kore_logs | maybe I'll sleep when I am dead

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.

And Jesse just- stares at him for a few long seconds, even stops breathing for a moment in absolute incredulity that the dude's reacting the way he is. Really? You're gonna have a mental breakdown on him now of all times? "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, I'm fuckin' hilarious and all, but we kinda got some real pressing issues goin' on the other side of that door here, ya know!" he grates out, leaning further onto his knees and hanging his head as he lets out a solid sigh to try to even out his breathing some.

Dreaming. So they are dreaming. But that doesn't make sense either, because who the fuck dreams together? These are Finch's dreams - like he said, he's had them before - and yet Jesse feels very absolutely fucking present in said dream, belonging in places he really oughtn't be belonging in. "I, uh, you wanna clue me into how the hell's that even possible over there, because I'm really-"

Jesse, unlike Finch, does see what's transpiring on the other side of the room, slowly turns his head and watches the smoke twist and form. His eyebrows furrow and he slowly starts to push himself up, watching carefully and, "Finch," he says at first, carefully, like he doesn't want to spook the smoke, which is fucking ridiculous, but there you have it. And then more urgently, "Jesse, what the fuck is goin' on-"

He'll be happy to explain. Or - not happy, not really happy at all, but he can and will explain. Unfortunately, Pinkman says his name like that, and then more urgently, and Jesse looks up quickly, expression panicked again. Oh - oh, no, he was hoping it wouldn't find them.

But it's a nightmare, of course it did.

Jesse scrambles up, pressing himself against the wall (door's gone, he realizes, the door has vanished) and watching as the smoke forms solidly into a dog made of snakes, its eyes glowing an unnatural yellow. That's another sharp pang of fear from Jesse, the immediate urge to curl up and fucking hide, because that's it, that's the dog, it's like the first night the two of them had met all over again. Except this time, Pinkman can see it. This isn't a hallucination.

"I -- I gotta, we gotta get out, f-fuck --" Jesse panics, and he's already trying to grab for Pinkman again, but it's too late. The dog pauses, looks up at them - and lunges.

And in House 20, Jesse Finch wakes up with a wheezing, terrified gasp.

There's this steady stream of 'what the fuck's making its way out of Jesse's mouth as the dog solidifies more and more, growing in speed and volume until one loud, final, "What the FUCK!" as he throws himself back and away and against the wall, the dog lunges, Finch's terror curls in Jesse's spine and multiplies viciously, like weeds, before the dream snaps and Jesse startles awake with a small noise.

He sits like that for a good long while, his eyes wide, his head propped up on his hand where he leans heavily against the arm of the couch.

And then, at once, he's kicking his sneakers on and making his way across the town to House 20.

A large, very insistent part of him is figuring that he has to stop drinking before he drifts off or something, because his dreams are getting hastily out of control. Nightmares on his own time, and now they're leeching into a whole other territory with which he hasn't even dealt before. But there's this seed of doubt there that can't ignore the specificity of that dream, the details that don't make sense to him even if they make sense to Finch, and that doubt's seen a lot happen in this town, an awful fucking lot that he can't begin to explain but that doesn't stop it from continuing on existing.

It's why he's standing on House 20's porch at three in the morning, feeling like a fucking idiot in these flannel pants and a t-shirt that's a few sizes too big - none of them fit, in that house, none of the clothes fit him right. He's taking a big goddamn leap by knocking on Finch's door like this, but it's gonna eat at him until he says something. He'll get his feelers out on the situation, and if he's just going crazy, then he's going crazy, and he can make up some stupid excuse for why he's banging their door down at this time of day.

By the time the door opens, Jesse's fingers are scratching spasmodically at the back of his head, and he very quickly resembles a deer in the headlights. "I, um."

No, no, it's okay, Pinkman, because when Finch answers the door, he looks like he's on the verge of a panic attack.

He'd crawled out of bed to - go recover, somehow. Galen had asked him if he was okay and Jesse had managed to make him believe that yeah, yes, he was. Galen's still asleep and Jesse's practically rocking back and forth, terrified that it's going to be like before. He's going to start seeing the fucking dog again, it's going to wander the streets, and Jesse can't help but think what if - what if he's next? What if Galen passed the nightmare to him?

Finch answers the door, but he's pale as a sheet and breathing a little unsteadily. Jesus Christ. It wasn't just a nightmare, that was - it was different. It was fucked around with, because Jesse's dreams don't usually change. He's either drowning in spiders or in abuse and there's always a steady sort of - plot. Never has he had someone come in and save him. And fuck. He had to have someone save him from his own goddamn father, he's such a child --

He looks at Pinkman, but he can't think of what to say, so he opens his mouth, closes it, and then wraps his arms around himself. You're not the only one, it's written all over his face.

Yeah, it reads all over Finch's face as soon as the door swings open, clear as day, and it turns out Jesse doesn't have to skirt around anything and hope he starts making some sense in all of it. There's a kind of immediate panic that grips Jesse tight then, he goes stock still all over and all he lets out is a low, muttered, "Jesus fuckin' Christ," before he just pushes his way in without being invited, past Finch.

It occurs to him, belatedly, that he didn't even think to throw a jacket on before he came over here, but when he's shaking all over he's not entirely sure it's one hundred percent from the cold.

He treads in aimlessly and comes to a halt in the middle of their living room, and his hand mops over his mouth before he just stands there, lost, his hands carefully rubbing over the top of his head and clamping there for a few long seconds before he can actually think of anything productive to say. He turns to Finch when he does and it's after a long while, and his voice goes shuddery and angry when he does, even if that anger isn't aimed at Finch.

"So that's their new play." Dreams. "Dreams, they're goin' after-" He cuts off and bites down hard at his lip, lets out a tsk of frustration and lowers his voice to a harsh, furious whisper, conscious of not waking anyone else in the house up. "We can't even get some goddamn sleep without them pryin' around up there? What the hell kinda game is that?"

He doesn't say anything in the long silence, eyes on the corners of the room, looking for smoke, listening for that hiss, getting his breathing back together. He has a hard time not reacting to the anger in Pinkman's voice, though, taking a slow and even breath the best he can. It's not aimed at him, he knows, but after that clusterfuck, he's wary. But - wait. Pinkman's assuming it's... the scientists?

"I - y'think it's them?" Jesse asks, blinking as he closes the door and sinks back to lean against it.

And Jesse just- pauses for a few long seconds, his hands slipping down off his head to fall by his sides. "Uh, no, I think Captain Dreamlord took me on a dream boat river tour of his own little slice'a hell for shits and giggles," he remarks in a voice that's positively rife with sarcasm, squints confusedly at Finch and gives a minute shake of his head. He can't stop shaking fitfully and he clenches himself tight all over, fists balling by his sides and his shoulders going up around his ears. "The fuck are you talkin' about, what else would it be?"

It's sarcasm, but Finch's expression is tight and the slightest bit offended when Pinkman makes the reference. They're both shaking, he can see it, and Finch would try to help, somehow, if he knew what he could do. But he's already bogged down heavily by - well, what just happened. After that, he's just not eager to touch anything without permission.

"The dog," Jesse says quietly, rubbing at his face with both hands, instead. "The nightmare coming back."

A dog. Finch, that week everything and everybody'd gone crazy, he'd kept bringing up a dog, some kind of nightmare that'd been hounding him and stalking outside the lighthouse.

"Alright," he answers slowly, watches Finch a little closely as he does, but, well, hang on, "that shit's all you though," he tacks on, furrowing his eyebrows further. "That's, like, your nightmare." Right? "So why the hell would I be havin' it?"

"That's - that's what I don't know," Jesse says, taking a deep breath. "Maybe it's pulling people into dreams - maybe you were dreaming and it decided t'eat two birds with one stone, I don't - fucking know, I don't know how it works."

And the fact that Pinkman saw what's in his nightmares makes Jesse so, so uncomfortable, now that he's awake and concentrated on the fact. He fidgets, biting his lip. He remembers it clearly.

"But that ain't," he starts to say, nearly cutting off Finch's words in the process as he shakes his head again and holds up a bit of a placating hand, "how dreams work, man, it ain't like I got things in my head climbin' out to try to waste you."

Yet? Though he's not entirely sure why it's okay when he suggests the scientists are doing it, but when it's of Finch's own volition, it's impossible.

It's not really occurring to him yet how delicate of a matter it is that he just kinda got himself witness to. Hell, it still hasn't entirely sunk in that they just experienced the same dream, he's having a hard time getting over that one.

"Yeah, well, you don't know how the nightmare works either," Jesse snaps, pushing off the door. "S'what it does. M'not fucking crazy, the nightmare gets in people's heads and turns everything they're fucking scared of into a game. Takes good, innocent people and corrupts them into something that can torment and kill."

He shoves away from the door and pushes past Pinkman, heading to the kitchen. "Lucky you that you ain't got shit trying t'do that to you in your dreams." He needs to calm down and he needs a drink.

There's a cautious kind of expression on Jesse's face - he lets Finch push him out of the way, just kind of takes a step back after - as he turns on his heel to watch Finch enter the kitchen. He's hearing him loud and clear, and he's hearing him talk about this thing like it's a living and breathing monster, not just like something he concocted in his mind.

"I thought that was just a nightmare," he questions first, his words a little slow and deliberate. He takes a few belated steps after Finch then, arms folding tightly across his chest. "You had-!" he starts to spit out before he realizes his voice is raising, and he adjusts his volume back down to a harsh whisper, leaning a little into Finch's personal space. "You had somethin' like that bouncin' around in your brain. And you never told me."

Jesse's opening a bottle when Pinkman follows him in - and he flinches away from Pinkman's accusation, hunching up. He talks about it that way because it is that. It's a monster, it's a thing, built up from negative energy.

Finch takes a drink and curls against the counter, watching Pinkman with a weird mix of anger and wariness. "S'not mine, it was Galen's. It was Galen's first." He shouldn't talk about it, but - after that he feels like he owes Pinkman an explanation of some kind. "You - remember it, right? The dog. S'what I was seeing at the lighthouse. It was trying t'get in. I weren't lying, it was a real thing."

He looks down at his feet.

"Yeah, I remember," he says a bit passively, distractedly, and he thinks of asking Finch for a drink of his own off that bottle but he's got a few more pressing matters to attend to before he can focus on getting himself good and drunk. "It was- real."

Not that he can speak for a moment - he just turns his head away, eyebrows raising and eyes closing as he rubs confused fingers at an eyelid and rolls the idea over in his mind. "Alright, so, follow-up question," he adds at long last, and he shakes his head once. "Why the fuck would Galen put somethin' like that up in your head again? I'm kinda wrackin' my brain here."

He actually hadn't even thought of that possibility. Is it Galen again? Is it Galen giving him nightmares and tormenting him - did he drag Pinkman in because they're close? Is he falling back into it? Jesse stiffens up and looks at Pinkman, eyes wide.

"I --" He splutters, grip tightening on his bottle. Shit. "I - dunno. It - the nightmare infected him, it bit him afore we came here but I thought we cleaned h-him of it." Calm down, jesus, take a deep breath and don't hyperventilate in the middle of the kitchen. "It m-might - it might be him, I didn't even think of that. I thought it was... I thought it just followed me, jumped ship from Galen t'me but I don't know, maybe it's..."

He presses a hand over his mouth, staring up, like he can see Galen from here. Mumbles, "I dunno wh-what I did."

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( here lies a warning for GROSS THINGS )

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