Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

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Jesse stopped next to the El Camino and looked back—he locked eyes with Mr. White and for one heavy eternal moment they just stared at each other. Then Mr. White nodded, just slightly, and Jesse’s eyes were brimming as he nodded back, saying everything and nothing with that one look.

Jesse’s heart was pounding and he still hadn’t really processed everything that just happened. Mr. White came back for him. Mr. White killed Jack and his crew. Mr. White got shot while shielding Jesse. Todd was dead and could never hurt him again. Jesse was free. He was free and he could just drive right out of this hellhole now. It felt like a fever dream.

He looked back at Mr. White one more time and then got into the El Camino. Started the engine. Shifted it into reverse without even consciously deciding to.

Jesse backed the car up and then stopped right next to Mr. White. Kept his foot on the brake as he leaned over to shove the passenger door open.

“Get in,” Jesse told him.

Mr. White put his hand on the door, uncertainly said, “Jesse—”

“Get in the fucking car!”

Mr. White sighed and got in the fucking car.

“You’re just going to end up with a body to have to get rid of,” Mr. White said as he carefully fastened his seatbelt, leaving some slack on the bottom so it wouldn’t hit the gunshot wound.

Jesse frowned and said, “Don’t do that—make it tight. Pressure on the wound or whatever.”

Mr. White looked up at him for a second, then said, “I don’t know how much good that will do,” as he tightened the seatbelt and held it directly over the gunshot wound, wincing.

“Did it go clean through or..?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. White answered, sounding tired. “Just… just drive.”

Jesse looked away, put the car in drive, and floored it out of there, busting through the gates and ignoring the hiss of pain from Mr. White at the impact.

Mr. White didn’t ask where they were going and Jesse couldn’t have answered him even if he did. He was just driving, just fleeing on instinct and pure adrenaline, just getting the hell away from that place.

Once he was a good ways away and back on a real road, maybe five minutes later or so, he started trying to figure out where exactly he was—kinda hard when it was pitch fucking black outside—and trying to head in the general direction of the ABQ. He could try to find a ER or something, drop Mr. White off and then run for it—except he didn’t feel right about that, about leaving him. Couldn’t leave him ten minutes ago either, how was he supposed to dump him off at a hospital and then just drive away?

Jesse glanced over to check on him and his breath caught when he saw that Mr. White was unconscious—hopefully just unconscious—with his head lolled forward onto his chest.

“Mr. White? Mr. White!” Jesse said loudly, and Mr. White’s head lifted up and he made a groggy murmuring sound. “Jesus,” Jesse swore under his breath—for a second he’d thought…

Don’t think about that, he told himself, just drive.

He put his eyes back on the road and drove, flooring the gas pedal and holding in a sudden urge to scream out his frustration and grief and anger and relief and triumph and fear all at once.

He drove, and he didn’t know what the fuck happened because one second he was gunning it down some empty street in the middle of the night, and the next second it was broad daylight so bright it was blinding and he was off-roading it in the desert and slamming the brakes trying not to hit the side of an RV that was right fucking in front of him out of nowhere.

The El Camino skidded and slowed almost to a stop but not quite, and he still ran into the side of the RV with a crumpling sound of metal-on-metal, but thankfully he’d slowed down enough that it was more of a bump than a crash. The RV rocked a little with the impact but not much, not enough to tip it or anything.

Jesse looked up from the steering wheel—the front of the car was banged up and there was a not too deep but pretty fucking wide dent in the side of the RV—and then he looked over to check on Mr. White, who was awake again and groaning and reaching towards the wound in his side.

“You alright?” Jesse asked, putting the car in reverse and carefully backing it off of the RV a few feet before putting it in park.

“What happened?” Mr. White grumbled at him, blinking his eyes against the bright sunlight.

“I don’t know, we were on the road, it was fucking night still—I don’t know,” he babbled, wondering if he was losing his mind. Wondering if he’d had some kind of psychotic break or something.

“Is that an RV?” Mr. White asked, blinking as he peered through the cracked windshield.

Jesse looked closer at it, because it looked like the same exact kind of RV as the Crystal Ship, which was fucking weird. Like spooky weird. X-Files and Twilight Zone kind of weird. He glanced towards the door of the RV, wondering if somebody was going to step out and pull a gun on them—and then he saw the tape.

Five little pieces of duct tape, there to cover five bullet holes.

No.

No fucking way.

They’d watched the Crystal Ship get crunched up at the junk yard, there was no fucking way—

Then the RV door opened and Mr. White stepped out—Mr. White from like two years ago with the shaved head but no goatee yet and that appalled look on his face as he stared at the El Camino. Couple seconds later a younger and unscarred Jesse stepped out behind him.

What.

The.

Fuck.

This was—this had to be a dying hallucination or something. Jesse must’ve wrecked the car. He was bleeding out in the wreckage with Mr. White and this was just… just his mind giving him something entertaining on the way out or whatever. Had to be.

Jesse laughed. Laughed so hard he started crying, but he couldn’t seem to make himself stop.

“Jesse?” Mr. White was asking beside him in a weak voice.

“It’s okay,” he told Mr. White, because they were going out together after all and that was… despite everything Jesse was surprisingly okay with that. It felt right.

The Mr. White and Jesse outside the RV were still staring at them, and the younger Jesse’s mouth had dropped open—he’d recognized them. He was pointing and saying something to the younger Mr. White, who looked skeptical but squinted closer all the same, and then he mouthed oh my god.

Jesse laughed again and raised his hand to wave.

Then he glanced back over at the Mr. White beside him, ready to crack a joke about saying hi to himself or something, but his stomach dropped because Mr. White was unconscious again.

Jesse turned the car off and shoved the keys in his pocket, then reached over to unfasten Mr. White’s seatbelt. He opened the driver’s side door and carefully dragged Mr. White across the bench seat and out of the car, leaning against the side of the El Camino to support him.

Jesse glanced over at their younger selves, then called, “Yo, a little help here? He got shot.”

Because maybe this was a dying hallucination and maybe it didn’t matter what the fuck they did during it, but Jesse couldn’t just stand by and not try to help Mr. White. Not when he’d came back and gotten Jesse out of that hellhole. Not when he’d taken a bullet for him acting as a human shield.

“What the fuck, yo? How the fuck—?” Jesse’s younger self said.

“I don’t fucking know, just, help him!” Jesse snapped at him.

Younger Jesse took a step towards them but younger Mr. White grabbed his wrist and held him back, almost protectively.

But the younger Jesse yanked his wrist free and said, “Yo, they’re us. We gotta help them.”

“How is this possible?” the younger Mr. White asked, looking shell-shocked. He didn’t try to stop the younger Jesse when he walked towards them again.

Jesse just shook his head. “No idea.”

Younger Jesse said, “Yo obviously it’s time travel, or they’re from a paranoid dimension like on those sci-fi shows Badger’s always watching.”

“Parallel dimension,” younger Mr. White corrected. Then he shook his head and said, “Both of those things are impossible—it’s science fiction, like you just said.”

Younger Jesse got closer and tentatively reached for Mr. White’s arm but hesitated.

“What, uh, what do I do?” he asked.

“Check his back,” Jesse told him, “see if it went all the way through.”

“Okay… um…” younger Jesse reached down and carefully pulled Mr. White’s jacket and shirt up, and looked around behind him. “Uh, yeah, there’s another hole in his back. Is that good or bad?”

“No fucking clue,” Jesse answered. “You guys got that first aid kit, right? Gauze and alcohol and shit?”

“He needs a hospital,” the younger Mr. White spoke up. “If it hit any organs or arteries—”

“I was taking him to a hospital,” Jesse interrupted, “and then this fucking happened. How is he supposed to go to a hospital now when you’re you here?”

The younger Mr. White blinked and didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

Jesse laughed humorlessly and muttered, “Fuck, I’m yelling at my hallucinations now.”

Younger Mr. White sort of bristled at that and said, “We are not your hallucinations—we’re very real and if anything you’re part of our hallucination. Maybe there was a gas leak, or, or—chemical exposure, or maybe some fumes got in through the respirators—”

Younger Jesse piped up, “Yo, how? We ain’t even started cooking yet.”

“Look, it doesn’t fucking matter what this is or how it happened,” Jesse snapped, two seconds after he decided that he should treat it like it was all real regardless. Because if he didn’t and he let Mr. White die and then somehow it really was real…then he’d be alone here and he would never forgive himself. “He’s bleeding real blood so fucking help me with him!”

Jesse shifted his grasp on Mr. White and took a step towards the Crystal Ship. Younger Jesse automatically helped him, supporting Mr. White on his other side.

Younger Mr. White backed a couple steps away, leaving them a path to the door and seeming a little nauseous as he got a closer look at his bleeding future self.

“Jesus,” the younger Mr. White muttered under his breath.

Jesse and his younger self hauled Mr. White into the RV and carefully laid him down on the floor next to the ‘workstation.’

“So,” the younger Jesse asked nervously, “we gotta stop the bleeding first, right? Like in movies and shit they always say to put pressure on the wound.”

“Yeah, sounds right. Um—where’s the first aid kit?”

Younger Jesse went over and grabbed it off a shelf underneath the workstation and sat it on the floor in front of Jesse.

“Get a bunch of the gauze out and hold some over both spots, my hands aren’t clean,” Jesse told him.

Out of the corner of his eye Jesse saw the younger Mr. White step into the RV, cautiously eying his older self on the floor. The younger Jesse did what he was told, kneeling down and pushing Mr. White’s shirt up out of the way, carefully sliding one hand with a big wad of gauze underneath him to the exit wound, and putting another over the one in his side. There was already so much blood on Mr. White’s skin and clothes it made Jesse nauseous to look at.

“How did this happen?” the younger Mr. White asked.

Jesse glanced over at him and said, “Kind of a long story.”

Younger Mr. White just gave him an expectant look and said, “Well we’ve got four days that were supposed to be spent cooking—I’m sure there’s time.”

Jesse blinked, then echoed, “Four days?” He glanced from younger Mr. White to younger Jesse, then scrambled up off the floor and ran over to the driver’s seat.

The fucking key was in the ignition.

Jesse swore under his breath and turned the key and prayed.

The engine turned over right away and roared to life, and Jesse heaved a sigh of relief. At least the RV wouldn’t be stuck out here with Mr. White bleeding out.

“Thank fuck,” he said under his breath.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” the younger Mr. White demanded from behind him.

“Saving your asses from a really shitty time,” he said. “You said you haven’t started cooking yet? So, what, you just got here?”

“About ten minutes ago. We were just about to start the preparations when you crashed into us,” younger Mr. White said, sounding annoyed.

Jesse nodded, thinking back to what had been going on back then. “Okay…um. First off, you’re not dying. Not yet. You were actually in remission right now and the coughing up blood was just from the radiation inflammation shit. So, uh, no rush on the cooking marathon.”

Younger Mr. White blinked at him a few times looking stunned, then he just said, “What?”

Younger Jesse called from across the RV, “Yo, what’s going on up there?”

“The buzzer’s broke. When I left the key in the ignition it drained the battery and we were stuck out here for days.”

“Oh shit,” younger Jesse said.

Younger Mr. White blinked and slowly turned to look over at the younger Jesse, then asked in his best are-you-a-fucking-idiot tone, “You left the key in the ignition?”

Jesse cut in and said, “Don’t bitch him out over it, okay? No harm done, we’re good.”

He left the engine running but stood up and went back over to his Mr. White, who was still unconscious.

“Got it stopped?” Jesse asked his younger self.

“I mean, it ain't stopped, but it’s not like leaking out around the gauze yet, so,” he trailed off, keeping his hands over the wounds nice and tight, one hand underneath Mr. White and the other pressing down on his side.

“Okay, that’s good. You’re doing really good,” Jesse said, clapping his younger self on the shoulder as he stood up and went back over to younger Mr. White. “You got your phone?” Younger Mr. White nodded, and Jesse said, “Good. I’ll drive, you call Saul and see if he’s got some kind of, I don’t know, like a doctor or a vet who does shit off the books or whatever.”

He took a step towards the driver’s seat.

“Oh, so you’re in charge now?” the younger Mr. White asked him sarcastically.

Jesse turned back around and stepped right up into his space and hissed, “This is not a dick-measuring contest right now! I don’t care about ‘being in charge,’ I care about him not dying on me. So either call Saul or give me the fucking phone so I can, but he always listened to you better, so…”

Younger Mr. White just stared him down for a few seconds, and Jesse fought the urge to look away as he held the eye contact. Eventually the younger Mr. White reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, then finally looked away as he flipped it open to dial.

Jesse sighed and sat down in the driver’s seat. He put the RV in gear and took off, turning it around and heading down the little dirt road he remembered so well. He would have to come back and deal with the El Camino at some point—probably not a good idea to leave a duplicate of Todd’s car laying around—but that was a future problem.

In the passenger seat next to him, younger Mr. White was talking to Saul’s receptionist.

“Yes it’s very urgent, it’s life or death urgent and I really need to speak with him as soon as possible. All right.” He sighed and looked over at Jesse and told him, “She’s seeing if he’s available.”

Jesse just sort of grunted in response. It was gonna take them a little while to get back to a real road and then get back to town anyway.

The younger Mr. White straightened up in his seat and said, “Yes, Saul—we have an emergency here… Medical emergency. Yes—gunshot wound, went all the way through. Um, lower abdomen, far over on the right side. His right. Yes. He’s going to need stitches or surgery, and I don’t know, probably a blood transfusion. We, uh, have a perfect match for a blood donor available. Yeah, lucky… Okay, yeah, hang on,” he said, opening the glovebox and grabbing a pen and an old envelope out of there. “Go ahead with the address… Okay, got it. It’s probably going to be at least twenty minutes but we’ll hurry. Thanks Saul.” Younger Mr. White hung up, then looked over and told Jesse, “Saul knows a guy.”

“He always does.”

Jesse kept driving as fast as he could on the dirt road.

A couple minutes later, the younger Jesse called, “Yo get back here!” sounding upset. “I think he’s—just get back here!”

Jesse hit the brakes and put it in park and ran back to where the two of them were on the floor, dropping to his knees on the other side of Mr. White. His younger self had tears on his face.

“What? What’s wrong?” Jesse demanded, feeling a flare of panic.

“Check him, I can’t—if I move my hands,” he trailed off, sniffling.

Jesse leaned closer and put his ear to Mr. White’s chest. It took a second, but he heard a heartbeat—too slow probably, but there—and he felt his chest rising slightly as he breathed.

The younger Mr. White must’ve followed him because he anxiously asked from like right behind Jesse, “What’s happening? Is he—?”

“He’s still here, he’s alive,” Jesse told them both.

Jesse’s younger self let out a big sigh and said, “Oh thank fuck.”

“Why’d you freak out?” Jesse asked.

His younger self sniffled again and said, “He woke up, just for like ten seconds and he smiled at me and,” he shook his head and paused for a second, looking at his own Mr. White and then looking away, “he said my name real quiet and he said ‘should’ve told you I love you’ and then his eyes closed and I thought—”

Jesse felt a pang in his chest at that, but he just bit his lip and patted his younger self on the shoulder again and said, “Just stay with him, okay? Saul gave us an address.”

Jesse started to stand back up but the younger Mr. White put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Jesse tensed up automatically and flinched away, glaring up at him from the floor.

“The fuck, man?”

Younger Mr. White backed off but gave him an odd look and held up his hands in like a ‘I’m harmless’ gesture, then said, “I’ll drive. You should stay with him too. Just…in case.”

“Okay?” Jesse said, kind of making it a question but the younger Mr. White didn’t elaborate.

Younger Mr. White glanced at his own Jesse for like two seconds, gave him an awkward smile, then hurried back to the driver’s seat and got the RV moving again.

Jesse glanced down at Mr. White, then put his hand flat on his chest and left it there, where he could feel his heartbeat and feel his chest moving with his breathing. Just in case.

For a minute or so there was just silence, just the sound of the RV engine and the feel of Mr. White’s chest rising and falling under Jesse’s palm.

Then his younger self cleared his throat and said, “Yo, uh… am I allowed to ask about the future or parallel universe or whatever, or..?”

Jesse raised one eyebrow at him. “I don’t know about ‘allowed’ or not. We didn’t do this on purpose, there’s not like a rule book.”

“Okay. Then, uh… what happened to you guys? You just bust out of prison or something?”

Jesse laughed but there was no humor in it. “Nah, I wish. In prison you would actually have like, rights and shit.” He looked down at Mr. White, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going.

His younger self didn’t push though, just said, “Oh,” and went quiet for a long moment. Then he carefully said, “Yo, I gotta keep my hands where they are, but you can come over and, uh, sit with me. If you want.”

Jesse looked up at his younger self—come sit with me, Jess, had been Aunt Ginny’s way of telling Jesse she either wanted a hug or thought Jesse needed one, and the reminder of all those times sitting cuddled next to Aunt Ginny on the sofa while they watched tv or just talked or cried when one of them needed to had Jesse blinking back tears even as he smiled slightly and took his younger self up on the offer.

 He moved over to Mr. White’s other side, sitting right next to his younger self and leaning against his side, resting his head his shoulder. After a moment, Jesse hesitantly put one arm around his younger self’s waist while he kept his other hand on Mr. White’s chest. After months of his only physical human contact being getting beat up or getting roughly escorted between his cell and the lab, it felt really fucking nice to just sit there in a sort-of hug with someone he knew wouldn’t hurt him.

“Thanks, Jess,” Jesse told him on a whim.

He needed something else to call him anyway—his brain was starting to hurt from constantly thinking of Jess as ‘his younger self’—even though he was exactly that. It was just a constant mindfuck, the me-but-not-me of it all, and having something different to call him would probably help.

His younger self—Jess—huffed out a quiet laugh and said, “What, I’m Jess now? How come you get to keep our whole name?”

“Uh, cause I’m older? Duh,” Jesse half-teased.

“Fiiiine,” Jess said, sighing like he was put out by it, but Jesse could tell he was just playing.

They both went quiet, and Jesse suspected Jess was watching the slight rise and fall of Jesse’s hand on Mr. White’s chest as he breathed.

“What are you gonna call my Mr. White?” Jess asked after a minute, sounding amused.

“I don’t know. Walt, I guess,” Jesse said even though it felt weird as hell.

“That’s so weird,” Jess muttered, and Jesse almost smiled.

They stayed like that for the rest of the ride, leaning on each other and just watching Jesse’s hand on Mr. White’s chest rise and fall with his breathing.

Time didn’t mean a lot to Jesse right now, but it only felt like five more minutes tops before the RV was parking and the younger Mr. White was calling Saul again to let him know they were here.

Younger Mr. White—Walt, Jesse reminded himself, call this one Walt—was walking towards both Jesses and giving them an odd look for a second before looking down at Mr. White and asking, “Is he…?”

“Still ticking,” Jess told him.

“Good. Saul’s guy will be out any minute. He’s bringing the supplies here so we don’t have to try to move him.”

“Aight,” Jess said.

Jesse just nodded. He hadn’t moved away from Jess or from Mr. White’s side.

Younger Mr. White—Walt—cleared his throat and said, “I think our story should be that you two are our cousins. It wouldn’t take much to disprove us having twin brothers, but disproving distant cousins would take more digging. So you’re our older cousins who happen to have an uncanny resemblance. Maybe… maybe our fathers were twins? My father and my older self’s father, I mean, not my father and either of yours. Obviously. Your fathers were twins.”

Jesse almost cracked a smile at how flustered and thrown off Walt was by all of this, and at his over-the-top lies. The lying was almost kind of endearing coming from this younger version of Mr. White who hadn’t used it against Jesse yet.

“Keep it simple,” Jesse mumbled at him. “Older cousins if anyone asks. Don’t need to get into the twin shit—it’s too much. Honestly we don’t even gotta use the cousin thing either, anybody gets nosy you can just give them that Heisenberg stare and tell them to mind their business.”

“Heisenberg stare?” Jess echoed, sounding dubious.

A knock at the RV door interrupted, and Walt walked over to open it.

“Yo, don’t let go until somebody’s ready to take over,” Jesse told his younger self before moving away. Jess nodded and kept the pressure on the wounds.

Jesse went to stand out of the way as the doctor came in—at least Jesse assumed this was the doctor, even though he was just wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and the scent of strong whiskey clung to him like cologne. He looked older than Jesse but a little younger than Mr. White, so maybe in his 40s, tall white guy with about a week’s worth of stubble on his face, dark hair with a few gray streaks shot through. He was carrying two big duffel bags, one on each shoulder.

“Okay,” the man said, setting the bags on the floor and glancing around the RV. He looked at Mr. White on the floor, then he looked from Jess to Jesse to Walt and then kind of said to all three of them, “You can call me Dr. Daniels, as in Jack. No that’s not my real name and yes I do think I’m funny. Full disclosure—the state of New Mexico no longer recognizes the ‘Doctor’ part, but fuck them, I earned it.” He paused for a second, as if expecting one of them to complain or argue. When no one did, he continued, “Now, our mutual friend already wired me five thousand of your dollars just to take a look at your pal here—that’s my consultation fee and apparently in this case my Pretending I Don’t Know I’m Standing In a Meth Lab fee. Final price determined by the extent of care, I’m not legally liable if the patient is beyond saving, cops are not to be involved by either party, blah blah blah, do you agree to those terms?” he asked, glancing between the three of them but seeming to land on Walt as he waited for an answer.

“We agree,” Jesse said firmly, “just help him.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Dr. Daniels said, taking a flask out of his pocket and blatantly taking a drink in front of them.

“Excuse me, are you seriously drinking right now?” Walt demanded.

Dr. Daniels gave him a mild glare and snarked back, “You want my hands to stay steady for this or not? I was told there’s a gunshot wound.”

Walt gave him that appalled look of his, but Jesse decided to cut in before he could say anything else to insult the person who was there to help him. Yeah, a doctor with a revoked license and 'functional alcoholism' or whatever probably wouldn’t have been Jesse’s first choice either, but that was who they got and honestly Jesse didn't give a shit as long as the guy could help Mr. White.

“Yeah, he got shot,” Jesse told the doctor. “Went all the way through—exit wound’s on his back. We’ve kept pressure on them for the most part. He uh, also has lung cancer, if that’s important.”

Dr. Daniels knelt down next to younger Jesse and peered at Mr. White. “He on any kind of cancer treatment right now?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse answered, “we’ve been apart for a while. He was in remission for like a year, but he told me it came back right before we, uh, got separated. That’s been about six months ago,” Jesse said, trying to ignore the curious looks both of their younger counterparts were giving him.

“How long ago did he get shot?”

“Um, like half an hour, maybe?” Unless Jesse really had blacked out and lost time between escaping the compound and ending up in the past. But he didn’t have a way to explain that possibility without sounding insane, so he didn’t try.

“Okay,” Dr. Daniels said, standing up and grabbing one of his duffel bags, dragging it over close to Mr. White before going back for the second bag. “I was told we have a compatible blood donor—I’m guessing that’s you?” he said, looking over at Walt.

“Right. Exact same blood type,” Walt said.

“Lucky for him,” Dr. Daniels said, opening the second bag. He pulled out an empty IV bag but kept digging. “Here we go,” he said, pulling out a packaged needle tip for the IV and walking over to the younger Mr. White. “Hold this,” he said, handing him the empty blood bag while he attached the needle to the end of the tubing on it. “Okay, give me your arm. Make a fist and squeeze it a few times, good, okay, little pinch now—there you go. Now sit down, keep that needle in. We need a full bag preferably, but if you start feeling like you’re going to pass out, pull the needle.”

Walt carefully sat down on the floor with the blood bag, out of the way but close enough to still see and hear what was going on.

“All right,” Dr. Daniels said, finally kneeling down next to Jess to take a closer look at Mr. White. “You got your hands directly over the wounds?” he asked, peering at the arm Jess had underneath Mr. White like he was trying to estimate exactly where the exit wound was.

“Yeah,” Jess answered.

“Anything come out other than blood? Like bile or fecal matter?”

“Uh… I don’t think so?” Jess said.

“I only saw blood,” Jesse chimed in.

“Good. This….this trajectory might be good. Hang on.” Dr. Daniels reached for his duffel bag and dug out some kind of machine that folded open like a particularly thick laptop and had a thing that kind of looked like a remote and kind of like a microphone plugged into the side of it.

“Is that a portable ultrasound machine?” Walt asked.

“That it is,” Dr. Daniels said as he started setting it up. “You,” he called, beckoning one hand at Jesse, “Get over here and cut his shirt off while I get this thing running. Scissors are in the side of the bag.”

Jesse bowed his head and automatically followed the order. He knew he wasn’t going to get beaten here for not following an order fast enough, but six months with Jack and Todd’s asshole crew had him pretty well-trained to jump to it.

He grabbed the scissors and kneeled down across from his younger self and then cut Mr. White’s shirt, starting at the collar and working down. Then he pushed the two flaps of fabric aside so they were out of the way.

Dr. Daniels had the ultrasound up and running, and he told Jess, “Keep the pressure on,” as he put some kind of clear goo on Mr. White’s skin next to Jess’s hand and slid the microphone looking thing around in it, glancing over at the monitor and studying it for a moment. “Oh, excellent. This is one lucky man, right here. Bullet missed his intestines, missed the kidney, just barely nicked the edge of his liver. And in relatively healthy people who don’t drink a lot, the liver eventually regenerates itself.”

“Rare, occasional drink,” Walt chimed in.

“Good for him,” Dr. Daniels said absently, setting the ultrasound aside and wiping off the goo with a square of gauze. “Let’s get him sewed up, do the blood transfusion, and then I’ll take a look at his lungs on there once he’s more stable.” He glanced towards Walt, eyed the blood bag, and asked, “Doing all right?”

“I’m fine,” Walt told him.

“All right.” Dr. Daniels dug a syringe and a vial out of the duffel bag, peered closely at it, then filled the syringe about halfway. “Local anesthetic, move your hand just a little bit kid, keep the pressure on though—good.” Dr. Daniels did the injection and set the syringe aside, then pulled out a kinda scary looking curved suture needle. He glanced at Jesse and said, “You’re looking kind of pale there. Might want to step away if you’re squeamish, I don’t need you puking on my patient.”

Jesse nodded and moved away, going over by the younger Mr. White instead. He grabbed a bottle of water out of the cooler on the way and twisted the lid off before handing it to Walt, who gave him a curious look but accepted it and took a big drink while Jesse sat down beside him. He handed the bottle back and Jesse screwed the lid back on and set it on the floor.

“So,” Walt said after a moment, his tone sounding carefully and deliberately casual, “you’ve been apart for six months?”

“Yeah.”

“And the cancer was back?”

Jesse licked his lips nervously. “He said it was. But he could’ve been lying. He was trying to change my mind about something, so, who knows?”

Walt studied him for a second and then opened his mouth to pry some more, but Jesse interrupted.

“Look, just, don’t try to work me for info right now, okay? We can talk about shit once he’s fixed up. Right now I’m too…” he trailed off and vaguely waved his hand to mean anxious and fucked up and probably going insane all at the same time.

Walt studied him for another few seconds, then said, “Okay.”

Jesse sighed and shifted closer, leaning against Walt’s side, and when he didn’t get shoved away or any kind of protest he decided ‘fuck it’ and rested his head on Walt’s shoulder too.

It felt nice. Comforting. Safe. This Mr. White hadn’t done anything to hurt or betray Jesse yet. Maybe this Mr. White never would. Maybe Jesse and his Mr. White crashed into this time so they could fix things—he could stop Jane dying, and then her dad would never crash those planes. He could tell his younger self to stop seeing Jane, to never get involved with Andrea, to—hell, to never try to expand to that corner where Combo got shot. To never work with Todd and those assholes so Drew Sharp wouldn’t get shot and Andrea wouldn’t get killed to punish Jesse. He could save so many people. And maybe…maybe he could save the younger Jesse and Mr. White from turning on each other, keep this younger version of Mr. White from going off the rails so bad this time around.

“Jesse,” Walt said after five or ten minutes, sounding slightly woozy, “bag’s almost full.”

“You okay? Here, drink some more water,” he said, taking the cap off and handing him the bottle again.

Walt finished off the water bottle, and Jesse glanced back over towards where the doctor was still working on Mr. White.

“Yo, the bag’s almost full over here,” Jesse called.

“Perfect timing,” Dr. Daniels said, “Entry wound’s stitched, and I’m almost finished with the exit wound. Go ahead and remove the needle, bring the bag over.”

Jesse glanced over but Walt had already pulled the needle out himself.

“Okay, um,” Jesse stood up and carefully took the bag over to Dr. Daniels.

Jesse’s Mr. White was still unconscious, but he’d been turned onto his side. Jess had a hand on his shoulder in case he moved, and Dr. Daniels was stitching up the wound on his back. Jesse watched that curved needle poke through his skin and then looked away, feeling a little nauseous.

“Just a sec,” Dr. Daniels said. A minute or so later he said, “All done. Give me the bag—you good to keep helping?” he asked Jess, who looked a little nauseous too but nodded as he took the blood bag, “Just hang onto the very top part, there you go.”

Dr. Daniels switched out the needle on the end of the blood bag with a fresh one, then carefully stuck it into the vein on Mr. White’s arm and taped it there.

“All right, let’s take a look at those lungs,” he said, dragging the portable ultrasound back over and pressing the handheld part to Mr. White’s chest. Jesse glanced over at Walt and gestured for him to come closer. “Okay… hmmm. Definitely got a tumor in there—just the one, though. Who’s seen his past scans? You? How’s that look?” Dr. Daniels asked Walt.

Walt blinked at the monitor, then said, “It looks better, actually. Much smaller than the last scan I saw.”

“Which was when?” Dr. Daniels asked.

“Um,” Walt glanced over at Jesse for help.

“Last time you saw it would’ve been about two years ago, maybe a little less,” Jesse chimed in.

“Okay, so he’s probably been getting some kind of treatment then, that’s good.” Dr. Daniels said. He put the ultrasound away, took his gloves off, and got his flask back out of his pocket for another drink. “Let’s give this blood some time to get into him, then I’ll give him some IV fluids in the other arm and leave him some pain meds and some antibiotics just in case. Seems like he’s going to pull through—infection’s going to be the thing to watch out for.”

Jesse cleared his throat and asked, “You, uh, think maybe you could get ahold of some chemo or something for him too? Wherever he was getting it before ain’t gonna be an option anymore.”

“I can look into it. Probably won’t be cheap,” he added, pulling out a pen and notepad and scribbling down a phone number. “Give me a call once he’s awake if he can tell you what he was taking. And call me if any of you have any more emergencies—quicker than going through Saul every time. But if I don’t answer or call you back within like ten minutes it means I’m either sleeping, on another job, or uh otherwise indisposed, so you’ll want to call Saul for somebody else."

“Okay. Thanks,” Jesse said, taking the paper.

“No problem.”

Dr. Daniels checked the blood bag—about half of it was in Mr. White by now, and the doctor seemed satisfied with how it was going. “Let’s go ahead and start the fluids in his other arm while that finishes up,” he said, getting an IV bag full of clear fluid out of his duffel bag along with another needle tip to put on it. Jess took the IV bag with his free hand, still holding onto the blood bag in his other.

Jesse watched the doctor kneel down and carefully stick the needle in Mr. White’s arm and tape it down like the other one.

“All right,” Dr. Daniels said under his breath as he stood back up. “While we’re waiting on that,” he said, catching Jesse’s eye and gesturing for him to step closer, “let me check you over real quick, kid. On the house—you look like shit.”

Jesse crossed his arms and automatically said, “I’m fine.”

“Kid. You are not,” Dr. Daniels said in a cut-the-bullshit tone.

Jesse sighed and stepped closer, spreading his arms out in a lazy shrug and raising one eyebrow at the doctor while he tried to ignore Jess and Walt both giving him concerned and curious stares.

“Let me see those wrists first,” Dr. Daniels said.

Jesse frowned because he had long sleeves on, but one of them must’ve slipped down for a second while he was helping the doctor. He pushed his sleeves up and showed Dr. Daniels. The rings of chafing from the handcuffs and chains weren’t all that bad now—they were just really red and kind of swollen and the skin felt a little too slick. Wasn’t bleeding or anything. Jesse was used to it. It sure as hell didn’t warrant the angry muttered Jesus from Walt, or the horrified whisper of What the fuck from Jess.

“Get some over the counter hydrocortisone cream for this, it’ll help with the inflammation. Can put plain old Vaseline on it too if it gets dried out or sore. What else you got?” Dr. Daniels asked matter-of-factly, not acting shocked or like he pitied him, and Jesse appreciated that. Jesse pointed at his face, but Dr. Daniels barely gave the cuts a glance. “Those are mostly healed over—nothing looks infected there. You can try some of that Neosporin anti-scar stuff if you want, but I don’t think it’ll do much good at this point. What else?”

Jesse shrugged and looked down at the floor as he answered. “Same red rings on my ankles. More cuts on my back, but they’re old and probably scarred over now too. Some cigarette burns. Bunch of bruises. Think I probably cracked a few ribs a while back but they don’t hurt anymore. The worst of it’s all old and already healed.”

“Jesus,” Dr. Daniels said under his breath.

Jesse shrugged again and tried to sound casual when he said, “I’m fine. It’s in the past now.” Then he let out a slightly unhinged laugh because no, it was in the future technically, and he was in the past now.

Dr. Daniels gave him another concerned look but Jesse waved it off and started to turn away.

“Kid, come here another sec,” Dr. Daniels said, gesturing for Jesse to follow him and going over to the other side of the RV, towards the corner in the back.

“What?” Jesse asked a little nervously, once they were out of earshot of the others.

Dr. Daniels sighed and took his flask out for a quick sip, then he said quietly, “Look, you don’t have to tell me any details if you don’t want to, but uh,” he paused kind of awkwardly then continued, “well, there’s only so many reasons to keep a person chained up like that. If you want, I know somebody who can run STD tests on the downlow—”

“No,” Jesse interrupted, “they never did nothing like that.” Some of the guys in Jack’s crew had joked about it sometimes and Jesse was pretty sure Todd had wanted to fuck him, but nothing ever actually happened.

“Okay. Just saying there’s no shame in it if anything did happen, and that I’ve got resources if you need them.”

“Okay, thanks, but I’m good,” Jesse said firmly, being careful to keep his voice down. “They didn’t fuck me or make me do stuff to them. The worst of all this,” he said waving one hand vaguely at himself to mean all of his scars and injuries, “was from ‘interrogating’ me when they first got me. Most of the time they just had me cooking meth for them—the cuffs and chains were to keep me from trying to escape again.”

“Okay,” Dr. Daniels said after a moment, letting the subject drop. “I do also have some names I could give you of counselors who specialize in helping people through shit like you’ve been through. Call me if you want them, all right?” He patted Jesse on the shoulder and walked away to check on Mr. White.

Jesse let out a heavy sigh, because that had been awkward as fuck. He only had a few seconds of peace though, because Jesse’s younger self made a beeline for him as soon as Dr. Daniels walked away. Jesse glanced over and saw that the younger Mr. White was holding the blood and IV bags for Mr. White now, staring down at his future self with an unnerved but curious expression.

“Yo, what the fuck?” Jess asked in a concerned whisper.

“Nothing, I’m fine,” Jesse told him.

Jess didn’t seem to believe him, carefully reaching for one of his hands and looking more closely at the red ring around his wrist. “What happened?”

Jesse gritted his teeth, then said, “We got mixed up with the wrong people, and shit went sideways. I’ve been their meth-cooking slave for the past six months.”

“Jesus,” his younger self breathed, glancing over at Mr. White before meeting Jesse’s eyes again—blue on blue—and asking, “So, what, your Mr. White got shot getting you out?”

Jesse looked down at the floor and nodded. Technically that was true. It wouldn’t do their younger selves any good to know Mr. White was also the one who’d thrown him to the wolves in the first place. Not if Jesse had any hope of fixing things, of keeping their younger selves from making the same mistakes and keeping them from eventually turning on each other.

“Did they have him too, or..?”

Jesse didn’t answer or look back up at him, just muttered, “I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”

“Okay,” Jess said, backing down but not letting go of his hand. “Sorry, yo. This is just, like, a huge mindfuck, you know?”

Jesse nodded, then felt a hand on his other arm and glanced up to see Jess awkwardly reaching for him and stepping closer, trying to comfort him again. And despite there being two Mr. Whites and a doctor who was mostly a stranger in the RV with them, Jesse leaned forward into the hug his younger self was offering.

He hid his face in Jess’s neck and the tears he’d been holding back for what felt like forever finally broke free and he clung to his younger self and sobbed.

*

Jesse wasn’t sure how much time passed when he had finally cried himself out and calmed down enough to pay attention to his surroundings again.

His younger self had eased the two of them down to the floor at some point, with Jesse halfway in his lap and still clinging to him, face buried in his shoulder. Jess had one arm wrapped around him in a hug still, and the other hand softly stroking through Jesse’s longer hair.

The RV felt like it was moving.

Jesse sniffled and pulled away from the hug a little bit, too embarrassed to make eye contact with Jess. He glanced over and saw Mr. White still laying on the floor. Dr. Daniels was gone and so were his bags and all of his equipment. The younger Mr. White—Walt, he reminded himself—was up front driving.

Jesse awkwardly climbed out of his younger self’s lap.

“Yo, where you going?” Jess asked.

“Why’s nobody sitting with him?” Jesse demanded, walking over and sitting down beside Mr. White instead. He was still unconscious. Jesse put one hand on his chest and sighed in relief when he felt it rise under his hand. Then he laid his head down on his chest and was even more relieved to hear a stronger heartbeat than before.

“The doctor said he’s probably gonna be okay,” Jess said from behind him. “Just gotta make sure he takes the antibiotics and doesn’t, like, strain himself or reopen the wounds.”

“I’ll make sure,” Jesse said quietly, not moving his head off Mr. White’s chest.

Jess sighed and then sat down beside Jesse. After a few seconds a hand landed on Jesse’s back and started tentatively rubbing it. When Jesse didn’t protest, a second hand joined it and started giving him a proper back massage and it felt warm and comforting and amazing.

Neither of them said a word.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, the RV was rolling to a stop and parking. Walt turned the engine off and stood up, walking over and giving Jess and Jesse an odd look for a moment before speaking.

“So, for obvious reasons we can’t go to my house,” Walt said, “but you need a shower and he needs somewhere comfortable to recover, so…”

Jess scoffed and cut in, “So you decided it’s my house,” but he only sounded a little bit annoyed about it. He was still rubbing Jesse’s back and shoulders.

“It’s that or a motel, and a motel would have dozens of other occupants as potential witnesses to see us carrying an injured man inside. And if someone calls the police to report seeing a person with a gunshot wound—” Walt argued.

“All right, whatever,” Jess told him. “My house it is.”

“How is he? Me, I mean,” Walt asked.

Jesse didn’t move but he mumbled, “Heartbeat’s stronger.”

“Good. That’s…good,” Walt said awkwardly. Jesse thought Walt was actually doing a pretty good job at not freaking the fuck out over seeing his older self this badly injured, or over the time-travel thing in general. Walt cleared his throat and said, “We need to get him into the house very carefully, and preferably without any witnesses. If anyone sees us, I suppose we'll just have to tell them he’s passed out drunk and hope they don't look at him too closely.”

Jess chimed in with, “I don’t think that blood’s gonna pass for red wine stains, yo.”

“You brought a dozen of those obnoxious hoodies with you,” Walt countered, “go get one and put it on him. Carefully.”

“I brought like three,” Jess mumbled, but his hands left Jesse’s back and he stood up and went to go dig through his bag for a hoodie.

Walt kneeled down beside Jesse and Mr. White, putting one hand on Jesse’s back and leaning close to whisper, “Jesse, I’d like to speak with you privately, once we get him settled.”

Jesse didn’t lift his head off Mr. White’s chest, but his eyes flicked up to look at the younger version. “Okay,” he quietly agreed.

“Okay,” Walt echoed, wearing an expression Jesse couldn’t quite interpret.

He was pretty sure Walt was going to want future details. Jesse figured he should start thinking of what to say to fix things, to save all the people they’d gotten killed the first time around, to keep their younger selves from turning on each other. No pressure.

Jess walked back over with a black and red hoodie in one hand and scissors in the other and said, “Yo, I figured this one, in case he bleeds through the stitches or something it won’t show as bad.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Jesse murmured, catching his younger self’s smile at the praise before he hid it.

“And uh, here,” Jess said, handing the scissors to Jesse. “His shirt’s ruined anyway, might as well cut it the rest of the way off so we don’t jerk him around too much taking it off his arms.”

Jesse took the scissors and reluctantly sat up. It had felt warm and safe and weirdly comforting to have his head on Mr. White’s chest, to feel his heartbeat and his chest rising and falling as he breathed. He mentally shook himself out of it and focused, carefully cutting across to the sleeves and then cutting them open long-ways to free Mr. White’s arms, pushing the flaps of fabric out of the way.

The doctor had wiped most of the blood off of Mr. White’s skin before leaving, but it was all over the floor underneath him and on the shirt he’d been wearing and the top of the pants Mr. White still had on. Jesse was sure he had it all over himself too, but his clothes were dark enough it probably wouldn't show.

Between the three of them, they got the hoodie on Mr. White without jostling him around too much or fucking up the stitches. Jesse zipped up the hoodie, glancing briefly at the stitched wound.

Jess and Walt shared a glance and seemed to have a silent conversation, then Walt told him, “Go get one of the cots, we’ll use it like a stretcher to move him.”

“Okay,” Jess said, heading to the back of the RV and dragging one of the cots over.

 “Okay,” Walt said, “each of us will take an arm, and Jesse—other Jesse—get his legs.”

Jesse huffed out a laugh at being called ‘other Jesse’ but he did what he was told, reaching for Mr. White’s ankles but not lifting yet.

“Now, the doctor said we need to be very careful not to strain his stitches by twisting or bending his abdomen too much or jolting him when we move him, so do not let go once we lift him. And let’s try to keep his torso as level as we can. Ready? Lift him up now, easy.”

The three of them lifted him, slow and careful, and it was awkward but they managed to get him onto the cot safely.

“Okay. Now the cot—once again, keep it level and don’t jolt or drop him. Um—Jesse, go outside and make sure the coast is clear.”

“On it,” Jess said, heading for the door and peeking out. “Looks clear. Nobody outside.”

“Good, stay there and keep watch. You help me carry him,” Walt told Jesse. “And if anybody happens to see us we’re telling them he’s passed out drunk.”

 They lifted the cot like it was a stretcher, then headed for the door. Jesse went first, carefully walking backwards out of the RV and holding onto the cot at Mr. White’s feet while Walt held on at the other end. They had a little bit of an awkward time squeezing out the door, but they made it without tripping or dropping Mr. White.

Jesse glanced over his shoulder at the house, and seeing the duplex he used to rent from Jane was like getting stabbed in the gut.

His eyes teared up but he blinked it away, telling himself Jane wasn’t dead here and now. She wouldn’t die here this time—he wouldn’t let her. Even if that meant telling his younger self he had to stop seeing her. Even if that meant driving her away himself if Jess didn’t listen. Because there wasn’t a lot of time, was there? Getting stranded in the RV had only been, what, a couple weeks before Jane died? Maybe less?

They got Mr. White up to the porch, and Jess dug his keys out and unlocked the door.

They carried him inside, and Jess was telling them to put him in the bedroom, and Jesse was blinking back tears again because he didn’t want to put Mr. White in the bed where Jane had died, but there was nowhere else.

She’s not dead here, he kept reminding himself. It didn’t happen here. But it happened to him. He’d lived it.

They set the cot down on the bed and then at Walt’s direction they carefully lifted Mr. White again just enough to pull the cot out from under him so he was on the mattress.

Mr. White looked weirdly small laying on the bed wearing one of Jess’s oversized hoodies. He’d lost weight—Jesse could see that, and he had felt it when Mr. White tackled him to the ground with a lot less muscle mass than the last time they’d grappled.

Jesse wanted to put his head back on Mr. White’s chest but that would mean laying in the bed where he’d woken up to Jane dead beside him, and he wasn’t up for that quite yet.

“Can you guys stay with him?” Jesse asked quietly, “I want to shower, shave, get rid of all this shit,” he said, gesturing at his overgrown hair and beard. “I’ll make it quick,” he added, not wanting to be away from Mr. White’s side for too long in case he woke up or anything went wrong.

“For sure, yo,” Jess said.

“Wait,” Walt said, “you should keep the beard—trim it a little but don’t shave it off. It’ll hide the resemblance a little bit.”

Jesse had wanted to shave it all off—hair, beard, the whole works. It all felt filthy and he’d never had his hair or his beard that long before so it all just reminded him of being in that fucking pit. But Walt had a point. He always had a fucking point.

“I can help you with that, and your hair. Jesse can stay with him,” Walt offered, giving him a pointed look. Right. The private talk.

Jesse sighed and said, “Fine,” and trudged towards the bathroom.

Walt was right behind him, following him inside and then closing the bathroom door behind them.

Jesse turned to face the mirror and leaned closer to it to inspect the scars on his face. They were…pretty bad, honestly. Two straight lines on his right cheek, one about twice as long as the other, and then a curved one kind of bracketing his left eye—they were all slightly raised and kinda thick and, like the doctor said, probably past anything a scar ointment could do for them. Jesse met his own eyes in the mirror and then immediately looked away. He cleared his throat and opened one of the drawers on the sink to grab a pair of scissors. Then he turned his back to the mirror, sat on the edge of the sink, and handed the scissors to Walt.

“Do your worst,” Jesse told him, only halfway kidding. If Walt fucked it up and made it look stupid, Jesse would have an excuse to just shave it off like he wanted to.

Walt took the scissors, studied Jesse for a moment, then decided, “Beard first. Hold still, now.”

Jesse did his best not to flinch away from the touch or lean too much into it either when Walt started trimming Jesse’s beard, one hand working the scissors and the other alternately tilting his chin different angles and combing through his beard to hold some of the longer parts out for cutting.

“So,” Walt said after a moment, all fake-casual, “I couldn’t help but notice the way you’ve acted towards my older self. Very... protective, and affectionate, and, well… physical.”

Jesse blinked at him a few times in shock, then he looked down at the floor and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry—apparently Walt thought Jesse and Mr. White were fucking each other, like partner partners…

But…

Wait…

Shit.

That was…

It was absolutely insane, but maybe that was it.

Maybe that was how he fixed everything. Maybe that was how he kept Jane and Andrea from dying because of him, how he stopped all of the bullshit that had driven wedges between him and Mr. White, how he made sure they stayed ride-or-die this time around.

Holy shit.

“Now,” the younger Mr. White was saying, his tone careful but with that manipulative edge to it that Jesse recognized easily now, “I understand that there are probably things you think you can’t tell us for whatever reason, but if you think about it, there’s really—”

Jesse made a snap decision and leaned forward to interrupt him—with his lips.

Walt made a surprised noise against Jesse’s lips, but after only a moment’s hesitation he was kissing him back, careful at first but getting more demanding as the seconds went on, pressing his tongue past Jesse’s lips and tilting his head to a better angle to deepen the kiss.

Walt was good at this, and it wasn’t as weird as Jesse thought it would be—it was nice, and it felt kind of inevitable or whatever, like maybe he should’ve done this years ago with his own Mr. White. 

Jesse reached one hand up to cup the back of Walt’s neck while he gave him the most intense kiss he could manage, hoping it would fool Walt into thinking that his older self and Jesse had been doing this for years.

After a moment—a long fucking moment—Jesse pulled away and blurted out, “Wait, we shouldn’t—”

“You’re the one who kissed me,” Walt pointed out, sounding breathless and a little bit stunned.

“I know,” Jesse said. They were both breathing heavy, their faces still close, and Jesse felt overwhelmed and hopeful and terrified and kind of like he was losing his mind all at the same time. “I’m sorry, I just—"

Jesse’s eyes teared up and he didn’t try to stop them.

“Shhh, Jesse, it’s going to be okay, son,” Walt said softly, and maybe getting called son should’ve felt weird after they’d just made out, but it came out sounding so genuinely fond that Jesse’s eyes teared up some more. "You're both going to be okay."

“You, uh… you want me to tell you how to not turn into us, right?” Jesse asked him, sniffling. He still had one hand on the back of Walt’s neck, and he reached up to grab a handful of his shirt with the other. “I’ll tell you—I will, but you have to promise me you’ll listen.”

“I’m listening,” Walt said, his eyes fixed intently on Jesse.

“Okay,” Jesse said, pausing and licking his lips nervously and trying to think of where to start. The more recent events stood out sharpest in his memory. “Okay… First of all—Vamanos Pest. Remember that name, and don’t ever—for any fucking reason—do any kind of business with that company, or anyone connected to them, at all. Saul hooked us up with them but it was a huge fucking mistake. Don’t work with them this time, no matter what. Got it?”

“No Vamanos Pest,” Walt said. “Got it.”

Jesse nodded, thought for a minute, then said, “Okay, next thing… this one’s coming up a lot sooner. You gotta promise not to let Jane die.”

“Who’s Jane?”

Jesse wanted to slap him, but he just gritted his teeth and snapped, “The girl that younger me’s seeing right now. I’m gonna tell him to cut her loose and stay away, but if he doesn’t listen—if you find the two of them passed out on drugs, and if she rolls onto her back and starts choking,” Jesse’s eyes teared up and he blinked a few times but kept talking, “roll her onto her side. Do not just stand there and watch her die.”

Walt looked horrified and offended at the same time, “I would never—”

“He did,” Jesse interrupted, and that shut him up. Walt blinked at him a few times, still looking stunned and slightly nauseous. “And, uh, if you break that promise for whatever reason,” Jesse added, because he knew any version of Mr. White was capable of doing insane mental gymnastics to justify just about anything if he put his mind to it, “then for fuck’s sake, at least don’t leave him there to wake up next to her body.”

Walt’s mouth dropped open and he looked even more horrified at that.

“Jesse,” he said, but couldn’t seem to get any other words out.

“Promise me you won’t do that to him this time,” Jesse said, his voice breaking.

“I promise,” Walt said as he leaned in to kiss Jesse again, maybe to seal the promise or maybe to comfort him or maybe just because he wanted to.

Jesse tried to believe him and he kissed him back, maybe to seal the promise or maybe because he needed the comfort or maybe just because he wanted to.

After a long moment Jesse pulled back from the kiss and glanced up at Walt and their eyes locked and they just looked at each other. Then Walt’s eyes flicked down to Jesse’s beard, which probably looked pretty ridiculous since they’d stopped to make out in the middle of him cutting it.

“We should probably finish with this,” Walt said a little awkwardly, picking the scissors back up.

Jesse nodded and stayed still, keeping his chin up while Walt went back to trimming the mess of beard on Jesse’s face into something shorter and neater.

Jesse stayed still and stayed quiet and hoped that he hadn’t just made a huge mistake by lying about being together with Mr. White to get their younger selves together for real. He hoped it would make things better, not worse. He hoped that whenever his Mr. White woke up he wouldn’t immediately call bullshit and ruin the whole thing.

“Okay,” Walt said after a couple minutes, lowering the scissors. “I think this is good, if you want to take a look,” he said, gesturing towards the mirror behind Jesse.

Jesse didn’t particularly want to look in the mirror again.

“I don’t really care—if you say it’s good, it’s good,” Jesse said quietly.

That got him a furrowed brow and a mildly concerned look but Walt just said, “Okay,” and reached up to get started on Jesse’s hair.

It didn’t make sense but Jesse felt a little bit cleaner and a little bit lighter with every snip of the scissors and every clump of hair falling onto the counter or into the sink behind him. He still wanted to just shave it all off but this would do, for now. This was a little better, anyway.

Couple minutes later Walt put the scissors down and ran both hands through Jesse’s hair, kind of fluffing it and shaking it out.

“All right, looks better,” Walt told him. “It’s still a little longer than my Jesse keeps it, but that’s probably a good thing if you’re sticking around. Better to look different enough to claim cousins than to look too much alike and draw attention.”

Jesse gave him a humorless smile, because between the scars and the ten or fifteen pounds he’d put on since he stopped using crystal and the aura of absolute misery he was pretty sure he radiated these days, he didn’t think anybody was going to be mixing up him and his younger self anytime soon.

“It’s not really up to me if I’m sticking around,” Jesse said. “We didn’t come here on purpose. No idea how it even happened. We could get snapped back any second, as far as I know.”

Walt frowned at that and said, “In that case, is there anything else of vital importance you need to tell me about the future? What to do, or not do? Who to avoid?”

Jesse bit his lip and thought about it, then said, “If Saul still hooks you guys up cooking for a guy named Gus this time around—just… be very very careful with him. We made a ton of money before shit went bad, and, maybe there’s a way to make it work but I don’t know. I don’t know all the details of what went down with you and Gus but… I had to kill this other cook he was trying to replace you with because if I didn’t Gus was gonna kill you, and later on you poisoned somebody I cared about and made me think Gus did it to, uh, to manipulate me into helping you kill Gus too. I don’t know how much of what you told me was truth and how much was bullshit now, but—”

“Will you stop saying ‘you’ when you’re talking about my future self?” Walt interrupted. “I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t kill this Gus with you. I never poisoned anybody or watched a girl die or left you to wake up next to her body. None of that was me.”

Walt looked disturbed at the thought that his older self did those things too, and Jesse thought that was probably a good sign as to getting him to not do them this time.

Jesse blinked, then said, “Yeah. Sorry. You’re right… Um. Anyway, about us… look, I know you—future you—tried a long time to make things work with your wife, but… honestly, it’d be better for everybody—better for your whole family—if you just end it with her now before she gets roped into our shit.”

“Roped into—Skyler found out?”

“Yeah. Future-you had her in charge of the money laundering eventually, and they stayed married for that thing where you can’t be forced to testify against each other, but it was like way over. She had an affair with her boss, and it was a whole fucking mess, man.”

Walt blinked at Jesse a few times with his mouth dropped open in that appalled look he did so often, but he couldn’t seem to decide on which part of it to react to first.

Finally Walt closed his mouth and just looked away, frowning towards the wall.

“So… you’re telling me I should just… leave my wife? Just like that? With a baby due in the next few weeks?”

Jesse looked down and said, “Doesn’t have to be right this second, but, yeah.”

“Leave my wife for,” he paused and pointed at the closed door, in the general direction of the bedroom across the house, “for the former student I cook methamphetamine with, who was hurling homophobic slurs at me in the not-so-distant past?”

Jesse frowned and awkwardly said, “Yeah, um, sorry. I didn’t mean that shit—it was just frontin’.”

“Just ‘fronting’?” Walt echoed with a scoff, but he looked away again and didn’t seem to actually expect a response from Jesse. He looked like he was thinking everything over really hard from every possible angle.

“Look, Mr. White,” Jesse said to Walt, his tone quiet but confident, “for real, you and your Jesse getting together early would fix a lot of the shit that went wrong for me and him. Okay? It’d keep your family from getting mixed up in all this, because Skyler would never find out about you cooking, and then it’d keep your fucking brother-in-law off our asses too, since he wouldn’t be right up in your business all the time. You and Jess wouldn’t have the same, like, trust issues and shit that we had for a while. It would just be better all around.”

Walt seemed to consider it for another moment, then he said, “Are you going to tell my Jesse all of this as well?”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to him.”

“And you seriously think he’ll go for it? With the ‘nerdiest old dude he knows,’ and without whatever precipitated the two of you getting together?”

Jesse shrugged, then honestly admitted out loud for the first time ever, “Well I had a huge fucking crush on you in high school, so, yeah—pretty sure he’ll go for it.”

Walt’s mouth dropped open in shock and he just stared at Jesse.

Jesse smirked and leaned forward to kiss that look off his face—to sell this whole fake-dating story, of course, and maybe also a little bit because he just wanted to. Maybe because he felt like he deserved a kiss or ten from this younger version of Mr. White who hadn’t done any of the things his own Mr. White had done to hurt him yet. Maybe because after all the shit he’d been through these past six months he was a little bit starved for any kind of positive contact. Jesse had earned it, hadn’t he? He’d earned some fucking kindness. Some affection.

Maybe… maybe he’d earned a second chance too, and maybe that’s why this whole time-travel thing was happening—so he could fix things, save people, save Mr. White, save himself?

Tears stung Jesse’s eyes again but he just blinked them back and kissed Walt harder.

He would do this. He’d fix it. He’d save them—all of them. He wasn’t going to waste his second chance.

When Jesse finally pulled back from the kiss, he glanced up and caught Walt giving him a fond and sort of amazed look, but Walt masked it pretty quick and then cleared his throat.

“I should probably,” Walt said, trailing off but gesturing vaguely towards the door.

“Yeah,” Jesse said, gesturing towards the shower and saying almost as awkwardly, “I should—yeah.”

Walt laughed a little and Jesse cracked a smile and this was so fucking weird but like, not in a bad way. Just kind of awkward and trippy and… weirdly nice? But a total mindfuck—a couple hours ago he was chained up cooking a batch with no hope of ever getting out of that hellhole, and now he was two years or whatever in the past and he’d just made out with a younger version of Mr. White and was trying to get their past selves to hook up. Kafkaesque.

“Just, uh, come get me if he wakes up,” Jesse said as Walt opened the bathroom door.

“Of course,” Walt told him, giving him another awkward but genuine-looking smile before he left and closed the door behind him.

Jesse stared at the door for a second and had a surreal little moment of holy shit I just made out with the younger version of Mr. White, then he looked away and put a pin in that and reached into the shower to turn it on and get the water warming up.

He pulled off his dirty clothes and threw them on the floor—he would’ve loved to just light the fuckers on fire but that wasn’t an option right now.

He stepped into the shower and under the spray and closed his eyes and for a moment the warm water was nice but then his mind glitched out or something and he felt a flare of panic and it was like he was back in that fucking compound getting jeered at and sprayed with the hose like a farm animal and he couldn’t catch his breath and his heart was pounding and his instincts were screaming at him to just run—he jerked backwards out of the spray of water and nearly slipped in the tub but caught himself with his arms braced on the shower walls.

He looked up and stared at the showerhead, keeping his eyes open and trying to focus on what was in front of him, trying to tell himself he’s here in this shower, not back at the compound. You’re here. The showerhead looked kind of old, one of those dull-looking metal ones instead of shiny chrome. Little bit of rust around the edges. You’re here. The holes where the water came out were arranged in a pattern of circles inside rows of circles that got smaller until you got to the middle—there was a word for that but he didn’t remember it. Mr. White would probably know what it was. There was some white crusty buildup around some of the holes too—was that calcium or lime? Mr. White would probably know that too. You’re still right here. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down—he was still staring at the showerhead because that was helping for some reason, focusing in on the shape and all the details of it as if he was going to draw it. You’re free and you're two years in the past and it’s insane but you’re here.

Gradually his breathing slowed down and his heart stopped trying to pound out of his chest and he let out a big sigh and reached for the bottle of body wash. He opened it and poured some in one hand without looking, keeping his eyes fixed on the showerhead while he got clean. He kept his eyes open when he rinsed off under it, and kept them open when he washed his hair as fast as he could and then rinsed it too. Keeping his eyes open helped but his heart was still beating too fucking fast.

Turning the water off was a relief.

He stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry off, making an effort to take deep even breaths. His heart rate gradually went back to normal, and he really fucking hoped he wasn’t going to freak out like that every time he took a shower.

When he was dried off, he glanced at his pile of dirty clothes on the floor and realized he didn’t have anything to change into, and he sure as hell wasn’t putting those rags back on.

Jesse wrapped the towel around his hips, then opened the door and leaned out a little ways.

“Yo, Jess!” he called down the hallway. “Bring me some clothes, will you?”

Couple seconds later Jess called back, “Yeah, just a minute!”

Jesse leaned against the doorframe and waited, and it was probably more like five minutes but Jess stepped out of the bedroom with a big bundle of clothes in his arms and headed down the hall towards Jesse.

“Yo, I uh, brought some different options, like outfits or whatever. Didn’t know what you’d want, so—”

Jesse smiled a little and said, “Thanks, but I’m not gonna be picky right now.” Honestly he just wanted something clean that hadn’t been given to him by Todd. “C’mon,” he told Jess, turning and stepping back into the bathroom.

Jess followed him, but when Jesse turned back around, his younger self was wearing a shocked and horrified expression.

“What?” Jesse asked, but then it clicked. His back. “Oh. Right. How bad is it?” he asked. He’d figured there were scars.

“I mean… bad. It looks like it really fucking hurt.”

“Yeah,” Jesse muttered, grabbing a pair of boxers out of the pile of clothes in Jess’s arms. He dropped the towel and stepped into the boxers, pulling them up. “So, uh, anyway. Like I told your Mr. White, I have no idea how we got here or how long we have. He figured I should hurry up and tell you two the most important shit for how to not end up like me and my Mr. White.”

Jess blinked and said, “Okay?” seeming nervous but really curious at the same time.

“Okay. Um. First—you’re not gonna like this, but… you gotta stop seeing Jane. If you don’t she’s gonna relapse and you’re gonna start doing heroin together and she’s gonna die. Like real soon.”

Jess’s mouth dropped open and after a few seconds of processing that, he sort of protested, “I don’t do heroin—”

“She talked me into trying it. Just—don’t do it this time. And stop seeing her. Make something up or act like an asshole or scare her off by asking her to marry you or something, but you gotta let her go or she’s gonna end up dead because of us again.”

Jess blinked at him a few times, then said, “What if we just don’t do heroin this time? I don’t have to ‘run her off’ yo—”

“Jess, just listen—this is gonna sound crazy but,” he paused, swallowed nervously, then said, “Mr. White is who we belong with anyway, okay?

Jess’s eyebrows went up but he didn’t say anything and didn’t look away either. After a second he sort of scoffed and said, “Wow. I, uh, kinda thought maybe you two were, you know. From what he said, and how you act with him.”

Jesse glanced away, then said, “Yeah. So, I think if you and yours hooked up early—like, soon—that would keep a lot of the really bad shit from happening to you two this time around.”

“So you want me to, uh, to dump Jane. For Mr. White.”

Jesse nodded.

Jess huffed out a laugh and said under his breath, “How is this my life?”

“Could be a lot worse,” Jesse told him with a grim forced smile, “trust me.”

Jess gave him a sympathetic look and said, “Yeah, sorry… Yo, I’d hug you again but my hands are full.” He held up the armful of clothes and Jesse cracked a smile and grabbed a tee shirt out of the pile and pulled it on.

Jesse rifled through looking for some sweatpants but Jess had only brought a pair of baggy blue jeans and slightly less baggy black jeans, so he decided to just not worry about pants. The boxers were enough—he was exhausted and probably going to pass out the second he got off of his feet anyway.

Jess raised one eyebrow at him and said, “What, no pants? Shit, Mr. White’s rubbing off on you.”

Jesse smiled a little at that. “I’m beat, man. Think I’m just gonna go to sleep.”

“Oh. Wait,” Jess said, not moving out of the way when Jesse took a step towards the door, “I got questions, yo. You can’t just drop a bomb like ‘dump Jane for Mr. White’ on me and walk off.”

“What questions?”

“Well, like—what’s it like? The uh, the gay sex part. With him.”

Jesse glanced away and rubbed the back of his neck like he was embarrassed. “It’s uh, it’s good,” he invented. “We got, uh, chemistry. You know?”

“Chemistry. Hilarious,” Jess deadpanned. “Yo, seriously, is that all you’re gonna tell me?”

“Yeah, well, it’s like—spoilers, you know? Don’t want to ruin anything for you.”

Jess gave him a severely raised eyebrow, then said, “At least tell me whether I ever get to be on top.”

“Uh—yeah, man. Fifty-fifty,” Jesse invented, figuring that was fair and if he said it like it was a fact then Jess would push for it and make it a fact. “Not that we actually keep count or whatever, but yeah. We flip.”

“Oh. Sweet,” Jess said, looking a little surprised. Then his brows furrowed a little bit and he asked, “Wait—did you already tell Mr. White about all of this? Like just a little bit ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus. Guess that’s why he was staring at me like that when he came back.”

“I kinda kissed him too,” Jesse admitted.

“Dude!”

“Sorry.” He wasn’t though.

Jess just looked at him for a moment, then asked, “He a good kisser?”

Jesse laughed and honestly answered, “Yeah, man.”

“Oh. Good,” Jess said, looking off to the side like he was imagining it or something. Then he cleared his throat and said, “But totally unfair, yo—you already know everything he likes, he’s gonna want you instead of me if you keep it up. You at least gonna give me any pointers?”

“No spoilers, yo. Figure it out together,” Jesse said. Then he remembered how close in the timeline they were to Jane dying and then them getting set up working with Gus, and he added, “Like, soon.”

 Jess frowned a little and muttered, “I think being a hardass rubbed off on you too.”

Jesse frowned too but didn’t take the bait. “Just—quit seeing Jane. Be with Mr. White. And if Saul hooks you two up cooking for this guy named Gus, just be very fucking careful. Don’t let him play mind games and pit you and Mr. White against each other this time, okay? Just stick with Mr. White, and if things go wrong with Gus again and Mr. White wants you to help get rid of him, just fucking do it—things always went better when we were ride-or-die. Oh, and off in the future, don’t ever work with Vamanos Pest or anybody connected to them, okay? Especially not this one guy Todd Alquist. Remember that name, and if you ever meet him either shoot him in the head or run the other way, all right?”

Jess’s eyebrows went up. “Shoot him?”

Jesse nodded, “Right in the face.”

“Do I wanna know why?”

“He shot and killed a little kid for a flimsy-ass reason. His uncle runs a nazi gang and that’s who had me locked up as their meth-cooking slave. He killed somebody I cared about in front of me as punishment for trying to escape. He’s the one who put half of these fucking scars on me. He’s a psycho creep just in general. Take your pick.”

“Jesus,” Jess muttered.

“Hopefully you never have to meet him this time around, but if you do…”

“Todd Alquist—shoot him or run. Got it.”

“Good,” Jesse said, reaching up to pat Jess’s shoulder. “Now come on, I’m seriously exhausted. If I’m still here tomorrow I’ll try to think of more stuff to tell you guys.”

“Aight,” Jess said, stepping away from the doorway and letting Jesse through.

They walked back down the hall towards the bedroom together, Jess carrying all the extra clothes and Jesse nervously running his fingers through his hair.

“Yo, you know there’s only one bed here, right?” Jess asked in an almost teasing tone.

Jesse smirked and said, “It’s a king, right? We can all share.”

“Gay,” Jess said under his breath, but it sounded like he was smiling too. At least he wasn’t arguing or making a big deal about it.

Jesse went in the bedroom first, immediately looking at his Mr. White on the bed. Still seemed to be asleep. Jess took the extra clothes back to the closet and started putting them away. Walt was sitting on the edge of the bed on the opposite side from Mr. White, keeping an eye on him.

“Anything?” Jesse asked Walt.

“Still unconscious,” Walt told him, meeting his eyes for a moment before looking at Jess with a curious but kind of cautious expression.

“Yeah I told him,” Jesse blurted out, not in the mood to watch the two of them dance around it and be all secretive and awkward. Maybe that was one of their problems the first time around—they never just fucking talked about shit.

“Oh. Good,” Walt said.

“I’m, uh, going to sleep,” Jesse told them both. “I’m fucking worn out. If me and him get snapped back or whatever, just—please remember what I told you. Stick together. Stay away from Jane. Stay away from Todd and Vamanos Pest. Be really fucking careful with Gus.”

Walt and Jess both nodded, and Jesse gathered up his nerve and climbed into the bed where Jane had died—not here, she’s not dead here—and he laid down next to his Mr. White, laying on his side and putting one arm carefully across Mr. White’s chest so he could feel it rising and falling with his breathing.

“Night,” Jess said from somewhere behind him.

“Night,” Jesse murmured back, eyes closed and already halfway asleep.

*

Jesse wasn’t sure what woke him up at first—for a split second he thought he saw and heard that damned tarp flapping on top of the bars of his cage’s roof and he almost panicked, but then his brain caught up and he blinked and he wasn’t even facing the roof he was laying on his side clinging to Mr. White who was still sound asleep. He was alive—Jesse’s arm across his chest was moving up and down slightly with Mr. White’s breathing, and that reassurance helped Jesse calm down a little

Then he realized the whole bed seemed to be moving up and down slightly, not just Mr. White’s chest. And what was that sound?

Jesse rolled onto his back and glanced over to his other side, and—holy shit.

Walt and Jess were in the bed on Jesse’s other side, both naked and panting. Walt was on top of Jess, kissing him and unmistakably thrusting into him while Jess’s legs were wrapped around his waist. Neither of them seemed to notice they had an audience now.

Jesse blushed and looked away up at the ceiling and said, “Yo, when I said ‘soon’ I didn’t mean right now while I’m sleeping here.”

“Shit,” Jess breathed, “told you we were gonna wake him up.”

Walt didn’t seem bothered. “Nothing he hasn’t seen or done before.”

Then Walt must’ve done something really right because the next thing out of Jess’s mouth was a porno-worthy moan.

Jesse felt himself blushing but tried to play it cool, tried to act like this was something he’d seen and done a hundred times with his own Mr. White.

 “Oh god, harder—c’mon Mr. White,” Jess was gasping.

Jesse couldn’t see between them where they were joined but he could hear the slick sounds, and the slap of Mr. White’s balls against Jess’s ass with every thrust.

Jesse licked his lips and glanced over again, then told Walt, “Pull his hair a little bit—he likes it.”

Walt glanced over at him for a moment, then focused back on Jess and tangled one hand in Jess’s hair to gently tug at it.

Jess moaned again and gasped, “Yes, fuck yes—”

Jesse watched his younger self’s blissed out expressions—he could tell Jess was getting close.

Jesse licked his lips again and told Walt, “Talk to him—he likes your voice. Tell him how good he is for you.”

Jess whined before Walt even said anything, but Walt kissed him and then panted out, “You feel so good, Jesse—so tight, so good for me.”

Jess shuddered and leaned up to kiss Walt again and then breathed, “Close—Mr. White—m so close—”

Walt took his hand out of Jess’s hair and reached down between them to stroke Jess’s cock instead as he sped up his thrusts, fucking into him harder, faster.

Walt kissed him hard one more time and then said against Jess’s lips, “Be a good boy and come for me, Jesse.”

And that was it—Jess shuddered and whined and squeezed his eyes shut as he came hard. Walt managed a few more thrusts and then shoved in one more time and went still, grunting into Jess’s shoulder as he came too.

For a long moment they just stayed there, catching their breath. Jess’s legs were still wrapped around Walt’s waist and his hands were smoothing over the nail marks he’d left in Walt’s back. Walt let go of Jess’s cock and reached up with his other hand—the one not covered in cum—to stroke through Jess’s hair again.

Jesse was… stunned and relieved and turned on all at the same time. This was good—even without fucking, Jesse and his own Mr. White had always been weirdly intense about each other, and so loyal before things started going wrong—now that Jess and Walt had this extra layer to it, they’d be rock solid ride-or-die forever.

So yeah, this was good. And hot. And weird. But mostly good.

Jesse’s cock was tenting his boxers and he wasn’t sure if he should excuse himself to the bathroom or follow their younger selves’ exhibitionistic example and just start jerking off right there.

Jess was smiling up at Walt and pressing a kiss to his lips and then murmuring, “God that was good. I wanna go again, let’s do it again.”

Walt looked over to the side, at Jesse as if for help, then told Jess, “Um, I’m not twenty-something like you, Jesse. It doesn’t exactly happen again that fast for me.”

“Oh. That’s fine. Later’s fine.”

Walt was still frowning a little, but he glanced at Jesse again and seemed to notice the tent in his boxers.

“Or…” Walt said, trailing off suggestively and raising his eyebrows at Jesse.

“Or what?” Jess and Jesse asked at the same time.

Jess looked over at Jesse and grinned at him, then he blinked and noticed that Jesse was hard. “Oh.”

Jesse swallowed nervously. Jess licked his lips. Walt looked back and forth between them and then leaned down to whisper something in Jess’s ear.

Jess nodded right away and said, “Yeah. Hell yeah. You uh, sure you’re cool with that?”

Walt leaned back and met Jess’s eyes and said. “I’m very cool with it, if you are.”

Jess nodded and glanced over at Jesse instead, licking his lips.

“Yo, um,” Jess said, then he kind of hesitated for a second, seeming eager but almost shy. After a few seconds he blurted out, “You wanna fuck me while he watches?”

Jesse’s eyebrows went up, but he was nodding his head yes before he’d even consciously decided. Of course he did. Of course he wanted this younger happier version of himself who hadn’t made his same mistakes, who hadn’t killed anyone in cold blood, who was still hopeful and beautiful and full of light instead of darkness. Wasn’t even a question.

Jess grinned at him and then looked back up at Walt, stretching up for another kiss and then saying, “Yo, trade him spots,” as he unhooked his legs from around Walt’s waist and lowered them.

Walt kissed Jess one more time, then pulled out and moved away, sitting on the edge of the bed instead.

Jess had his knees pulled up, feet flat on the bed and legs spread, and he glanced over at Jesse and raised one eyebrow at him with an inviting smile.

Jesse sat up and knee-walked over between Jess’s legs, looking down and licking his lips at the sight of his hole glistening from lube and dripping with Walt’s cum. Jess wrapped one hand around his own cock while Jesse was staring, and he started stroking it, getting it back in the game for round two.

“Go on,” Walt said from beside him.

“Yeah, come on,” Jess said, staring up at Jesse and giving him his best bedroom eyes. Jesus. Did Jesse really look like that once? Jess was fucking gorgeous. Hot. Beautiful. All of that and then some.

Jesse swallowed and took off his tee shirt, tossing it aside and then shoving his boxers down, awkwardly shuffling out of them. Then he got into position over his younger self, lining up his cock but not pressing in just yet.

He leaned down and kissed Jess, pressing their lips together before he could lose his nerve. Maybe kissing himself should’ve felt weird but it didn’t—it was just really fucking good. Jess moaned and kissed him back enthusiastically and kept stroking his own cock in between them.

“Come on,” Jess whispered against Jesse’s lips after a moment.

Jesse met his own baby blue eyes and watched Jess’s face as he shifted his hips and started to slowly push in.

It was tight—he was so fucking tight and hot and already so slick inside from the lube and Walt’s cum. It was fucking amazing. It was impossible. It was—

“So good,” Jesse breathed as he pushed those last couple inches inside, buried balls-deep in his younger self. “God, Jess, you’re fucking perfect.”

“Move,” Jess told him, leaning up to steal another kiss. “I’m okay, come on.”

Jesse pulled most of the way out and then pressed back in, slow and steady for now—had to get used to this and make sure he didn’t hurt Jess while at the same time pretending he knew what he was doing and pretending he’d been having anal sex for years with his own Mr. White. No pressure or nothing, he thought sarcastically.

He tried to set up a steady pace, keeping his eyes locked on Jess’s for any sign of pain or discomfort, but Jess just looked turned on and blissed out and like he couldn’t quite believe this was really happening—which, yeah, same.

Jesse must’ve shifted his angle a little without meaning to, because on the next thrust in Jess’s breath hitched and he moaned and said, “There! Right there, fuck, Jesse—”

“Right there?” Jesse asked, trying to hit the same spot.

Another whimpered moan from Jess was his answer, so Jesse kept that angle, kept hitting that spot every time. He could tell Jess was getting close, and it wouldn’t take much to tip Jesse over the edge at this point either.

He was about to really go for it and start hitting it harder, start trying to get them there—but then Walt cleared his throat and said, “Jesse?” and Jesse and Jess both glanced over at him. “I might’ve spoken a bit too soon about. Well,” Walt gestured down at his own cock, which was already hard again.

“Yeah, Mr. White!” Jess said through a grin.

Jesse went still inside of Jess and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say, or whether he was supposed to act surprised that Walt was hard again that fast or whether he should act like that was normal for the two of them.

Jesse decided to go with the second one, and asked almost casually, “So are you just gonna jack off, or you gonna use it?”

Walt blinked at him and echoed, “Am I going to..?”

Jesse second-guessed himself a little as he realized that ‘using it’ implied Walt either fucking Jess again or fucking Jesse while he was doing Jess. And he felt a blush creeping into his cheeks at the second option, but at the same time… what if this was his only chance to have this? What if this was his one shot at knowing what it would’ve been like to hook up with a Mr. White who had never hurt him? As far as Jesse knew, him and his Mr. White could get snapped back into their own time at any moment. So… what the hell, right?

He figured he’d regret not doing it way more than he might regret doing it.

“Yeah, uh,” Jesse said. “I haven’t had anything inside me for six months or so,” it had been longer than that, actually, since the last time he’d used his fingers on himself or the butt plug he used to have, “so uh, lots of lube and go slow, but… yeah. Use it. If you want.”

Jesse bit his lip and waited, because this was insane, he’d just given Mr. White’s younger self permission to fuck him while he was fucking his own younger self—but at the same time he wanted it. He thought he deserved it. Maybe even needed it.

“Okay,” Walt said after a moment, sounding stunned and even more turned on. “Okay. Um—the lube,” he said absently, searching around in the sheets until he found the bottle.

Walt moved closer behind Jesse, staring down at his ass while Jesse watched him over his shoulder. Jesse swallowed and tried not to act nervous, tried to act like he’d done this a hundred times already with Mr. White.

He managed not to tense up or anything when Walt’s hand landed on the curve of Jesse’s ass and sort of caressed it before pulling away to uncap the bottle of lube and squeeze some into his hand. Jesse looked away, back down at Jess who was starting to look a little impatient.

You’ve done this before, Jesse thought, trying to calm down and not be too obvious that he actually hadn’t ever exactly done this before. You’ve done this, you’re with Mr. White and you’ve had his cock up your ass a million times as far as these two know, and you liked it.

One of Walt’s hands returned to Jesse’s ass cheek, grasping it while one slick finger on Walt’s other hand traced a teasing circle around Jesse’s rim.

Jesse bit his lip but reminded himself to act like he’s done this all before, and he leaned down to kiss Jess instead, partly because he wanted to and partly just to hide his expression from him. Didn’t need his younger self noticing that he was nervous and not actually used to this after all.

Walt’s finger pressed in slow but steady and Jesse focused on kissing Jess and not tensing up while Walt stretched him. Walt didn’t wait very long before adding a second finger, but he seemed to know what he was doing and nothing hurt—it felt a little weird but fine. Matter of fact when Walt changed the angle slightly and his fingers prodded against Jesse’s prostate it went from weird and fine to fucking amazing and he was muffling a moan against Jess’s lips as his hips jolted forward in an involuntary little half-thrust deeper into Jess.

Jess broke the kiss to smile up at him and ask, “Have you missed this with him?”

Jesse nodded and breathed, “Yeah,” but he didn’t meet Jess’s eyes, afraid he’d be able to tell Jesse wasn’t being completely truthful.

“Six months apart, right?” Jess asked. “That must've sucked.”

“Yeah,” Jesse said, and instead of elaborating on that he just kissed Jess again and focused on Walt’s amazing fingers stretching him and the tight heat of Jess around his cock.

Jess kissed him back but after a few seconds he paused to ask, “Yo, did you and yours ever have a threesome before, or is this new?”

Jesse huffed out a laugh that turned into kind of a hiss when Walt pulled out the two fingers and pressed back in with three now. It wasn’t exactly painful, but the stretch kind of burned a little that time.

Jesse must’ve clenched up a bit though because Walt paused and asked, “Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jesse said, trying to relax, “just—slow.”

“All right.” Walt leaned down and pressed a kiss to the tattoo on Jesse’s back—or maybe just to one of the scars close to it—and then he started moving his fingers again, going slower as he worked three into Jesse.

Jesse tried to relax for him, then he remembered Jess had asked him a question and answered, “Oh, um, nah—no threesomes. This is definitely a first.”

“That’s hot,” Jess said, then he smirked and added, “We can make it a foursome whenever yours wakes up.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jesse said, but he didn’t meet Jess’s eyes. “If we’re still here,” Jesse added, trying not to make any promises.

“Not until he’s healed,” Walt said distractedly, three of his fingers still stretching Jesse. “The last thing we need is to tear his stitches just for the sake of having an orgy.”

Jess snorted and looked past Jesse at Walt and teased, “You just don’t want to share with yourself.” Jess winked at Jesse and stage-whispered, “I think he just wants to hog us both, yo.”

Jesse almost smiled and muttered, “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“No,” Walt said, sounding a little annoyed but mostly like he was teasing, “I’d simply rather avoid the embarrassment of having to call that doctor to fix my future self up again after some kind of sex-related injury.”

Jess teased back, “How ‘bout we call the doctor to surgically remove the stick from your ass so I can have my turn in there?”

“Excuse me?” Walt said, his fingers going still inside Jesse’s ass. Jesse couldn’t see but he’d bet money Walt was making that appalled face with his mouth dropped open and that ‘are you fucking kidding me’ stare.

“Yo, we switch—future Jesse said so. Fifty fifty,” Jess told him.

“Is that so, ‘future Jesse’?” Walt asked, sounding half curious and half sarcastic.

“Hell yeah,” Jesse bluffed, biting his lip as Walt’s fingers started moving again, stretching him and teasing his prostate, “I rock your world on the regular.”

“Oh. Well,” Walt said, and Jesse couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking until he added. “I suppose I’ll look forward to you proving that.”

 Jesse smiled a little and tried not to let his relief show—if he’d guessed wrong and if Walt had been totally against even trying it, it would’ve ruined Jesse’s whole story.

Walt kept working Jesse’s ass open with his fingers, and Jesse started moving with him, rocking forward deeper into Jess when Walt’s fingers pushed in, and moving backwards with them a little bit when Walt started sliding them out. Wasn’t much, like an inch or two at the most in and out of Jess as Jesse moved with Walt’s fingers, but it was something.

Jesse was trying to keep his face hidden in Jess’s neck, teasing little nips and kisses and licks to the soft skin there. Jess had to be getting impatient though—he’d already been close when Walt decided to join in, and Jesse had never been much of a fan of edging.

“You ready yet?” Jess asked him, then halfway teased, “You’re kinda killing me here.”

“Um,” Jesse said against Jess’s neck, “maybe? But uh,” he said lifting his head and glancing over his shoulder at Walt and telling him, “go slow, okay? It’s been a long time.”

Plus, even before seeing Walt’s cock in all its naked glory today, he’d already vaguely known Mr. White was hung—those tighty-whities never left much to the imagination when they were cooking in the RV together back in the day. Definitely gonna have to take it slow.

“All right,” Walt murmured, kissing Jesse’s shoulder, “we’ll go slow. I’ve got you, Jesse,” and for a second Jesse felt like crying at the sheer fondness in Walt’s tone and the careful reverence of his touch and mostly at the possibility that maybe he could’ve had this with his own Mr. White years ago and not had any of the bad shit happen between them if only they’d been brave enough or smart enough or whatever to go for it.

Walt’s fingers carefully slid back out and Jesse felt horribly empty for a moment, but then he felt the head of Walt’s cock pressing up against his rim and pausing there.

Jesse bit his lip and tried to stay relaxed, tried not to tense up and give away that he’d never had a cock inside him before. One of Jess’s hands reached up to stroke through Jesse’s hair, his face flushed and his cock still hard between the two of them. Jesse’s cock was still inside him too and Jess squirmed a little, looking needy and sexy and still so goddamn beautiful.

Jesse leaned back down and kissed Jess’s neck again and whispered, “You’re doing so good, being so patient for me,” while Jess squirmed at the praise.

“Jesse?” Walt asked quietly, nudging his cock forward just a bit, like a question.

“Yeah,” Jesse said, keeping his face hidden in Jess’s neck and shoulder, “go on, do it.”

Walt pressed a kiss to Jesse’s shoulder blade near the skull tattoo, then he leaned back on his knees so he could take hold of Jesse’s hips with both hands as Walt’s cock finally started to push inside.

For a second Jesse’s breath caught and he didn’t think it was going to fit, but then he reminded himself that his younger self literally just did this, and if it fit in Jess it would fit in Jesse. He tried to relax a little more, and then Walt’s cock was pressing through Jesse’s rim and sinking inside him now, hot and slick and so hard, going slow like Jesse asked for but not stopping until he was buried inside as deep as he could go, his balls pressed snug up against Jesse’s.

Jesse bit his lip and tried to hold in a moan at everything he was feeling right now—the fullness, the heat of him, the mindfuck of it being Mr. White’s younger self’s cock inside of him, the double-mindfuck of having his own cock inside of his younger self still—it was kind of overwhelming but not in a bad way.  More like a ‘this is going on the top shelf of the spank-bank memories collection forever’ way.

Walt’s hands were gripping Jesse’s hips tighter and kind of rubbing them at the same time, and he leaned back down and kissed Jesse’s shoulder again.

“You okay?” Walt asked, doing a decent job of staying still and giving Jesse time to adjust.

Jesse nodded, then said kind of breathily, “It’s a lot. Good though.”

Walt laughed quietly and said, “Middle’s always best,” in a tone that made Jesse wonder if he was speaking from experience, but before he could gather up the nerve to ask about it, Walt was kissing Jesse’s neck and shifting his hips to pull out about halfway before sliding back in deep. “Okay if I...?” he asked Jesse.

Jesse nodded, then repeated, “Go slow.”

“I will. You just focus on him,” Walt said, meaning Jess, “and I’ll take care of you.”

Jesse’s breath caught for a second because something about this version of Mr. White who had never hurt him saying I’ll take care of you in that fucking voice of his while he was balls deep inside Jesse and gripping his hips so firm but so careful at the same time—something about all of that just clicked something into place inside Jesse’s heart or brain or whatever, something he hadn’t realized he needed until right now.

Jess was leaning up and kissing him now, and Jesse kissed him back while Walt started moving again, his cock sliding in and out of Jesse nice and slow but steady, setting up a rhythm.

Jesse started moving with him after a moment, letting Walt’s movements guide his own. When Walt’s cock started sliding out of Jesse, Jesse pulled halfway out of Jess who whimpered and looked relieved to finally get some decent friction again. When Walt thrust back in, the momentum or whatever pushed Jesse forward into Jess balls-deep again, giving Jesse a double-shot of pleasure. It was like Walt was fucking both of them, controlling the pace and their movements and more or less fucking Jess through Jesse. It was hot and overwhelming and by far the best sex of Jesse’s life.

Jess nipped at Jesse’s lips in a messy kiss and then muttered, “This is so fucking hot,” like an echo of Jesse’s thoughts.

“Yeah,” Jesse breathed, shifting his hips just right to make his cock hit Jess’s prostate the next time Walt fucked Jesse forward into him. “I’m, uh, m’close,” Jesse said to them both.

Walt nipped at Jesse’s ear and instructed, “Get him off first—touch his cock.”

God that voice.

Jesse obeyed, reaching down between himself and Jess to stroke his younger self’s dick.

Probably wasn’t the best handjob in the world—Jesse was so turned on and so close to coming that his hands were shaking a little but he tried, and he kept that same angle so his cock nailed Jess’s prostate. Then Walt shifted his own hips just right and then he was hitting Jesse’s prostate too, and it was all too much too good too overwhelming and then Jess was clenching tight around Jesse’s cock and spurting cum across both their chests as he came. Jesse followed right after him, moaning and whimpering and coming hard inside of Jess, leaning down and catching his lips in a breathless, uncoordinated kiss. Walt’s grip on Jesse’s hips tightened and he pounded into Jesse four or five more times and then went still as he spilled deep inside Jesse. Walt leaned forward and rested his forehead on Jesse’s back as he stayed there and tried to catch his breath.

The coughing fit that interrupted their afterglow shouldn’t have surprised Jesse as much as it did.

Walt pulled out of him and moved to the edge of the bed, coughing so hard that Jess was craning his neck to look over Jesse at Walt with a concerned expression.

“Yo, let me up,” Jess said.

“He’s fine,” Jesse told him, but he pulled out and let Jess up anyway.

“Mr. White?” Jess asked as he moved over to sit beside Walt, concern and affection both obvious in his tone. “Shit, is that blood?”

Walt had finally stopped coughing, but he didn’t answer.

Jesse sat up and leaned over to grab a tissue off the nightstand before moving to sit on Walt’s other side.

“Here,” Jesse said, handing him the tissue. “Don’t freak out—you’re in remission, I promise.”

Walt glanced over and gave him that are-you-fucking-kidding-me look and asked, “Does this look like remission to you?” holding up his hand with the specks of blood he’d coughed up in it.

Jesse shook his head but answered, “No but he swore afterwards that the coughing up blood was no big deal. Radiation inflammation or some shit. You’re in remission.”

Walt gave him a doubtful look but finally took the tissue, wiping his mouth and then his bloodied hand with it. He tossed the tissue towards the trash can next to the nightstand and then sighed. “Has it occurred to you that he might’ve been lying?” Walt asked.

Jesse gave him a humorless smile and muttered, “Only after everything he says, these days.” It came out sounding bitter and hurt and Jesse wished he could take it back immediately when Walt and Jess both gave him a curious and sort of suspicious look. Jesse hurriedly added a weary, “Just, don’t ask.”

They both studied him for another moment, then glanced at each other and seemed to have a silent conversation. When they both looked back at Jesse instead, neither of them seemed deterred from asking.

Jesse sighed and headed off the interrogation with, “You don’t need to worry about our bullshit, okay? With you guys getting together this soon, it won’t happen the same way for you two. You’re good.”

Walt nodded slightly, and said, “That’s one way of looking at it. But perhaps it would be better for us to know more about ‘your bullshit’ to better prevent it from happening again.”

“You don’t gotta do shit to prevent it. It won’t happen again,” Jesse said firmly, meeting Walt’s eyes and holding the gaze like it was a staring contest.

Walt looked away first, which was really fucking weird for Jesse until he reminded himself that this version of Mr. White hadn’t gone full egotistical god-complex Heisenberg mode yet. Maybe this one never would. That was the goal, right?

While Jesse watched, Jess leaned close to Walt’s ear and murmured something—a question, judging by how Walt looked at him for a moment and then nodded in response.

Jesse looked away with a twinge of jealousy, feeling all of a sudden like he was intruding.

It had been good, the three of them together—actually scratch ‘good,’ it had been fucking mindblowingly amazing—but he was intruding. He didn’t belong here. Didn’t belong in this time. Didn’t belong with the two of them.

He looked across the bed at his own Mr. White—still unconscious, still breathing—and he let out a tiny disbelieving laugh that he’d just had a threesome with their younger selves while Mr. White was laying right there beside them. But what was one more crazy impossible thing in a string of them? Being here in the past was a crazy impossible thing. Mr. White busting him out of that hellhole and killing Jesse’s captors and taking a bullet protecting him was a crazy impossible thing. The fact that he’d survived was a crazy impossible thing.

Jesse moved away from Walt and Jess, leaving them to their murmured conversation that Jesse wasn’t paying attention to anyway. He grabbed his boxers and tee shirt and put them back on, then he crawled across the bed towards his Mr. White instead, laying next to him and curling up against his side. He put one hand on Mr. White’s chest, taking comfort in the slow rise and fall of it.

He felt like crying and he couldn’t even pinpoint why—things were going really fucking good right now even with all of the impossibleness. He hated feeling this overwhelmed. He hated being this pathetic.

Eventually Walt and Jess laid back down too, both of them telling Jesse ‘good night’ while Jess leaned over to press a kiss to Jesse’s shoulder. Walt and Jess talked some more, and Jesse caught a few murmured snatches of conversation but he wasn’t really paying attention.

Eventually they went quiet and fell asleep.

Eventually Jesse drifted off too, the steady reassurance of Mr. White’s breathing finally lulling him into sleep.

*

Jesse woke up with a jolt, flinching away from whoever's hand was nudging his shoulder and then bracing himself for a kick or a punch or a belt lash.

None of that happened though, and after a few seconds Jesse’s brain caught up to reality—he wasn’t in that pit at the compound, he was out, he was safe, he was at the house he used to rent from Jane, he was in the past with his younger self and two Mr. Whites.

He took a deep breath and waited for his heart to catch up to reality and stop trying to pound out of his chest.

After a moment he glanced over at the other side of the bed—empty, Walt and Jess must already be up—and then he glanced at his own Mr. White, just watching his chest rise and fall because apparently that was what calmed him down now. Mr. White’s breathing seemed a little different though, not as slow or as deep, almost like—

Jesse’s eyes flicked up to focus on Mr. White’s face instead and his breath caught, because Mr. White was awake and looking right at him.

“Jesse,” he said, his weak voice barely more than a whisper, “what…?”

“Hey,” Jesse said, feeling awkward and relieved and anxious and too many things all at once to even name them all, so he didn’t try to—instead he just answered the questions he figured Mr. White would be asking already if he felt less like refried death. “Um, we got away, got you stitched up. You’re gonna be okay. Got some pain meds and antibiotics for you somewhere,” Jesse said, glancing around and hoping the medicine hadn’t gotten left in the RV. He leaned over towards the other side of the bed and checked the nightstand but didn’t see any pill bottles. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go find your meds,” Jesse said as he started to get up.

“Jesse,” Mr. White repeated, and when Jesse looked over his shoulder Mr. White was leaning up a little and had one arm stretched out reaching for him, wincing as if the movement hurt.

“Whoa, chill out,” Jesse said, moving back over to sit beside him on the mattress. “Lay down, just rest, okay?”

“Don’t leave,” Mr. White said. His voice was quiet but strained, probably from pain, and he still seemed woozy and kinda out of it. He reached up towards Jesse again, and Jesse hesitated but then took Mr. White’s hand in his own and held it.

“Okay,” Jesse told him, “I’m right here.”

Mr. White relaxed at that, except for his hand which squeezed Jesse’s just the slightest bit tighter.

After a moment Mr. White asked in a kind of slurred mumble, “We got away?”

“Yeah, we’re good,” Jesse confirmed.

“Where—?” he asked, glancing around the room.

“Um,” Jesse said, not sure if Mr. White was really coherent enough to try to explain the whole time travel thing to him right now. Maybe he shouldn’t get into that or introduce him to their younger selves just yet. It wouldn’t help anything to stress him out over that right now, right?

He heard footsteps in the hall though, and the choice got taken away from him when Jess walked in.

“Yo, I made some Huevos Rancheros for breakfast, if you wanna—” he cut off abruptly when he noticed Mr. White was awake. “Oh, hey, you’re up” he said, smiling at Mr. White. “Had us worried, yo.”

Mr. White just blinked at Jess like he didn’t know what to say, then he looked between Jess and Jesse a few times, seeming stunned.

Jesse sighed and looked over his shoulder at Jess to ask, “Yo, can you find his medicine and bring it here?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jess said, smiling at both of them before walking back out of the room and calling, “Yo, where’s his pills at?” presumably to Walt on his way back towards the kitchen.

Jesse didn’t hear an answer, but his own Mr. White was shaking his head slightly and mumbling something.

“What?” Jesse asked.

“’M hallucinating.”

“No you’re not—unless you saw somebody other than a younger me just now.”

Mr. White stared at him for a few more seconds, then mumbled, “Dreaming, then,” as he turned his hand in Jesse’s grip and laced their fingers together.

“Um,” Jesse said, but he trailed off.

Mr. White still seemed hella out of it. It wouldn’t hurt to let him just keep thinking he was dreaming for now, right? That would be better than him freaking out over the whole time travel thing when he needed to be resting.

More footsteps in the hallway and then Jess was back, holding two pills in one hand and  a bottled protein drink in the other. “Yo. Not supposed to take the antibiotic on an empty stomach, so, here,” he said, climbing onto the bed to sit beside Jesse and holding the protein drink out towards Mr. White.

Mr. White didn’t take it. He just stared at Jess in silence for a few seconds and then mumbled, “Don’t need food in dreams.”

Jess raised one eyebrow and said, “You think you’re dreaming right now?” He smirked, then teased, “Do you, uh, dream about two of me in bed with you often?”

Mr. White actually cracked a smile at that and murmured, “Just one ‘til now,” and…

Wait.

What?

Jesse blinked a few times, and honestly he probably shouldn’t have been surprised by that—Jesse had already fucked the guy’s younger self and was holding Mr. White’s hand right now—but it still threw him off, hearing his Mr. White so bluntly talk about wanting him.

“Wellllll,” Jess told Mr. White in a playful tone, “how about if you drink this and take your meds, then me and him will make out for you?”

“Deal,” Mr. White said, reaching for the bottle with his free hand.

Jess smiled, looking proud of himself, and he shook up the protein drink and then twisted the cap off the bottle before holding it out towards Mr. White.

Mr. White started to lean up but winced again. He was still holding Jesse’s hand and didn’t seem inclined to let go of it, so Jesse put his other arm around Mr. White’s shoulders and helped him sit up a little bit without straining, just far enough to be able to take a drink without spilling it.

Mr. White took the drink from Jess and sipped it, hesitant at first like he wasn’t expecting to like it. When he was mostly finished with it he handed the bottle back to Jess, who traded him for the antibiotic and pain pill. Mr. White popped the pills into his mouth and Jess handed him back the bottle so he could use the last drink to swallow the pills.

“All right,” Jess said, taking the protein drink bottle again and putting the lid back on before tossing it over his shoulder at the trash can and missing by like five feet. Jesse carefully took his arm out from behind Mr. White’s shoulders so he could lay back down.

Mr. White looked back and forth between Jesse and Jess with an expectant expression, and Jesse almost laughed.

Jess did laugh, and said, “Yeah, okay, you earned it.” He caught Jesse’s eye and smiled as he leaned in. “Come here, yo.”

Jesse met him halfway and their lips brushed together slowly at first, almost like a tease. Jess reached up with one hand, stroking the side of Jesse’s face and tracing one thumb across the scars on his cheekbone.

Mr. White was still holding one of his hands but Jesse ran the free one through Jess’s hair as he kissed him back. Jess’s tongue traced along Jesse’s lower lip and Jesse opened for him, letting him deepen the kiss.

It still didn’t feel weird, French-kissing himself—it probably should’ve felt weird but it didn’t, it still just felt amazing and hot and strangely comforting.

He let Jess take the lead and just enjoyed it for a long moment, kissing him back until Jess finally pulled away and winked over at Mr. White.

“Is this your new favorite dream?” Jess teased, smiling at Mr. White.

“Mm-hmm,” Mr. White murmured. He was smiling slightly but his eyelids kept drifting down and it looked like he was trying really hard not to fall back asleep.

Jesse squeezed Mr. White’s hand and told him, “Get some more rest, okay? We’ll be here.”

Mr. White squeezed back and closed his eyes and murmured something that was sleep-slurred and mostly vowels but that sounded suspiciously like ‘love you.’

Jesse’s eyes stung a little but he blinked and forced a smile and squeezed Mr. White’s hand again as he said, “Goodnight.”

For a minute or two he stayed sitting there just holding Mr. White’s hand. Jess stayed too, moving closer and resting his head on Jesse’s shoulder.

When it seemed like Mr. White was fully asleep, Jess murmured, “Come eat some breakfast, he’ll be alright.”

Jesse hadn’t even thought about food yet somehow—he was used to going without for days sometimes back at that hellhole—but now that he was thinking about it, he was actually really fucking hungry.

“Yeah, okay,” Jesse said.

Jess moved away and got up, and Jesse squeezed Mr. White’s hand one more time before letting go and getting up. He followed Jess out of the bedroom, glancing back one more time at Mr. White before stepping out into the hall.

Out in the kitchen, Walt was sitting on one of the stools at the counter with a half-empty plate in front of him and sipping on a cup of coffee.

Jess went over to the pan of eggs on the stove and started putting together a plate of Huevos Rancheros for Jesse.

“Hey, good morning,” Walt greeted him, smiling but seeming a little uncertain at the same time.

“Mornin’,” Jesse said.

Walt’s eyes seemed to linger on the scars on Jesse’s cheek for a moment before he looked away.

“How is he?” Walt asked.

“Asleep again,” Jesse answered. “Woke up long enough to take the meds though. Seemed pretty out of it still—he thought he was hallucinating or dreaming when he saw both of us.”

“I bet,” Walt said.

Jess chimed in, “He was awake enough to ask us to make out in front of him.”

Walt’s eyebrows went up a little but he seemed amused.

“He didn’t ask, you offered,” Jesse said.

Jess just shrugged and said, “Same difference,” and brought over the plate of food, sitting it down on the counter.

Jesse’s stomach growled and he sat down on the stool next to Walt’s, his conditioning or whatever kicking in and telling him to hurry up and eat whatever he was given before Todd and those assholes took it away or knocked it on the floor if they thought he wasn’t eating fast enough. There wasn’t any silverware for him so he grabbed the fork off Walt’s plate next to him and started eating as fast as he could, shoveling huge mouthfuls of eggs in and chewing the bare minimum before swallowing.

He kind of noticed that it was extra quiet but he didn’t bother looking up until he was mostly finished with the plate—and then he realized Walt was gaping at him with that appalled look and Jess had both eyebrows raised and seemed sad and concerned at the same time as he stared.

Jesse muttered, “Sorry,” through a wave of embarrassment and a mouthful of eggs, then he swallowed and forced himself to slow down.

Walt closed his mouth, then carefully said, “Jesse—”

Jesse cut him off and insisted, “I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” He took another bite of eggs and then set his fork back down and chewed slowly this time, as if to prove his point.

Walt opened his mouth to say something else—probably to push—but Jess spoke up before he could.

“You don’t gotta talk about it,” Jess told him. “Just, uh… nobody’s gonna take your food away here, okay? Church,” he promised. “And I’ll make more if you want. Or there’s always Funyuns and PopCorners and Crunch Berries and stuff around if I’m not here. Or just have a pizza delivered, you know where my cash stash is,” he added, forcing a smile.

Jesse nodded and looked down at his plate, blinking away the tears that were stinging at his eyes.

“Thanks,” Jesse said under his breath. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he flinched just slightly before realizing it belonged to Walt, and then he leaned into the touch a little and murmured, “Thanks,” again.

After a minute or so, Jesse picked up his fork again and kept eating—slower and calmer this time. Walt’s hand stayed there for another minute or two before patting Jesse’s shoulder and then sliding down his arm and away.

“So anyway,” Walt said eventually, “I’ve been thinking that we—him and I, I mean,” he said, pointing between himself and Jess, “should take the RV back out to cook. We still have three days—well, two and a half by the time we drive out.”

“I told you, you’re not dying right now. Remission,” Jesse reminded him.

“Still, I went to the trouble of arranging myself four days off specifically so we could cook, and I don’t think it would be wise to waste them. Plus we should do something about that car you two showed up in, instead of just leaving it out there at the cook site.”

Jesse gave him a sullen shrug. “Whatever.”

Walt continued, “You’ve got his medicine, and the doctor said he’s stable. There’s food here, and like Jesse said you can order pizza. So you two should be fine for a couple days—”

“Yeah okay, I said whatever,” Jesse interrupted. “You’re gonna do what you want anyway, so just go.” He glanced over at Jess instead and reminded him, “Don’t leave the key in the ignition.”

“Yeah, got it,” Jess said with an embarrassed smile.

The El Camino was out there this time, so they could just use that to jump the RV if they had to, but still.

“And there’s a fire extinguisher in the Crystal Ship. Just saying,” he added on, remembering how Mr. White had looked at him like he was the biggest idiot on the planet after he’d dumped all their water out on the generator fire.

Jess scrunched his brow up at him for a second, but then just said, “Okay?”

Walt gave him a more scrutinizing look and asked, “Are we likely to need it?”

“Probably not now. Just saying, you know. In case.”

Walt still studied him for another moment, then finally said, “Okay,” before glancing over at Jess and asking, “Did you not already know we have a fire extinguisher?”

Jess shrugged. “Not, like, specifically.”

Walt scoffed. “It’s basic safety procedure Jesse, of course we have a fire extinguisher! It’s right next to the workstation.”

“Okay, well now I know that,” Jess said, sounding embarrassed and a little sarcastic.

“You should’ve known it before. Are you seriously telling me you don’t pay attention to—”

Jesse set his fork down on his plate hard and snapped over at Walt, “Will you get off his ass about it already?”

Walt blinked at him, looking half-offended and half-chastised, then he scoffed and said, “Well forgive me for prioritizing lab safety and expecting—”

Jesse interrupted, “Okay, you’re forgiven,” in a flippant tone, waving one hand at Walt like he was casting a spell or something. Then he added, “Don’t be a dick about it next time.”

Jess snickered. Walt gave Jesse that appalled look of his. Jesse gave Walt the same sarcastic and challenging smile he’d given his own Mr. White across the table at Denny’s when they were wearing those stupid matching Kenny Rogers shirts after watching Gus slit a guy’s throat in front of them. Then Jesse picked his fork back up, took his last bite of breakfast, and then set the fork back down on Walt’s plate.

“Have fun cooking, I guess,” Jesse said to both of them before heading back towards the bedroom and back to his Mr. White.

Maybe it had been too much to hope that Walt and Jess hooking up would automatically make Walt be less of a dick about stuff like that. Maybe he shouldn’t have expected it to. Maybe Jesse might’ve overreacted to the criticism a little bit too, on account of already being embarrassed over chowing down in front of them like a starving dog and then being caught off-guard by Walt’s plan to take Jess and go cook and leave Jesse and Mr. White here alone. He wasn’t thrilled about the two of them being left alone right now.

He still didn’t know how him and Mr. White had even gotten here in the past, or how long they would be here. Would they get snapped back to their own time at some random moment? Were they stuck here forever? Whenever Mr. White got healed up enough to stay awake longer and get out of bed, maybe him and Walt could do some kind of sciencey shit to figure it out.

In the meantime, Jesse climbed back into bed and laid down next to Mr. White and carefully rested one hand on his chest and just felt him breathe.

*