it’s a quiet suburban afternoon and flynn is bored, he sits on the couch flipping through the cable channels, AC blasting in order to combat the dense albuquerque heat. there’s nothing good on, but at least his parents aren’t home, which means he can do as he pleases and not have anybody bother him. 

he’s contemplating retreating to his room in favor of video games when the doorbell rings --- quickly followed by a few harsh knocks on the door. he grabs his crutches that were set beside him and raises from his seat. flynn makes his way to the door quickly, and swings it open. 

JESSE’S USUALLY UP at odd hours of the night, typically either because he’s unable to sleep or because nightmares are too frequent and he’d rather not wake up in the middle of a panic attack for the third time in a week. So, he’s awake when a car pulls into his driveway, blasting music, and he knows immediately that it’s Flynn. 

He opens the door and seems surprised to see the boy in such a state, having been half-expecting him to be coming here just to kick Jesse’s ass for something he remembered or realized after their conversation. He holds up a hand like he doesn’t need an explanation. He knows what it’s like to feel that way. 

     “Come on in. I was just about to make some tea, want some?” 

flynn is thankful that jesse welcomes him back into the house --- the walls of the  hotel room he’d been staying in felt as though they were closing in on him inch by inch. he hadn’t expected jesse to be awake, but flynn too had spent nights forgoing sleep just to avoid bad dreams. he wishes he would’ve considered that a few hours ago. 

as he looks at jesse, his eyes are almost shameful. he’s not prepared for jesse to see him in this state, but there’s no other choice, besides staying alone and driving himself crazy. “ thanks, ” it comes out low and uneven as he moves past jesse and into the living area. flynn plops himself down in the same spot he’d been in last time, he barely pays attention to setting his crutches somewhere.

                    H E A R T

A heart in a cynical sense feels nothing, it simply carries through all the blood, all the oxygen, all the components the other parts that do feel need. An ugly organ, misshapen and strange when held in the palm of your hand. Yet, it is the centre of your being. It is the core. Even when you try to act unaffected, it is your heart that gives you away, skipping a beat, fluttering in excitement, halting dead in terror. You have so much of it to give, you just haven’t learned to discern who is and isn’t worthy of it yet. Hold onto it. Do not whittle it down, carve names into the flesh that you cannot erase. Remain patient, remain astute, and remain loving.

tagged by: @fullyfungi​ and @absolutehorror​

he’s been in this town much too long. but he can’t bring himself to leave. this place is getting to him now, seeping into his bones and causing them to ache. flynn hadn’t had a nightmare in so long --- he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to wake up in a cold sweat and reach for a breath that he couldn’t quite catch, all while the distorted images of his past fell from the forefront of his mind, lurching back to the deepest depths of it. he can barely even recall how he got to jesse’s front door, there’s only the hazy memory of the car ride over, and the music pounding through his car unbelievably loud so that he didn’t have to be left with his own thoughts. 

    even  though  mari  really  did  think  his  dad  was  a  bit . .   odd,   mari  truly  didn’t  mind.  it  was  nice  to  be  in  a  house  where  the  main  event  was  odd  discussions  about  mold.    a  soft  giggle  as  he  mentions  taco  bell.     ‘  i  co –  could  really  go  f– for  some  cinnamon  tw  –  twists  right  about  now.   ‘

his dad had always been a little odd --- it never bothered flynn before, in fact, there were times when it was something he appreciated. lately though, his behavior began to be more and more weird. flynn pushes it to the back of his mind, instead thinking about sharing cinnamon twists with mari. 

HE APPRECIATES FLYNN’S willingness to ease into what promises to be a very difficult conversation for both of them. He wouldn’t have blamed the kid if he’d decided to just jump right in, ask the hard-hitting questions. 

The strangest part of this whole experience is the way Walter’s son seems to treat Jesse; the fact that he doesn’t outright hate him. Or, at least, if he does, he’s very good at hiding it. He wasn’t expecting to face someone with any kind of empathy for his situation, no matter how minute; he’d been expecting to have to defend himself more than anything. 

For some reason, this is a much harder situation to deal with. 

     “He, uh, he blackmailed me.” 

Jesse scoffs a little, looking past Flynn and at the front window at the frost beginning to collect against the wooden windowpane. 

     “He saw me running from the DEA after a bust his brother-in-law was doing, and looked my name up in the school system and came to my house that night, tellin’ me that if I didn’t teach him how to cook and sell that he’d turn me in.” 

flynn isn’t just doing it for jesse’s sake, despite the fact that he’d come all this way, and wanted to fill these gaps so desperately, he was scared now --- fear was welling up in him as the seconds passed. he didn’t know what he was more afraid of, hearing more horrible things about his father, or getting to know so much more about jesse. 

flynn regarded him with a strange indifference, hate stood in it’s place for a long time, some of it did still reside within him, and maybe it always would. it would be so easy to write jesse off as a villian in this story, to think that he was just as bad as his father and leave it at that. but flynn couldn’t bring himself to do it. sitting across from jesse, he can see a fragile humanity in him --- he can recognize that hurt, which flynn can relate to more than he’d like to admit. it’s becoming more and more clear each time jesse speaks, like fog lifting from a windshield. 

jesse was like a boogeyman. there’s blind fear first, leaving on lights and checking under the bed so that he won’t be harmed in the night, and then, as he grows older, he realizes there’s no one hiding under the bed, and no one waiting to catch him in the dark. it’s just flynn, all alone in that darkness. still, he doesn’t think he’d want to be friends with the boogeyman. 

he listens as jesse explains, and part of him still can’t believe this is what his father was doing while he was worrying about getting an a in science. he shakes his head slowly, a frown forming on his features, “ sound --- sounds like you were in deep shit, ” a pause, as the urge to know more about jesse’s past besides his work with heisenberg tugs at him, “ so, why’d you wanna sell drugs in the first place? i mean, besides the money. ”