as continued mind games and manipulation between wj.

Enjoy? :)

*

 

The next morning Jesse has stopped pretending Walt’s not in the cabin, which is a partial victory. Jesse still isn’t speaking to him and he’s tense and sullen and radiating hostility whenever he glares in Walt’s direction or gets within five feet of him, but at least he isn’t ignoring Walt’s existence anymore.

Walt will take it. And he’ll press his advantage, because that’s what he does.

There’s only about a week and a half left before Ed is supposed to return with more groceries, more supplies, and possibly chemo for Walt. That week and a half feels like a deadline—like if Walt can’t get Jesse to crack and speak to him before Ed gets here, then Jesse will just talk to Ed and get his fix of human interaction that way, and that’ll reinvigorate his resolve and stubbornness and then Walt will have to start all over at wearing him down.

Right now though, Walt is all he has. Right now they’re the only other person in each other’s world. Right now Jesse is lonely and frustrated and evidently touch-starved, and despite his stubbornness he has to be almost as sick of this bullshit as Walt is. Right now Jesse is still furious with him but he hasn’t left yet, hasn’t even tried to, and he hasn’t lashed out at Walt with anything more dangerous than a pillow, which must mean it isn’t broken after all—their bond is strained and weakened but not broken, not irreparable.

So with the previous night in mind, Walt’s next strategy becomes seduction.

He doesn’t expect it to be a successful seduction—he isn’t delusional—but he hopes it will at least succeed in getting Jesse to finally speak, even if that comes in the form of him rejecting Walt and calling him a barrage of slurs and insults. It would be unpleasant but at least it would get Jesse speaking to him. Walt is a little bit amazed at how much farther he keeps lowering the bar for this.

If nothing else, the attempted seduction will at least throw Jesse off-balance enough to make him more vulnerable to whatever Walt tries afterwards. Maybe while Jesse is still reeling from it Walt will do a one-two punch and try something crazy like… saying that he was wrong to poison Brock and shouldn’t have done it? Perhaps. That might be going a bit too far though. He’ll play it by ear.

Walt waits for an opportunity to begin his latest strategy, and he gets one when Jesse wanders over to the kitchen area and starts looking for breakfast.

While Jesse’s standing by the counter with his back to the room as he opens the top cabinet to get some cereal, Walt walks over as quietly as he can and steps in close behind him. He’s not quite pressing up against him but it’s close, only an inch or so between them.

Just as Jesse reaches up and grabs a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, Walt puts his left hand on Jesse’s hip and reaches past him with his right hand to take the box of cereal from him and put it right back into the cabinet.

Jesse jumps and sucks in a surprised gasp but doesn’t say anything—he just freezes there, tense and wary.

“You won’t be needing those today,” Walt tells him in a tone that’s aiming for cheerful and affectionate. His lips are very close to Jesse’s ear but not quite touching, half a breath away. Maybe Jesse feels Walt’s breath and shivers, or maybe Walt just imagines it. “I’m going to make us some French Toast. Go sit down.”

Walt takes his hand off of Jesse’s hip and backs off just enough for Jesse to turn around.

Jesse’s cheeks are tinged pink and he’s wearing an expression caught somewhere between stunned and wary and pissed off but he doesn’t say anything, he just stares at Walt. His eyes look extra blue somehow in the morning light.

Walt holds the eye contact and just smiles at him, like there’s nothing out of the ordinary about his behavior.

Jesse eventually steps away but not to go to the table. He stays in the kitchen and leans against the counter by the sink instead, crossing his arms and keeping a cautious eye on Walt.

“Or you can stand there and watch me cook,” Walt concedes, turning towards the fridge to get some eggs. They’re on the middle shelf all the way in the back, so Walt bends and reaches into the fridge to dig them out. “Do you know how to make French Toast? I can teach you—”

A cabinet bangs closed, and Walt almost hits his head on the fridge straightening up to look.

Jesse’s already walking away with the box of Cheerios in his hand, heading for the other side of the cabin.

Walt sighs.

He makes two servings of French Toast anyway.

Walt ends up eating both of them.

 

*

He’s succeeding already in throwing Jesse off-balance—that much is evident.

Jesse has been stealing glances from across the room whenever he thinks Walt isn’t paying attention. He seems annoyed and wary and curious all at once, and he’s keeping a close eye on Walt now. Too close of an eye for Walt to take him by surprise again.

Jesse is across the cabin sitting on the thick rug on the floor and watching that ridiculous movie for about the fiftieth time. Walt is sitting at the kitchen table with a half-finished cup of coffee in front of him, watching Jesse.

Perhaps it was a mistake not to push things farther that morning.

Perhaps Walt shouldn’t have backed off when he had Jesse pinned in between himself and the counter. Perhaps he should’ve grabbed Jesse’s hips and pressed closer against him and kissed his neck and pulled Jesse’s pants down. If Jesse had broken his silent streak to tell Walt to stop, Walt would’ve won. If Jesse hadn’t told him to stop Walt still would’ve won, in a different way.

The problem, Walt realizes, is that he lost focus in the moment and proceeded as if he were starting slow and actually building towards a successful seduction instead of just trying to shock a reaction out of Jesse.

He should’ve pushed. He shouldn’t have backed off until Jesse either spoke up and told him ‘no’ or physically resisted.

Too late now. And now Jesse won’t be caught off-guard as easily next time. Walt might have to try something else in the meantime to lull Jesse into a false sense of security before attempting the seduction route again.

Jesse glances over like he feels Walt’s eyes on him, and Walt meets his gaze and forces a smile and wills him to say something, anything. Jesse studies him for a long moment, still doesn’t say a word, and eventually looks away.

Walt takes a sip of lukewarm coffee and wonders what kinds of sounds he might’ve drawn out of Jesse with his hands, his lips, his cock.

Walt doesn’t look away for a long time.

 

*

The temperature plunges as the morning goes on, and a snowstorm blows in and breaks up the monotony of the day. Walt stands at the kitchen window and watches it fall. The snow is solemn, hypnotic, unforgiving.

He hears footsteps passing behind him and turns in time to watch Jesse go into the bathroom. He hears the sound of the shower and he turns back towards the window, shaking his head.

Walt can’t fathom wanting to get wet while it’s even colder than usual—the wood-burning stove is doing a decent job of heating the cabin but Walt’s feet are chilled from the wooden floor despite wearing two layers of thick socks and a pair of fleece-lined house slippers.

Walt blinks, considers the cold floor, glances towards the closed bathroom door, and then hurries over to the front door and trades his house slippers for his boots as the perfect idea for his next move strikes him. He has to be fast though—Jesse usually spends about fifteen minutes in the shower, so if Walt hurries…

He puts his coat on, then goes over to the bed and drags the deflated air mattress out from underneath it. He folds it up into a smaller bundle and glances at the bathroom door one more time before unlocking the front door and stepping out onto the porch with the air mattress in his arms.

The snow is still coming down fast and heavy and it wouldn’t surprise him if it lasted all day, all night, the rest of his life.

Walt doesn’t go down the short flight of front stairs—instead he climbs down off the side of the porch where his footprints won’t be obvious if Jesse happens to look outside. He sticks close to the side of the building until he’s past it, then he heads for the edge of the woods, about thirty feet away from the cabin.

When he gets to the tree line he takes a few more steps and then throws the folded up air mattress into the woods as hard as he can. It unfolds a little in flight and lands about fifteen feet away in a heap on the ground. Good enough.

Walt turns and hurries back towards the cabin. If Jesse catches him coming back in, he’ll say… He’ll say he thought he heard a vehicle approaching and was checking to see if Ed was early? Yes. That should work.

There’s no reason for Jesse to notice the air mattress’s absence until bedtime when he needs it, and by then the snow will have filled in all of Walt’s footprints and covered up the mattress as well, so even if Jesse does try to look for it outside there won’t be any clues for him to follow.

Walt carefully climbs back onto the porch from the side instead of using the front steps, holding onto the post on the corner of the porch to help pull himself up. It isn’t that high, maybe three feet but it’s still a little hard on his knees. Once he’s up on the porch he stomps his boots to jolt most of the snow off of them so he won’t track it in.

Walt takes a deep breath, then goes back inside.

Bathroom door is still closed. Sounds like the shower’s still running too. Good.

Walt lets out a relieved sigh, takes off his boots and coat, then goes over to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee while he congratulates himself on the brilliance of his new plan.

He smiles, confident that this will do it. This will make Jesse finally speak to him—to yell at him first, and then to demand to share the bed once his anger and stubbornness die down and he realizes that it’s the only practical option without the air mattress unless he wants to freeze on the unforgiving floor—there’s no sofa and all of the chairs are wooden and uncomfortable, and the rug Jesse sits on to watch that movie is too small to sleep on.

And just in case it doesn’t work—if Jesse somehow doesn’t break his silence to yell or ask to share the bed, then Walt will be magnanimous and offer to share it. When Jesse silently takes him up on it, Walt will continue the seduction route—he’ll ensure that they wake up in a suggestive position, and he’ll offer to alleviate Jesse’s morning wood if he’s lucky enough for that opportunity to arise. Then he’ll get some words out of him—whether it be a rejection peppered with swearing and slurs, or a breathless Mr. White as Walt makes him come.

One way or the other, Walt is finally going to get Jesse to speak to him.

 

*

Night falls. More snow falls.

Jesse watches that movie again and Walt tries not to be too obvious about watching Jesse. There’s a swell of anticipation building in his chest, but it’ll still be at least another few hours before Jesse goes to bed and discovers the air mattress is gone.

Neither of them have eaten anything for dinner yet, so Walt decides to try cooking a meal for Jesse again. He doesn’t announce it this time, he just finds a box mix of macaroni and cheese and puts a pan of water on the stove. While he’s waiting on the water to boil he starts some frozen French fries cooking in the oven. Not the greatest of meals, but it’s two things he knows Jesse likes.

He catches Jesse glancing over at him once or twice, but he focuses on cooking.

When everything’s ready, Walt fixes two plates and brings them to the table.

Jesse’s still watching that movie.

“There’s macaroni and cheese and French fries, if you’re interested,” Walt tells him.

Jesse glances over and studies him for a moment before turning back to the movie, staying as silent as the snow falling outside.

Walt sighs and sits down to eat his own dinner.

He leaves the plate he made for Jesse where it is—maybe when Walt finishes and leaves the table, Jesse might still come over and eat it.

Jesse doesn’t.

Instead Jesse ignores the plate on the table and goes over to the pan containing the rest of the macaroni, putting it on the stove on low to heat it back up.

Walt watches from where’s he’s sitting on the edge of the bed as Jesse stirs the macaroni.

Jesse glances over his shoulder every so often, as if he thinks Walt might try to sneak up behind him again like this morning.

One of the times Jesse glances at him, Walt gestures towards the plate on the table and tells him in a halfway teasing tone, “I didn’t poison that, you know.”

Jesse glares at him, and Walt belatedly realizes that poison is something he probably shouldn’t joke about to Jesse, considering Brock.

Jesse’s expression manages to call Walt an asshole without any words at all before he looks away and turns back to the stove.

No matter. Walt will have him talking soon enough.

 

*

 

Walt doesn’t go to bed at his usual time. He doesn’t want to fall asleep and be vulnerable when Jesse discovers the air mattress missing, just in case Jesse snaps and actually does try to hurt him.

So he finds a notepad and pen in one of the drawers, sits on his bed with the pillows propped up behind him and his legs stretched out, and he amuses himself with some molecular equations to pass the time.

When Jesse finally turns the movie off and stands up with a yawn, Walt feels that anticipation flare up again. He tries not to react and he keeps working on the equations as Jesse walks over beside the bed and kneels down.

Walt watches out of the corner of his eye.

Jesse reaches under the bed without looking, the movement automatic after weeks of doing it. Then he leans down lower and Walt can’t see over the edge of the mattress but he imagines Jesse is peering under the bed now, or reaching his arm farther underneath it and feeling around.

After a moment Jesse sits up on his knees, glaring at Walt.

Walt does his best to keep his expression innocent when he glances over and asks, “What?”

Jesse scoffs and gives him a humorless fuck-you smile as he stands back up. Jesse heads for the closet and looks inside, then he goes into the bathroom. When the air mattress isn’t in there either, Jesse walks back out and starts searching the main area of the cabin. He checks under the pile of his blankets in one of the wooden chairs. He checks the cabinet under the sink. He checks under things and behind things and he even looks inside the oven and the refrigerator. Only then does he stomp back over towards Walt and give him an expectant look.

Walt just looks back and tries not to smile. “Is there something you’d like to ask me?”

Jesse glares at him, then stares at the pillows behind Walt’s back as if he’s studying the size of them and how much space they take up and trying to determine whether or not the air mattress could be hidden underneath them. When he correctly concludes that it’s not, Jesse turns and stomps away towards the front door, puts his boots on, then his coat.

Walt stands up and follows him to the doorway, leaning out and watching Jesse open the lid on their garbage can by the porch and sift around in it searching for the air mattress.

When the air mattress isn’t in the trash can, Jesse slams the lid back down and gives Walt another furious look. Then he turns and storms off through the snow, following the driveway as if he intends to walk all the way down to the main road.

Walt swears under his breath and hurries to put his own boots and coat on, then he chases after Jesse in half a panic.

“Jesse!”

He isn’t supposed to leave. That isn’t how this is supposed to go.

Jesse has about thirty feet of a head start, and it’s not easy to run through at least a foot of snow, so it takes Walt a minute to catch up and he’s breathing heavy when he does.

“Jesse, wait,” he pants out. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Jesse ignores him, keeps trudging through the snow.

“You can’t just, just walk into town and call a cab or whatever you think you’re doing—we’re both fugitives. You’ll get arrested. You won’t even make it out of the state.”

Jesse keeps ignoring him.

“Jesse, it’s too cold out here—just, come back inside, all right?”

Nothing.

“Jesse! You’re being ridiculous—”

Jesse stops in his tracks and turns around and he grabs the front of Walt’s coat with both hands—he manages to catch him mid-step and off-balance, and he uses Walt’s own momentum against him to hurl him down into a snow drift.

Walt gets a faceful of snow and his glasses fall off. It takes him a minute to find them in the snow, then he sits up and yells, “Jesse!”

Walt catches sight of him—Jesse’s storming back towards the cabin instead of away from it now, so that’s good at least.

He sighs and clambers to his feet, cursing the snow. Snow on his face, snow down his boots and the collar of his sweater, snow sticking to everything he’s wearing. It’s merciless.

He trudges back towards the cabin, not bothering to hurry since Jesse already went back inside.

When Walt gets about ten feet from the cabin, the door opens and Jesse steps out of it backwards, dragging the mattress from Walt’s bed with him—he has the mattress standing up on its side, sliding it a few inches at a time along the floor and out onto the porch.

Walt stops in his tracks and gapes for a second, then he yells “Jesse!” and breaks into a run.

Jesse gets the mattress out onto the porch, still propped up on its side, and he’s moving behind it now, preparing to shove it down the short stairs into the snow when Walt finally gets to the porch.

“Jesse, stop! Put it back!”

Walt hurries up two of the four stair steps and braces his shoulder against the mattress, trying to shove it back towards the door instead.

He gains a few inches but Jesse pushes right back and Walt almost loses his footing on the stairs.

“Jesse, stop!” Walt yells again, pushing back against the mattress. It slides back towards the cabin a foot or two this time and Walt makes it up the stairs onto the porch itself.

Before Walt can press his advantage, Jesse shoves the mattress again, harder this time—it catches Walt in the center of his chest and he tries to plant his foot but he slips on the icy porch.

Walt falls backwards towards the stairs and has about half a second to feel surprised and think oh shit before there’s a crack of pain against the back of his head and then darkness.

 

 

*

Walt drifts back into consciousness slowly, reluctantly.

His head hurts, back hurts, mind feels unmoored.

Everything swimmy, thoughts blunted, almost like being drunk if drunk hurt.

“Mr. White? You awake?”

Walt turns his head towards the worried voice—mistake. Painful mistake.

Walt groans.

“Mr. White? Hey. Can you open your eyes?” Jesse’s voice sounds scared and close and concerned, sounds like the most beautiful thing Walt’s ever heard but he can’t immediately place why that is.

Walt mumbles something wordless in response, reluctantly opens his eyes.

He’s in the cabin. Ceiling over his head. Jesse hovering over him too. Jesse’s eyes look red, eyelashes wet. From crying? Why?

“Finally. Thank fuck,” Jesse says, sounding relieved now. He looks back and forth between each of Walt’s eyes like he’s checking his pupils for a concussion.

“Jesse?” he mumbles, reaching up, reaching for Jesse’s face. Jesse catches Walt’s hand with his own before it gets there and lowers it back down but holds onto it. Feels nice. Feels warm.

 “Yeah,” Jesse answers, “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to…” he trails off.

“S’okay,” Walt says, unsure what Jesse’s talking about but not bothered by it. He just wants Jesse to keep talking, wants him to keep looking at Walt like he gives a damn about him.

“I thought you were dead for a minute,” Jesse tells him, voice breaking. “I thought I killed you. Over a stupid fucking mattress.”

Mattress? Feels like he’s laying on a mattress.

Oh.

Right.

Walt remembers getting rid of Jesse’s air mattress so Jesse would yell at him and have to share Walt’s bed.

That certainly backfired.

But Walt’s mattress seems to be back on his bed where it belongs, and Jesse is back at Walt’s side where he belongs, and he’s finally talking to Walt again and that alone makes the head injury worth it.

Walt tells Jesse again, “S’okay,” and then, “lay down.”

He pats the mattress with the hand that Jesse’s still holding onto in case there’s any confusion, because Walt doesn’t mean on the floor.

Jesse blinks at him, seems uncertain. “Um…”

“S’ bed time, lay down,” Walt says. A wave of tiredness hits him, his body trying to pull him back into sleep so it can recover.

Jesse bites his lip, studies Walt another moment.

“Nah, I’m good. I’m just gonna sit here, make sure you don’t die in your sleep or whatever.”

“Yeah, okay,” Walt mumbles at him, shifting farther over towards the wall to make room for Jesse to sit down on the edge of the bed.

Jesse sits on the bed, stretches his legs out in front of him, props a pillow behind his back.

Once he’s settled he glances down at Walt with another guilty look—there's still a trace of fear underneath the guilt in his eyes. Guilt over the possibility that he could've killed Walt, fear over...the possibility of being alone? Jesse spirals when he's alone, and resentment or not, Walt is all he has right now.

“Get some rest, I guess,” Jesse tells him.

Walt smiles, because Jesse is actually speaking to him. Jesse is in Walt’s bed. He’s won.

The heavy throbbing pain in his head as he drifts back to sleep is worth it.

 

 

*

Walt sleeps like the dead and wakes up to the smell of coffee.

His head still hurts and he groans when he opens his eyes because the light hurts at first too.

He turns his head towards the kitchen, wincing against the pain of it, and he sees Jesse at the stove cooking something while the coffee brews.

Walt watches, doesn’t try to speak just yet.

It’s soothing, watching Jesse cook. Familiar.

Jesse glances over and does a double-take when he sees that Walt’s awake now. “Yo,” he says.

Walt is stunned for a moment until he remembers the night before—the mattress fiasco and then Jesse finally speaking to him after weeks of stubborn silence, Jesse sitting on the edge of Walt’s bed as he fell back asleep.

“Morning,” Walt croaks out, relief still warring with disbelief in his chest.

Jesse gets a mug out of the cabinet, starts to pour some coffee.

“Is this a black coffee day or a big splash of milk day?” Jesse asks him. His tone is normal, casual, as if him speaking to Walt isn’t something longed-for and beautiful and momentous.

“Milk,” Walt tells him.

He’s surprised Jesse pays enough attention to notice that Walt switches up how he takes his coffee these days. This morning he’s a little nauseous and black coffee on an empty stomach would only make it worse.

“Okay. I’m uh, making huevos rancheros. Hope that’s cool.”

“Yeah. Yes. That’s…cool,” Walt says.

He doesn’t particularly want food but Jesse is cooking it for him and Jesse is finally talking to him, so Walt will try to eat it.

Jesse adds milk to the mug of coffee and brings it over to Walt. On the way, he drags a kitchen chair over beside the bed and sets the cup of coffee on it as if it’s a tray table.

“Thanks,” Walt tells him.

Jesse lingers a moment and looks guilty again when he says, “We got Aleve and Tylenol in the bathroom cabinet—which one you want for your head?”

“Um… Tylenol, I suppose.”

Jesse goes and retrieves it, hands Walt two pills and a glass of water. Walt pops the pills into his mouth, lets his fingers brush against Jesse’s when he takes the glass from him. Jesse doesn’t react to the contact and Walt’s a little disappointed by that. He swallows the disappointment along with the pills and focuses on the positive, which is that Jesse is finally talking to him again.

Jesse says, “So uh, dude who brought us here’s supposed to be back next week, right?”

“Ed. Should be another week and a half, roughly,” Walt answers. “Unless I slept for more than just one night?”

“Nah. Just the one.”

Jesse goes back over to the stove and takes the pan of eggs off the burner.

He fixes them each a plate of huevos rancheros and brings Walt’s to him in bed.

“Thank you, Jesse, this looks amazing,” Walt says, giving him a smile even though he feels like death warmed over.

Jesse nods and looks off to the side, biting his lip as he walks away to get his own plate.

Jesse sits down at the table. Walt stays sitting up in his bed.

They eat in silence.

When Jesse finishes his plate, he puts it in the sink and then says without turning around, “We’re not cool, just so you know.” It comes out sounding firm and honest yet a little practiced, like Jesse’s been thinking about it and holding it in for a while, rehearsing it in his head.

Walt swallows the bite of eggs he was chewing, then says, “What?”

“You’re not forgiven—for Brock, for lying to me, for treating me like some fucking pawn instead of your partner, for trying to have me killed—”

“Jesse—”

“Shut up,” Jesse interrupts as he turns around to face Walt and stare him down. “You want me to talk to you so fucking bad, I’m talking, but you shut up and listen.”

Walt shuts up.

“You’re not forgiven,” Jesse repeats, “but I’m sick of all the bullshit, okay? Can we just call a truce for however long we’re here, and quit making this shittier than it has to be?”

Jesse gives Walt an expectant look, and Walt infers that he’s allowed to speak now.

“That sounds reasonable,” Walt says instead of pointing out that Jesse is the one who started it with his silent treatment.

Jesse meets his eyes and studies him for a moment, like he’s gauging whether or not Walt means it.

He means it.

“Okay, good.” Jesse says, looking relieved. “Speaking of ‘reasonable,’ give me my fucking air mattress back so I can get some sleep. I’m wiped out from staying up checking on your ass all night.”

“It’s gone. Just lay down here,” Walt says, gesturing towards the empty half of the bed.

Jesse raises an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean, it’s gone? What’d you do, make acid out of Drain-O or some shit and melt it?”

“Yes, actually,” Walt lies, because that sounds more impressive than admitting he threw it in the woods. More final, too—Jesse will give up on looking for it if he believes it’s destroyed.

Jesse scoffs, demands, “Why? I mean, I know why—but why fuck with my bed, specifically?"

Walt waves a dismissive hand and says, “It’s getting too cold for you to keep sleeping down there, you were going to get sick.”

“Right. You melted my bed for my own good. Because I’m gonna believe that.”

Walt sighs, tries again. “I was sick of getting woken up by the noise from you airing it up twice a night, all right?”

“Asshole,” Jesse mutters, but he seems to believe him that time. Jesse sighs and walks over to the side of the bed. “Whatever—you’re stuck sharing with me now. Move over by the wall, I’m not climbing over you every time I want up.”

Walt sits his half-empty breakfast plate next to his mug of coffee on the chair beside the bed, then he carefully moves over, wincing as his sore head protests it.

Jesse grabs his own blanket and pillow off the pile of bedding he’d left on one of the wooden chairs, then he lays down on the edge of the bed, turning onto his side with his back to Walt. His posture looks tense.

Walt smiles up at the ceiling and wonders if Jesse is thinking about the night before last. Neither of them have mentioned it, and he figures Jesse must’ve just filed Walt’s interrupting and then joining Jesse’s masturbation under ‘all of the bullshit’ that they agreed to call a truce on.

There’s really no reason to continue trying to seduce Jesse now—Walt already won. Jesse is speaking to him again and sleeping in Walt’s bed now. They have a truce. There’s no reason to push. None at all, except for those noises Jesse makes when he’s close to orgasm and those gorgeous blue eyes and the way Walt is convinced that nothing in the world would ever feel better than making Jesse his in this one final way. No reason except Walt wants to.

When Walt looks over again at Jesse, his posture looks more relaxed. On his way to falling asleep, perhaps.

Walt still feels exhausted and sore and he can’t reach his cup of coffee now without disturbing Jesse, so he lets out a quiet sigh and closes his eyes. Might as well get some more rest in the meantime.

 

*

When Walt next wakes it’s nighttime and the darkness is disconcerting.

He glances over, frowns at the empty space on the mattress beside him.

Jesse is across the cabin, sitting on the rug on the floor with his blanket wrapped around him, and he’s watching that insipid movie again. Walt doesn’t understand how Jesse isn’t bored of it by now.

Walt moves over towards the edge of the bed, puts his legs over the side of the mattress, and sits up with a quiet groan. He reaches for his mug of coffee—it’s long-cold but he takes a big drink of it anyway. His head still hurts and his back aches worse than before, and he needs to piss.

Walt sits on the edge of the bed and gives himself a minute, hoping to prevent any dizzy spells from getting up too fast, then he carefully stands.

“Yo—where you going?” Jesse asks, finally noticing that Walt’s awake.

“Bathroom. I’m fine,” Walt tells him, an involuntary smile on his face—the novelty of Jesse actually speaking to him again still hasn’t worn off.

Jesse keeps watching him but doesn’t get up.

Walt makes it to the bathroom without any dizzy spells. He pees, washes his hands, then opens up the medicine cabinet. He decides to try the Aleve instead this time, and he swallows the pill with a cupped handful of sink water.

He goes back out into the cabin, heads for the kitchen. Pours himself a glass of milk, looks out the window as he drinks it. No snow tonight, just a clear frigid sky and full silvery moon.

Clock on the wall says 10 PM. Walt frowns, not thrilled with wasting an entire day. He still feels disproportionately tired and sore though, so perhaps he needs the rest.

Walt sighs and washes out his glass. Then he gets back in bed, moving all the way over towards the wall.

He closes his eyes, strains his ears a little listening to try to figure out how much of the movie is left. He hates that he’s overheard it enough times to know that two of the characters arguing over whether or not one of them made a wooden cube fly around the toy store means that it’s almost over, but at the same time he’s glad that it’s almost over.

He suffers through the whimsical music and sound effects of the last scene. The cheesy last line. The first few notes of the end credit music.

 “Jesse?” he calls once the end credits start.

“Yo?”

“It’s ten o’clock, come to bed.”

Jesse glances over and gives him a raised eyebrow for that, but then he turns off the television and actually listens.

He brings his blanket over and lays down next to Walt, on his back this time instead of facing away.

“Don’t let me sleep all day again,” Walt tells him. Casual. Domestic. As if any of this were normal.

“Okay.” Jesse glances over at him, studies him for a moment. There’s still quite a bit of guilt in his expression as he looks at Walt. After a moment Jesse adds a somewhat stiff, “Night.”

“Good night,” Walt says.

They both go quiet and the peace is oddly tense, like neither of them quite knows what to do with it.

Jesse falls asleep first.

Walt lies awake for what feels like hours, just listening to Jesse’s deep even breathing.

 

*

Walt dreams of snow.

It’s impossible snow. Every snowflake feels like a boulder despite their slow drift downwards and their normal size. Walt is laying on the ground and he can’t get up because the snow is piling up on his chest, it’ll bury him soon, it’ll suffocate him and then no one will find his body until spring.

He wakes up in half a panic and tries to sit up but he can’t because of the weight on his chest—but as it turns out, that weight isn’t nightmare snow with an impossible molecular density, it’s just Jesse laying halfway on top of him with his head resting on Walt’s chest and one arm thrown across him.

Jesse seems to still be sound asleep.

Walt blinks, relaxes, puts one arm around Jesse before he can think better of it.

He looks up at the ceiling and tries to even his breathing and waits for his heart rate to normalize.

What a ridiculous dream.

He reaches up and carefully strokes his hand through Jesse’s short hair. It’s grown out a little and Jesse hasn’t been shaving it while they’ve been at the cabin, but there still isn’t much there for Walt to run his fingers through.

He shouldn’t be doing that anyway.

He shouldn’t push. He knows that.

Walt got what he wanted—he has Jesse talking to him, and he even has Jesse sleeping in his bed. Jesse hasn’t forgiven him and there’s still resentment underneath the guilt over the head injury and the fear of being alone that have Jesse playing nice with him right now, but they have a truce.

He shouldn’t push.

He’s going to anyway.

The only question is how hard and how fast Walt can push without pushing Jesse away.

Next time it won’t be about shocking a response out of Jesse. Next time when Walt attempts to seduce him, it’ll be for real. For keeps. Forever.

Walt stops stroking Jesse’s hair and puts his arm back down at his own side. He decides it’ll suit his purposes best if Jesse wakes up just how he is—sprawled over Walt and clinging to him—without Walt touching him, and preferably with Walt asleep so there’s no doubt that Jesse put himself in that position without any help.

Walt closes his eyes, takes deeper slower breaths, and tries to fall back asleep. If he doesn’t manage it before Jesse wakes up, he’ll pretend to be asleep or pretend to wake up shortly after Jesse does. He’ll pretend his head hurts even worse than it really does and he’ll ask Jesse to stay next to him because he’s warm and comfortable, and maybe Jesse will feel guilty enough to do it.

If Walt’s fortunate, Jesse will wake up clinging to him with morning wood and then Walt can oh-so-generously assist him with it.

Walt ends up dozing off halfway—he isn’t sure how much time passes, but when Jesse finally starts stirring awake Walt doesn’t have to put much work into feigning that he’s just waking up as well.

Jesse shifts around and actually presses closer, nuzzling his face against Walt’s chest and hugging him tighter for a moment before freezing and seeming to remember who he’s in bed with.

Walt pre-empts the panic by reaching up and laying his hand on Jesse’s shoulder—it’s not just a pat and not quite a hug, but it’s casual and affectionate and it makes it clear that Walt’s fine with Jesse staying right where he is.

“Morning,” Walt mumbles.

“Yeah,” Jesse says, sounding embarrassed, “um, sorry.”

Jesse starts to pull away, moving off of Walt and turning to lay on his back instead of on Walt’s chest—but Walt moves with him, turning onto his side and throwing his arm over Jesse’s chest and mirroring their previous position.

Jesse tenses up and goes still, says, “Uh, Mr. White—?”

“Stay here,” Walt murmurs, playing up the sleepiness as he lays his head on Jesse’s chest, “you’re warm.”

“I uh, gotta take a piss,” Jesse says, sounding uncomfortable.

Walt heaves a frustrated sigh but lets him up. “Come back after,” he tells him.

Jesse hesitates for a moment, then he gets out of bed and heads to the bathroom.

He’s gone for at least ten minutes, and Walt figures maybe Jesse’s in there having a crisis over waking up clinging to Walt.

When Jesse finally walks out of the bathroom, he doesn’t come back to bed—instead, he heads over to the kitchen and starts making a pot of coffee.

Walt sighs and gets out of bed as well, lets it go for now.

He hasn’t changed his mind about pushing for more, but he decides to wait until the right opportunity presents itself. And until his head doesn’t hurt quite so damn much.

He takes an Aleve and then joins Jesse in the kitchen. Walt starts cooking French Toast for the two of them, and he pretends not to notice the extra bit of tension that emanates from Jesse whenever Walt gets close to him.

Despite that tension, Jesse makes Walt a cup of coffee and he lingers in the kitchen and hands him ingredients when asked.

Jesse eats the French Toast that Walt cooks for him this time, so Walt counts the morning as a victory.

 

*

The day goes on.

Jesse watches that ridiculous movie yet again. Walt mostly stays in bed and rests, taking an embarrassing number of naps throughout the day. He spends an inordinate amount of his waking time watching Jesse and fantasizing about doing more than just watching him.

Whenever Walt’s thoughts aren’t fixated solely on Jesse, he’s either brainstorming ways to get the rest of his money back from Jack and to his family instead, or ways to make Jack and his cronies regret crossing him, or ways to reclaim his empire and keep running it from the shadows somehow—all with Jesse by his side, of course.

Jesse eats lunch with Walt that day as well as breakfast, accepting the plate Walt fixes for him and sitting across from him at their little kitchen table. That’s new. That’s progress.

And Jesse still doesn’t talk much unless Walt prompts him, but at least the silences feel neutral and incidental now instead of tense and aggressive and deliberate. There’s no intent behind the silence anymore. No malice.

Sometimes when Walt glances over he finds Jesse already looking his way, contemplating him. Sometimes the looks that Jesse gives him are still guilty, sometimes they’re suspicious, sometimes they’re resentful, sometimes they’re just looks.

Sometimes Walt asks random questions just to hear Jesse’s voice again when he answers, and sometimes Jesse gives him a raised eyebrow like he knows what Walt’s doing, but so far Jesse has always indulged him and answered.

That night Walt goes to bed a little earlier than usual, wakes up a couple hours later to Jesse awkwardly trying to climb in beside him. Walt’s in the center of the bed and there isn’t quite enough space on the outside edge of the mattress for Jesse to lay down.

“Sorry,” Jesse tells him when he realizes he woke Walt up.

“No, it’s fine,” Walt says, scooting over closer to the wall.

Jesse lays down, brings his own blanket instead of getting under Walt’s. Walt considers throwing Jesse’s blanket into the woods too, but even half-asleep he decides it isn’t worth breaking their truce over. And there are more blankets in the closet anyway—it would be stupid to get rid of all but one just so they’d have to share.

Walt goes back to sleep.

He sleeps better than he has in weeks now that Jesse is a warm and comforting presence by his side.

Walt wakes up in the middle of the night with Jesse clinging to him again. Walt isn’t sure what woke him up—he thinks he might feel something prodding his thigh through their clothes and the blankets, but Jesse rolls over away from him and gets out of bed before Walt can be sure.

Jesse goes into the bathroom for long enough that Walt’s already dozing off by the time he returns. Jesse crawls into bed, gets under his blanket, and turns onto his side with his back firmly to Walt.

“Night,” Jesse says under his breath, seeming embarrassed.

“Night,” Walt murmurs back, half-asleep.

Neither of them talk about waking up entangled again. They just don’t talk about it.

 

*

Day three of their truce, Walt wakes up before sunrise. His head still hurts, but not quite as much as before.

He’s laying on his side, spooned up behind Jesse with one arm around him and every part of his front pressed flush against Jesse’s back.

Walt’s cock is half stiff and pressed against Jesse’s ass and begging for some friction, and Walt nudges his hips forward—once, twice—before his brain wakes up along with his body and tells him to fucking stop that right now. He can’t have Jesse wake up with Walt hard and wrapped around him and rubbing off against him—Jesse will assume the worst and lash out and then probably insist on taking turns using the bed or sleeping head-to-foot or something else counterproductive to Walt’s goals.

Walt sighs, carefully shifts his hips away from Jesse this time, and then pulls his arm out from around him too. He turns onto his back, going slow and being careful not to jostle the mattress too hard as he moves.

He stays on his back for maybe thirty seconds before he misses the shared body heat too much.

Walt turns onto his other side with his back to Jesse this time, then carefully moves closer until he’s pressed up against him again, back-to-back. It’s warm, comfortable, comforting. And it’s entirely innocent if Jesse wakes up while they’re laying like this.

Walt dozes back off.

When he wakes the next time, it’s to soft morning light in the cabin.

He’s laying on his side facing Jesse again. The difference is that Jesse’s lying on his side facing Walt as well this time, and he’s already awake and watching Walt with a contemplative expression. Like he’s studying him. Like he’s trying to figure something out.

Walt blinks, gives him a groggy, “Good morning.”

“Morning.”

Maybe it’s because he hasn't been awake long, but Jesse seems a little softer and more open as he looks at Walt this morning. That undercurrent of tension and resentment Jesse usually has towards him seems to be muted for the moment. It’s a nice change.

Walt wants to kiss him. He refrains.

Jesse looks away after a moment, gets out of bed.

Walt wants to stop him. He refrains.

Jesse boils water and makes instant oatmeal for their breakfast. It’s not really what Walt wants, but they shouldn’t waste rations and Jesse made it for him so he eats it.

After breakfast, Jesse goes and watches his movie.

Walt takes a shower, cursing the cold when he steps out of the tub. There’s nothing wrong with their hot water but with no central heat and no space heater in the bathroom it’s impossible to dry off and get dressed fast enough to avoid catching a chill.

Lunch is canned chicken noodle soup, chosen and prepared by Jesse. It's delicious.

After lunch Jesse watches Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium yet again.

“Aren’t you sick of that movie yet?” Walt finally asks him.

“Nope,” Jesse answers without looking away from the screen.

Walt spends a good chunk of the day brainstorming ways to deal with Jack and his crew. Rules out poison as too complicated for that number of people. Considers a bomb, but how would he get access to plant it somewhere effective enough?

Night falls.

More soup for dinner, different kind. Cream of mushroom. Every soup Jesse makes for him becomes his favorite.

Walt goes to bed, takes the side up against the wall, waits to see if Jesse is going to join him. There’s nowhere else for Jesse to go anymore though—Walt made sure of that—so it’s when, not if. It's foregone. Predetermined. It's the fate Walt orchestrated for them.

Walt is almost asleep by the time Jesse comes to bed.

He’s on his side facing the wall and he feels the mattress dip. Jesse lays down, seems to hesitate, then moves closer and lays on his side with his back pressed up against Walt’s back.

Walt doesn’t say anything, doesn’t react, tries to keep his breathing even—Jesse probably thinks Walt is asleep and Walt’s fine with keeping it that way if it means keeping him close.

This is promising, Walt thinks—Jesse voluntarily seeking out closeness and contact with Walt. Probably just for the body heat, but still. If Walt’s lucky, Jesse will turn over in his sleep and wake up clinging to him again. And if he’s very lucky, Jesse will be hard when he does and Walt will finally have the opportunity to do something about it.

Walt falls asleep with a smile on his lips and the solid comfortable warmth of his partner settled against his back.

He dreams of snow again, but this time it's different. This time Jesse is with him, catching snowflakes on his tongue. This time Jesse is smiling and laughing and carefree as if nothing ever went wrong, as if the worst things between them never happened. This time Jesse always forgives him, loves him, chooses him over everything else. This time Jesse takes both of Walt's hands in both of his own and tugs him closer with a dare in those blue eyes. This time Walt leans in and kisses him, touches him, presses him down into the snow, and this time Walt takes what he wants and Jesse gives and gives and gives.

 

Notes:

comments give me life 💕

I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on Jesse’s actions & reactions, and whether he seems believable/in-character considering the situation. Also interested in what YOU think Jesse's thinking and where you think his head's at (since entire fic is Walt POV so it's trickier to convey😭) 😊

Constructive criticism is always welcome here and on all of my fics! 💕

Chapter 3

Notes:

In which things escalate…
NSFW ;) Heads-up for dub-con at times (real AND imagined)

Posting this chapter for WaltJesse Week 2024, day 5 prompt: Snuggling or Struggling

 

Day four of their truce, Walt wakes up to Jesse laying on his side facing him and studying him again. Walt isn’t sure what to make of it. Jesse looks soft and contemplative again, and his lips twitch into a forced-looking smile when he realizes Walt’s awake now.

“So what’s your plan?” Jesse asks, without preamble or any sort of context.

“Plan?”

Is he asking about the seduction attempts? Has Walt been too obvious and given himself away?

“I mean, we’re not gonna sit around and just chill here forever, right? What Jack did… you don’t let shit like that slide.”

Walt relaxes, says, “Coffee first. Then questions.”

“Mr. White.”

Walt smiles at the plaintive sound of his name from Jesse’s lips. He wants so badly to lean in and kiss him, wants to make Jesse moan his name instead. But he can’t, not yet.

Jesse bites his lip and looks away, seeming embarrassed.

Walt wonders if any of his desire leaked into his expression just now, or if it’s just the situation Jesse finds embarrassing—the two of them sharing a bed, sharing murmured morning conversations after weeks of animosity.

“Coffee,” Walt reminds him.

“Fine,” Jesse grumbles, climbing out of bed.

Walt props his head on his hand, elbow on the mattress, and watches Jesse head for the kitchen to start the coffee brewing.

“You should make huevos rancheros again,” Walt suggests.

Jesse opens the fridge, digs around. “Uhh… If I do, it’s gonna use up the last of our eggs ‘til whats-his-name comes back. You still want ‘em?”

He does, but the thought of running out of one of their staple foods makes him anxious even though Ed should be back in roughly a week now, so he says, “No, let’s save them. Cereal’s fine, I suppose.”

“Um, getting kinda low on milk too—if we want it to last and have enough for our coffee—”

“Oatmeal again, then,” Walt interrupts. “Don’t add milk to it, just the hot water.”

Jesse scrunches up his nose at that, but starts preparing it anyway.

Walt sits up but stays in bed.

When it’s ready, Jesse brings Walt a bowl of maple sugar oatmeal and a mug of coffee with a splash of milk. He makes a second trip and brings Walt a glass of water and an Aleve.

Jesse hesitates, then asks, “Your head feeling any better, or..?”

“Still hurts,” Walt answers, tone short. It doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as before, but he keeps that detail to himself. “So does my back.”

“Sorry.”

Walt swallows the Aleve along with the absolution that he could-but-won’t offer. Jesse’s guilt suits Walt just fine—it keeps him talking to Walt, keeps him close—he isn’t in a hurry to dispel it. The guilt won’t last, won’t override Jesse’s buried resentment towards him forever, but Walt will enjoy this more receptive version of Jesse for as long as he can.

Jesse takes his own oatmeal and coffee to the table, eats in silence.

When they’re both finished with breakfast Jesse puts their empty bowls in the sink, refills Walt’s coffee, then sits down on the edge of the bed and gives Walt a pointed look.

“So… your plan?” Jesse prompts him.

Walt sips his coffee, waves vaguely with his free hand.

“It’s not a concrete plan yet, more of a set of end goals.”

“And those are…?”

“Jack and his crew dead. The rest of my money back, ideally. Somehow getting the majority of my money to my family, without getting killed or captured.”

Jesse studies him for a moment, concludes, “So you want me to help you do all that.”

“I would certainly appreciate it.”

Jesse doesn’t agree or disagree—he seems to consider it for a moment, then says just as matter-of-factly, “And once I’m not useful anymore, then you kill me.”

“What? No!”

Jesse raises an eyebrow and doesn’t seem to believe him. “Then what?”

“Then, I don’t know—I said I don’t have specifics yet. We’ll figure it out.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. You and me,” Walt assures him.

Jesse studies him for another minute and then looks away, biting his lip.

For a moment Walt’s certain Jesse will ask and then what again, and Walt doesn’t have an answer, at least not one he can give him right now because he’s hoping by then he’ll have succeeded at seducing Jesse and their then what will include a different kind of partnership.

Jesse doesn’t ask.

Jesse sighs and stands up and goes over to watch his ridiculous movie for the hundredth time.

 

 

*

Walt plots.

Lydia, he could poison.

She’s obsessive about that Stevia sweetener in her drinks. Walt has the ricin hidden behind an electrical socket in his house on Negra Arroyo Lane. He knows which café she prefers to use for her meetings. She’s predictable, a creature of habit. It could work.

Todd… Todd, he’s inclined to give a pass—Jack said it was Todd’s respect for Walt that made Jack spare him that day. Except… Todd was clearly infatuated with Lydia. Possibly even obsessed. And if Walt kills Lydia and then Todd finds out Walt’s responsible for it, he might go after Walt or Jesse or Walt’s family for revenge. Better to just tie up all the loose ends, right? Maybe he’ll let Jesse be the one to kill Todd. After what happened with Drew Sharp, Jesse might even enjoy it. Walt probably wouldn’t have to do much persuading.

The rest of Jack’s men all have to die because they’re Jack’s men. They know too much. They helped Jack steal Walt’s money. They helped Jack kill Hank and Gomez.

Jack, Walt wants to kill personally and slowly and preferably last. Walt wants Jack to crumple to the ground and see his family dead and witness his own little empire crumbling in front of him the same way Walt had to. He wants Jack to suffer.

 

 

*

The day passes quickly.

Walt fantasizes about elaborate revenge schemes, each scenario unlikelier than the last.

Jesse watches his movie again and again.

That night Jesse comes to bed a little earlier than usual, while Walt is still awake.

He lays there on his back next to Walt and he stays quiet but there’s a tension to the silence, as if there’s something Jesse’s very loudly not saying. Or as if he’s waiting for Walt to say something.

“Can I tell you something?” Walt tries.

He’s feeling a sudden compulsion to testify against himself, to give Jesse a level of honesty he hasn’t yet attempted because then maybe Jesse will trust him again.

“No,” Jesse says, and when he glances over there’s a flicker of suspicion in his eyes, like he expects Walt to try to work him with some elaborately-spun lie.

Walt isn’t scheming this time, isn’t trying to work him. But Jesse turns his head to look back up at the ceiling and Walt doesn’t want to ruin the tentative peace so he lets it drop.

Instead he says the words inside the safety of his own mind. He looks at Jesse and he thinks them very quietly. I’m sorry for Brock—not for the reason you want me to be, but because it cost me your loyalty and trust.

“Good night,” Walt tells him instead, after a long enough silence has passed.

“Night,” Jesse mumbles back, but he’s staring up at the ceiling biting his lip and there’s still a lingering tension like Jesse wants to say something.

Walt closes his eyes, wondering whether Jesse will speak his mind.

He falls asleep still waiting.

It’s a light sleep, restless.

The noises wake him up first—the choked-off whining moans, the breathless gasps. Then he feels it.

Walt’s on his back and Jesse’s on his side sprawled halfway on top of Walt with his head on his chest and one arm thrown across him, and Jesse’s cock is hard and his hips are rutting forward against Walt in languid uncoordinated thrusts. Despite all of that, Jesse seems to still be asleep.

Walt smiles.

Finally.

This is perfect.

Walt stays still another moment, trying to gauge how close Jesse is to coming. Another of those whiny moans escapes and Walt takes that to mean close.

“Jesse,” he murmurs, reaching across himself to put one hand on Jesse’s hip as Jesse rocks forward against him. Walt doesn’t push him away or try to pull him closer, he just holds on. “Jesse,” he says again, a little louder this time to wake him.

Jesse moans again, then he hisses in a sharp gasp and mutters, “Fuck,” before starting to pull away.

Walt tightens his grip on Jesse’s hip and Jesse’s head snaps up to look at him, his expression a blend of mortification and arousal.

Jesse starts to pull away again, blurts, “Sorry, I—”

“Stay.”

“What?”

“Stay,” Walt repeats, meeting Jesse’s eyes and tugging him forward as much as his one-handed grip on Jesse’s hip will allow.

Jesse hisses as his cock presses against Walt again. He pulls back just an inch or two and says, “Mr. White—” sounding ashamed and uncertain and desperate. He’s close though, he has to be.

“I’ve got you, Jesse,” Walt tells him, guiding him forward again. “Come on.”

“Fuck,” Jesse breathes, but he drops all pretense of leaving and hides his face against Walt’s chest as he grinds his hips forward again.

“That’s it, that’s good,” Walt murmurs, clutching Jesse’s hip.

Jesse moans again and only manages four more quick thrusts against Walt before he’s shuddering and coming against him with one last moan, louder and less restrained and absolutely beautiful to Walt’s ears.

Walt’s own cock is stirring and he wants to reach down and stroke it, wants to take it out and guide Jesse’s hand to it and teach him exactly how Walt likes to be touched, but he tells himself not to push too hard just yet.

Jesse’s still slumped against him and half on top of him, trying to catch his breath and probably trying not to panic as well.

“Sorry,” Jesse mutters after a moment, sounding embarrassed as he finally pulls away.

Walt’s hand clenches on Jesse’s hip again, reluctant to let him go.

Jesse reaches down and pushes Walt’s hand away, mutters, “I gotta clean up.”

“Okay,” Walt says, and he lets him up this time.

Jesse gets out of bed, grabs a fresh pair of boxers, and disappears into the bathroom.

Walt glances at the clock—3:03 AM—and then waits for Jesse to come back.

After fifteen minutes pass, Walt sighs and gets out of bed, goes over to the bathroom. Knocks on the closed door.

“Jesse?”

No answer so Walt opens the door.

Jesse’s sitting in the empty bathtub, fully dressed with a rolled up towel stuck between his head and the wall like a pillow, and he gives Walt a resigned-but-embarrassed look.

“What are you doing?” Walt asks.

“I’m just, uh, gonna sleep here.”

“It’s freezing in here. You didn’t even bring a blanket.”

“I’m fine,” Jesse says, waving a hand towards the toilet and adding, “just take a piss or whatever you gotta do,” as he pulls the shower curtain closed.

Walt sighs and walks over to open the shower curtain.

“Yo—” Jesse protests.

“Stop being ridiculous and come back to bed.”

“Why, because you figure I owe you one now?”

“You don’t owe me,” Walt tells him, “but I certainly wouldn’t say no if you offered.”

Jesse blinks at him a few times, then carefully asks, “You’re not mad that I was…?”

“Did I seem mad to you?”

Jesse looks up and studies him for a long moment, but doesn’t reply.

“Come back to bed,” Walt repeats.

Finally, Jesse listens.

He sighs and climbs out of the bathtub, follows Walt to the door.

Walt looks back a couple times to make sure Jesse’s still behind him all the way to the bed.

Walt climbs in first, leaving plenty of room on the edge.

Jesse gets in, lays on his back looking straight up at the ceiling. He seems tense, despite Walt’s assurances.

“Turn over,” Walt murmurs.

“What?” Jesse demands.

“Not like that,” Walt says, realizing how that sounded. “Just lay on your side, face the room.”

Jesse gives him a suspicious look for another few seconds, then he sighs and obliges.

Walt turns over too, facing the wall, then he inches closer to Jesse and settles in against him, laying back-to-back again.

“Oh,” Jesse says under his breath, sounding relieved.

“Good night, Jesse,” Walt tells him.

“Night,” Jesse replies, and Walt can feel the tension draining as Jesse relaxes against him.

Walt smiles into the darkness, and despite not getting off he considers the night a victory.

 

 

*

When Walt wakes up the next morning, Jesse’s side of the bed is already empty.

Jesse’s in the kitchen, eating dry Cheerios out of the box one handful at a time while he stirs something on the stove with his other hand.

Walt yawns and gets out of bed to go investigate.

Jesse hears him halfway across the kitchen and turns around, giving him a big awkward and guilty looking smile while managing to avoid meeting his eyes.

“Hey. Um. Making huevos rancheros—you said you wanted some yesterday, so…”

Walt frowns slightly. “I wanted to save the eggs.”

“Yeah, I know. I only made enough for you this time, there’s still a couple eggs in the fridge. I’m just having Cheerios.”

“Oh.”

Jesse turns back to the stove, stirs the eggs, grabs another handful of cereal and pops it into his mouth dry. He glances over his shoulder a couple times, never quite making eye contact with Walt.

It seems Jesse forgot to make coffee, so Walt gets the canister of coffee grounds out of the cabinet and does it himself.

“Oh, yeah sorry, I was getting to that,” Jesse says.

“I’ve got it, Jesse,” Walt tells him.

Jesse looks away abruptly at that, blushing and perhaps remembering Walt telling him I’ve got you, Jesse last night.

Walt smirks. This is good—that Jesse is blushing and embarrassed about it rather than disgusted or angry. This is very promising indeed.

Walt makes his coffee and sits down at the table, and when Jesse brings him his plate of huevos rancheros it’s the best breakfast he’s ever tasted.

 

*

Jesse avoids him for the rest of the day, as much as one can in such a confined space.

Jesse watches his movie a record-setting five times back to back. He fixes lunch but takes his own plate over to the rug on the floor and eats in front of the TV. He sits at the table for dinner, but still mostly avoids Walt’s eyes and only speaks if spoken to.

He waits for Walt to go to bed first, and when Walt feigns sleep Jesse comes over and picks up his own pillow and blanket and tries to sneak away to the bathroom.

Walt stops pretending to be asleep and says, “If you try to sleep in the bathtub again I’ll take a sledgehammer to it.”

Jesse jumps, nearly drops his pillow.

“We don’t have a sledgehammer,” Jesse says, but his tone sounds uncertain.

Walt doesn’t actually know if they do or not.

“We have an axe.” He knows that one for sure. It’s outside in the shed for chopping firewood and it would work just as well against a ceramic bathtub.

“Well maybe I’ll go melt the axe in acid so you can’t use it, like you did with my air mattress,” Jesse snarks at him.

“Maybe I’ll melt the tub,” Walt replies. It’s a complete bluff—none of the chemicals in the cabin could be combined to create hydrofluoric acid or anything even close to it, but Jesse doesn’t need to know that.

Jesse gives in, carrying his pillow and blankets back to the bed and climbing in beside Walt with a muttered, “Prick.”

Jesse turns his back to him, but that doesn’t bother Walt—Walt just slides over close and presses his own back up against Jesse’s. Jesse sighs but relaxes into the contact and the warmth.

For a few minutes it’s just quiet and comfortable and warm.

Then Jesse clears his throat and says, “Yo, um… if I start doing that in my sleep again, just push me out of bed or something, okay? You don’t have to…you know… let me.”

“I don’t mind letting you.”

“You don’t mind getting molested in your sleep?” Jesse asks, tone sarcastic but still with a trace of guilt underneath.

“It’s not ‘molesting’ if I give you permission. Which I just did. So knock yourself out.”

“…the fuck?” Jesse mutters, seeming incredulous.

“Maybe don’t go quite that far,” Walt says, and it’s probably the stupidest joke he’s ever made but it surprises a laugh out of Jesse.

“Yeah, no, I won’t,” Jesse mutters.

Walt decides to show mercy and stop teasing him.

“Goodnight, Jesse.”

“Yeah. Goodnight.”

 

*

Walt is actually disappointed to sleep through the night, but he wakes up in the morning with Jesse spooning him from behind, which almost makes up for it.

Jesse’s cock is hard and pressed against Walt’s ass through their sleep pants, and he has one arm slung over Walt with his hand up Walt’s shirt and splayed flat against Walt’s stomach like he’s trying to keep him close even in sleep. Jesse does seem to still be deep asleep, his weight leaning heavy against Walt and his breaths slow and even.

Walt yawns and stays still and takes a moment to consider his options. His own cock is half-stiff, but Jesse’s hand is too far away for any accidental touches, so he won’t be getting any stimulation unless he picks up Jesse’s hand and moves it, or unless he touches himself. Or… unless he can wake Jesse up just enough to escalate things.

Walt tilts his hips and presses back against Jesse’s erection—carefully, subtly, just enough to give him some more contact without waking him up. Jesse doesn’t react so Walt does it again a little more insistently. He gets a response that time, a slight groan and a roll of Jesse’s hips and Jesse’s fingers flexing against Walt’s abdomen.

“Good,” Walt whispers, hoping the praise will filter through to Jesse’s subconscious and spur him on the way it seemed to last time. “That’s good, Jesse, come on.”

Jesse thrusts against him again in his sleep, and his hand slides up Walt’s chest and grasps at the flesh there—perhaps he’s dreaming about some girl, but Walt’s nipples have always been sensitive so it works just fine for him. It feels good, but some attention to his cock would feel even better.

Walt shifts around a little, thinking he might try to get one of his hands down the front of his sleep pants. Jesse kneads at Walt’s chest again and one of his fingers presses hard against Walt’s nipple and it was probably a complete accident but it feels amazing and Walt lets out a moan.

Jesse’s breath hitches and he goes still—great, he’s awake now and probably seconds away from freaking out again.

Walt braces for it, but Jesse surprises him.

Jesse lets out a long sigh but doesn’t pull away. Instead he presses his forehead between Walt’s shoulder blades like he’s trying to hide his face there, and he rolls his hips forward in another thrust. Jesse’s hand moves away from Walt’s nipple and trails down his chest, past his stomach, and then… fuck… under the waistband of his sleep pants and into his underwear.

Walt expects Jesse to balk when he gets to Walt’s cock but he doesn’t, god he doesn’t, he wraps his hand around it and gives it a firm stroke, pulling another moan out of Walt.

“You’re awake,” Jesse murmurs, more of a statement that a question.

“Yes,” Walt breathes.

“This okay?” Jesse asks, stroking Walt’s cock again.

“Fuck yes,” Walt tells him.

Jesse strokes Walt’s cock a little harder in time with his next thrust forward and Walt stops trying to hold in his gasps and moans. Maybe Jesse wants to hear them. Maybe he likes hearing them as much as Walt likes hearing Jesse’s.

“Knew you’d be big,” Jesse murmurs, so quiet Walt isn’t sure he’s supposed to hear it.

“Jesse,” he gasps.

Jesse bites at the flesh over Walt’s shoulder through his clothes, thrusts against his ass a little faster now, a little more erratic. Jesse’s close, and his hand speeds up on Walt’s cock like he’s trying to catch him up and bring him along with him.

Walt reaches down, slips his hand into his pants and wraps it around Jesse’s hand as it keeps stroking Walt’s cock. He squeezes, making Jesse grip him a little tighter. He guides Jesse’s hand to add a little twist on the upstroke, teaching him just how he likes it.

Walt’s hand retreats—it’s a test and Jesse aces it, continuing to stroke Walt’s cock exactly the way Walt just showed him.

“That’s good, Jesse—perfect,” Walt tells him.

Jesse’s hips and cock press more urgently against Walt’s ass—a few more erratic thrusts and then he’s coming and muffling his groan into Walt’s shoulder.

His hand slows on Walt’s cock and gets a little lazy with the grip for a moment but doesn’t stop—Jesse keeps stroking Walt even through his own afterglow.

“Jesse,” Walt says after a moment, tone somewhere between pleading and impatient.

“I got you,” Jesse murmurs into his shoulder, tightening his grip on Walt’s cock and jacking him off properly, with the slight twist just like Walt showed him.

Walt doesn’t last much longer—seven, eight more strokes maybe and then he’s gasping, “Jesse,” and spilling into his hand. Jesse keeps stroking him through it but stops just on the right side of overstimulation.

Jesse starts to pull his hand out of Walt’s pants, and Walt is anticipating some sort of freak-out over the escalation from half-asleep frottage to conscious hand-jobs, but all Jesse does is sigh and wipe his hand off against Walt’s skin on its way out of his boxers.

Jesse rolls away from Walt, lays on his back for a moment, doesn’t say anything. Walt rolls onto his back too, watches Jesse out of the corner of his eye. Walt’s halfway holding his breath in case Jesse freaks out this time.

Walt wonders if he should say something, but the seconds keep ticking by and Walt keeps not saying anything.

Jesse finally sighs, then simply asks, “What do you want for breakfast?” as if it’s a normal morning, as if they didn’t just give each other spectacular orgasms.

But that’s okay—not talking about it suits Walt just fine.

“Whatever won’t use the last of our eggs or milk,” Walt answers.

“Hmm,” Jesse says, stretching as he sits up. “I think there might be frozen hash browns or some shit.”

Jesse doesn’t look at him before getting out of bed, and Walt pretends that doesn’t sting.

 

*

More avoidance after breakfast.

More all-morning one-man movie marathons.

More longing stares from Walt as he grows increasingly frustrated.

He’s fine with not talking about it and he doesn’t expect Jesse to do a one-eighty and spend all day in bed with him, but still.

Walt tries to focus on the positives—Jesse getting off against him again and voluntarily giving Walt a handjob is immense progress. Jesse not freaking out and not trying to leave and not taking a swing at him are all excellent signs. Jesse murmuring that he knew Walt would be big means he’s thought about it before, which is as surprising as it is satisfying.

Dinner time rolls around, and Jesse wanders into the kitchen to look through their cabinets of dry food. Walt gets out of bed, takes a seat at the kitchen table and watches him.

Jesse pulls out a pouch of instant mashed potatoes and a can of beef and vegetable stew, then turns around and holds them up, one in each hand, raising an eyebrow at Walt as if to ask him if he approves.

It strikes Walt in that moment that Jesse hasn’t actually said a word to him since breakfast, and his stomach sinks at the realization and at the prospect of another stretch of silent treatment.

Walt pretends he can’t read the label from across the kitchen and he asks, “What’s in the can?”

It’s a test, to see whether the silence is deliberate or just coincidental this time.

Jesse doesn’t answer out loud, he just walks over to Walt and holds the can out towards him.

Deliberate silence, then.

God fucking damn it.

Walt’s temper flares and he smacks the can out of Jesse’s hand, hoping to get cussed at or at least get an angry yo but Jesse just flinches and then gives him an infuriatingly silent what the fuck look as the can bangs to the floor.

“What is your problem now?” Walt demands, standing up and taking advantage of their height difference to loom over him a little.

Jesse scoffs and waves one hand at Walt as if to ask what’s yours, but he still doesn’t say anything and the wariness in his eyes just pisses Walt off even more.

“No, Jesse, I’d really like to know what I’ve done to earn another silent treatment. Am I taking too long to recover from the head injury you gave me?”

Jesse winces and looks guilty at that but he still doesn’t answer out loud, he just shakes his head no and crosses his arms, looking down at the floor.

“Oh, okay,” Walt says acerbically, “then perhaps you think I’m not being accommodating enough in bed, is that it?”

Jesse freezes and sort of flinches at the same time as Walt demolishes their unspoken not-talking-about it rule, then Jesse blushes and starts to turn away.

“Hey—no!” Walt says, reaching out to grab Jesse’s wrist. “We are not doing this again, Jesse. Fucking say something!” He can’t take another week or day or even another hour of the goddamn silent treatment—he’ll lose his mind.

Jesse wrenches his wrist free and sarcastically snaps, “Something!”

Despite the tone, relief uncoils in Walt’s chest like some Pavlovian response to Jesse’s voice. It’s pathetic. It’s infuriating. Walt wants to smack him and he wants to kiss him and he wants to bend him over the kitchen table and fuck him until the only thing he remembers how to say is Walt’s name.

He doesn’t do any of that. He lets Jesse step away, lets him pick up the can of stew off the floor and storm back over to the stove. Jesse sets the can down hard, then just stands there with his back to Walt and his hands braced against the counter on either side of the stove.

After a moment Jesse lets out a heavy sigh and says without turning around, “It’s not about you, okay? I wasn’t punishing you or whatever—I just didn’t know what the fuck to say to you after…that.”

Walt gapes at him for a moment, then scoffs and says, “We don’t have to have a big discussion about it. We didn’t the first time.”

Jesse sighs and mutters, “That was different. I didn’t…”

He trails off but Walt fills in the blanks—Jesse didn’t touch Walt’s cock or get him off too the first time.

Walt rolls his eyes but his frustration gives way to clarity and he sees how to fix this, how to work this to both their advantages.

He takes a few steps closer, tries to sound patient and grateful when he says, “No, you’re right—it was different.” A few steps closer, and he sees Jesse’s shoulders tense at his approach. Close enough to touch now and Walt reaches out, carefully lays his hands on Jesse’s shoulders as he murmurs, “You were so good to me this morning, Jesse.”

Jesse’s shoulders drop as the tension rushes out of him along with a huff of breath as if he’s been gut-punched.

“So good to me,” Walt repeats, stepping even closer and moving his hands from Jesse’s shoulders to his hips while Jesse’s hands grip the edge of the counter. “Let me be good to you,” Walt says, his lips almost brushing Jesse’s ear.

Walt slides one hand around in front of Jesse and teases his fingertips under the waistband of Jesse’s jeans, lingering there without moving further.

Jesse’s breath hitches but he doesn’t tell him to stop, so Walt reaches around with his other hand too and unbuttons Jesse’s jeans, unzips them, tugs them down.

“Wait,” Jesse breathes, tensing again.

“It’s okay,” Walt assures him, letting Jesse’s jeans fall to the floor around his ankles and putting his hands back on Jesse’s hips, “I’m just going to do what you did for me. All right?”

Jesse relaxes a little under Walt’s touch but he doesn’t reply.

“Jesse?” Walt prompts, using the I want an answer tone he used to use in his classroom.

“Okay. Y-yes,” Jesse says, and it comes out a little shaky but Walt still smiles.

“Good,” Walt murmurs, slipping one hand into Jesse’s boxers and wrapping it around his half-erect cock.

Jesse makes a strangled noise somewhere between a gasp and a moan, and Walt strokes until he’s fully erect in Walt’s hand, pre-cum leaking from his tip and easing the glide.

Walt dares to move closer, to mouth at the juncture of Jesse’s neck and shoulder, to taste and lick and nip at the skin there.

“Fuck,” Jesse whispers as Walt kisses Jesse’s neck while swirling his thumb across the tip of Jesse’s cock on the upstroke.

Walt reaches between them with his free hand and manages to shove his own pants and underwear down his thighs, freeing his erection. He closes the distance between them, takes that last step forward and despite the cloth of Jesse’s boxers still being in the way, he presses his cock against Jesse’s ass and rolls his hips forward, the simple pressure giving him a thrum of pleasure.

Jesse chokes out a wordless moan and Walt echoes it, grinding against him again.

Skin on skin would be better. Penetration would be better. But it’s still good, it’s goddamn amazing and Walt tries to remind himself not to push too much too fast.

He keeps stroking Jesse’s cock, keeps grinding his own hips and cock forward against Jesse’s ass, keeps kissing Jesse’s neck and pulling those delicious whiny moans out of him.

“Ah—Mr. White—I’m—fuck,” Jesse gasps out as he comes.

Walt keeps stroking him through it and manages to catch some of his release in his hand.

He lets go of Jesse’s spent cock and uses the cum to slick up his own cock, stroking it faster while his other hand keeps gripping Jesse’s hip.

He wants to yank down Jesse’s boxers and come on his bare ass, or better yet use Jesse’s cum as lube and bury himself inside of him—it would be so tight and so perfect but Jesse would never forgive him, he would never let Walt near him again, and there’s no time for that anyway he’s going to come any second now—

One of Jesse’s hands finally lets go of the counter and covers Walt’s hand that’s still gripping Jesse’s hip, like Jesse’s holding him there, like he’s telling Walt not to let go, telling him he’s still right here with him. Jesse’s splayed fingers slot between Walt’s—probably by accident, but the sense of intimacy tips him right over the edge and he comes hard, muffling his groan against Jesse’s neck and shooting his load across the back of Jesse’s boxers.

He slumps forward against Jesse, letting go of his cock in favor of pressing it snug against Jesse’s ass again and clutching Jesse’s other hip too, holding onto him as he catches his breath and rides out the aftershocks of pleasure.

Walt keeps his grip on Jesse’s hipbones, his thumbs absently caressing little paths back and forth beside them. He presses another open-mouthed kiss to Jesse’s neck, but this time Jesse tenses and squirms away from it. Jesse’s hand unentangles from Walt’s and pushes at it instead.

“Let me up,” Jesse says when Walt doesn’t move right away.

Walt doesn’t want to, ever, but the post-orgasmic clarity is already sinking in—it must’ve hit even faster for Jesse since he came first, but at least he’d let Walt finish.

Walt sighs, lets go of Jesse, takes a reluctant step back.

Jesse’s tense again, not looking at Walt, not saying anything either. Jesse steps the rest of the way out of his jeans and leaves them there on the kitchen floor, carefully not looking at Walt as he walks away, one hand covering the spot on his neck Walt had kissed.

“Jesse—?”

“You don’t have to pretend you like me after just ‘cause we’re getting off or whatever. Don’t want you to strain yourself.”

Walt’s mouth drops open as he processes that, appalled and confused and a little offended by Jesse’s conclusion.

“What do you mean pretend I like you?

“I’m taking a shower,” Jesse says instead of answering, still not looking at him as he adds a pointed, “alone.”

“Jesse—”

But Jesse strides away and shuts himself in the bathroom.

Walt sighs and pulls his own pants and underwear back up, realizing that he might’ve just made things worse.

This wasn’t reciprocity, it was another escalation.

He’d framed it as returning the favor of a sleepy early morning handjob and dry-hump, but it’s nearly dinner time and they’re both wide awake and Walt had both taken his cock out and kissed Jesse’s neck, neither of which Jesse had done that morning. And then Walt kissed his neck and tried to treat him tenderly after they’d gotten off, breaking whatever illusion Jesse must’ve had in his head about them ‘just helping each other out’ or however he rationalized it.

Fuck.

He’ll be lucky if Jesse even agrees to share the bed with him tonight.

He doesn’t let himself regret it yet though—he holds the regret back like holding a breath, waiting to see if it’s warranted, waiting to see if he’s ruined this.

                                                            

*

Walt cooks the stew and instant mashed potatoes while Jesse showers. He tries not to let his thoughts spiral into catastrophizing, and he tries to ignore the memory of Skyler criticizing his ‘apology breakfasts’ while he cooks what could be considered an apology dinner.

He’s still dwelling on what Jesse said and trying to figure out how in the hell he could possibly think that Walt doesn’t like him. After everything Walt has done for him, risked for him, sacrificed for him? Has it really escaped Jesse’s notice that Walt loves him, needs him, considers him something like family? More than family, even? Does one terrible mistake really outweigh years of protection and partnership?

And beyond that, has Jesse somehow failed to notice that he is the one here with Walt now?

Jesse is the one Walt took with him when he had to run. It had crossed Walt’s mind to drive home first before going to the vacuum store—to go to his old house and cuff Jesse to the steering wheel and herd Skyler and the kids into the truck as well and just take them all—but the longer he’d thought about it the more he’d realized it just wasn’t feasible.

Skyler wouldn’t have gone with him, and she wouldn’t have let him take the kids without her—especially not with Jesse there while Skyler considered him dangerous. It was an irrational impulse anyway, to try to drag his family away from their home instead of leaving them with some plausible deniability for whenever the police and DEA come knocking. Skyler will be fine—she can lie, plead ignorance, claim Walt threatened her into silence. And the kids—the farther they stay away from all of this, the better. Walt will figure out a way to still get some of his money to them eventually. Maybe he’ll even be able to see his kids again someday.

In the meantime, he has a partner to win over—because he doesn’t just want Jesse to speak to him and share his bed and his body with him—he wants him back, entirely. He wants his loyalty, his trust, his love even. He wants Jesse to let Walt hold him and kiss his neck and show casual affection outside of getting off. He wants Jesse to look at him with admiration and affection and respect the way he used to. He wants Jesse to believe Walt cares about him, because he does. He still wants to fix this, and he wants Jesse to be his partner in every sense of the word this time.

Walt finishes cooking dinner and sets two empty plates at the table, along with silverware and a bottle of water for each of them. He leaves the food on the stove to keep it warm in the meantime.

He sits down in the chair facing the bathroom door, folds his hands, waits.

Jesse eventually opens the door and steps out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips. Walt stares but Jesse still isn’t looking at him. Jesse walks over to the bed, digs through his things for some clothes. Walt keeps staring. Jesse keeps his back turned and puts on a shirt, then drops the towel so he can pull on a pair of boxers, and for a few glorious seconds Walt gets an eyeful of Jesse’s bare ass. Then Jesse pulls on pants and thick socks and a sweater, and then—finally—he turns around and heads for the kitchen table. He still isn’t looking at Walt.

Jesse sits down, stares at his empty plate, sighs.

Walt isn’t sure what to say, and he opens his mouth to make some awkward comment about the food being ready on the stove but Jesse beats him to speaking.

“Your brother-in-law told me something,” Jesse says, eyes still fixed on the table, “when he was talking me into wearing a wire to meet you…”

Walt waits but Jesse trails off and doesn’t elaborate.

“What did Hank say?” Walt asks after a moment.

Jesse bites his lip, still doesn’t look up.

“Bunch of bullshit about how you’re all cold and logical and shit about everything except me, and how you care so much about me.”

Walt blinks, feeling caught out, but he immediately says, “That isn’t bullshit.” He bites the bullet and adds, “I do care about you. A lot,” he adds, feeling like an awkward teenager at how it comes out.

Jesse finally looks up and meets his eyes, but then he scoffs and leans forward a little and says in the same tone someone would say checkmate, “Then why’d you have a fucking hit-man waiting for me at that plaza?”

Walt frowns, confused. “I didn’t.”

“Nice try, I fucking saw him. You should’ve shelled out for a real pro who would actually know how to blend in—”

“Jesse, there was no hit-man,” Walt interrupts.

“Bullshit!”

“No—I went alone, just like I said I would—”

Jesse shakes his head, says, “You’re a fucking liar—”

“I wanted to talk to you, to fix things—I don’t know who you saw, but I went there alone Jesse, I swear on my life,” Walt tells him, desperation creeping into his tone because if this is where everything went wrong, if this was the last straw that made him lose Jesse—over some goddamn misunderstanding—then all he has to do is convince him of the truth.

“So you’re saying some skinhead thug that looked like one of Jack’s guys just happened to be lurking there when I showed up?” Jesse says, giving him a humorless smile.

“Yes! I didn’t call Jack until after you called and threatened me and forced my hand. And I have no clue what thug you’re talking about but he wasn’t there on my orders.”

Jesse locks eyes with him and seems to waver a moment, but then he shakes his head again, says, “You’re just trying to fuck with my head and turn this around to make it my fault everything went to shit—”

“Jesse—”

“—trying to say if I would’ve just talked to you that day then we wouldn’t be on the run and your brother and his partner wouldn’t be dead, is that it?”

Walt tilts his head slightly, says, “Well…” before thinking better of it, because while that wasn’t the point he was driving at it also wasn’t an incorrect assessment in his book.

Jesse scoffs and glares at him but his voice breaks when he snaps, “Yo, fuck that and fuck you.”

“Jesse—”

But Jesse storms across the cabin to the bathroom and shuts himself inside, slamming the door.

Walt’s on his feet following him before he even consciously decides to. He was so goddamn close, he almost had him—

There’s no lock on the bathroom door and Walt’s grateful for that as he opens it and barges in. Jesse’s standing by the sink with his back to the door, one hand holding on to the edge of the counter and the other pressed over his mouth like he thinks he might vomit. He dry-heaves as Walt watches, but nothing comes up.

Walt steps closer, steps up beside him. He hesitates, then puts one hand on Jesse’s back and hopes Jesse finds it comforting instead of presumptuous.

Jesse trembles a little at the touch but he leans into it, just a little, just enough for Walt to feel it.

Walt starts rubbing Jesse’s back, asks, “You okay?”

“No,” Jesse snaps, crossing his arms but not moving away from Walt’s touch.

Jesse glances over to meet Walt’s eyes and studies him in silence for a moment. There are tears in Jesse’s eyes and Walt wants to kiss them away.

Maybe that shows on his face, because Jesse blinks at him a few times like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, then mutters, “Fuck,” and looks away.

Walt doesn’t say anything, he just keeps rubbing Jesse’s back.

Jesse sniffles and after a long moment he says, “What would you have said? If I’da sat down on that bench by you that day?”

Walt sighs, thinks the wrong thing, evidently. He already said it to Jesse on their way to the vacuum repair shop—that Brock was never in danger of actually dying, that Walt hadn’t seen any other way to secure Jesse’s help killing Gus to save both their lives. He doesn’t want to keep saying the wrong thing, doesn’t want to keep loving him the wrong way but damned if he knows what the right way is. Walt is selfish and controlling and obsessive and so is his love, but does that make it any less real?

“Does it matter?” Walt says. He doesn’t want to rehash the same argument over Brock, doesn’t want Jesse to close off again.

“What would you say now, if we had a do-over?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do,” Jesse counters.

“I would…”

When Walt glances up Jesse’s eyes are locked on him again and there’s something fraught and anticipatory in them, something vulnerable that makes Walt’s better judgment snap right in half.

Walt leans in and kisses him.

Jesse inhales sharply and freezes at first, and Walt wonders for one heart-stopping second whether he’s ruined everything—but then Jesse makes a choked-off noise against his lips that might be a sob or might be a moan and he presses forward, he kisses Walt back and reaches both hands up for Walt’s face as if to hold him there.

Jesse kisses him like he’s drowning, like he’s desperate, like he’s devouring some new drug—Walt’s drowning right there with him, just as desperate and already addicted.

This, for Walt, is more intense than a usual first kiss—it’s damn near a religious experience—it’s beautiful and terrifying and nothing will ever live up to it. But that’s okay—he doesn’t want any more first kisses to compare it to, he wants Jesse to be his last first kiss, his last everything.

Jesse pulls back and it’s devastating but he stays close, he locks eyes with Walt as they both gasp for air. Jesse’s eyes are so blue—a piercing blue, Blue Sky blue—Walt could drown in them, would drown in them happily if Jesse asked him to.

“Say it,” Jesse breathes, begging and commanding him at the same time. “I think I know, but I need to hear you say it.”

Walt blinks, still dazed by the kiss and he starts to ask, “What—?”

“Just say the words, Mr. White,” Jesse pleads.

And suddenly Walt knows what Jesse means, what he must’ve seen in Walt’s eyes or tasted in his kiss, the truth that Walt himself doesn’t often dare to look at directly because deep down he knows it’s his biggest weakness.

“I love you,” Walt confesses, “and I—I need you, Jesse. More than anything.”

Jesse’s eyes soften even as he lets out a half-sob. He looks devastated and relieved and broken and put back together all at once. He gives Walt a wobbly smile and then throws his arms around Walt’s neck, burying his face against his chest. It feels like a surrender. Walt hopes it’s a surrender.

Walt holds him close, one hand cradling the back of Jesse’s head. Jesse’s the one crying in his arms but Walt feels like the vulnerable one here and he hates it—hates feeling sliced open and laid bare and uncertain. Jesse hasn’t said anything back but he hasn’t pulled away either and Jesse kissed him back and Walt chooses to believe that means something.

After a minute or ten or an hour, Jesse sniffles and quietly says, “You know, I thought I was being sarcastic when I told Schrader you were totally gay for me.” He keeps his face hidden against Walt’s chest, like it’s easier to talk that way, easier to be honest.

“Did you?” Walt says, not sure what else to say to that. Jesse is intuitively good with people in a way Walt has always envied and never managed to master for himself—except apparently Jesse has one big Walt-shaped blind spot. Walt could run out of fingers listing each time he’d been certain he’d showed his hand after saving Jesse or doing something to help him or to keep him, yet somehow Jesse had still believed, probably up until that kiss, that Walt didn’t care about him and still intended to kill him in the future.

“He didn’t laugh or nothing, either,” Jesse tells him. “Like he thought I was just spitting facts. I been thinking about that since we’ve been stuck here. Specially after that night with the, uh, the jerking off.” He sort of laughs and then clarifies, “I mean the first time, when I wasn’t talking and you were being a dick.”

Walt tenses at the reminder of Jesse’s weeks of silence. Jesse must feel it because his arms around Walt loosen and his hands start rubbing soothing paths across Walt’s back.

“Yo, chill,” Jesse tells him, “like you said, we’re not doing the not-talking thing again.”

Walt exhales, forces himself to relax, wonders what he’s done in his life amidst his long list of crimes to deserve this moment with this caring and beautiful boy. You didn’t go through with having him killed, a possessive part of his brain answers, quiet but certain. You spared his life and now he belongs to you. Walt only wishes it were that simple, that easy, that final.

Jesse sniffles, pulls back a little and looks up to meet Walt’s eyes.

Walt stares back at those baby blues and doesn’t know what to say.

When Walt opens his mouth, what comes out is, “I cooked dinner… mashed potatoes and the stew you picked out.”

He wants to say more, is afraid of saying more, afraid of screwing this up.

“Okay.”

For a moment it seems like Jesse might say more, or maybe he’s afraid too because ultimately he just nods towards the door and then leads Walt out to the kitchen.

Dinner that night is on the quiet side, but it’s a different kind of silence this time. The comfortable, hopeful kind. Walt doesn’t mind it. It’s the calm after the storm, once the wind’s stopped blowing and the plants are soaking up the rainfall.

When Walt goes to bed that night, Jesse doesn’t wait three hours to join him.

They lay down together, Walt going first and laying on his back closest to the wall. Jesse lays down on his side, but he starts out facing Walt for a change. Walt turns his head to meet Jesse’s eyes, finds him already looking up at Walt and biting his lower lip like he wants to say something.

“What?” Walt prompts, careful to keep his tone gentle.

Jesse chews on his lip some more, doesn’t answer.

Walt looks away, up at the ceiling. Tells himself not to push any more, that if anything else happens tonight it has to be Jesse who instigates it.

The minutes keep ticking past and the day catches up to him and Walt’s closing his eyes, he’s halfway drifting off when Jesse’s quiet voice brings him back.

“Mr. White?”

“Hmm?”

“Just. Um. If you wake up like that again and I’m still asleep, you don’t gotta stop… You can do what you’ve been letting me do. If you want.”

It takes Walt a moment to parse all of that, and another for a small spike of alarm to wake him fully back up once he realizes what Jesse’s referring to—the time Walt woke up hard and grinding against Jesse but he stopped himself and turned to lay back-to-back with him instead. Evidently Jesse had been awake through that. Embarrassment over being caught gives way to stunned anticipation because—finally—his brain processes that Jesse is giving him permission.

“You… really?” Walt asks, to be sure he hasn’t misheard.

“Yeah. Fair’s fair,” Jesse says, like it’s nothing.

It’s everything.

By the time Walt finally unties his tongue to reply, Jesse has already fallen asleep next to him.

 

 

Notes:

Comments and con-crit are always welcome and very much appreciated 💕 I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the pacing of the relationship development...

Chapter 4

Notes:

warnings for: some dub-con, Walt thinking about noncon again (no acting upon it), so much smut, consensual somnophilia, discussion of switching and top/bottom versatility.... NSFW obviously

This chapter is for WaltJesse Week 2024, day 6 prompt: First Time or Last Time (first time)

Yoooooo make sure you didn’t miss chapter 3- I’m updating two days in a row for WJ Week and ao3 was being glitchy yesterday so…
Enjoy!

*

Walt wakes up in the middle of the night, warm and content and comfortable, and it takes him a moment to recognize that the warm weight laying halfway on top of him is Jesse, asleep with his head on Walt’s chest again and one arm flung across him.

Despite the anticipation that kept him laying awake for what felt like hours after Jesse gave him permission to touch him and get off against him and instigate things while Jesse’s still asleep, Walt isn’t even disappointed when he realizes neither of them are hard.

He just presses a kiss to the top of Jesse’s head and goes back to sleep.

 

*

In the morning it’s a different story. Or it’s the same story with a different ending, one of those choose-your-own-adventure books he used to read to Junior, the ones where Walt always kept a finger or three marking the pages for the last few choices so they could go back if he didn’t like what happened.

In the morning he wakes up so hard it’s almost painful.  Jesse’s still asleep, tucked up against him with his head under Walt’s chin and they’re on their sides again facing each other this time. Walt can feel the bulge of Jesse’s erection pressed against him through their clothes.

Walt smiles, gently cards his hand through Jesse’s hair, and decides to make good on that permission he’s been given.

You can do what you’ve been letting me do, Jesse had said, and Walt had given Jesse blanket permission to do whatever he wanted while Walt was asleep, short of actually trying to fuck him. And while Walt hasn’t yet let Jesse wake him up with a blowjob, he certainly would. It falls under the established parameters. It’s allowed, surely.

He pulls away from Jesse, going carefully and so slowly, trying not to wake him as he puts a few inches of distance between them. He presses a kiss to Jesse’s forehead, then gently nudges at his shoulder and turns him on his back instead of his side. Jesse makes a sleepy little humming noise and shifts around for a second, and Walt pauses.

Jesse settles back down and Walt moves again, scooting down the mattress a few careful inches at a time, trying not to jostle his partner. Walt shifts down until his face is level with the tent in Jesse’s pants. He throws one leg over Jesse’s and presses his own erection against Jesse’s calf for some relief.

Walt peers up at Jesse’s face—still peaceful and asleep and gorgeous—then he nuzzles his face against Jesse’s erection, the soft cotton of Jesse’s pajamas catching against the rasp of Walt’s goatee.

Jesse murmurs in his sleep and Walt does it again, this time letting the line of Jesse’s cock trace against his cheekbone. Walt presses a kiss to the tip, mouths around it through Jesse’s clothes.

Jesse’s breath hitches and he twitches up into the contact. Walt reaches for Jesse’s hips, both palms splaying over his hipbones to hold him down as Walt mouths at him again.

There’s a sharp inhale and Walt glances up as he rolls his hips again, pressing his erection against Jesse’s leg.

Jesse’s blinking his eyes open and staring down at Walt like he thinks he might still be dreaming.

“Morning,” Walt tells him, nuzzling his face against Jesse’s cock and pressing another teasing kiss to the tip through his clothes.

“Mnngngh,” Jesse says.

Walt chuckles and reaches for the waistband of Jesse’s sweatpants with both hands, curls his fingertips underneath it as he asks, “Is that a ‘keep going’ or a ‘get off of me, pervert’?”

Jesse licks his lips, takes a second to remember how to form words.

“Keep going, for sure.”

“Good answer,” Walt tells him.

Jesse shivers a little and licks his lips again, eyes glued to Walt’s.

The last of Walt’s restraint crumbles and he tugs down Jesse’s pants and boxers in one go. Jesse’s cock springs free and Walt wraps one hand around the base of it to hold it steady. He nuzzles his cheek against it one more time—finally skin to skin—then he licks a stripe up Jesse’s cock from base to tip before taking it in his mouth, tucking his lips over his teeth and sinking down as far as he can without choking.

“Holy fuck,” Jesse gasps out, one hand skimming fingertips across the back of Walt’s head—he’s probably used to having some hair to grab in this situation, but he keeps his touch light like he’s trying not to press too hard on the bruises from Walt’s fall. Considerate boy; even barely awake and in the middle of receiving a blowjob he’s thinking of Walt’s comfort—Walt doesn’t deserve him, but he’ll take everything Jesse’s willing to give him anyway.

Walt takes him deeper and fights his gag reflex, swallowing around Jesse’s cock as his eyes sting with involuntary tears. He lets go of the base and grasps Jesse’s hips in both hands again, urges him to buck up, urges him to fuck Walt’s mouth as rough as he wants. It’s a gift and a sacrifice and an act of devotion all rolled into one, showing Jesse he’ll take it—however rough, however much Jesse wants to give him, he’ll take it. Walt isn’t the best with pretty words and soft romantic gestures—sometimes he tries, but he feels more honest with violent devotion and rough love, with fiery explosions and the thump thump of his tires over those rival thugs Jesse so recklessly went after when his friend got killed. Walt said run instead of I love you that night and expected Jesse to hear it anyway. He hopes he hears it now.

“Mr. White,” Jesse gasps out, fingertips tracing over Walt’s head, the touch almost reverent and so gentle contrasted with the hot fullness of Jesse’s cock hitting the back of his throat.

Jesse’s hands move away to cover Walt’s own, entwining their fingers and stealing Walt’s grip away from his hips. Without Walt urging him up so harshly, the rhythm of Jesse’s hips slows to a gentler pace, carefully rolling up to meet him like a request instead of a demand, a please can I go deeper instead of the fucking take it Walt had inflicted on himself.

Walt goes with it—he’ll take Jesse’s mercy too, even if it’s not what he deserves.

It doesn’t take long at all for Jesse’s smooth rhythm to stutter, for him to gasp out, “Mr. White, I’m close, I—”

Walt doesn’t pull off, wouldn’t dream of it. He hollows his cheeks and sucks harder, draws a strangled moan out of Jesse and then he’s swallowing around his cock as Jesse spills down his throat.

“Holy shit,” Jesse whispers, sounding wrecked and breathless.

Walt finally pulls away, pressing one more kiss to the tip of Jesse’s cock as he goes.

Walt’s own cock is still rock hard but it won’t take much to tip him over the edge, not after that. Jesse’s eyes are locked on him as Walt brings one of Jesse’s hands up to his mouth and licks his palm. Walt shoves his own sweatpants down his thighs and then guides Jesse’s spit-slicked hand to Walt’s cock as he leans down over him to steal a possessive kiss.

Jesse kisses him back and strokes him just the way Walt taught him, his grip firm and confident and perfect, and Walt’s already so keyed-up it’s only moments before he’s coming.

He breaks the kiss after—reluctantly, but he needs to catch his breath.

Jesse keeps his grip on Walt’s cock, slides up and down it in one more teasing glide before letting go. Then he wraps both arms around Walt’s back and shoulders, gently urges him to lay down on top of him.

“Hang on,” Walt says, glancing between them and then reaching down to wipe his cum off of Jesse’s skin first. Wouldn’t be pleasant for it to dry and stick them together. Walt licks it off his own hand without thinking, and catches Jesse staring at him like he’s fascinated. “What?” Walt asks as he lays down, settling on top of Jesse as comfortably as he can.

“Nothing,” Jesse murmurs, one hand gently resting on the back of Walt’s neck while his other arm wraps securely across his back, “just—this kinda feels unreal, you know?”

“In a good way, I hope?”

“Yeah. Mostly,” Jesse says, and Walt believes him.

 

*

Breakfast is instant oatmeal with just water again.

They’re halfway through their last box of oatmeal. They’re down to half a box of Cheerios, their last two eggs, about a quarter of a gallon of milk, four frozen dinners, two more packs of instant mashed potato mix, a can of beef stew, and one last box mix of macaroni and cheese. There’s plenty of coffee, at least, even if Walt will eventually run out of milk for it.

Walt tries not to worry about their dwindling food supply—today is day seven of his truce with Jesse, and Ed should be back in roughly the next four days. They’ll be fine.

 

*

“Yo, you want heuvos rancheros for lunch? I kinda feel like you earned it this morning,” Jesse says through an awkward smile. He’s standing in the kitchen like he’s trying to decide what to cook.

Walt smiles back but says, “No, I don’t want to use the last of the eggs just yet.”

Jesse shrugs, glances at the little magnetized mini-calendar stuck to the fridge. “Suit yourself. Vacuum dude should be back in a few days though, right?”

“Should be,” Walt agrees.

Jesse must pick up on something in his tone, because his eyes narrow and he asks, “What, you think he’ll ditch us or something?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Mr. White,” Jesse repeats in that don’t bullshit me tone of his.

“No, I just—our food supply getting this low makes me uncomfortable, all right?”

Jesse looks at him for another moment, then says, “Okay. I can skip lunches til he gets back, stretch our food longer. When I was on crystal I pretty much never had an appetite, so skipping meals ain’t nothing new…” he shrugs and trails off.

Walt nods, says, “Good idea. We’ll just have breakfast and dinner until we get more supplies.”

Jesse tilts his head, says, “Yo, I said I’ll skip. You’re still healing, you need to eat.”

“I’m fine,” Walt insists. “The bruises look worse than they feel at this point.”

“You still need to eat.”

“I’m not hungry anyway, Jesse.”

Jesse sighs and looks like he regrets his suggestion, but he stops arguing and goes to watch his movie for the two or three hundredth time.

 

*

Dinner that night is one frozen fettuccine alfredo entre split between the two of them. Jesse wants to make mashed potatoes to go with it but Walt insists on saving them. Jesse doesn’t argue, but Walt is pretty sure Jesse puts slightly more than half of the pasta on Walt’s plate on purpose.

Jesse chatters through dinner, telling him a story about some prank he and his friends played on a substitute teacher back in middle school.

Walt is half listening and half mentally re-tallying their food inventory. Ed had given them an estimate for his return, a rough time frame rather than an exact date. They should’ve been more careful with their food from the start. Shouldn’t have indulged in three regular meals a day this whole time.

“Yo, are you even listening?”

“Yeah—you had her sign a hall pass and stole the pad of detention slips off the desk right under her nose.”

“And then what?” Jesse asks, and Walt doesn’t know the answer. Jesse sighs, says, “Quit stressing about the food, yo. It’ll be fine.”

Walt waves one dismissive hand, lies, “I’m not stressing.”

“You’re a horrible liar, you know.”

“I am not,” he snaps defensively, then belatedly he adds on, “lying. Jesse, I’m not stressing, honestly.”

“Okay. Sure.”

They’re both quiet through the rest of dinner, and Walt starts to worry that Jesse is upset with him.

But after they do the dishes, Jesse follows him to bed and doesn’t even wait for them to fall asleep first, he just pushes Walt down onto his back and climbs on top of him.

Jesse kisses him and runs his hands up under Walt’s sweater and the shirt underneath it.

“Take this off,” Jesse murmurs against his lips while his thumbs tease Walt’s nipples under his clothes.

“Yours too,” Walt tells him, and Jesse leans back to give Walt room to sit up a little while they both take off their shirts. Walt has about two seconds to admire the dragon tattoo on Jesse’s chest before he’s leaning back down and capturing Walt’s lips again, something almost feral in his neediness.

The next time Jesse pulls back he reaches down between them, hooks his fingertips underneath Walt’s waistband before looking back up to meet Walt’s eyes. Jesse quirks one eyebrow up in a silent question, and Walt nods and nudges Jesse off of him.

“Take yours off too,” Walt tells him as he slips out of his sweatpants, but when Jesse climbs off of him and out of bed, he heads over to the kitchen and Walt’s stomach sinks.

He didn’t think he misread things, and Jesse was clearly—oh.

Jesse grabs a bottle of olive oil out of the kitchen cabinet and brings it back over to the bed, biting his lip and giving Walt a nervous glance.

“I’ve, uh, never done this before, but I wanna try.”

Walt nods immediately. As if he would ever say no.

Jesse takes his pants and boxers off, climbs back into bed.

“How exactly do you want to do this?” Walt asks.

When he decided he’d take and give anything Jesse wanted him to, that included Jesse’s cock and his own ass. Walt’s experience with men is limited to college experimentation and he very much prefers being on top, but as with everything else he’s willing to make an exception for Jesse.

Jesse seems confused by the question though, and he gestures to the olive oil as if its mere presence is the answer.

“Yes,” Walt says patiently, “I understand you’re implying anal sex, but which one of us do you intend to be on top?”

Jesse blinks at him, then opens and closes his mouth a few times without saying anything. Finally he manages, “Um… I kinda assumed you would be?”

“I would prefer that,” Walt tells him.

Jesse studies him another moment, tilts his head. “But you’re saying the other way around is, like, not impossible?”

Walt holds his gaze, honestly answers, “Not my preference, but not impossible.”

Jesse bites his lip and something in his gaze turns soft and affectionate as he leans down to kiss Walt again.

“Say it again,” Jesse murmurs against his lips.

“It’s not impossible,” Walt repeats—if the thought of topping Walt gets Jesse worked up faster, he’s all for it.

“No, I meant the uh, the other thing,” Jesse falters, almost seems embarrassed as he asks again, “Say the words?”

Oh.

“I love you, Jesse…” Walt tells him, and it feels a little less like pulling teeth to get it out this time. Jesse practically melts into the next kiss, throwing one leg across Walt so he’s straddling him now as he reaches for the olive oil. “And I need you… so much,” Walt says against his lips as Jesse uses one hand to slick Walt’s cock with the olive oil.

After a moment Jesse leans back, breaking the kiss and lifting himself up as if he’s about to just go for it, as if he intends to just sink down on Walt’s cock for the first time with no preparation.

“Wait, wait—Jesse,” Walt says, reaching for his hips to stop him. “Christ, you can’t just—here, spread your legs a little farther. Give me the bottle.”

Jesse bites his lip and watches Walt slick up three of his fingers with the olive oil.

Walt puts his clean hand on Jesse’s hip, then reaches up between his legs with the other.

“Breathe, don’t tense up,” Walt tells him as he finds that tight ring of muscle and pushes the first slick finger inside.

Jesse stares down at the hand between his legs and a blush spreads across his cheeks as Walt fingers him open. Jesse’s cock is hard and already leaking pre-cum when Walt works a second finger in beside the first and starts to scissor them. Two fingers become three, and when Jesse hisses a little at the stretch Walt tries to reach for his partner’s cock with his free hand but Jesse pushes it away before it gets there.

“Don’t,” Jesse tells him breathlessly, “I’ll fucking come. Just keep going.”

So Walt does, avoiding Jesse’s prostate on purpose.

When he deems Jesse ready he withdraws his fingers, ignoring Jesse’s little whine of protest.

He puts his slick hand on Jesse’s other hip, uses both hands to guide him down.

Jesse locks eyes with him and the pupils are blown wide in those baby blues. The tip of Walt’s cock nudges against Jesse’s hole and pauses there.

“Bear down when you first take it in,” Walt instructs him, “like you’re trying to push me back out. It actually helps the muscles relax more.”

Jesse raises an eyebrow at him but he listens, and the head of Walt’s cock pops in easy when Jesse starts sinking down onto it.

“Fuck,” Jesse breathes.

“Slowly,” Walt tells him, even though his hands are clenching Jesse’s hips as he fights the urge to just pull him down and ram home all at once.

Jesse bites his lip and keeps going, lowering himself one glorious inch at a time until he’s sitting on Walt’s hips and Walt’s cock is balls-deep up inside him.

Jesse looks down at Walt like he doesn’t quite know how he got here or what he’s supposed to do next, but his pupils are still blown wide and his cheeks are still red and his cock is still hard so Walt just smiles and resigns himself to being Jesse’s teacher one more time.

“Take a minute to get used to it,” Walt tells him, tugging his hips forward. “Rock with it a little, try to relax.” Jesse shifts around, moving his hips back and forth without lifting up. It feels good but not good enough, but Walt fights the urge to rush him—he wants this to be good for Jesse too, wants him to want more, wants him to keep coming back for it. “Come here, kiss me,” Walt tells him, tugging at his hips again.

Jesse carefully leans down, kisses Walt without letting his cock slip free. Walt searches out Jesse’s tongue with his own, kisses him while he guides Jesse’s hips to rock back and forth and then in a circular motion while Walt’s cock stays buried inside him.

He feels it when Jesse adjusts, a subtle relaxing of that tight heat gripping Walt’s cock.

He breaks the kiss, tells Jesse, “Lift up now and ride me—start slow, couple inches at a time.”

Jesse locks eyes with him and does as he’s told—once he gets used to it, he’s a natural. He keeps a good pace—not too fast or too slow—and he’s careful not to lift up too far and let Walt slip out. He plants his hands on Walt’s chest for leverage, fingers splayed out and his thumbs teasing at Walt’s nipples while he keeps riding his cock.

Walt can feel his balls drawing up and he knows he’s close so he tightens his grip on Jesse’s hips, adjusts his angle the next time he sinks down, and teaches him one last thing.

Jesse’s eyes go wide and his mouth drops open in a porn-worthy moan as the change in angle makes Walt’s cock nail Jesse’s prostate.

“Holy fuck,” Jesse breathes, giving Walt an incredulous look. A why didn’t you show me that sooner you prick look if Walt had to put a name to it.

Walt just grins at him and urges him to do it again.

Jesse keeps riding him, lifts up and finds that angle again, and only moments later they’re both coming hard, Walt spilling deep inside Jesse’s tight heat and Jesse’s cock spurting between them without even being touched.

Jesse lets himself fall forward onto Walt’s chest to catch his breath, hips and ass still firmly seated on Walt’s cock.

“Holy shit that was awesome,” Jesse murmurs against Walt’s skin, sounding worn-out but amazed.

“Yeah… You did good, Jesse,” Walt tells him, meaning it.

Jesse nuzzles his face against Walt’s chest, presses a teasing kiss to one of Walt’s nipples. His ass seems to clench tighter around Walt’s softening cock for a moment too, and Walt makes a mental note to praise him more next time.

Next time, Walt muses, and he’s borderline euphoric that he even got this time, let alone that a next time seems possible and even downright likely.

Walt wonders if he actually died when he hit his head, and if everything since then has just been his brain misfiring and giving him a fantasy-come-true of a hallucination on his way out.

He decides he wouldn’t mind much if that were the case.

 

 

*

Day eight of his truce with Jesse and approximately three days before Ed is due back, Walt wakes to the sounds of a plastic clattering in the kitchen and Jesse cussing under his breath. Walt blinks his eyes open, sees Jesse bending to picking up a couple empty bowls off the floor.

When Jesse stands back up, Walt closes his eyes and pretends to still be asleep—he’s groggy and his head aches and he’s more than a little disappointed that Jesse didn’t wake him up in a more fun way before getting out of bed.

Walt waits a few minutes until he hears the coffeemaker gurgling to pretend to wake up.

Jesse’s standing in the kitchen with his arms crossed tight against his chest, staring at the coffee pot. There’s a pan of water on the stove, presumably heating up for their oatmeal.

Walt sits up with a big fake yawn, and Jesse jumps a little when he catches the movement in his peripheral.

Jesse untucks one hand from his crossed arms just long enough to lift it in an awkward wave before looking away again, seeming awkward and almost guilty. 

“Good morning,” Walt tells him as he gets out of bed and goes to sit at the table.

“Morning,” Jesse says, and Walt can’t quite read his tone.

Does Jesse regret it already? Are they back to pretending nothing’s changed until one of them wakes up hard again?

Walt can’t quite bring himself to ask. Can’t quite bring himself to look closely at Jesse either, afraid to see regret written in his face or his posture.

“Your head hurting again?” Jesse asks him as he brings two bowls of oatmeal to the table.

“Kind of.”

Jesse goes and gets him an Aleve. Walt takes it.

Breakfast is quiet. Walt barely tastes his oatmeal.

 

 

*

After breakfast, Jesse goes over to watch his movie again.

Walt does the dishes. When he’s finished and drying his hands, Jesse calls over to him as if he’s been waiting, “Yo, your head feeling any better yet?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good.” Jesse chews his bottom lip for a moment like he’s working up his nerve, then he says, “So… do you want to, uh, Magorium and chill, or..?”

Walt looks at him, takes a moment to try to decipher that, then gives up and says, “Do I what?”

Jesse gives him a sly sort of smile, says, “You know, since we don’t have Netflix…”

Walt blinks a few times, still lost, then repeats, “What?”

Jesse rolls his eyes and finally translates, “Do you wanna watch the movie with me and mess around?”

Walt feels a rush of simultaneous relief and desire but he hesitates, because it feels like a trick question somehow. “Why does the movie have to be involved?”

Jesse scoffs and mutters “Fucking never mind,” as he turns off the television.

Walt’s stomach drops and he gets the distinct impression that he screwed up, but then Jesse stands up and walks over to him and pulls him down into an insistent kiss, one hand on the back of Walt’s neck and the other hand dipping into the waistband of his pants to tug him towards the bed instead of the television.

Walt kisses him back and moves with him, relieved again and eager to go along with anything Jesse wants right now. Their clothes decorate the floor along their path to the bed.

Jesse gets on the mattress and lays down, tugging Walt down on top of him between his spread legs.

Walt kisses him again, tries to decide exactly what to do with him this time.

Jesse takes the decision off his hands by reaching over and grabbing the olive oil off the chair beside the bed where they’d left it.

“Here.” Jesse meets Walt’s eyes and boldly tells him, “You do the work this time, and don’t wait til the end to start hitting that good spot.”

Walt thinks I might’ve created a monster. Walt thinks he doesn’t mind at all.

Walt thinks—several breathless minutes later with Jesse’s baby blue eyes staring up at him in a mix of pleasure and captivation as Walt thrusts into him those last few times and brings them both over the edge—that he wouldn’t change one single goddamn thing that led them here.

 

*

They skip lunch.

Jesse watches his movie.

Walt goes outside to bring some more firewood from the shed up to the porch.

After a few hours, Jesse manages to drag Walt over to the plush rug in front of the television to finally watch that asinine movie with him.

Walt sits in front of Jesse between his spread legs, leaning back against his chest. Jesse wraps his arms around him and rests his chin on his shoulder, and he seems to have a sixth sense for when Walt starts getting annoyed enough with the movie to think about pretending he needs a restroom break to leave—Jesse will kiss his neck, or nip at his ear, or brush over Walt’s nipples through his shirt as he adjusts his arms around him, and Walt will decide five more minutes that turn into another ten or twenty until he starts getting antsy again.

They make it through the entire movie, and it’s just as ridiculous as it always sounded whenever Walt overheard bits and pieces. It’s about a young woman who works in a magical toy store trying to convince her two-hundred something year old eccentric mentor not to let himself die by showing him how much he still has to live for.

“Well,” Walt says as the end credits roll, “that’s an hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back.”

Jesse huffs out a laugh, his breath warming Walt’s neck.

“It’s not that bad,” Jesse argues.

“It is that bad, you’re just ignoring how bad it is because it’s the only movie you have.”

Jesse laughs but then goes quiet, and Walt feels the mood shift.

“What?” Walt asks, hoping to draw out whatever’s infected his partner’s thoughts before it has time to spread or fester.

“Nothing, just… I thought you’d like it if you actually watched it,” Jesse says, and Walt gets the distinct impression that he’s lying. “Maybe whatshisname will bring more movies.”

“Ed. His name is Ed, I don’t know why you have such a hard time remembering it.”

“Okay, Ed, whatever.” Jesse glances over at the clock and so does Walt. Almost six. “What do you want for dinner?” Jesse asks.

Walt hesitates. “Maybe we should skip tonight.”

Jesse sighs, but says, “Okay, but we aren’t skipping tomorrow,” and he restarts the movie.

Walt opens his mouth to complain, but Jesse snakes one hand down the front of Walt’s sweatpants to grasp Walt’s cock and stroke it slowly, almost like a question. Magorium and chill?  Walt settles back down against Jesse and relaxes into the touch, reaches down to run his hands along Jesse’s thighs where they’re bracketing him.

Jesse teases him, gets him close and then backs off twice before Walt loses his patience and turns around and pins Jesse to the floor, kissing him roughly and tugging both of their cocks free. Walt presses their lengths together and wraps his hand around them both as best as he can, jerking them off at the same time.

One of Jesse’s hands joins Walt’s and before long they’re making a mess of each other right there in the middle of the floor, movie forgotten in the background.

 

*

Walt wakes up in the middle of the night to hot wet beautiful suction around his cock.

There’s just enough moonlight streaming through the window to see Jesse’s head bobbing over Walt’s crotch as he sucks him, one hand around the base of Walt’s cock and the other fondling his balls. Jesse keeps gagging when he tries to deep-throat him, but if there’s one place the effort counts for something, it’s here.

“Jesse,” Walt gasps out, and Jesse’s eyes flick up to meet Walt’s in the near-dark.

Jesse hums around him, like he’s asking a question, and Walt’s eyes slam shut as he bucks up and comes just like that.

Jesse pulls off spluttering, and the chilly air is an unpleasant shock against Walt’s cock after the heat of Jesse’s mouth.

“The fuck, man,” Jesse complains, wiping his mouth. “Warn a guy.”

Walt doesn’t reply, too busy catching his breath and wishing he would’ve woken up sooner to enjoy that for longer.

After a moment Jesse says, “Yo, um,” to get Walt’s attention, and when Walt glances at him Jesse quirks one eyebrow and gives him a hopeful look as he reaches down to put one hand on Walt’s thigh and pointedly spread his legs farther apart. Jesse’s hard and tenting his sweatpants, and the olive oil is still on the chair next to the bed where they’d left it, and Walt had told him not impossible.

“Can I—?”

“No,” Walt says on reflex.

Jesse blinks and his face falls but he takes his hand off Walt’s thigh and moves away without protest.

“Not that, not tonight,” Walt amends. “Come here,” he offers instead, sitting up and trading places with Jesse and ducking between his legs to suck him off in return.

After, when Jesse is sated and breathless underneath him, Walt leans up and gives him a deep and filthy kiss, savoring the taste of the two of them mingling between their mouths.

 

 

*

Day nine of their truce Walt decides to stop using that as a metric for counting, since they’re quite a ways beyond just a truce now. It’s approximately two days before Ed is due back. Countdown E-minus-two, Walt thinks, more amused with the turn of phrase than he probably should be.

He needs coffee—the light coming through the windows is brighter than it usually is when he wakes up, and his internal clock is telling him he overslept.

Jesse is still asleep with his head on Walt’s chest and his arm thrown across him. It’s becoming their normal position to wake up in, and Walt hates making him move—but again, he needs coffee.

He gently nudges Jesse off of him, manages to move him without waking him up.

Walt climbs out of bed carefully, and goes over to the kitchen to make coffee. Jesse’s usually a deep sleeper—the sounds and the smell of coffee brewing shouldn’t wake him.

He opens the fridge and freezer doors and then the cabinet to re-count their inventory.

He sighs and makes them each a packet of oatmeal, which leaves only two more packets of oatmeal in the box—after tomorrow they’ll be eating dry Cheerios for breakfast.

Walt stares at the coffee pot and jumps when Jesse’s arms wrap around him from behind.

“Morning,” Jesse says, amusement in his tone at having successfully snuck up on Walt.

“Morning, Jesse.” Walt turns in Jesse’s arms so they’re facing each other instead, then leans into kiss him.

Jesse’s cock is hard, and Walt’s isn’t but it could get there easy—being confined to a cabin with a willing Jesse Pinkman has done wonders for Walt’s libido.

“Breakfast first,” Walt tells him, handing him a bowl of oatmeal.

“Mr. White,” Jesse nearly whines.

“It’ll get cold.”

“We have a microwave,” Jesse points out. “Are you seriously gonna blue-ball me over oatmeal?”

“Eat fast then,” Walt says.

He’s mostly just messing with Jesse—he doesn’t care about reheating the oatmeal and he would cave in an instant if Jesse pushed.

But Jesse doesn’t push. He grabs a spoon and shovels the oatmeal into his mouth, not bothering to sit down at the table first, just standing there next to Walt at the counter.

Jesse catches Walt’s eye and points his spoon at him. “Eat yours too—goes great with the leftover cum taste from last night,” he tells him through a mouthful, tone sarcastic.

Walt chuckles and takes his damn time eating his own oatmeal, tells him, “You could’ve brushed your teeth first.”

“And then it would taste like toothpaste, that’d be worse.”

“If you say so.”

One packet of instant oatmeal isn’t a lot of food, but Walt is still surprised when Jesse finishes his in under a minute, tossing the bowl in the sink and then peering into Walt’s bowl.

“Yo, hurry up and finish that or I’m going American Pie on it.”

Walt understands that reference—unfortunately, in his opinion—and says, “We are not wasting food like that when we’re this low.”

“Eat fast then,” Jesse tosses back at him, a playful gleam in his eyes.

Walt finishes the last few bites of oatmeal and puts his bowl in the sink, and then Jesse’s tugging him back towards the bed.

Jesse strips off his own clothes, then rushes Walt through removing his while jerking him off. Jesse grabs the olive oil and for a moment Walt thinks Jesse’s going to press again about topping him, but then Jesse lays flat on his back and spreads his legs and pulls Walt down over him, and Walt relaxes.

“I like this,” Jesse says, quietly like a confession in between kisses, “a lot more than I thought I would.”

Walt slicks up his cock, guides it where it belongs, presses inside Jesse.

He swallows Jesse’s moan and rolls his hips and drives into him, each thrust slow but deep and perfectly aimed to hit Jesse’s prostate every time.

Jesse wraps his legs around Walt’s waist, scrabbles at his back with blunt fingernails, gasps out, “Fuck, yes—Mr. White—harder—” and Walt gives him everything he asks for.

 

*

They forego lunch again, even though Walt’s stomach growls in protest after a few hours today. The meal-skipping is starting to catch up with him but he does his best to ignore the hunger.

Jesse tries to tempt him into Magorium and chill-ing again, gazing across the room at Walt from the rug on the floor with one hand down his own sweatpants, but Walt’s cock is spent for at least a few more hours after that morning’s excursion and he reluctantly tells Jesse so.

“Are we gonna have to put Viagra on the list for the next time what’s-his-face comes back?” Jesse teases, still jerking himself off, and it puts Walt in a shitty mood immediately. First for the Viagra comment—Walt personally thinks he’s doing an admirable job at keeping up with Jesse considering his age and the cancer and the stress he’s been under—and secondly because it reminds him that Ed isn’t back yet and that their food supply is getting concerningly low. He’s hungry by choice today but if Ed still isn’t back in a few days when they run out of food, then the hunger won’t be voluntary anymore.

“How about we put some self-control on the list?” Walt snaps. “Or some ambition to do anything other than watching that idiotic movie all day and getting off?”

Jesse’s hand in his pants goes still and he stares over at Walt and asks, “The fuck crawled up your ass?”

Walt sneers at him and says, “Not you, that’s for sure—you little nymphomaniac.”

“Yo, screw you,” Jesse snaps back at him, “you fucking tease. What happened to not impossible?”

Walt scoffs, says, “Winning the lottery is ‘not impossible’ too, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen every time you want it to.”

Jesse rolls his eyes, mutters, “Whatever,” and stands up to head for the bathroom.

Walt throws his hands up, says, “Oh, okay, go have your little temper tantrum and shut yourself in the bathroom again, finish jerking off in there while you’re at it—you’re really proving your maturity here, Pinkman.”

Jesse’s halfway to the bathroom and parallel to the bed, but at Walt’s needling he changes his course—Walt squares his shoulders and plants his feet, and when Jesse steps up and shoves at him he barely even moves.

Walt grabs Jesse’s shoulders and holds on as he half-throws and half-drags Jesse down onto the bed with him, Walt on top. Jesse pushes at him once, halfheartedly, and then he wraps his arms around Walt’s shoulders and bucks his hips up in search of friction.

“Little slut,” Walt growls at him, but he instinctively grinds his hips down against Jesse’s through their clothes anyway, giving Jesse what he wants despite himself.

Walt still isn’t hard or turned-on, he’s just pissed off right now and he would rather Jesse keep fighting with him instead. So he starts to pull away like he’s going to leave the bed.

“No wait,” Jesse breathes, tightening his arms around Walt’s shoulders before he can move away, then bringing his legs up to wrap around Walt’s waist too. “Please—”

He wonders, for one wild second, whether he could push Jesse into forcing himself on Walt—god, Walt would own him forever after something like that. The guilt once Jesse came to his senses would eclipse the head injury and the almost shooting him and the nearly burning his house down—Jesse would never forgive himself, he would do whatever Walt wanted for the rest of their lives trying to make up for it. With the right amount of mixed signals and provocation and riling him up into desperation before telling him no, maybe—just maybe—he could make this sweet beautiful boy of his do something unforgivable.

But does he really want that?

Walt’s anger clears like clouds parting and he stares down at Jesse, he meets those frustrated and pleading baby blues and he realizes that no, he actually never wants to see those beautiful eyes filled with self-loathing or guilt or shame when he looks at Walt.

Walt feels a hot rush of shame for even entertaining the thought, and he sighs and leans down to kiss Jesse’s neck to hide his face.

Jesse rolls his hips up again and Walt grinds down to meet him, drawing a moan out of Jesse even though they’re just dry-humping like pre-teens.

Walt’s cock never does get hard, but he feels a rush of satisfaction anyway when Jesse comes in his pants against him.

 

*

Jesse doesn’t talk to him much again until dinner, which he informs Walt that they are absolutely not skipping. He snuck two of the frozen Salisbury Steak dinners into the microwave side-by-side when Walt wasn’t looking, which instantly pisses Walt off once he realizes it.

“Yo, look at this shit though, they’re tiny—there’s not enough there to split one and you keep saying to save the mashed potatoes—”

“Jesse, do you really not grasp the concept of rationing? If Ed doesn’t get here within the next few days—”

“Then we’ll deal with it when it happens, we don’t need to starve early. You said he’s supposed to be here tomorrow—”

“He said approximately a month, Jesse, it’s not set in stone, he could get delayed—”

“Which is why we’re skipping lunches and that’s fine, but you’re a real fucking dick when you get hangry, and I’m over it.”

Walt sighs, throws his hands up and then rubs one hand over his eyes as he leans against the counter. The two dinners are already halfway cooked in the microwave anyway.

“Hey,” Jesse says, quiet and close and tentative.

Walt lowers his hand, opens his eyes.

Jesse’s standing right in front of him.

“Look, I know you worry and you freak out when you’re not in control of everything, but we’re gonna be fine, Mr. White.”

Jesse leans up and presses a brief kiss to Walt’s lips, like a peace offering, or like sealing a promise.

Walt kisses him back, then he forces a smile and pretends he believes him.

 

 

*

“I didn’t mean nothing by the Viagra thing earlier,” Jesse tells him when they lay down after dinner. “I was just kidding.”

“I know.”

“Wasn’t trying to make you mad. And, the uh, the other thing—I shouldn’t have said that, yo, you don’t have to let me be on top if you don’t want to, I’m not gonna be a bitch about it and like, pressure you or whatever—”

“It’s fine, Jesse,” Walt says, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Okay. Good night?” Jesse says, tone lifting up at the end like maybe he’s hoping Walt’s up for more than just going right to sleep, but like maybe he feels like it would be bad form to ask after just saying he wouldn’t pressure him.

Walt huffs out a laugh, reaches over to pull Jesse closer as he asks, “Have you ever sixty-nined before?”

“Yeah,” Jesse says, “but uh, never with a guy.”

“Take your pants off and get up here.”

 

*

One day left before Ed is due back. E minus one.

Jesse is still asleep when Walt wakes in the morning, and Walt snakes his hand into Jesse’s sweatpants, strokes him to full hardness and then tugs down his pants. He puts his lips around Jesse’s cock and bobs down on it a few times before pressing kisses down his shaft, then mouthing at his balls, then trailing down even lower, teasing and prodding his tongue just along the outside of Jesse’s rim.

Jesse sucks in a sharp breath that’s half a moan as he wakes up, blinking and sitting up and staring down at Walt looking flustered and bewildered and awestruck all at the same time.

“The? What’re you—?”

Walt smirks up at him and moves back up to press a kiss to the tip of his cock. “Just getting your attention.”

“You,” Jesse pauses to lick his lips, “fucking got it. Jesus.”

Jesse spreads his legs wider, glances over at the olive oil on the nightstand, then pointedly raises an eyebrow at Walt.

“Hand it to me, you’re closer,” Walt tells him.

Jesse stretches up to grab the bottle, passes it to Walt.

Walt slicks up his fingers and mouths at Jesse’s cock while he stretches him open. Jesse’s fingertips skate over Walt’s head, over the stubbly regrowth on his scalp that Walt hasn’t been shaving. He’s decided to let his hair grow back, and maybe in a month or two Jesse will have something to grab onto whenever Walt blows him. Assuming they’re still here in a month or two. Assuming they haven’t starved.

Walt pushes that thought away as he pulls off of Jesse’s cock and slicks up his own with the olive oil as he gets into position.

Jesse draws his knees up, wraps his legs around Walt’s waist, bites his lip in anticipation as he stares up at him with those gorgeous blue eyes.

Walt shifts his hips forward, presses in nice and slow. Jesse’s breath hitches and his cheeks flush and his eyes stay locked on Walt’s, pleasure written all over his face.

“You love having my cock inside you, don’t you Jesse?”

Jesse blinks and blushes a little harder but shakily answers, “Y-yes.”

“Nobody ever fucked you like this before me?” Walt asks, even though he knows the answer, he knew it the moment when Jesse seemed to think he could just sink down onto Walt’s cock with no preparation their first time.

“No, never,” Jesse answers as Walt pulls mostly out and then slides back in smooth and precise, perfectly hitting Jesse’s prostate.

There’s a second question that logically follows the first, but Walt hesitates to ask it. The wrong answer would ruin the mood, ruin all of this by proving it an illusion.

Jesse though—Jesse just keeps proving he knows Walt better than anyone, keeps proving he’s perfect for him as he answers that second question without Walt having to ask.

“Nobody else ever will,” Jesse promises, staring up at Walt with those baby blues as he takes Walt in so perfectly. “I’m yours.”

It’s all Walt can do not to come right then.

Instead he proves he knows Jesse just as well, leaning down to kiss him and murmuring “Good boy,” against Jesse’s lips.

Jesse moans into the kiss and tightens around Walt’s cock as Walt picks up the pace and fucks him harder. Jesse’s nails dig into his back and Walt relishes the sting of it.

“You’re so tight, so gorgeous, taking my cock so well, Jesse.”

“Fuck—Mr. White,” Jesse keens, something plaintive to it as his hips shift up to meet Walt’s thrusts and take him that tiny bit deeper.

“Mine,” Walt growls, picking up the pace and fucking him harder, his kisses and his thrusts both turning rougher and less coordinated. “Say it.”

“Yours,” Jesse gasps out, “I’m yours, I’m—mmmnh—I’m close, Mr. White—please… say it?”

“I’m yours,” Walt says back without thinking—he means it, but another second later he realizes what Jesse was actually asking for, and he kisses him again and gasps out, “Love you so fucking much, Jesse,” and he means that too.

Jesse’s breath hitches and he clenches tighter around Walt as his cock spurts between them, and only seconds later Walt’s following him over the edge and spilling deep inside him.

He pitches forward, rests his forehead against Jesse’s shoulder while they both catch their breath. Jesse’s hands stroke across Walt’s back in a comforting arc, back and forth. He doesn’t pull out yet and Jesse doesn’t seem to want him to—he keeps his legs locked around Walt’s waist, crossed at the ankles as if he means to hold him there.

Jesse’s breath hitches once, twice, and Walt doesn’t think anything of it until he hears a quiet sniffle.

Alarmed, Walt lifts his head up and meets Jesse’s eyes.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Jesse says, voice shaky, “I’m fine, I’m—just being stupid. Just give me a minute, sorry.”

Walt’s brow furrows and he reaches one hand up to wipe a tear from Jesse’s cheek while he tries to figure out why Jesse is crying.

“I really do love you,” Walt tells him, in case Jesse doubts him, in case he thinks it’s something he’ll only say in the heat of the moment.

Jesse gives him a wobbly smile, says, “I believe you.” His voice breaks when he adds, “And if I could go back and do it different I would meet you on that bench and I—I would help you kill Gus the first time you asked, and—”

Walt kisses him, deep and searing and sacred and full of the same impossible regrets.

They can’t change the past. It’s stupid and impossible and pointless to dwell on—and yet…

“If I could go back I wouldn’t poison Brock,” Walt says, and damn it all but he actually means it. “And I would take you in after your parents sold the house,” he says, because Jesse doesn’t know Walt let Jane die but if he never had to rent that duplex then he never would’ve met her and she never would’ve come between them in the first place. “Hell, I would—I would leave Skyler once we started cooking, to spare my family all of this and to have more time with you.”

Jesse sniffles again, staring up at Walt completely speechless.

Walt feels a little speechless too, after that. Speechless and wrung out and completely out of his depth.

“You’d leave your wife for me?” Jesse finally asks, hope and doubt warring in his tone.

“I did leave my wife for you, technically,” Walt points out. “I brought you here, not her.”

Jesse bites his lip, halfway asks, “Your kids though..?”

Walt sighs. “They’re better off without me. They’re going to hate me when they learn the truth. Junior probably already does.” By now the whole goddamn world probably knows Walter White is Heisenberg.

Jesse frowns, like he’s sad on Walt’s behalf.

“They won’t hate you,” Jesse tries to reassure him. They’re both quiet for a beat, then Jesse adds, “I uh, always thought back in high school that you seemed like you’d be a good dad.”

Walt blinks, and Jesse sort of winces.

“Sorry,” Jesse says, “that was a fucking weird thing to say—”

“It’s not—”

“—especially with your dick still in my ass,” Jesse mutters, reaching one hand up to cover his face. And maybe he has a point, but Walt’s still unbothered.

Walt pulls his hand away, kisses him, says, “Thank you. Weird or not.”

Jesse didn’t actually tell him to pull out and Walt doesn’t want to yet, so he stays right where he is even though his spent cock has gone soft and won’t be getting hard again anytime soon.

He settles more comfortably on top of Jesse, laying his head on his shoulder. Jesse wraps his arms around him, presses a kiss to Walt’s forehead.

They end up falling back asleep for a few more hours.

Walt wakes with a headache from his coffee being overdue. Jesse teasingly gripes that Walt crushed his ribs sleeping on top of him.

It’s closer to lunch than breakfast when they finally make it out of bed, but they eat the last of their oatmeal anyway.

 

*

 

Jesse watches his movie again. And then again.

Walt puts on his boots and coat and goes out to chop some more firewood—not because they need it yet, but because he doesn’t want to watch the movie or listen to it again right now, and it’s frustrating now to watch Jesse from across the room and know Jesse wants him back but to not be able to do anything about it for at least a few hours due to Walt’s refractory period.

There’s always something, Walt muses.

He swings the axe, splits another log in two, adds it to the pile.

He wonders if he should just swallow his pride and put Viagra on the damn list for next time. It’s not like there’s much of anything else to do around here, and now that he has a gorgeous willing partner half his age he should make the most of it for as long as this lasts, pride be damned.

Walt chops another thirty or so logs, carries them up to the porch a few at a time to add to their stack.

He kicks the snow off his boots, heads back inside.

Jesse’s at the stove heating up their last can of stew and it smells amazing—Walt glances at the clock and it takes a minute to read it through the snow-blindness but he realizes it’s later than he thought, almost six.

“Yo,” Jesse calls, sounding happy to see him, “we’re having stew tonight—and don’t argue, we ain’t skipping dinner again.”

“Stew is fine,” Walt says, taking his boots off and hanging up his coat by the door.

“Well good, ‘cause I already made it,” Jesse says, glancing over at him with a smile that’s caught somewhere between nervous and flirty. “Mashed potatoes would go real good with it, ya know—”

“The potatoes can be a meal by themselves on another day,” Walt tells him, for about the dozenth time.

Jesse sighs but doesn’t argue.

They eat dinner and Jesse tells him about the first time he got high with Skinny Pete and Badger, and Walt cracks up laughing a few times despite himself.

Walt washes the dishes and Jesse stands next to him and dries them. Walt doesn’t really need help for literally two bowls and spoons and the pan Jesse heated it up in, but he likes Jesse’s presence there at his shoulder, warm and familiar and helpful. It reminds him of their days cooking together in close quarters in the RV.

“Well,” Walt says when the dishes are dry and back in the cabinet. “I’m overdue for a shower and in the event that Ed shows up right on time tomorrow, I’d rather be clean when we’re expecting company.”

Jesse nods, bites his lip, says, “Yeah, me too—you were so worried about overworking the water pump a couple weeks ago, we should probably just share, ya know? Save water and all.”

Jesse’s smirking by the end of it, unable to keep a straight face through the least subtle come-on Walt’s ever had directed at him.

Walt just smiles at him and tells him, “Bring the olive oil.”

 

*

If Walt were about ten years younger and if they weren’t in the middle of nowhere with zero access to medical care in the event of an embarrassing slip or fall, he might’ve attempted something more adventurous for his first foray into shower sex with Jesse—like perhaps holding him up against the shower wall.

As it is, he settles for having Jesse face the wall with his arms braced against it and his legs spread while he bends halfway over for Walt. It’s good—it’s always good with them—and the warm water raining down on them is a lovely added sensation and the steam in the bathroom adds to the atmosphere, but it’s the first time they’ve had penetrative sex without facing each other, and Walt finds that not being able to look into Jesse’s eyes and watch the pleasure written all over his face rather detracts from the experience.

Jesse’s quieter than usual as Walt thrusts into him with one hand reaching around to stroke Jesse’s cock.

“Jesse?” Walt asks, concerned. Jesse’s hard, and he seems into it, but Walt still senses something off.

“Yeah?”

Jesse sounds breathless, sounds like he’s enjoying this, but Walt asks anyway, “Is this—are you—?”

“S’good,” Jesse interrupts, “s’fine, I just,” he trails off, breath hitching a little as Walt hits his prostate on the next glide in.

“Just what?” Walt asks, pausing his movements.

Jesse hesitates for a moment, then sighs and says, “Not to be like, extra gay or whatever, but…I like it better facing each other.”

Walt huffs out a laugh, presses a kiss to Jesse’s shoulder.

“Yo, don’t laugh at me,” Jesse grumbles.

“I’m not—here, turn around,” Walt says, carefully pulling out of him.

Jesse straightens up, turns to face him with one skeptical eyebrow raised.

Walt answers the unspoken question with, “No I’m not going to risk us falling and breaking something trying to pick you up, but we can still…” He steps closer, backing Jesse against the shower wall. “Here, arms around my neck, lean your back against the wall, good, okay—” he puts one hand on Jesse’s ass, tells him, “—now put just one leg up around my waist—good,” he reaches down with his free hand, guides his cock back to Jesse’s hole. He tilts his hips and presses back in, and the angle is awkward for a second but then Jesse shifts his leg up higher around Walt’s waist and that helps.

Walt gets back to it, sets up a rhythm—he’s got Jesse wrapped around him, holding him tight inside and out, and he’s got those gorgeous blue eyes and beautiful smile aimed at him again and he’s got a handful of Jesse’s ass while he holds him steady and rocks into him.

Neither of them lasts very long after the position change, Jesse coming all over both their chests and Walt spilling in Jesse’s ass when those inner muscles tighten around him during Jesse’s orgasm.

Jesse stays wrapped around him and Walt’s in no hurry to move so they kiss in the afterglow, warm water still raining down and Walt’s cock still snug in Jesse’s ass where it belongs.

They don’t get out until the water starts running cold.

 

*

That night they lay down in bed together, nestled close with Jesse’s head tucked against Walt’s chest.

Jesse falls asleep first.

Walt lays awake and stares at the dark ceiling, one hand absently stroking through Jesse’s hair.

He hopes Ed will arrive tomorrow with plenty more food and supplies for them so Walt can stop being hungry and stressed out over it.

He also hopes Ed’s arrival doesn’t disrupt the new dynamic between himself and Jesse.

Maybe it’s irrational, but Walt worries that the sudden presence of someone from outside their own little world will make Jesse start thinking he doesn’t actually like or want Walt after all and that he’s just latching onto the only other person here out of desperation.

Walt doesn’t want to be like that stupid goddamn movie Jesse keeps watching over and over, doesn’t want to be something Jesse settles for because it’s all he has.

But if that’s the best he can get, he doesn’t want to lose it either.

It takes Walt a long time to fall asleep that night, listening to the ticking of his watch from the nightstand. It sounds like a countdown, even after Walt scoffs and tells himself to stop being so dramatic.

Eventually he falls asleep.

He dreams of the desert.

 

 

Notes:

Comments give me life! 🥰
I'm especially interested in feedback on the relationship development...

FYI the last chapter might be late due to irl stuff & me not wanting to rush it, but it's intended for the last day of WJ Week 2024.

Chapter 5

Notes:

This chapter is dedicated to Lovethieves as a (slightly) early birthday present. Love you!!! 💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

CONTENT WARNING for their food situation getting pretty dire in this one—their food supply gets extremely low, they worry about starving, and they barely eat some days. Please take care if that might be triggering or upsetting.

This chapter is verrrry NSFW too ;)

Hope you enjoy the final chapter!

The next morning is E minus zero. Blast off, or so it supposedly goes. It’s a month since Ed left them here. He should be back any time now.

Walt wakes up early, perhaps from nerves.

The sun is just starting to rise and Jesse is still asleep sprawled across Walt’s chest, but Walt nudges him until he wakes up just enough to move off and roll onto his back instead.

Jesse mumbles something unintelligible at him while Walt ducks down under their blanket and tugs Jesse’s sweatpants down to free his cock. It’s only half-hard but once Walt gets his mouth on him that changes quickly.

Walt takes him in deep, hollows his cheeks, hums around him as he slowly pulls up and off long enough to ask, “Are you awake enough to return the favor, or am I taking care of myself?”

“Yeah m’awake,” Jesse gasps as Walt teases him with a lick to the head of his cock while he waits for an answer, “I got you, just—fuck yeah, like that,” he trails off when Walt takes him in deep and swallows around him as the tip hits the back of his throat.

Walt thinks Jesse must be getting close, but after another moment Jesse’s reaching down and gently nudging Walt’s head off of him.

He glances up, concerned, but then Jesse’s tugging at Walt’s arms instead, telling him, “Come here, m’close, just get up here and fuck me.” Jesse reaches over and grabs the bottle of olive oil off the nightstand, presses it into Walt’s hand. “Here.”

Walt doesn’t have to be told twice.

He slicks his fingers and cock, sets the bottle aside, works Jesse open, then moves up over him and slides his cock home. Walt leans down to muffle Jesse’s moan with a kiss, and Jesse wraps his legs around Walt’s waist, hips tilting up to meet each thrust and take him in deeper.

Walt draws it out as long as he can, but when he feels his orgasm approaching he shifts his angle to hit Jesse’s prostate each time, and then Jesse’s clenching around him and coming hard and Walt’s following right after, spilling deep inside him.

He rests his head on Jesse’s shoulder a moment to catch his breath while Jesse’s hands rub over Walt’s back, slow and firm and soothing. When he starts to move away Jesse pulls him down into a kiss instead, deep and lazy and lingering.

Jesse smiles against Walt’s lips and says, “Mmm, best wakeup ever.”

Walt kisses him one more time, then reluctantly pulls out and starts to get out of bed.

“Don’t go,” Jesse whines, trying to hang onto him again.

“You want breakfast, don’t you?”

Jesse grumbles at him and lays back down, cuddling under the blankets like he intends to go back to sleep.

Walt goes over to the kitchen, and in a sudden fit of optimism he scrambles their last two eggs for breakfast, hoping Ed will bring more by the end of the day.

It’s barely enough food to even call breakfast for two grown men, but Walt divides the scrambled eggs up into equal portions anyway. He wishes they had bread left for toast, or more hashbrowns.

He sets the plates on the table, starts the coffee brewing, then goes and leans over the bed to kiss Jesse back awake.

“Mmm, c’mere,” Jesse murmurs, trying to pull Walt back into bed.

“It’s time to get up, Jesse—I made the last of the eggs, come eat them before they get cold.”

“Mmngh,” Jesse grumbles, but he sits up and stretches and follows Walt to the table anyway.

 They eat the eggs, and Walt drinks his coffee. He skimped on the milk because there’s maybe a cup and a half of it left in the jug at most.

“So, uh, today’s the day, right?” Jesse asks, once they’re both fed and more awake.

“Today is one month since he brought us here. He did say he’d be back in approximately a month, so…”

“Like you haven’t been counting down to today this whole time.”

“Let’s just… manage our expectations, okay? Just in case,” he says, as if he isn’t fully counting on their supply delivery being today.

Jesse shrugs and seems unbothered as he puts their dishes in the sink and then goes over to the rug in front of the television.

Walt stays seated at the table, facing the door and ignoring the hunger still gnawing at his stomach.

Jesse watches his movie.

Walt watches the door. He gets up a dozen or so times to look out the kitchen window, imagining he hears an engine. Every time it turns out to just be the wind.

The end credits roll on the movie and Jesse stands and stretches.

Walt is heading back to the table after checking the window again when Jesse intercepts him, grabs his face and drags him into an insistent kiss.

Walt kisses him back but pulls away after a moment.

“Jesse—?”

“You’re giving me anxiety, staring at the door and checking out the damn window every ten minutes. Even if we don’t hear his car pull up, I’m sure he’ll fucking knock when he gets here. We ain’t gonna miss him. Just chill already.”

Jesse presses another brief kiss to Walt’s lips, then pats him on the shoulder and walks over to get something out of the desk—pen and paper by the looks of it—before sitting back down on the rug and starting his movie over.

 

*

Walt tries to ‘just chill already.’

He sits back down at the kitchen table.

He makes another cup of coffee.

Maybe he checks the window a few more times, but so what? There’s nothing wrong with being vigilant.

“Here,” Jesse says, some indeterminate amount of time later.

Walt glances up at him, takes the folded piece of paper Jesse’s holding out.

It’s a hand-drawn card, the illustration on the front a surprisingly good rendition of their cabin’s exterior, complete with snow drifts out front and the woods in the background. There’s a miniature Walt and Jesse in the front yard—both wearing bulky parkas but it’s unmistakably them—and they’re building a snowman together. The mini Walt is placing his own black ‘Heisenberg hat’ on the snowman’s head.

Walt smiles and opens the card—on the inside Jesse has written Happy we survived the first month here Day! and signed it simply with a xoxo for ‘hugs and kisses.’

“Figured we shouldn’t be putting our names on shit around here, so I didn’t actually sign it…” Jesse trails off and rubs the back of his neck like he’s nervous about Walt’s reaction. “Kinda stupid I guess, but it was something to do.”

“No, this is good, Jesse,” Walt says, looking at the drawing on the front again. “I like it.” It’s an anniversary card, of sorts, and Walt likes that too—the thought behind it. The implications.

Jesse smiles but ducks his head like he’s trying to hide it.

Walt wonders which day Jesse considers their anniversary—was it their first kiss, their first time awkwardly getting off together, or maybe the first time Walt actually fucked him? Or maybe Jesse doesn’t consider them something worthy of an anniversary. Walt doesn’t quite dare to ask. He supposes he’ll find out if and when he gets another card.

 

*

Lunch time comes and goes, and Ed still doesn’t show up. Walt and Jesse skip lunch without discussing it.

Walt checks out the front window a dozen or so more times.

An hour or so later Jesse hands him another drawing, a little comic strip showing a cartoon Walt running to the window every time a snowflake falls or a bird flies by.

Walt doesn’t think that one’s cute.

He wads it up and throws it back at Jesse.

“Bitch,” Jesse mutters, but he’s still snickering at Walt as he retreats to the other side of the cabin.

 

*

Night falls. Still no sign of Ed.

Jesse makes one of the packets of instant mashed potatoes for dinner—technically one pouch is supposed to contain four servings, but even splitting the entire pan fifty-fifty it still makes a pretty pathetic main course for two hungry men.

 They have one more pack of mashed potatoes left after this one, along with one box mix of macaroni and cheese with the cheese pouch inside—the pre-mixed cheese, not powder—one last frozen fettuccine alfredo dinner, half a box of Cheerios, and about a cup of milk.

Walt tries not to let on how anxious the dwindling food supply makes him.

Jesse takes a bite of potatoes, says, “These would be better with extra butter, but we’re all out, so…”

Walt takes a bite—the potatoes are a little dry, but not too bad.

“You could stir some olive oil in them if you want,” Walt suggests.

“Gross, dude—that’s our lube.”

Walt scoffs and says, “It’s still perfectly edible—it’s not contaminated just because we use it for that.”

“Dude.”

“Well, I haven’t stuck my fingers down in the bottle, or touched the rim with dirty hands—have you?”

Jesse licks a bite of potatoes off his spoon, then quirks an eyebrow and asks, “Are you seriously gonna talk about fingers and rims right now? Trying to get me turned on at the dinner table, or what?”

“Well why not?” Walt says, sweeping his arm towards the front door and the general property outside where Ed still hasn’t appeared. “Doesn’t seem like we’re in any danger of being interrupted at this point.”

“He’ll probably be here tomorrow,” Jesse says, shrugging. “Bet he just got held up in traffic or snow or some shit.”

Walt’s tempted to snap at him for the unfounded optimism, but there’s a moment right before Jesse forces a smile that his expression slips and Walt can clearly see that Jesse’s anxious too, so Walt bites his tongue.

Maybe Jesse’s just pretending to be optimistic about it. Maybe he’s being kind and not just stupidly optimistic, trying in his own misguided way to reassure Walt. But Walt is reassured by facts, by tangible proof, not by rose-colored assumptions and speculation.

Even so, he holds his tongue. Chews his potatoes.

Eventually Walt replies, “Yeah. I’m sure that’s all it is.”

His tone doesn’t convince either one of them.

They finish eating and clear the dishes away and then Walt fucks Jesse right there on the kitchen table, both of them still halfway dressed.

The table is just the right height for Jesse to sit on the edge and lay back while Walt stays standing and slots between his legs and pushes inside him.

Jesse seems to enjoy it at first, but right when Walt’s starting to get close Jesse shifts around and sort of grimaces and says, “Yo this is hot and all, but this fucking table’s killing my spine—can we move to the bed?”

Walt wants to pretend he didn’t hear him, but he sighs and pulls out and steps back so Jesse can hop off the table.

Jesse stands and pauses to kiss Walt—maybe as a thank-you, maybe he didn’t think Walt would stop and Walt almost feels insulted by that even though he didn’t want to stop—and then Jesse smirks and wraps a hand around Walt’s erection and literally leads him by the cock to their bed.

Jesse lays down on the mattress and pulls Walt down on top of him and Walt pushes back inside, leaning down to kiss Jesse as he finds the rhythm again.

Walt’s orgasm sneaks up on him—he was already close when they moved from the table—and it takes him a minute afterwards to realize his partner is still hard between them and hasn’t come yet. Jesse isn’t trying to rush him though, he’s just running both hands soothingly across Walt’s back while Walt catches his breath.

“Sorry,” Walt murmurs, pulling out and reaching between them for Jesse’s cock.

“S’alright,” Jesse says, then he bites his lip and his hands slide down Walt’s back to his ass instead, and Jesse raises one eyebrow and gives him a hopeful look.

Walt considers it—he does, for a second—then he sighs and says, “Jesse—”

His tone must say enough, because Jesse sighs too and takes his hands off Walt’s ass.

“Look, if you changed your mind I’ll quit asking, but like, just tell me if that’s off the table so I can stop getting my hopes up.”

“It’s not off the table, just, not tonight Jess.”

Jesse smiles, which confuses Walt for a moment until Jesse echoes, “Jess?”

Walt blinks and opens his mouth to awkwardly play it off but Jesse beats him to speaking.

“It’s fine,” Jesse tells him, still smiling, “I like it.”

“Oh... Good.” Walt licks his lips, then says, “You know, you could try calling me Walt… if you think you can manage that when you aren’t pissed off at me.”

Jesse smiles and leans up to brush the tips of their noses together before kissing him.

When Jesse pulls back he locks eyes with Walt and smirks and says, “Well, Walt… my dick isn’t going to suck itself.”

Walt laughs and kisses his way down Jesse’s body and then happily takes care of that for him.

When Jesse comes, he still gasps out Mr. White instead of Walt, but that’s okay. Walt likes it better that way anyway.

 

*

The next morning Walt has to start his count over, moving in the opposite direction now. One day past due. Is it fair to call Ed ‘late’ when it was always approximate anyway? Fuck it—with the amount of money he paid, Walt’s calling it late.

One day late.

He wakes up before Jesse and carefully climbs over him to get out of bed and reexamine their food supply. They have approximately half a box of Cheerios, one frozen fettuccine alfredo dinner, one more pack of mashed potatoes, one more box of macaroni, and maybe ¾ cup of milk left in the jug that’s approaching its expiration date now anyway.

Walt sighs and makes himself a cup of coffee, sits down at the table. Milk’s down to half a cup now.

It’s fine. This is fine.

Even if Ed takes another day or two to show up, they’ll be fine.

They survived two days in the desert with no water and no power, they can survive a few more days on minimal food if they have to. If Ed takes longer than that to show, humans can survive at least a few weeks on no food if they have to. Water is more important than food anyway, and they have plenty of that—the tap water is perfectly adequate, and if the pipes freeze they still have a few mostly untouched cases of bottled water stacked in the corner.

It’ll be fine. It has to be.

He sighs and goes back over to the bed, sits down on the edge.

“Jesse?”

Walt reaches for Jesse’s face, tentatively strokes his cheek while he sleeps.

“Hey. Jess, wake up.”

Jesse shifts in his sleep, leaning his face into Walt’s touch and murmuring something unintelligible.

Walt smiles and leans down to kiss him awake, deciding it’s worth the risk of getting head-butted if Jesse startles.

When their lips touch, Jesse doesn’t react at first. Walt kisses Jesse’s bottom lip and runs his tongue along it, which earns him a sleepy moan and then some returning pressure as Jesse starts to kiss him back.

Jesse deepens the kiss without opening his eyes, reaching up and sliding his hand from Walt’s neck down to his shoulder and then tugging at his arm, trying to pull Walt down on top of him.

Walt reluctantly breaks the kiss, says, “Jesse, hang on a minute.”

Jesse half-whines as he lets Walt pull away and finally opens his eyes.

“What is it?” Jesse asks impatiently.

“I think we should cut back to one meal a day until he gets here, just to be safe. And if we wait for lunchtime to eat, that one meal should hold us over better. Okay?”

Jesse sighs and it turns into a yawn as he rubs at his eyes.

“Fine, whatever. That could’ve waited til after,” he adds, leaning up to kiss Walt again.

“Until after what?”

Jesse rolls his eyes and tugs Walt down, kisses him some more and then manages to roll them over so he’s straddling Walt instead, then he finally answers, “After I ride you til I can’t walk straight.”

Jesse divests his own clothes and then Walt’s and makes good on that promise.

 

 

*

Despite Jesse doing all the work, Walt’s worn out once they finish and he’s tempted to just go back to sleep and tell Jesse to wake him up if and when Ed gets here.

Jesse climbs out of bed and pours them each a mug of coffee though, so Walt drags himself over to the kitchen table and drinks his when Jesse brings it.

“Milk’s getting iffy,” Jesse tells him. “We should probably just finish it off today or tomorrow,” but despite his suggestion he hadn’t put any in his own cup.

Walt gives a noncommittal hum in response. He isn’t looking forward to black coffee on an empty stomach once the milk is gone—sometimes it’s fine, but other times it’s as bad as taking vitamins or aspirin on an empty stomach and feels like he swallowed razor blades dipped in acid.

Jesse stares down at his own black coffee, then says, “Yo, how about we have the macaroni today? We can put half in the fridge and make it last two days, and—”

Walt holds up a hand, interrupts, “Jesse, let’s not talk about food until it’s time to actually eat it.”

As if on cue, Jesse’s stomach growls loud enough that Walt hears it from across the table.

“Yeah, all right,” Jesse concedes, taking a sip of his black coffee and failing to hide a slight wince.

Jesse will drink his coffee black sometimes, but Walt knows he actually prefers some milk in his coffee, and sugar too if it’s available. Walt vaguely remembers Jesse throwing away the empty bag of sugar a week or so ago—a small bag that only had about 2 cups in it to begin with.

Walt doesn’t say anything, he just gets up and gets the nearly empty milk jug out of the fridge, brings it back over and pours a little into Jesse’s coffee.

Jesse smiles up at him and then takes another drink, actually seems to enjoy it this time.

Walt sniffs the milk on the way back to the fridge—not bad but definitely not fresh anymore either. Jesse’s right that they should probably finish it off—the whole fourth of a cup or less of it that’s left.

Walt sits back down at the table and they both drink their coffee in a companionable silence.

He catches Jesse sneaking looks at him—considering looks, but without the sexual undertone he’s gotten used to. More like the considering looks Jesse gave him before they started sleeping together, before Jesse trusted him.

“What?” Walt finally asks him after the third or fourth time.

Jesse bites his lip for a moment, then takes his last drink of coffee and jerks his head towards the living room as he stands.

“Come here.”

Walt finishes off his coffee too, and he isn’t particularly in the mood to watch that asinine movie again, but he follows Jesse anyway.

Jesse doesn’t sit down on the rug though—he keeps walking over to the desk against the opposite wall and sits down on the floor next to it, leaving the chair for Walt and opening one of the bottom drawers.

Walt sits in the chair, watches Jesse rifle around and pull out a pack of printer paper from the very bottom of the drawer.

He wonders why it’s even there—there’s no computer or printer or even a typewriter here—perhaps a former occupant liked hand-writing letters on unlined paper?—but he decides it doesn’t matter.

From under the pack of blank paper, Jesse pulls out a stack of at least twenty or thirty drawings.

He hands Walt the drawings, biting his lip like he’s nervous.

“When did you…?”

“When we weren’t talking. I waited til after you went to bed to draw, in case you decided to be a dick and throw them out or burn all the blank paper or something.”

“I wouldn’t have done that,” Walt says automatically. He doesn’t know if it’s true.

“Sure. Says the guy who melted my air mattress,” Jesse retorts, but he doesn’t sound mad and there’s even a tiny hint of amusement in his tone, as if Walt having the capacity to be a vindictive asshole is just a fact of life that doesn’t faze him anymore. He isn’t sure whether to feel insulted by that or not. But obviously Jesse trusts him not to destroy the drawings now, or he wouldn’t be revealing them.

Walt looks down at the drawings, flips through them. He’s expecting more of the same cartoonish drawings like the comic of Walt running to the window or the cruder and more ridiculous ones Jesse used to doodle on the back of his chemistry tests years ago, but he’s pleasantly surprised.

These are more detailed and better by far. There’s one of the outside of their cabin, reminiscent of the card he’d made for Walt but with more realism. There’s one of the kitchen counter and sink and window with snow falling thick outside, like a still life. A few of the characters from the Magorium movie. There’s one of Andrea and Brock sitting side by side playing video games. One of Jane sitting on the porch of Jesse’s old duplex with a sketchbook of her own on her lap. A few of an older woman Walt thinks might be Jesse’s aunt.

There are several of Walt—some as he used to look back when Jesse took his class, younger and with a full head of hair. Some with his hair and moustache, wearing his tighty-whities and apron while cooking in the RV. Some with the goatee and bald head—most of those feature him with a hint of cruelty in the glint of his eyes or in the subtleties of his expression. Some—the most recent ones, obviously—show Walt as he looks right now, the goatee turning into a full beard and hair slowly growing back out on his head.

One of them—Walt swallows and feels his dick make a valiant effort to twitch to life—is from Jesse’s point of view laying in bed and looking down as Walt is taking Jesse’s cock into his mouth and staring up at him with an intense gaze.

“Jesse…these are amazing,” Walt tells him.

He means it, too. There’s such… life… in them, somehow. The way that Jesse managed to make lines on paper look like real people, and to make their faces and eyes seem to convey such emotion, and mostly from memory at that—this is genuine talent.

Walt looks down, catches Jesse blushing and smiling down at his lap as he picks at a loose thread on the sleeve of his sweater.

“Thanks,” Jesse murmurs.

“I mean it. You could do something with this—do portraits, sell drawings, illustrations for books—”

“As a fugitive stuck in a cabin in the middle of nowhere?” Jesse interjects, raising an eyebrow.

“Well—”

“It’s all right, you don’t gotta do the whole encouraging teacher bit. Means enough that you like them.”

With that, Jesse stands and presses a kiss to Walt’s lips before grabbing a pencil and a blank piece of paper and going to sit at the kitchen table instead.

“Yo, c’mere and lay down on the bed. Gonna draw you like one of my French girls,” he says through a grin.

Walt rolls his eyes, but he does it anyway.

“I’m keeping my clothes on,” Walt tells him. “It’s too cold.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

Watching Jesse draw him for the next hour or so, Walt almost forgets that they’re waiting for Ed to show up.

And maybe that was part of Jesse’s motive, to distract Walt, because once the drawing is finished (it’s lovely, even though Walt thinks Jesse has to be fudging things a little to flatter him because Walt looks handsome and appealing in this drawing in a way he hasn’t felt in years) and once they’re cooking lunch Walt’s mood takes another nosedive as he starts stressing over how much longer it’ll take Ed to get there.

The macaroni is delicious at least, and they carefully set half of it aside for tomorrow before digging in.

Jesse takes his first bite and lets out a nearly orgasmic moan. “Oh my god, this is so good,” he says through a mouthful.

Walt’s tempted to scold him for talking with food in his mouth. Instead he takes his own bite and lets out his own appreciative moan.

“Told you,” Jesse says.

They both dig in and don’t talk much until their plates are clean.

Then Jesse sighs and says, “I’m tempted to just eat the other half today too, how about you?”

Walt opens his mouth but Jesse sees his expression and cuts him off before he can launch into it.

“Yeah, yeah, rationing, I know. Just saying.”

Jesse stands and takes their dishes to the sink.

Walt runs his tongue along the inside of his mouth, chasing every last bit of the lingering taste of their lunch.

“It is a tempting thought,” Walt admits after a moment. “But we have to be smart about this.”

“I know. We could probably stretch that last pack of potatoes to last two days too, right?”

“We’ll plan on that, yeah. If we have to.”

“All right.”

Jesse starts washing the dishes and despite the pointlessness of it, Walt goes over and stands beside him and dries them.

When the dishes are all put up, Jesse dries his hands off and turns to face Walt. He smiles and wraps his arms around his neck as he leans up for a kiss.

Walt kisses him back, hands landing on Jesse’s lower back and pressing him closer.

Jesse breaks the kiss after a moment to suggest, “Magorium and chill?”

Walt hesitates. “Ed has a key, and if he shows up while we’re…” he trails off.

Part of him secretly kind of likes the thought of Ed walking in on them, witnessing him fucking Jesse, seeing how Jesse wants him and how Walt gets to have him. But Walt knows nothing about Ed and has no idea how the man would react—they have to rely on him for supplies and safety right now, and if he turned out to be homophobic he could kick them out or turn them in or worst-case-scenario just shoot them and dump their bodies somewhere. It just isn’t worth the risk.

Jesse huffs and says, “Well I would hope he’d fucking knock and not just barge in—”

“So do I, but let’s just be cautious during the day for now, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Once we go to bed for the night, anything goes.”

Jesse smiles, quirks up an eyebrow. “Anything?”

“Within reason,” Walt amends, but he smiles too.

Jesse kisses him one more time, then goes over to the rug and watches his movie.

Walt stays in the kitchen and starts going through every cabinet, looking for anything edible they might’ve overlooked. Just in case.

 

*

Ed doesn’t show that day either.

All Walt finds in the cabinets are spices with little to no nutritional content, and a small canister of corn starch that isn’t technically safe to consume raw and has to be cooked into something to be edible. They do still have the olive oil, which Walt hasn’t thus far been counting among their food supply—but maybe it’s time to start conserving that too in case they need to eat it.

Jesse does a decent job of keeping Walt distracted via movie commentary, more drawings, and more anecdotes about him and his friends—but it’s more and more obvious as time goes on how hard Jesse’s trying to keep him distracted from the fact that Ed still hasn’t shown up. Walt appreciates that and resents it in equal measure.

They go to bed around ten, and for once Walt’s not even remotely in the mood for sex.

He lets Jesse go down on him anyway, and Walt’s cock takes a little longer than usual to get in the game but Jesse’s talented mouth eventually has him hard and leaking and aching for more.

Jesse grabs the olive oil, and perhaps sensing Walt’s distraction he fingers himself open for a change, face scrunched slightly as he does. Then he slicks Walt’s cock and straddles him, sinks down onto him. Rides him until they’re both panting and sweating and coming hard.

Jesse stays on top of him, stays seated on Walt’s cock as he leans down to press a kiss to Walt’s lips, and another to his temple.

Walt pretends it’s Jesse’s way of telling him I love you without having to confess anything.

 

 

*

Two days overdue.

Walt wakes up to Jesse spooning him from behind, morning wood pressed against his ass through their pajamas and his hips jutting against Walt in uncoordinated thrusts. He’s pretty sure Jesse’s still asleep.

Walt’s cock isn’t hard so he doesn’t bother waking Jesse or slipping a hand down his own pants, he just presses back slightly to meet each thrust and lets him finish. Jesse moans when he comes but he doesn’t seem to wake up all the way. He tightens his arm around Walt and settles against him and falls back asleep. Walt doesn’t envy the mess of dried semen Jesse’s going to have to clean off himself and his boxers later, but he doesn’t wake him.

Facing the wall, Walt has no idea what time it is or how much time passes before Jesse stirs again.

He hears Jesse make an uncomfortable little “Ugh,” when he feels the mess in his underwear. “Sorry,” he tells Walt, very quietly like he thinks Walt might not be awake yet. And like he thinks Walt would have any objections to Jesse dry-humping him in his sleep after Walt already gave him permission.

Walt doesn’t say anything back, but he turns over and reaches for Jesse’s face, pulls him into a kiss as Jesse’s starting to get out of bed.

Jesse kisses him back, smiles into it, tells him, “I uh, kinda need a shower. Wanna come with?”

“You go ahead,” Walt tells him. “I’ll make coffee.”

Jesse’s smile slips, just slightly, just enough to notice, but he says, “Okay,” and gives Walt one more brief kiss before heading into the bathroom.

Walt brews a pot of coffee, pours himself a cup, uses half of the last ¼ cup of milk they have.

He wonders how terrible the corn starch would taste if they boiled it with some water into a makeshift soup, and he hopes they never have to find out.

Surely Ed will be here today—and if not today, tomorrow.

Walt tries to hold onto that thought, tries to convince himself.

Jesse finishes his shower and gets dressed and Walt pours him some coffee too.

He gives Jesse the last of the milk, holding the jug over his cup of coffee. They both watch and Walt shakes the jug to get every last drop before tossing the empty jug in the trash.

Jesse picks up his mug and clinks it against Walt’s in a grim parody of a toast before taking a drink.

 

*

They finish the leftover macaroni for lunch.

Jesse watches his movie. Walt says fuck it and goes over to sit on the rug and watches it with him again, Jesse’s head pillowed in Walt’s lap.

“Do you even like this movie?” Walt asks him halfway through.

Jesse shrugs one shoulder while laying down, bumping it against Walt’s leg.

Walt scoffs and asks, “How do you not know if you like it? You’ve seen it about three hundred times—”

“I like some stuff about it, I’ve just never liked the ending… he leaves her the store and that’s great, but…” Jesse pauses, sighs, says, “It’s just stupid to me. Seems like if he really cared about her so much, he would’ve stayed.”

Walt hums, says, “I agree. But then I think the whole movie is stupid, so…”

Jesse laughs but then asks him, “How would you end it then, if you were writing it?”

“I would never write something that ridiculous to begin with.”

“Mr. White.”

Walt sighs. “Fine… I would… have something happen to make him realize what she means to him, and what he’s actually going to lose if he just gives up.”

“Something like what?”

“I don’t know, Jesse. I’m a chemist, not a writer.”

“I think they should end up together,” Jesse volunteers. “She should just go for it and kiss him on one of their little ‘life’s worth living’ dates, and she should fuck that old man until he stops being a bitch about thinking he has to die for a dumbshit reason.”

“Well, that would certainly be more entertaining,” Walt says.

“Yeah it would.”

“They’d lose their G rating though.”

Jesse snorts at that, even though Walt doesn’t think it’s that funny.

Walt’s hand finds its way into Jesse’s hair, lazily carding through it, and they finish watching the movie.

Ed doesn’t arrive that day either.

 

 

*

Jesse’s getting really good at giving blowjobs.

Turns out he’s a fast learner when it’s something hands-on and when he has a teacher who’s willing to demonstrate and to give him plenty of praise and encouragement, and—perhaps most of all—when there are orgasms involved.

But despite Jesse doing everything absolutely goddamned perfect for at least ten minutes now, ever since they laid down for the night, Walt’s cock won’t get more than halfway hard.

Walt finally sighs, says, “Jesse, just forget it. Trade me places, I’ll do you.”

Jesse glances up at him, hesitates a moment like he isn’t ready to give up, but then he listens to Walt and pulls off, wiping his mouth.

“Sorry,” Jesse says, as if any of it was his fault. “Off my game tonight I guess—my jaw’s been kinda sore. I’ll do it right next time—”

“Oh just shut up,” Walt snaps at him.

He doesn’t need the added humiliation of Jesse trying to take the blame for Walt not being able to get it up tonight. Walt’s never been able to stand having pity directed at him.

Jesse blinks, mutters, “Prick,” and moves up the bed, laying down on his side with his back to Walt.

“I said come here, we don’t both need to suffer.”

He puts a hand on Jesse’s shoulder to turn him over, but Jesse shrugs him off and stays put.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“My mouth still works perfectly fine, Jesse—”

“Well maybe you should shut up and let it rest before that stops working too Walt,” Jesse snaps, saying his name like a swear word.

Walt scoffs, and he wants to say something scathing in return but his mind goes blank and he’s still embarrassed and he doesn’t actually want to be arguing with Jesse.

They’re both quiet for a tense couple of minutes.

Then Jesse sighs and turns over to face him, looking contrite. “Sorry—I didn’t mean that, I’m just hangry or something. Look, it’s not even a big deal—you’re stressed, it happens.”

Walt rubs one hand over his face and says, “Don’t try to coddle me, Jesse, that just pisses me off worse.”

Jesse’s quiet for a moment, then he asks, “What do you want me to do, then?”

“Just let me take care of you. I can do that much,” Walt offers again. If he can’t get off, he can at least be useful. He wants to be useful, to provide, to be needed.

“I’m fine, really,” Jesse says, giving him a smile that’s probably meant to be reassuring. “Let’s just get some sleep, okay? We can fuck nasty in the morning.”

Walt sighs and surrenders. “All right.”

Jesse hesitates for a moment and then snuggles closer, laying his head and one arm on Walt’s chest. Walt puts his arm around him.

“Night, Mr. White.”

“Good night, Jesse.”

 

*

Three days late.

Walt wakes up first, gets out of bed to make coffee, doesn’t bother waking Jesse up to ‘fuck nasty.’

He sits at the table, stares down at his pitch black cup of coffee, and decides it’s time to start making a backup plan.

Ed told them not to leave the property or they’ll be on their own, but if it comes down to going on the run with no assistance or both of them starving to death, Walt knows what he’s going to choose.

But still… Ed’s only three days overdue for a deadline that was always just approximate anyway.

They shouldn’t be hasty.

They still have some food.

They should wait it out a little longer—as long as they can.

Walt sighs and goes over to the cabinet, takes out the half-empty box of Cheerios. He reaches inside for a handful of them to eat dry, and hopes that’ll be enough for the black coffee not to tear up his stomach.

 

*

Jesse sleeps in until nearly lunch time, and doesn’t seem pleased that Walt got up and let him oversleep. Jesse probably isn’t too pleased that Walt skipped the ‘fucking nasty’ this morning too, but neither of them brings it up.

He sits down across from Walt at the table and says, “Yo, I’ve been trying not to stress about it but we gotta talk about the food situation. And the uh, no vacuum dude situation.”

Walt’s still sitting at the table, coffee mug empty, stomach slightly upset but not razor-blade upset. He’s been expecting Jesse to bring it up sooner or later.

Walt calmly answers, “We’ll give Ed a reasonable amount of time, and if it comes down to either starving or losing his help and taking our chances alone, we’ll take our chances and leave.”

“And how long is ‘a reasonable amount of time’ to you?”

Walt spreads his hands, says, “I don’t have an exact number in mind.”

“Okay but, like—before going Dasher Party starts sounding like a good idea, right?”

Walt blinks, then says, “If you’re referring to the pioneers who resorted to cannibalism to survive while stranded in the snow, that was the Donner Party, Jesse.”

Jesse waves a hand, says, “Whatever, I was close. Knew it was one of the reindeer.”

Walt huffs out a laugh despite himself.

Jesse presses, “But we’re not gonna let it get that bad, right? I mean, we got that whole barrel of money, we could hotwire a car—”

“We’re not going to let it get that bad, but we need to give him as much time as we can before giving up. I don’t have the resources or the network I had before—we would be running blind with no allies, and every cop in the country probably still looking for us.”

Jesse raises a dubious eyebrow at him. “Every cop? Even way the hell out here, and a month later?”

“We’re very high priority fugitives, Jesse.”

Jesse snickers as if that’s funny somehow.

Walt doesn’t see the humor.

“Yo, you think we have any true crime groupies yet?”

“Any what?”

“Nothing, never mind.” Jesse’s stomach growls loud enough for Walt to hear it. Jesse winces a little and changes the subject. “So are we having the last TV dinner or the last pack of mashed potatoes for lunch today?”

Walt sighs, wishing Jesse hadn’t phrased it that way. The last of something either way, unless they went for the Cheerios—Walt thinks half the box might last them two days if they’re careful, but those likely won’t be as filling as the other options.

Walt decides to be generous, tells Jesse, “You decide this time.”

“Sweet,” Jesse says through a grin. “Alfredo, bitches!”

He goes over to the freezer, grabs the fettuccine alfredo dinner and pops it in the microwave.

Walt smiles at Jesse’s enthusiasm and tries not to dwell on their dwindling food supply.

 

 

*

Ed still doesn’t show up that third day.

They watch the movie together again and Walt brings more wood up to the porch and Jesse won’t shut up about how delicious the fettuccine was. Walt’s anxiety won’t shut up about how low on food they are and how vulnerable they would be if they left and took their chances on their own. It feels like a lose-lose no matter what they do. If Ed would just fucking show up when he’s supposed to…

Walt brings the wood to the porch, then goes and chops more even though they don’t need to yet. It helps take out some of his frustration.

When they lay down for the night Walt’s still stuck between being anxious and being pissed off, but when Jesse snakes his hand into Walt’s pants and starts stroking his cock, he welcomes the distraction.

“What do you wanna do tonight?” Jesse murmurs, leaning over him and pressing teasing kisses to the underside of Walt’s jaw as he keeps jerking him off.

Walt doesn’t reply right away, just watches as Jesse trails kisses down his neck and then his chest, teasing Walt’s nipples with light kisses and the tip of his tongue. Walt never told him he likes that—Jesse just picked up on it from his reactions, evidently. Jesse’s good at reading his cues, at doing what Walt likes even when Walt doesn’t ask for it.

Jesse’s eyes flick up to meet Walt’s as he switches to the other nipple, and Walt makes a snap decision. Maybe Ed will show up tomorrow and everything will be fine, or maybe they’ll starve to death waiting or get caught running if Ed never shows—but either way, Walt realizes he would regret not having Jesse in every possible way while he has the chance.

Walt reaches over and grabs the olive oil off the nightstand.

“Come here,” Walt says, slicking his fingers and setting the bottle aside.

Jesse sits up and moves to straddle him at the same time Walt spreads his legs and starts to draw his knees up, which almost results in Walt kneeing him in the crotch.

“Yo, watch the goods—what are you…?” Jesse says, but then his eyes go wide as he figures it out. “Holy shit, for real?”

“For real,” Walt says. He doesn’t want to go another day without knowing what it’s like to have Jesse this way too.

Jesse grins and says, “Hell yeah,” leaning down to kiss him as he repositions himself between Walt’s spread thighs.

“Hang on a second,” Walt tells him, reaching between them to work one finger and then two into himself.

Jesse licks his lips and leans back so he can watch Walt getting himself ready. He puts his hands on Walt’s knees, his palms absently smoothing up and down Walt’s legs.

“You uh, want me to do that part, or?”

“I got it,” Walt says, biting his lip as he eases in a third finger.

“Okay,” Jesse says, then he stops watching and leans down to suck Walt’s cock instead while he waits, focusing on the tip and teasingly laving his tongue around it.

When Walt deems himself ready he withdraws his fingers, reaches with his clean hand to gently tug Jesse’s hair until he looks up.

Jesse meets his gaze, eyes hooded and lust-blown.

“I’m ready,” Walt says, then at Jesse’s eager smile he adds a stern, “but start slow. I haven’t done this in about thirty years.”

“Yeah, of course. Kinda shocked you’ve done it at all.”

Walt doesn’t bother responding to that. So he’d experimented. So what?

Jesse presses one more kiss to the tip of Walt’s cock before getting back into position over Walt. Jesse glances down between their bodies and reaches to line up his cock. The tip of it prods Walt’s rim, not trying to push in yet, just resting there.

Jesse’s eyes flick up to meet Walt’s, then he leans down over him to capture his lips in a kiss as he shifts his hips forward. Walt kisses him back and bears down to let Jesse’s cock slide in easier.

Jesse moans into the kiss and then pauses only partway inside Walt, his breath hitching as he breaks the kiss and bites his lip. Almost as if…

“Don’t you dare come before you’re even all the way in,” Walt warns him, and he’s only halfway teasing.

Jesse huffs out a laugh but stays perfectly still and says, “Give me a minute or I fucking will... You’re so tight,” he adds under his breath, like he’s surprised by it, like he’s never been on this end of anal sex before either.

Walt leans up to kiss him, and he doesn’t ask for confirmation but he’s glad he seems to be the one to give this to Jesse for the first time.

Jesse kisses him back, and after a moment he finally starts to press in deeper, going slow but steady until he’s buried balls-deep inside Walt.

“Fuck,” Jesse gasps into their kiss, going still again for a moment to collect himself.

Walt takes the moment too, adjusting to the fullness and stretch of Jesse’s cock inside him. He takes the moment and smiles through a stab of satisfaction at the mere fact of it, that Jesse is inside him. Jesse is his in every way now, and that alone makes this feel exquisite.

After a moment Jesse asks, “Can I—?”

“Yes—slowly at first,” Walt reminds him.

Jesse nods, pulls out slow until just the tip’s still inside, then he presses back in and it’s just as slow and smooth and perfect.

“Good?” Jesse checks.

“Keep going. Faster’s fine.”

Another few thrusts, and Jesse asks, “Still good?”

“Yes,” Walt tells him, starting to get impatient with the checking in. “If that changes I’ll tell you, just—go ahead. Like you mean it.”

Walt gets the sense that Jesse would’ve rolled his eyes at him if he wasn’t already so preoccupied with enjoying Walt’s ass.

“Okay,” Jesse tells him, going a little harder and a little faster each time until he has a steady rhythm going. Jesse’s eyes are locked on Walt’s, like he’s watching for any hint of discomfort now that Walt nixed the checking in.

There’s no discomfort—there’s not even any awkwardness to it now, it just feels hot and full and amazing.

Could be better though, if he just—

Walt shifts his hips a little on Jesse’s next glide in—just enough to make his cock hit Walt’s prostate.

A strangled moan escapes him and Jesse pauses, looking concerned for a second before he processes Walt’s expression.

Jesse smiles, asks, “That the good spot?”

Walt nods, and Jesse adjusts his angle to start hitting it every time even though his rhythm starts to falter.

Neither of them last much longer—Walt surprises himself by coming first, his release painting Jesse’s stomach.

Jesse lets out a breathy little moan when Walt tightens around him, murmurs something that might’ve been oh goddamn and then shoves in deep one last time and spills inside Walt, leaning down for a sloppy desperate kiss as he comes.

  

 

*

Four days overdue.

Walt wakes up entwined with Jesse, feeling a little sore but still very satisfied from the night before.

Jesse’s head is on Walt’s chest, and Walt combs his fingers through Jesse’s hair.

His touch is soft and barely-there but Jesse stirs at it, murmurs, “Thought I felt you wake up,” as he leans up to steal a sleepy morning kiss from Walt.

“Morning,” Walt murmurs back.

When they pull apart and their eyes meet, Jesse smiles and echoes back, “Morning.”

Jesse’s looking at him differently, but not in the way Walt had secretly feared he might. There’s no smugness, no lessened respect, no underlying sense of disinterest now that he’d gotten what he wanted. Instead there’s more open warmth and softness in Jesse’s eyes than before. More affection. More… secureness, perhaps, in the way Jesse looks at him—like maybe Walt allowing him this finally cemented in Jesse’s mind that they’re partners. It seems ridiculous now to ever think Jesse would’ve seen this as something he’d taken from Walt or something he’d gotten over him instead of something they’d shared.

One of these days Walt will have to stop underestimating Jesse. Or just stop generally expecting the worst of everyone, but that’s a tall order and probably pointless anyway this late in his life.

Jesse presses another brief kiss to Walt’s lips, smiles at him, and climbs over him to get out of bed and make a pot of coffee.

Walt gets up when the coffee’s ready. He sits down, sets his cup on the table, and leaves his arm stretched out with one hand cupped around his coffee mug for warmth. Jesse stands at the counter and pours one for himself.

Bright morning light streams in through the kitchen window at the perfect angle to stretch Jesse’s shadow across Walt’s arm. Walt pretends he can feel it. He tries to put his other hand on top of the shadow, pretends he can hold it there forever. He knows how shadows work—knows he can’t hold one at all—but he pretends anyway, even as his hand passes through.

 

*

 

They watch the movie together.

Lunch time rolls around.

Their last two food options—minus the olive oil, even though half the bottle is left if they truly get that desperate—are set out on the counter. One last pack of instant mashed potatoes. One half-empty box of Honey Nut Cheerios.

“I mean,” Jesse says, running a nervous hand through his hair, “we could probably stretch the potatoes to last two days, if we’re real careful.”

Walt’s stomach growls loud enough for them both to hear it.

Jesse gives him a humorless smile and mutters, “Tell me about it.”

Walt sighs, says, “I don’t suppose you’ve been hiding any secret Boy Scout skills like building snares and traps to hunt, have you?”

Ed hadn’t left them any guns.

Jesse scoffs and says, “Fuck no. I got kicked out of Boy Scouts after like a month.”

 “Why?”

“I was too disruptive,” Jesse says, making air-quotes with his fingers. “Shit was boring anyway.”

Walt refrains from commenting.

Jesse says, “So uh, guessing you don’t know how to set snares and skin animals and all that shit either, huh?”

Walt shakes his head. “I can clean a fish. If there was a pond on the property, we could’ve tried ice fishing, but…”

Jesse heaves a big sigh, then asks, “So, potatoes?”

Walt ignores his grumbling stomach and suggests, “Maybe we should skip eating today. Save the potatoes for tomorrow and then try to stretch them a second day like you said. And then, if Ed still hasn’t shown up by the day after that… then we take our chances and leave.”

“With Cheerios for the road,” Jesse adds, and Walt thinks it’s meant at least partially as a joke, but Jesse’s eyes are just as solemn as Walt’s own when they meet.

“Cheerios for the road,” Walt agrees.

“Okay,” Jesse says.

It’s a plan—not a great one, but it’s something.

There isn’t much hope but they’ve chosen a path forward and Jesse will follow him.

There’s comfort in the decision. A sense of finality.

 

*

“Yo, jizz has calories and like, protein in it, right?”

“A negligible amount, but be my guest,” Walt answers, not expecting Jesse to take him up on it.

But Jesse does.

Jesse goes to his knees and sucks Walt’s cock and swallows everything when Walt comes.

Walt returns the favor and it doesn’t sate his hunger in any sense, but the way Jesse looks down at him afterwards and runs his thumb across Walt’s lower lip with fondness in his eyes is more than worth it.

 

*

Three hours after they should’ve eaten lunch, they hear it—a distant rumbling sound outside, slowly moving closer.

Jesse perks up, head swiveling towards the door.

“Mr. White—is that…?” he trails off but his tone is hopeful.

They both rush for the kitchen window to look out front and—it is.

Ed’s truck. Finally.

“Oh thank fuck,” Jesse says, throwing his arms around Walt and nearly knocking him over in his excitement before pulling back and grinning at Walt.

Walt attempts to smile back but under the crushing sense of relief, he already feels a flicker of anger rekindling towards Ed for putting them through the wait and the anxiety and the slow almost-starvation. Now that he’s here Walt can afford to be angry with him. Now that they’re definitely going to live long enough to be angry.

Jesse doesn’t seem to notice—he presses a brief kiss to Walt’s lips, then hurries over to the door to put on his boots and coat.

“Yo, come on! I wanna see what he brought, and we gotta carry everything in.”

Walt can’t match Jesse’s enthusiasm, but he follows him to the door anyway, dons his own shoes and coat. Jesse stands by the door, impatiently shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The second Walt gets both arms into his coat, Jesse grabs his hand and nearly drags him outside onto the porch just in time to watch Ed’s truck pull up and park in front of the cabin.

On a normal day Walt would’ve griped at Jesse to at least wait for him to zip his damn coat up, but today he’s hungry and freshly pissed off at Ed’s delay and privately satisfied that it takes Jesse a good thirty seconds to remember to let go of Walt’s hand.

Ed climbs out of the truck, raises both hands and preemptively says, “Sorry for the delay—I meant to be here a week ago but an emergency came up with another client. Glad to see you two didn’t take off.”

“We certainly thought about it,” Walt grumbles, and Jesse elbows him. “What?” Walt says, shooting him a look.

“You choose to leave, you’re on your own,” Ed reminds them. “But until then—I brought you extra food and water this time, just in case. And some more movies.”

Jesse perks up at that. “No shit?”

“I shit you not. Come down here and help unload.”

Jesse grabs Walt’s hand again when Ed turns his back, leading him down the porch stairs and watching him like he’s worried Walt might slip and crack his head again. Walt’s offended and touched in equal measure.

Once they’re down the stairs Jesse lets go and bounds over to the truck to look in the back. Everything’s in bags inside tote boxes in the truck bed, and it takes a good ten minutes for the three of them to carry it all in.

They add the four new cases of bottled water to the existing stack in the corner, then they sit everything else down on the kitchen table and counters while Walt takes stock of the haul.

Three gallons of milk. Two cartons of powdered milk. Five family-sized boxes of cereal. More coffee. Six dozen eggs. At least twenty frozen dinners, a bag of frozen tater tots, a goddamn carton of chocolate ice cream. An entire paper grocery bag filled to the brim with an assortment of pouches of instant mashed potatoes and various dry mixes of rice and pasta sides. Another paper bag overflowing with boxes of macaroni and cheese. Eight boxes of instant oatmeal. A cardboard box bigger than their microwave packed full of cans of soups and stews three layers deep. A dozen or so fresh apples and oranges. Six boxes of plain spaghetti in a bag with three jars of alfredo sauce and three jars of spaghetti sauce. Four loaves of bread, six packs of sliced lunch meat, and three jars of mayonnaise.

There’s even a tall bottle of mezcal tucked in one of the boxes like a gift, or an apology.

“Goddamn,” Walt says through a smile, surveying it all.

He and Jesse could probably live on this for half a year, with the way they’ve accustomed themselves to stretching their food lately.

“Yeah. Just in case I get delayed again, this should give you a damn big cushion. Especially when we keep adding to it every month.” Ed still seems genuinely sorry for the delay. As well he should be, Walt thinks.

Jesse steps up close to Walt’s side—much too close, but Jesse doesn’t seem to notice—and grins across the table at Ed. “Yo, this is fucking awesome, man.” He turns his smile on Walt, asks, “What do you want for dinner? We’re totally not skipping now.”

Walt takes a moment to try to remember whether Jesse likes the macaroni and cheese or the alfredo better, then suggests, “One of the fettuccine alfredo dinners? No—one each.”

“Each?” Jesse echoes, it seeming like a luxury after what they’ve gotten used to.

“Each,” Walt repeats.

Jesse’s smile grows and he says, “Hell yeah, baby!” He leans an inch or so closer and for a moment Walt thinks Jesse’s going to kiss him right in front of Ed but then Jesse catches himself, bites his lip, steps away.

Jesse clears his throat and takes the bag of TV dinners over to the freezer, putting all but two of them away.

Walt tries to keep his face impassive as he forces himself to meet Ed’s eye.

Ed doesn’t seem fazed, but he doesn’t seem oblivious either.

“Nice to see you two getting along,” Ed says mildly after a moment.

“Yeah,” Walt says, not looking away. He’s still watching for any kind of flicker of disgust or hatred, but it never comes.

Maybe they don’t have to worry about Ed.

But even so, Walt certainly doesn’t want to talk about it with him, so he changes the subject.

“Any luck getting your hands on some chemo for me?” Walt asks as Jesse starts moving the cold groceries from the countertops into the fridge and freezer. He asks it quietly, not wanting to dim Jesse’s smile with a reminder of the time bomb in Walt’s lungs.

“Not yet,” Ed says. “But I have a lead on a way to get it. Entirely possible that I might have it by next month’s delivery.”

Walt nods. “Good.” He glances over his shoulder, sees Jesse popping their alfredo dinners in the microwave. Quietly, he asks Ed, “Could you bring another couple bottles of olive oil next month too? I like to cook with it. Adds a little extra flavor, and the fat in it makes meals keep us feeling full for longer, you know.”

The corner of Ed’s mouth twitches in the tiniest impulse towards a smile, but he just says, “Sure,” and leaves it at that. Then, louder so Jesse can hear too, Ed says, “I need to get back on the road soon. Anything else you guys want to request for next time?”

Jesse glances over, eyes flicking from Ed to Walt then back to Ed. “Um—did you get chemo or some kind of medicine for him yet, or..?”

“Still working on it,” Ed says while Walt’s chest feels warmed by Jesse’s consideration. “Anything else?”

“Actually yeah,” Jesse says, “um… could we get like, a couple of those big jars of Vaseline? It’s just that being this cold all the time is making my skin all dry and my lips get chapped. And my aunt always said plain Vaseline was the best thing to use because it doesn’t have all the chemicals and like, perfume and shit, ya know?”

Christ. Walt thinks they might as well just ask for actual lube at this point.

Ed just nods and takes a pen and small notepad out of his jacket pocket, writes it down along with olive oil, presumably. “Anything else?”

“Um. Some more printer paper? Or maybe an actual sketchbook? I like to draw.”

“More pencils?” Ed asks.

“Sure. Thanks, yo.”

Walt clears his throat, adds, “Updates on my family? Albuquerque newspapers? And whatever useful information you can gather on the state of the meth trade there—particularly anything related to Jack Welker and his crew.”

Ed frowns slightly, says, “Things aren’t a problem to get. The intel you’re asking for is trickier…and riskier.”

Walt gives him a humorless smile. “I see. Would an extra ten thousand dollars cover the risk?”

“Twenty might.”

Walt scoffs but walks over to his barrel of cash in the corner, pries off the lid.

“Twenty better,” Walt says, handing him the twenty thousand.

Ed nods, pockets the cash, and turns to go.

“All right. See you boys next month.”

“Wait,” Walt says, “put more movies on the list too.”

Ed asks, “Have you even looked at the new ones yet?”

“No, and thank you, but just—always more movies, okay?” Walt tells him, and Jesse emphatically nods his agreement.

“Will do,” Ed promises on his way to the door, then he says, “See you next time,” as he steps outside.

Walt and Jesse go to the kitchen window and watch him walk to his truck. The microwave beeps as their dinners finish cooking but neither of them look away from the window.

Ed’s arrival loomed so large for weeks and now he’s already leaving after maybe twenty minutes—it feels surreal, like closing a circle, and evidently Jesse shares Walt’s compulsion to watch Ed’s departure.

Ed climbs back out of the truck after a few seconds though, holding another box.

“What is that?” Jesse mutters.

“Can’t tell,” Walt says, but he goes over to open the front door, Jesse following on his heels.

Ed walks up the porch steps and holds out the box, says, “Almost forgot—I figured the one that was already here probably isn’t in the best of shape.”

It’s a brand new air mattress.

Ed hands the box to Jesse with a smile, and Jesse holds it like he thinks it might explode.

“Um, yeah. Thanks,” Jesse says, and it takes him a second but he forces a smile back.

“No problem,” Ed tells him, seeming amused as he turns and heads back to his truck. “Bye for now,” he calls over his shoulder.

Walt and Jesse stay in the doorway and watch Ed drive away.

A gust of cold air reminds Walt that they’re letting heat out, and he finally closes the door.

Jesse looks down at the new air mattress box in his hands and so does Walt, and for a moment it feels oddly like watching a coin flipping through the air and waiting to see which way it’ll land. Then Jesse turns and heads straight for the hall closet, where he shoves the box onto one of the shelves along with all the other random junk they never use, then decisively shuts the door.

Walt exhales, lets his shoulders un-tense.

Jesse catches Walt watching him but just smiles and says, “Yo, let’s eat!” as he goes over to the microwave to retrieve the alfredo dinners.

The table and counters are still covered with their new provisions so they eat on the bed, sitting shoulder to shoulder with their backs leaning against the wall and their legs stretched out in front of them.

The fettuccine is divine, and devouring it precludes conversation.

Once they’re finished eating, Jesse gets out of bed just long enough to throw away their trash and put their forks in the sink, then he reclaims his spot next to Walt, sighing and leaning his head on Walt’s shoulder.

For a moment or two, there’s a comfortable silence.

Then Jesse blurts out, “Pretty sure Ed figured out we’re fucking somehow.”

“Might’ve had something to do with you standing so close and then asking for a ridiculous amount of Vaseline right after I asked him for more bottles of olive oil.”

Jesse snorts, says, “My bad. He seemed cool though, right?”

Walt shrugs and regrets it when the movement prompts Jesse to stop leaning his head on Walt’s shoulder and sit up.

Walt answers, “If you’re asking whether I think he’s going to come back and commit a hate crime, no, but aside from that, I don’t know.”

Jesse nods, chews on his lip for a second, then asks, “If he gets you your info on Jack… what then?”

“Then… ideally I’ll raze Jack’s entire operation to the ground and bury him in its ashes.”

Jesse’s lips twitch, an impulse towards a frown, and he asks, “And how are you gonna do that when we can’t leave this place without losing our only ally right now?”

We. Our. Walt smiles without meaning to. The plural implies Jesse’s accompaniment at least, if not necessarily his assistance.

Jesse’s expression turns suspicious, like he thinks the smile means Walt already has some elaborate plan. “What? You gonna send a bomb through the mail? Hire another hitman? Or you thinking we’re just gonna say hell with Ed and take our chances?”

Walt shrugs one shoulder, lets Jesse imagine whatever he wants.

Jesse just stares at him for a moment, then shakes his head and looks away.

“Is anything ever gonna be enough for you?” Jesse’s tone is quiet and undemanding and resigned, and something about that makes it worse than if he’d yelled.

“Jesse—”

“We got away, we’re alive, we got a whole barrel of cash sitting in the corner, and you got me—but all that’s not enough? You still gotta risk everything for revenge? And once Jack and all them are dead—what then? You gonna restart your fucking empire, start cooking and selling again?”

“I don’t know.”

The proud and greedy and irrational part of Walt does want to take back his empire, even though he knows it’s beyond a long shot. He’s lost so much—he would have to rebuild essentially from scratch, build a new network, find a new distributor, new enforcers… but he has his chemistry expertise and he has Jesse, and that’s what he started with to build his first empire. Beyond that he has one barrel of cash as start-up money, he has his perfected Blue Sky formula, and he has the advantage of his reputation now. He has Heisenberg. Maybe it wouldn’t be impossible to rebuild what he’s lost.

It’s quite the temptation, but… honestly he’s tired. He has no idea how long he has left to live, and with the uncertainty of if and when Ed can procure his bootleg cancer treatment, maybe he shouldn’t waste whatever time he has left trying to rebuild his lost empire—maybe it’s better spent building something new with Jesse.

Love or money? Empire or starting over? The man he used to be would’ve said both, would’ve said I want it all, and the man he used to be would’ve believed he could have it—would’ve believed he was owed it. The man he is today—exiled and humbled by the crumbling of the pedestal he’d placed himself upon—knows better.

The man he is today knows deep down that he’s already made his choice, because it’s the same choice he’s been making for years, irrational and possessive and with the certainty of the insane each time—when it comes down to it, he chooses Jesse over everything, always.

Walt meets Jesse’s eyes, and then asks him anyway because he has to push, “If I do, will you help me? Kill Jack, rebuild, all of it?”

“I don’t want to... but I will.”

The reluctance tastes bittersweet, but it’s still what Walt wanted—he has Jesse’s loyalty again, grudging but boundless.

Jesse says something else then, so quiet Walt almost misses it.

“Don’t want to love you either…” Jesse tells him, a confession and damnation all in one as he meets Walt’s gaze—he leaves the but I do unspoken, but Walt hears it anyway.

Walt’s breath catches and a thundercloud bursts in his chest.

“Jesse—” Walt breathes, reverence sweet and heavy on his tongue.

“If we go back to ABQ we’re gonna die or get locked up,” Jesse says, ignoring Walt’s astonishment, ignoring his own implicit confession. He says it like their fate is foregone, an inescapable fact. “And aren’t you sick of killing people and destroying things yet? Aren’t you done with that? Can’t we just…?” Jesse trails off, eyes shining. He shakes his head, and his voice wavers when he asks, “This is nice, right—you and me here together? Minus the almost starving part, but this is good, we’re good here, why can’t we just—”

“Jesse. Say it,” Walt interrupts him, tone gentle but firm.

Jesse blinks at him. “What?”

“Say the words,” Walt implores, and it’s another mirror, another chiral image, it’s two atoms locked in a covalent bond endlessly orbited by the electrons they share.

Jesse’s eyes lock with his, and Walt sees the moment it clicks. Feels the moment it snaps into place across the fraught distance between them, quantum and immutable.

Jesse licks his lips and pauses for one fragile electric moment, then he confesses again, confesses fully.

“I love you.” Jesse says it like it hurts—like it’s part of him, inexorable.

Walt leans in and kisses him, busies his lips and steals the chance for Jesse to take it back.

Jesse kisses him back, kisses him deeper, and it’s desperate and beautiful but eventually Walt’s lungs protest.

When they pull apart to catch their breath, Walt’s confession spills out.

“We aren’t leaving. We aren’t doing any of that, Jesse—I just, I needed to know you would. Okay? You are enough for me.”

Jesse’s kiss-swollen lips part and those gorgeous blue eyes pierce Walt’s as he studies him, caught between hopeful and skeptical.

“You’re gonna forget about Jack?”

“No. But we aren’t leaving—I’ll figure something else out. Something that doesn’t endanger us.”

Jesse bites his lip, studies Walt for a long moment like he’s searching for something—sincerity, maybe.

“Okay,” he finally says, holding Walt’s gaze.

Walt can’t stop his relieved sigh and something loosens in Jesse’s posture too, both of them relaxing as the tension dissipates and understanding clicks back into place between them like an electron slipping into covalence.

 

 

*  *  *

One month later Walt wakes to an empty bed.

He frowns and sits up to blearily glance around the cabin, but Jesse’s nowhere in sight. Not across the room watching a movie, not in the kitchen, not outside since Walt can see both of their boots and coats are still by the door.

Walt gets out of bed and heads for the bathroom to check there. The door’s closed.

Found him.

Walt lingers at the bathroom door for a moment—this close, he can hear the shower running and the plastic clunk of a bottle being set down.

He steps away from the door, leaves Jesse to his shower. He starts a pot of coffee for them, then opens the fridge to take inventory of their breakfast options.

This time, they still have plenty of food. Not as many perishables left—the eggs are almost gone and the milk’s running low—but they aren’t near-starving like the last time Ed was due.

Walt decides to wait until Jesse finishes his shower to ask what he’s in the mood for. Walt’s leaning towards omelets but Jesse’s partial to French Toast and if he makes either one of those it’s going to use the last of their eggs.

He takes his cup of coffee and wanders over to the table, takes a seat.

The letter is still sitting there in the middle of their dining table like a centerpiece. Signed but not sealed, in case Walt decides to make any more last-minute revisions before Ed arrives.

Walt reaches for the envelope, slides the letter out, unfolds it.

The letter is his compromise with Jesse. His confession to the world. His revenge on Jack. The closest to an apology he can give Skyler.

The first page is addressed to Skyler. It’s hateful and threatening and demanding, and hopefully enough to give her plausible deniability for anything she’s been accused of helping him with. Assuming the cops ever actually let her read the letter after they intercept it, Walt’s counting on Skyler being able to read between the lines and see what he’s trying to do for her. He’s painting himself as the monster, the mastermind, the abusive husband she was too afraid to leave or defy.

The second page is an even angrier letter that the first letter instructs Skyler to deliver to Jack Welker. Walt knows full well it'll never make it to Jack—and that's the whole point. It's addressed to Jack but Walt wrote it for the cops.

The second letter names names, implicating Jack and Todd and everyone else in their crew whose name Walt could remember. It names Todd as Drew Sharp’s murderer. It gives enough information for the cops to find Jack’s compound, via Walt complaining about having to drive way the hell out there to inspect his product. It mentions Vamanos Pest being a front for Jack’s robbery side business, by means of Walt insulting Jack’s lack of vision and implying that it was a distraction when his entire focus should’ve been on Walt’s crystal distribution all along.

The coup de grace of the second letter though, is that he both exonerates Jesse and accuses Jack of betraying Walt by murdering him, therefore—hopefully—persuading the authorities to stop searching for Jesse.

How DARE you go after Pinkman when I explicitly told you to leave him alone. I told you he was MINE. I spent over two years blackmailing and manipulating that boy, training him exactly how I wanted—I put in all that time and effort, and then you went behind my back and killed him. I could’ve forgiven the rest, Jack—the incompetence, the myriad inconveniences of working with you—but I can’t forgive you killing Jesse. I won’t. You better hope you never see my face again, because if you do it’ll be the last thing you ever see.

A shadow falls across the table. Warm arms wrap around Walt’s chest from behind and Jesse’s chin rests on Walt’s shoulder.

“What are you changing now?” Jesse asks, sounding fondly exasperated.

“Nothing,” Walt tells him.

“Mmhmm,” Jesse says, sounding like he doesn’t believe him. “Leave that last line alone, I told you it sounds badass.” He reaches for Walt’s wrist, tilts it so he can see the watch he’d given Walt without having to move his head off his shoulder. “What time do you think Ed’ll get here?”

“No idea,” Walt says, folding the letters and sliding them back into their envelope.

He handles them carefully, like the historical documents that they are—or will be—the last letters written by the infamous Heisenberg before he disappears for good. Maybe they’ll be in a museum someday alongside statues of ancient rulers… or maybe Walt’s overestimating his own importance, but it’s nice to imagine a lasting legacy, to imagine his name in history books, to imagine people still looking upon his work centuries from now.

Walt turns his head, steals a kiss from Jesse. He handles him carefully too.

Jesse smiles into it, kisses him back, then asks, “What are we having for breakfast?”

“Whatever you want.”

“What if I want you?”  Jesse murmurs into Walt’s ear, giving it a teasing nip.

Walt feigns disinterest and says, “We already established that semen has a negligible amount of calories and isn’t very filling.”

Jesse huffs out a laugh, his breath warm against Walt’s neck as he tells him, “You're such a dork.”

“Yeah, but you’re still going to suck my dick.”

“Oh am I?”

“Right after I suck yours,” Walt tells him, patting the tabletop right in front of his chair. “Come here.”

Jesse sits on the edge of the table, and Walt stays in his chair. He reaches up, frees Jesse’s cock from his pants, and strokes it to full hardness before leaning forward and taking it into his mouth.

“Fuck,” Jesse moans, both of his hands running through Walt’s still-short but regrowing hair.

Walt sets up a rhythm just the way Jesse likes, slow at first but building to a faster pace as his hands grip Jesse’s hips.

“Fuck, Mr. White,” Jesse gasps.

Walt hums around his cock in response, pressing his thumbs harder against the jut of Jesse’s hip bones and digging his other fingernails into Jesse’s skin hard enough for a jolt of pleasure-pain but not hard enough to make him bleed.

Jesse’s breath hitches on one last moan as he comes down Walt’s throat, both hands still clenching Walt’s hair like he doesn’t want to let him pull away.

Walt indulges him with teasing licks and kisses to his softening cock until the oversensitivity gets too much and Jesse finally hisses, “Okay, okay, that’s—yeah,” as Walt pulls off.

He tugs at Jesse’s hips, pulling him down from the table to Walt’s lap.

Jesse smiles at Walt and then kisses him deep and slow and reverent before drawing back and holding Walt’s gaze as he sinks to his knees on the floor.

Walt stays in the kitchen chair, seated like a king on a throne while Jesse pulls out Walt’s cock and presses a teasing kiss to the tip of it.

“Jesse,” Walt breathes.

“I got you,” Jesse murmurs, lips brushing featherlight against Walt’s cock as he speaks, then he stops teasing and gets to it—does everything goddamned perfect just the way Walt likes, just the way he taught him.

The soft morning sunlight spilling in from the kitchen window makes Jesse look like something ethereal in the warm glow, and Walt can’t look away. Jesse’s eyes flick up to catch Walt’s and he moans around his cock and then Walt’s gone, shuddering through his release as Jesse swallows it down.

When Jesse pulls off he leans back on his knees, gives Walt a smile and then plays at being exhausted, laying on the floor beneath the kitchen table at Walt’s feet.

“Mmm, I’m staying down here, taking a nap. You wore me out,” Jesse jokes. “Just wake me up when Ed gets here.”

Walt leans down, peers under the table at Jesse. “You’re going to miss breakfast then.”

Jesse cracks one eye open. “What’re you making?”

“Would you rather have omelets or French toast?”

“French toast. Duh.”

“Then come out from there,” Walt tells him, scooting his chair back and standing to give Jesse room. “We can cook it together.”

Jesse stands up and kisses him, and the lingering bitter flavor of their mingled release is the best thing Walt’s ever tasted.

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Yes the mezcal Ed brought them is Dos Hombres 🥃💕

Comments are always welcome and very much appreciated 🥰