kore_logs | maybe I'll sleep when I am dead

The hallway seems to straighten out and then twist again, back and forth as Pinkman walks along, and at first, the walls are fine. But as he keeps walking (and he could walk forever in these halls, there's no end), he's going to eventually run his fingers over something sharp. Several somethings sharp, actually, like dragging your fingers over a bed of nails. Or a bed of needles.

But there's nothing on the wall, it's just a wall, and suddenly, there's a door. A door which a smaller, younger Finch walks through, kicking the door open with his foot, books in his arms. He stops - stares, hair too short and eyes sharp with a sort of defensiveness that isn't in the modern day Finch's expression.

"... Gonna get in trouble, smoking in the halls. Dumbass."

Christ, this place just stretches on forever - it feels like no matter how he walks, he's not getting anywhere useful. There's no doors, no nothing, not even a window, though his hand does jerk away from the wall after a certain amount of steps, confused. He leans towards the wall and squints curiously at the spot. There's not even anything there. No harm done so he starts to do it again, tentatively, only makes it a few more feet before it happens a second time. "Ow, hey, what the hell."

But then a door suddenly opens in front of him, one he didn't see before, and Jesse takes a step back and away, before he really takes in the sight of who it is that's just walked through it. "No way," he remarks slowly, ignores the comment in favor of letting his eyes flicker over the guy in front of him. Finch? Jesse breaks out into a half a laugh, gestures to him with the hand with the cigarette. "Look at you, man!"

Finch bristles, looking indignant. Excuse you, you don't just come into his school and start laughing at him, don't you know who he is? Except - that's the problem, isn't it? Pinkman does know who he is, and Finch, still convinced he's a seventeen year old on the way to class, takes a step away from Pinkman and scowls deeply.

"The fuck are you supposed t'be, some new teacher?" Finch asks, holding his books tightly to his chest. "Gonna get fired the first day, what kinda moron does that?"

He rolls his eyes. "Whatever. I guess I'll see you in class eventually, sir." And he turns to head down the twisting hallway.

It doesn't do much to dissuade him at all, Jesse just grins a little smugly and pops his cigarette back into his mouth with a nod. "Yeah, yeah, your new teacher," he agrees with a raise of his eyebrows. "Chemistry. I'm lookin' to start a new record or somethin'."

But Finch is starting to walk away and Jesse immediately goes to follow him, a half a hop-skip in his step as he tries to match his stride. "Whoa, hey, hang on-" He blows out smoke away from Finch's direction, his free hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans. "What's goin' on, man? Where you headed? Where, uh-" He's just marveling at the situation as a whole, keeps looking around and then back at Finch. "Where is this?"

Real fuckin' attentive teacher we've got going on here, yeah.

Chemistry, huh? Not Jesse's favorite, but at least it's not history. Whatever. The new 'teacher' - like he believes that, this dude's some old guy just fucking around on campus, he can't be a teacher and he only proves it further when he starts asking questions. Finch raises his eyebrows, looking at Pinkman incredulously.

"Uh, class? Going to class. English." A beat. "What, so you're a teacher and you ain't even got an idea of where you're teaching?" It's like Finch doesn't even register the twisting hallway - they're upside down and right side up and then they keep walking and it straightens out, like a fucking funhouse mirror, but Jesse doesn't make any comment about it. The only noise except for them talking is the low hum in the walls as they walk.

"It's St. John's, y'know? Catholic boarding school. You drunk or something?"

Finch might not be lending a second thought to the dreamscape, but then again it's his own, it's not Jesse's. Everything's all twisted and wrong and it's awful hard to concentrate on the conversation sometimes when he's just trying to keep his feet going one after the other. "Probably," he admits to the being drunk, and doesn't really serve to help prove that wrong by the incredulous way he keeps admiring the walls around them.

It doesn't help that he's here and he's high, he's very high. He keeps digging a finger into his ear like he's imagining that sound underneath everything.

"I'm a new teacher, alright? Shut your fuckin' mouth, kid, keep walkin'," he adds instead with a vague gesture at the hall in front of them, glances up at the ceiling and then back down to Finch. "This is you, huh? Boarding school? 'O captain, my captain', that you?"

Edited 2013-06-19 06:39 (UTC)

"Uh, sure, I guess," Jesse says, scowling a little. Shut up, don't tell him to shut up. Way rude. "I dunno what that even means, you old sack of crap." But whatever, if this guy's a teacher, the fact that he's not so uptight about swearing is sort of nice. Something he'll get reported for right off the bat, but it's funny, so Pinkman can stay.

Finch comes to a stop in front of the classroom and opens the door. Immediately, the world fizzles in and out like a bad picture. This isn't right, there's something that shouldn't be here. There's no teacher, not usually, and Jesse frowns deeply, hand on the doorknob. And it's that humming noise picks up - starts to resemble the way a hive of angry bees sound, and - Finch doesn't think, he just slams open the door with his elbow, grabs Pinkman by the arm and hurries inside, because that noise doesn't sound good, whatever it is.

And then they're somewhere new.

"But..." Jesse starts, looking around. The kitchen they've ended up in is huge, sterile white. Stainless steel. Spotless - except for the thousands of beer bottles and half empty bottles of whiskey that litter the counters. "But this isn't..."

"Old-" Wow, okay, indignation! Jesse falls behind a step or two and then starts after him with harried strides. "Yo, it's from a movie, alright, how's about you educate yourself-"

He doesn't get to finish the thought - in fact, he almost slams smack dab into Finch where he's stopped in his tracks, keeps himself from bowling the guy over by touching a hand onto his shoulder and glancing around the hallway again. It's more paranoid this time when he does, his eyebrows furrowing agitatedly as he calls out over the buzz, "What the hell is that sound?"

And swears loudly when Finch drags him away and inside the classroom. Only it's not a classroom, it's a kitchen - it's a kitchen and it's just like the door Jesse walked into in the first place, doors leading to somewhere they oughtn't be leading, and, Jesus, someone had a party. Several someones. It's too many bottles to be anything actual and feasible and Jesse shakes his head a little to try and clear it. "Finch," he asks absently, takes a few steps into the kitchen and claps Finch a few times on the shoulder. "Finch, uh, what's goin' on?"

The noise is gone. For now.

It's a lot of bottles, and Jesse's almost too distracted by them, by the awful feeling in his stomach, to realize that this dude knows his name. But it doesn't escape his notice and he's going to say something about it, only there's this sound from outside the room. Sounds like a car door slamming. It's harmless, but Finch nearly jumps out of his skin, stumbling back into one of the counters. It's just enough to knock a good portion of bottles and glasses off the counter, and they shatter into a million pieces.

A normal person would probably curse and then calmly pick it up, but not Jesse. No, he panics, freaks out. Drops down, ignoring Pinkman for now, trying to scoop up the pieces with his bare hands. Have to clean the mess. Fuck, he screwed up, he's so fucked.

Finch jumps and Jesse does too, shoulders jerking as he whirls back to look at the other - Jesus, you would've thought somebody put a gun to his back. He thinks of telling him to chill, it's just a door, he's pretty sure, no big deal, but the bottles all crash to the floor and Jesse just throws his hands into the air in a 'well, shit' kind of way. His initial reaction is to help out, but Finch immediately drops and Jesse just kind of- takes a careful step back, watches him for a split second, "Whoa."

He means, yeah, it's a mess, it's bad, but Finch is seriously panicking here, like maybe he really does have a gun on him. "Ay, Finchy," he tries to deter him at first, haltingly. He sounds unsure, but it bleeds at once into something that's almost irritation, gestures at the glass. "Wouldja stop, you're gonna cut yourself, Jesus." Where the hell's a damn broom here anyway?

Not a gun, but close enough. It doesn't matter that he's going to cut himself on the glass, it really doesn't, because that's the sound of the key in the lock, and Finch freezes up, immediately pressing himself against the cabinet. He looks thoroughly and utterly terrified. It's like Pinkman isn't even here.

The door out in the other room opens. There's footsteps, and then there's a man, walking in, looking around. He's tall, broad, in a tailored, fitted suit that looks expensive, hair slicked back and face sort of - unremarkable, nondescript, except for bright green eyes. Like if you looked away, all you'd be able to remember was those eyes.

He spots Finch, and the mess. He's quiet. "What have you done?" The man asks, calmly, and his voice is deep - it carries. Finch shrinks down, digging his hands into the piles of glass.

He's still looking for a broom - well, he's half looking for a broom, but there's a lot about how Finch is reacting to this right now that's really got him distracted, concerned - and even starts to ask him what the hell's going on when the door opens. Some guy walks in. Jesse doesn't even recognize the face. But the way Finch is regarding him speaks volumes.

Who the hell-

There's an immediate discomfort in the air, so much so that Jesse's not even sure he should be saying anything straight away. He slowly turns on his spot to face the door, glancing uncertainly between the guy and Finch and back, and it's quiet for a few beats as Jesse watches Finch's hands sink further down onto broken fucking glass. "Was an accident," he says carefully, eyes flickering back up again, towards the suit.

The man slowly looks to Pinkman, face impassive. He stares, for a good few moments.

"And who are you?" He asks, moving further into the room, shutting the door behind him. From the floor, Finch whimpers almost inaudibly. The man crosses the room, stands in front of Pinkman, imposing and dark. "I thought I told you your trashy friends aren't allowed in this house, Jesse."

Finch looks down at the glass, but Samuel doesn't take his eyes off of Pinkman. A beat - it's quiet, and then, in his same low voice, Samuel speaks again, looking down to Finch. "Were you planning on leaving the glass there for people to step on? Quit whimpering, boy, clean it up."

And Jesse immediately does what he's told, keeping his eyes down, trying to collect the glass in his hands, flinching whenever it nicks at his skin.

The look Jesse's giving Samuel is cautious, a slowly darkening thing as he moves closer to him - the man means to be threatening, overpowering, but Jesse's not having it. He stands stock still, doesn't even flinch, just meets his eyes with a certain degree of authority, much as he can drum up.

Because just like that it clicks. This isn't just some guy in an expensive suit crashing their party for no discernible reason. This is Finch's dad. And that changes everything about this situation awfully quickly.

He doesn't give Samuel his name. In fact, there's a few long beats before Jesse even actually speaks, just the quiet sound of glass clinking against itself, and for the whole time he doesn't dare take his eyes off the man in front of him. "How about you lay off the kid," he finally suggests, and it's in a voice that's calm and collect, if with an edge to it that's just really looking out for what's in Samuel's best interests here. "I said it was an accident."

Jesse stands at about the same moment Pinkman speaks up, but he barely looks at the two of them before he's scurrying to the trash can. Have to clean. Have to get it out of the way.

Samuel looks back to Pinkman, eyebrows lifting. "I don't care if it was an accident," Samuel says, brushing his suit off. "The fact remains that he broke glass and needs to be responsible for picking it up. Are you telling me how to raise my child?"

Because it sure sounds like that's what you're doing. Finch comes back, and for a moment, he does look between the two of them. Clenching his fists a little, Jesse fidgets. "Just - just drop it, alright?" He tells Pinkman, with a shaky little inhale. "S'not a big deal, just --"

And Samuel interrupts him curtly: "Don't make excuses. Finish picking up the glass - I swear, it's a wonder you haven't failed out of your classes, Jesse, you can hardly even follow simple orders."

Finch's mouth snaps shut, and he looks warily at Samuel - for a second too long. His hesitation earns him a quick and sharp backhanded slap across the face.

"Do what you're told. Now."

"Alls I'm sayin' is-" he starts to rebut when Finch returns from the trash can, and for the first time Jesse breaks his eye contact with Samuel, glances over to Finch. There's a momentary dip in his expression when he really soaks in how scared the guy is, from vaguely imposing to something muddled and sympathetic.

He keeps watching Finch when Samuel speaks up again, opens and shuts his mouth like he's trying to drum up something useful to say to him. He's also still watching Finch when he gets a slap in the face.

And that certainly gets Samuel his attention back. "Whoa, hey!" Jesse's expression plummets, he's livid, and he brandishes a hand sharply out to the side, takes a step in towards Samuel to clear what gap there is left between them. "The fuck you think you're doin', he's just a kid!"

Finch shrinks down and holds his face, mouth shut and expression as hard as he can possibly make it. If he shows any sign of pain, weakness - he knows what happens. It can't happen in front of someone else. But it stings and he's so scared that it's going to be worse for him once this guy leaves.

He can feel the anger in the air, can nearly taste it, and he makes his heart thud like crazy in his chest.

Samuel's expression is flat, but the undertone of his irritation is clear, anyway. "He's no 'kid'," He says. "He is nearly eighteen years old. I would expect for him to at least know how to perform simple tasks at this age. I don't need to explain myself to you, either. You need to leave."

And from Finch, there's a sharp bite of fear. Oh god, please don't leave him alone with him.

"Jesse. The glass," Samuel barks, and Finch startles, dropping back down to finish picking up the glass, his hands bleeding. He makes the mistake of sniffing, trying to hide it - and Samuel ignores Pinkman for the moment to sigh, and head to the fridge, making a point to step on the glass and grind it down with the heel of his shoe as he passes.

"Useless," He mutters, loudly enough for Jesse to hear, and Jesse's shoulders go up around his ears.

There's this immediate twist in his chest when he's asked to leave, a frankly painful jab of panic that makes his heart skip a beat, and it's not his own. He's not afraid of Samuel, not really. He has no reason to be afraid of Samuel, not beyond the front he's showing off right now, the cold disregard and the edge of authority the guy's trying to hold over him right now. That's fine. That's not new. It leaves the fear as Finch's, and he's not sure he gets why he's feeling that. But he can't shake it.

It makes his jaw carefully square, and it sets angrily as he gradually turns on a heel, his hands patting once at his sides onto his jeans. He watches Samuel at the fridge, eyes flicker briefly to Finch and then back up again.

"But he is still just- a kid," he finally speaks up, his voice slow and deliberate. "He's your kid. No less." There's this whole other side to this that he's only mildly aware of, drumming up his own experiences and setting him that much more on edge, makes him that much more defensive about all of this, maybe. "He breaks a glass, that makes him useless?"

There's one thing made palpably clear in how he plants his feet on the ground then, even leans in a little towards Samuel to emphasize his point: He's most certainly fucking not leaving this kid alone in a room with him.

"And my - kid," Samuel says, almost mockingly. "Should know how to perform a simple task without my asking."

Simple as that. He reaches into the fridge and pulls out an ice tray, clinking a few cubes into a small glass. Silent for a moment, Samuel looks for a bottle of whiskey that isn't empty, and once he's found one, he pours it. On the ground, Finch brushes the crushed glass into his palm and speaks up, quietly. "S'not - just the glass," Jesse says, not looking up as he moves to put more glass in the trash. "S'a long running thing."

Samuel sniffs in amusement from where he's standing, taking a sip from his glass. "You're a stranger in my home," He tells Pinkman. "You have no idea as to how this household is run, nor about how I choose to discipline my children. You take his 'side', but you haven't seen his vast background of fuck-ups."

Across the room, Jesse looks down at his feet. His eyes burn, and he rubs at his nose, and Samuel sighs heavily, taking another sip.

"You had better not start crying again," He says, and Jesse is trying his very hardest, but with how scared he is, how difficult it is to hear the disappointment, and how he can feel that edge in his chest - he can't help it much. Samuel stares over at him, irritated, now. "Who is it that cries again, Jesse?"

Jesse pauses, gaze flickering to Pinkman briefly, and then he mumbles the answer. Samuel barks sharply, "Speak up," and Jesse repeats, louder, rubbing at his face, smearing a bit of blood on his cheek: "Girls and f-- faggots, sir."

"And we don't want to be like them, do we?"

"... No sir."

Fuck-ups, sure. Because Jesse knows, consciously, that Finch has plenty, but who the fuck doesn't? He's gotten some of them aired to him personally - right off the bat, actually, it was hard to miss the weight Finch carried when he'd gotten to know him as well as he had in so short a time. They'd both gone through plenty and he knows that what he knows is hardly what Samuel is getting at here, it's not even anything to which he's been held privy. And maybe that's what's getting Jesse riled.

He doesn't know what Finch was like as a kid, doesn't know his shortcomings and whatever it is that Samuel's been seeing in him, fine. But he thinks, pretty confidently, that he knows Finch. He knows what the guy's like and he, yeah, sometimes, he sees an awful lot of similarities that lay there between the two of them. Which adds a whole new defensive edge, sure, but that's not all.

There's this protective thing there, he thinks. And maybe it's under the conditions that they met in the first place, that night in the lighthouse, and maybe it's their friendship or maybe it's just the fact that Finch is standing before him as a teenager right now, a kid, just a kid and he's being knocked around by this guy twice his size, his own fucking father. Jesse watches Samuel pour himself a drink and he watches Finch smudge blood on his face and his expression falls into something uncharacteristically calmed, more mild than it was before.

Actually, he laughs a little. He looks to the side and he cracks into a grin and nods his head along to what's being said and wanders a step or two towards Samuel, glass crunching under his sneakers. "Girls and faggots," he repeats with a smirk like it's the best joke he's heard on a long time, and he looks at Finch when he says it, pointedly.

Of course, that's just before he draws back his fist and punches Samuel right in the face.

Out of all the things Finch is expecting to happen, it's not this. It's definitely not Pinkman punching his father in the face, it's definitely not - someone standing up for him. It brings a lot of different emotions into play, ones that conflict wildly with each other; anger, fright, exhilaration. Nobody's stood up for him this way before. And he can't decide if that's a good or bad thing.

Pinkman strikes first, which means that from now on, it's self defense. Samuel's head knocks back from the force of the punch, and as he slowly looks back, there's a sort of tick-tick-tick sound, like an old rotary phone being turned. Nobody has stood up for Jesse this way before. This is uncharted territory, and Jesse's head - doesn't know how to handle it except to make it worse.

Samuel's eyes grow a little sharper, radioactive green, and Jesse darts forward, because everything is wrong. It's wrong, this isn't how it usually goes, it's a dream, and everything in Jesse's head protests. When he grabs Pinkman's wrist, it's him, the modern adult Finch that Pinkman's used to, and he looks and feels terrified. He doesn't say anything except for, "We gotta move," because already, Samuel's mouth is opening far wider than it should.

Finch yanks Pinkman back and towards the door, he won't look, he will not because he's had this dream before, not in this order, but - he knows that if he turns around and looks he'll see the long, bristle-haired limb pushing up out of Samuel's mouth, followed by another and another and fangs, too many eyes, pushing and pressing at the skin like it's a suit rather than flesh. The door is open, somehow, thank god, and Jesse drags Pinkman through it, down the twisted, distorted hallway as that buzzing sound builds again, roars through the hall and spills out through the walls in the form of shadows, nasty, swirling black mist. The discordant buzzing mixes with the sound of a snarling dog, right up close and in their ears, despite there not being anything there.

But like it always is in dreams, they just can't run fast enough.

He's not aware of it at first, the shift that's happening - he's too lost in how absolutely fucking satisfying that punch had felt, even as he shakes out his hand and grips at his wrist, flexes his fingers because motherfucker, that really hurt. Whatever, worth it. He's pleased as punch and his mouth turns up into a bit of a cruel, self-satisfied grin as he finally looks back up at Samuel, up from his hands, and it's just around that time that the man's eyes start turning into something less human.

What the- hell-

There's no time to marvel over it, because there's a hand around his wrist and Jesse barely even has time to register the change in age before he's reflexively running after Finch, stumbling a few steps while his sight's still locked onto Samuel and whatever the shit is happening to the guy right now. "What the fuck," he calls over his shoulder, incredulously, he grabs onto the door for a second to stop their running in time to see whatever that is coming out of his mouth, but he's pulled again, in the opposite direction.

It's not a hallucination, it can't be a hallucination. What the fuck would he be on to make something look like that? Certainly not fucking crystal, and he knows what goes into his shit, he knows it's not laced with anything else to make something do that. "What the fuck?" he repeats, louder this time, horrified, this is something out of a goddamn Del Toro movie and he's never seen anything like it, not outside of dreams and Hollywood - it makes the hair on his neck stand up and makes him run after Finch in earnest.

Getting high was a bad idea, getting high was a very very bad idea. The paranoia's settling in hard and it's mixing with Finch's own terror in a very particularly ugly fashion right now.

It's a dream, it's a dream, it has to be a dream. It has to be because Pinkman wasn't there when that happened, he wasn't around to knock Samuel out when he was building up to his worst. It's a dream, Jesse knows it has to be, and it feels that way, now that he knows what he's looking at. He's done this before, in his own head and Galen's. It doesn't make it any easier, and he can't look back at what's chasing them because he knows what he's going to see. He's lucid, now, he doesn't have to look.

But the shadows are closer and closer, nipping at their heels, and he knows what happens when you piss a nightmare off. He's going to end up dead, it's going to destroy him from the inside out and he has no way of knowing if Pinkman is real or not, if Pinkman's not going to turn into something awful and drag him down under the earth.

Whether it's his own head or the nightmare, it doesn't matter. They can't run fast enough and the thudthudthud of eight legs slamming against the floor in pursuit makes Jesse's skin crawl. There's a door, though, at the end, and if he didn't know he was in a dream he wouldn't be able to reach it, but he does. He's had practice in lucid dreaming, which means he pulls it to them - and Jesse drags the two of them through it, slams it behind them and makes a small, terrified noise when it rattles with the force that the thing that was his father slams into the door. And then it's silent. Nothing. Completely, utterly devoid of sound, like listening to the world at high elevation.

Finch looks at Pinkman, leaning heavily against the door, shaking so hard Pinkman can probably feel it in his grip. A beat, and then, upset but not angry: "Wh-what... what the fuck are you doing in here?"

He's going to die. Oh, Jesus Christ, he's going to die and it's going to be at the hands of something that crawled out of Silent fucking Hill.

Jesse's chest hurts as he runs, lungs aching as he sucks in fast breaths and books it right along with Finch. Throwing a few looks back over his shoulder at what's chasing him does not help in the slightest; Samuel's mutated into some kind of grotesque spider something and it feels like an awful amount of real even though, yeah, okay, it's occurring to him quickly and violently that this can't be real, but he doesn't quite get it yet.

But he's dreaming, right? He's gotta be dreaming, but that doesn't make sense either, because he's never met Finch's dad, he's never fucking seen Finch's dad, how the hell could he ever know what Finch's dad even looks like? He's never seen that guy from back there in his damn life and yet that's in his head right now, or it was, before it all changed, one punch and it changed everything and none of this makes a damn lick of sense.

He lets out an almighty gasp once they're inside the room, breath rattling as he sucks in panicked breaths, it's all that fills up the room they're in for a moment and he's painfully aware of it. He looks up at Finch with incredulity once he speaks, and belatedly yanks his hand free of Finch's grasp so that he can stagger a step back and lean forward onto his knees. "That's what-" Jesse lets out a choked stutter of a laugh, pants hard and gestures wildly to the door.

"Yo, your dad transforms into goddamn Eight-Legged Freaks and that's what you ask? What the fuck am I doing in- How about what the fuck is going on?"

Well, when you put it that way, Finch can't help but laugh. And once he starts, he can't stop - he slides down the door slowly, hits the ground, and giggles hysterically, hands in his hair. For a moment, he can't breathe with how hard he's laughing.

Christ. He's losing his fucking mind.

He wraps his arms around himself and presses his face into his knees, trying to catch his breath. Dreaming. You're dreaming, and you need to wake up. Repeats it out loud, for Pinkman to hear. "Dreaming. We're dreaming, that was my dream, I've - had it before." Mix and matched, of course, but those were all elements of his dreams. "I gotta - I gotta wake up afore..."

Because this has to be the nightmare's doing, right? There's no other explanation. Any second now, it's going to be here, and Finch needs to wake up so the both of them are safe. And that's what he's trying to do - long enough that, with his head down like it is, he doesn't notice the smoke curling into the room, slowly forming itself into the shape of a dog across the room.

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( here lies a warning for GROSS THINGS )

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