If the dam breaks open many years too soon

[magnets]

[WHO:] Jesse and Various
[WHEN:] Day 83-88
[WHAT:] Dreamscape shenanigans.
[NOTES:] idk warning for pinkman in general. NO I'M JUST KIDDING, I have actual warnings this time, for drug use and violence and gore and some other pretty saucy things underneath, take heed.

[ ooc: Yet another catch-all post, this time for Jesse Pinkman! Prompts will go up underneath by me, but feel free to submit your own. If you wanna work something out for me to write you up, you can reach me as always at stagnation at Plurk! ]

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day 85 | for jesse finch | ( drug use warning )

[magnets]

Music pounds from the speakers, some dubstep song or another, and the house Finch finds himself in is an absolute heap.

The worst of it isn't even the people littering the room, though there are plenty. There's a couple fucking on a sofa as a third party tries insistently to get in on it, there's fat guy in his tie and his underwear eating peanut butter straight out of the jar, there's a sixteen year old girl sitting on the coffee table with a belt around her arm, there's two tattooed and pierced guys gut-punching each other while dangerously close to knocking the flatscreen television over. A number of other unlikelies sit scattered across the room in various states of disarray, but, hell, that's just the occupants.

Chips and broken glass and beer bottles are all around the floor, mixed in with- well, take your pick. Dog toys, discarded shoes, torn panties, fast food wrappers, pizza boxes, spent dimebags, hypodermic needles. There's a countless amount of bottles lining the shelves and the mantle, there's graffiti covering nearly every spare inch of the wall, and what isn't graffiti'd is streaked with vomit and God only knows what else.

It's a trap house, if you don't know any better. It's Wonderland, if you're actually staying.

But amidst it all, there's nothing for Finch to recognize, no familiar faces - most of the people, weirdly enough, don't even seem to have faces, there's just an empty maw left where the visage used to be, or they're blurry and distorted. There's nobody that seems to know the answers to any questions he might have, though a few spare hands might try to vaguely reach out, take his jeans legs, bump into him as he walks by. No sign of Pinkman anywhere.

[rigging]

The moment Jesse enters the house, he's on a mission.

This isn't the first time that he's been in a house like this. He's had his fair share of eternal parties, in smaller houses, but it doesn't make this any less disgusting. He's thoroughly grossed out by the amount of trash, the various states of the people around, but they're not his problem. Not right now. You can't save everybody in this room, Jesse reminds himself, taking care of where he steps. Fucking needles on the floor. God, he's glad he's wearing thick shoes.

There's nobody in here - nobody that he recognizes, or - can't. The faces glaze, nobody can answer his questions, and Jesse's frustrated near immediately, pushing people away, kicking at the hands that manage to get a hold on his jeans. Nothing in the living room. He'll try every room in the house - the kitchen, the bathroom, and finally the bedroom, which really, is where he thinks that he'll find Pinkman.

Come on. This is urgent, Jesse needs him. Needs him out of this house. It's important.

[magnets]

The rest of the house is just as bad as the living room - the fridge is open, condiments spilled all over the floor, nothing left of use inside except for beer and curdled milk; and the bathroom, well, the bathroom's nightmarish, complete with an overflowing toilet, a girl smoking and calmly taking a piss in the sink, and a scrawny redheaded man rocks back and forth in the tub - in fact, the bedroom looks like the only place that's relatively untouched.

A few clothes litter the floor, but the place isn't half bad. A few beer bottles on the side tables, there's a dresser drawer pulled out with a bag inside holding well over a hundred thousand dollars in cash, and a girl sits perched at the end of the bed in nothing but a bright pink thong. She's chattering incessantly about the dangers of violence in the media as she calmly blows people's heads off in some video game or another.

But in the middle of it all is Jesse. He's sprawled across the bed in nothing but his boxers, his eyes shut and a vaguely dreamy smile on his face. He doesn't seem to hear a word the girl's saying, he doesn't even seem to register that the door's just opened. There's still a loosened belt around his arm, and there's still a needle hanging askew out of a vein.

[rigging]

Well, that's - a sight to walk in on. Jesse stops in the doorway; he doesn't apologize for seeing her naked or anything because she's not even paying attention to him, and also, if she was worried, he figures the door would've been locked. Anybody could've walked in, everybody in the place is high as a kite, and there are people in the hallway passing by, too, so. Whatever, it's not important. Because when he sees Pinkman sprawled out on the bed, that becomes priority number one.

Thong-girl doesn't seem to be dangerous, and Jesse immediately throws the door open. "Ay! Get out! Party's over!" He barks angrily, stalking towards the girl and snatching the controller out of her hands. Get out, he has a job to do.

[magnets]

Mostly harmless. Though when Finch takes the controller she immediately jumps up - English clicks over to Spanish, very loud Spanish, sounds like a whole lot of insults and not much else as she points violently at Finch. She shakes her head to herself, swearing the whole way as she snatches a tiny blue dress off the floor and marches out of the room on unsteady five inch heels.

The door slams with gusto and Jesse finally acknowledges that there's even a world outside of his bed for just a second, waves an incredibly uncoordinated hand at the air - it hangs there for a moment too long, but he doesn't open his eyes. "Keep it down," he tries to say, but all that comes out is that one word, that 'keep', before his hand finally flops back onto the bed.

[rigging]

Ooh, Pinkman, you are in trouble. Jesse scowls and yells right back at the woman until she's gone because he's a mature grown-up - it's not Spanish but it's probably just as foul. When she's gone, Jesse slams the door behind her and throws the controller on the floor, moving to the bed to grab at Pinkman's arm, the one he'd waved around.

"Ay. Ay," Jesse snaps angrily, reaching across to yank the belt away, carefully take the needle out and put it on the bedside table. "Ay, motherfucker, wake up." He's so furious, because this is such bullshit. Pinkman's on fucking - heroin, and Finch isn't having it. He will not watch Pinkman go down this path, not after he's been down it himself.

"Jesse! Wake up." Finch says loudly, slapping at Pinkan's face.

[magnets]

"Party's," Jesse starts to reply, rolls his head to the side and whines when Finch starts to take the belt, removes the needle. "Party's downstairs," he finishes, and all his words slur together into one big mess, his fingers twitch idly at the ends of his arms. His eyes are shut lazily until Finch slaps him, and then they're open wide.

He immediately, fitfully, starts to struggle - he kicks out at Finch's legs with the heels of bare feet, and his arms draw up tight into him, hands balled into white-knuckled fists as he thrashes a bit more. "No, no, no," he argues furiously, squeezing his eyes shut tight again and finally stops kicking at Finch like a child. His arms are still drawn up tight, and his breath shudders as he sinks back into the bed again.

[rigging]

No, the party is here, Finch wants to say, but it sounds cheesy as fuck even to his own ears. Helpfully, that's about the point where Pinkman starts to try and whack at him, to which Finch is not going to put up with either. Cussing nastily, Finch attempts to pin Pinkman down to make sure he doesn't get kicked in the stomach.

"Knock it off, fucking - cockfaced son of a bitch, I --" But what that sentence is going to end with never comes out, because Pinkman finally settles down and Finch lets out the breath he'd been planning to use on words in one large whoosh. "Quit - fighting me. C'mon, you gotta sober up."

Jesse knows that's not how it works, but he doesn't care. Look, he's not going to leave Pinkman here, in this dirty as fuck house with needles and addicts all over. He'll drag him out if he has to. They're going to go back to Finch's place, he means it.

He'll even try to get Pinkman's arm around his shoulders, here.

[magnets]

Jesse's anything but compliant. He keeps jerking his arm away, stubbornly holding both of them locked to his chest and even trying to roll away from Finch's help. 'No,' keeps coming out of his mouth, 'no, no, no'; he seems very keen on staying in his own bed and reveling in his current state.

"Day off," he mumbles with a scrunched face and his toes curl angrily as he tries to pull up into a ball on the bed. It's about that time that Finch can finally pry his arm away from his body and get his shoulder up underneath him. "Mr White, it's my day off." He's all dead weight when he starts to lift off the bed, and he grapples with Finch again, fist going into his shirt and shaking it angrily as he tries to pull off of him.

"Good here," he grinds out stubbornly, trying to squirm away. "I'm stayin' here!"

Heroin. He told himself he'd never go back to the stuff and yet here he is, and also there he is back in Kore with a folded brown paper stuck up inside his mattress where nobody's going to find it. But here and now it's a dreamscape, it's just a dream, he can do what the fuck he wants and damn the consequences.

[rigging]

To his credit, Finch doesn't stop trying. Pinkman tries even harder to get out of his grasp, and he's so far gone that he thinks Jesse is that - Mr. White dude, someone Pinkman has mentioned once or twice. From the context clues Jesse's getting, this has to have happened before. But Finch isn't looking for a repeat performance, because god dammit, Pinkman is not going to kill himself with this shit.

Maybe he's not aware of it, but the bleed of emotions has Finch's worry and slight fright aired out in the room, mixing harshly with Pinkman's mellowed out quiet. It's like looking in a mirror. Jesse heaves, and pulls Pinkman off the bed, dumping him on the floor.

"Get up!" Finch near-yells, because yeah, that's helping. "We're going to my place and you're drying the fuck out, I swear to fucking god." He'll drag you by your ankles if he has to. "I don't care if it's your day off, heroin, I'll kick your goddamn ass. Get up, I ain't Mr. White, I'm worse."

[magnets]

Jesse stumbles a step or two before his legs give out and he lands hard, just sits on the floor in defeat with a dejected 'ow' and plops his hands into his lap. "Don't be mad," he sighs passively and sprawls out on the floor, his hands languidly opening and closing out by his sides for a moment. He doesn't want to go anywhere, he certainly doesn't want to go to someone's place to dry out. He just wants to sit here and rot for a while.

The music keeps pounding from downstairs, some rap song or another, and there's the distinct sound of glass breaking.

Not Mr. White. It's then that Jesse's eyes crack open again and he frowns up at Finch, like he has to really think for a moment about who he is and what he's doing here. Briefly, he smiles, something wide and full of recognition. "Finchy-boy," he grinds out as he struggles to sit up again, but his expression promptly falls again, as does he, and he blinks unevenly up at Finch, unfocused, his eyes glassy and a bit deadened. "Did you come- to save me?"

day 86 | for galen howard | ( gore warning )

[magnets]

[ He's in bed when it happens. He's safe and sound and asleep, his fingers curled into the sheets. There's a shift over him and his eyes flicker before they widen. It's Mr White standing over him, and this time he has a saw pressed to Jesse's throat - the metal edges bite into his skin and he barely even has time to gasp. "Cut off the loose ends," Mr White says with malice, and it's about when the teeth start to hack into his vocal cords that he usually wakes up. ]

[ Usually. He'd choke a little, he'd shoot upright, he'd sit there for an awful long time in his bed, head in his hands, and then he'd find something to do for a while, something that's decidedly not sleeping. They always go the same way, these dreams. More or less. The same thing to say, every time, and then Jesse dies in some nightmarish way or another. ]

[ This time, he sees the whole thing. He stands a few paces from the bed, he watches his own skin separate and his own blood soak into the sheets, and Mr White doesn't even bat a lash at him as he leaves; he only seems to see the Jesse cleaved in two on the bed. Jesse stands there for a while with nothing much to look at but his own dead body, and when he finally moves it's to carefully paw his hands at his face, expression shell-shocked and very, very pale. ]

Christ, Jesus Christ-

[gleans]

[ He's seen lots of violent dreams before, but they're usually just cheesy, made of dream-logic, just weird enough to make them less scary than they ought to be. The dreamer usually wakes up before they die, or the person who dies doesn't stay dead, and the dream moves on in the way that dreams do.

[ This one isn't like those dreams at all.

[ Galen -- arrives, for lack of a better word, just in time for the blood-covered Mr. White to walk past him, leaving him standing close enough to bed to see what remains of Pinkman. For a second, he feels ill - that heavy rush of shared emotion he's gotten used to from the other Kore dreamers - and thinks that maybe he's too late this time, but he hears, then looks --

[ Fuck, Jesus Christ. ]

Pinkman. [ Galen moves closer to him, away from the bloody, too-vivid body. ] Hey. Hey, look at me.

[magnets]

[ At first, he's in too much shock to even function, doesn't hear his name and keeps his eyes trained on the bed. His hands smooth down to grip protectively at the back of his neck. ]

I'm gonna die. [ He speaks to himself, under his breath. ] Holy hell, I'm gonna die -

[ Galen speaks up again and Jesse starts like someone's just cocked a gun at him, breathes a sigh of relief when he sees who it is. Galen's certainly a fuckton better than somebody coming in to finish him off. ] What are you- [ He starts to ask what Galen's even doing in his house, but he knows as soon as it's out of his mouth that he's dreaming. ]

Usually, I, uh. [ It starts off as a joke and kind of dies in his mouth as he slowly turns his gaze back to the bed, his hands white-knuckling a bit at the back of his neck. He feels sick. ] Usually I wake up.

[gleans]

You're not gonna die. [ Galen just wants to get that out of the way first. He has no idea who that was, or what's going on - just that he can feel what Jesse's feeling and it's making him jittery - but right now, as far as Galen's concerned, nothing is going to happen to him.

[ Just for a second, he rests a hand reassuringly on Jesse's elbow, then steps to block Jesse's view of the carnage on the bed. He hates that his voice shakes; it's not his fault that it does. ] I think they're fucking with everyone's dreams. I mean, obviously, since I'm here, but -- think about something else. Yeah? You can get out of here if you try. [ He doesn't know how much Finch has told Pinkman. Hopefully not enough to make him distrustful. ]

[magnets]

[ He flinches at the hand to him, nearly jerks his arm right out of Galen's reach as he keeps looking at the bed - for a while, when Galen's there, like he's seeing through him instead of actually seeing him. But his eyes shift and he takes a half a step back and looks at Galen now, really looks. ]

You're good at this shit, right? The- the- [ He waves his hand a little, in a circle, trying to drum up the appropriate words. ] The dream shit, you're good at all this, he said you were good at all this. [ And he doesn't specify who the 'he' is but it's made pretty obvious between the two of them. ] How do you do it?

[gleans]

[ So Finch told him. But how much? Galen nods as Jesse talks, eyes on him, careful not to touch or spook him, shifting further in front of the mess on the bed. ]

Yeah. Yeah, I am. But you gotta focus. You've gotta will it away, man, I know you can. [ Those instructions are pretty nonspecific, though, so he tries to clarify, biting briefly at his lip. ] Like a daydream, right, you're lucid, that's all this is.

[magnets]

[ Jesse just puffs out a hard breath, hands rubbing a bit frantically at his face before he drops them by his sides and shakes them out. Right, right. Daydream, that's all. Just having a bad daydream, he can make it go away any time he wants. It's his own fucking head, he can make it do what he wants. ]

[ But concentrating on it just makes his mind focus on the damn body for a long moment; the room shifts and it becomes the focal point, blood even starts running up the walls before he opens his eyes again and gravity behaves once more. Jesse's hands go back over his face. ] I'm lyin' dead, man, how the hell am I supposed to-

[ He just sighs thinly. He's not pissed at Galen, Galen didn't do anything wrong. But he is pretty pissed. ]

[gleans]

[ Yikes. Galen brings his gaze back from the walls and looks at the alive Jesse, trying to think of another way to help. He's done this a couple of times already, there must be some way. And if it doesn't work, he can always bail Pinkman out. Maybe. ]

Okay -- where do you really wanna be? Right now? [ Galen pushes his hair out of his face, reaches back to try and darken the part of the room with the dream-body. ] Something you can imagine, like, the smell, what being there feels like. And focus on it.

day 84 | for kenzi

[magnets]

Kenzi's going to find herself in an apartment - on the small side, but it's cute, it's got these cheery, pale walls, a little eat-in kitchen. Two leather recliners sit in the middle of the living room and the flatscreen's on, some movie playing in the background - Adam Sandler's face is onscreen, Jesse doesn't really remember or give a fuck whatever it is. Most of what matters is the two people in the chairs, Jesse and a decidedly female person with jet black hair, blunt cut bangs.

She sits with her legs thrown over an arm of the chair, in a t-shirt of her own and a pair of Jesse's boxers covered with the Monster logo. There's a cigarette caught between her two first fingers and the two of them have been talking, just talking, Jesse laughs a little when Kenzi shows up, but Jane notices her first. She leans forward and stubs out her cigarette in an ashtray mixed between spent beer bottles, Yodels wrappers, and a rather healthily sized bong.

Jane gives a coy bit of a smile when she sees Kenzi. Jesse looks like he's been caught red-handed, like he's gonna throw up.

"Well?" Jane speaks up, tucks her hair behind an ear and looks expectantly at Jesse. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

[onteamdyson]

Kenzi immediately feels like she's intruding. She knows what this is now. Dreamstuff, so freakin' weird. But... it's not like she can help it? It's not like she asked to walk in on Pinkman hanging out with... some chick with really great taste in hair styles. Huh. That's... that's a little... huh. Coincidence! Sure. Let's go with that.

She takes a few steps forward, closer to the two of them, and puts on a friendly smile. "Yeah, Pinkman. Don't be rude. You should totes introduce me." To your dream-lady. In your dreampartment. With all your dreamsnacks and dreampot. Not because she wants to be invasive! But because she has no idea how to get the hell out of here, and this particular instance of subconscious sharing actually seems pleasant and not at all terrible or horrible.

Please don't prove her wrong.

Just gonna wave at the chick with the hair a little awkwardly, still smiling. "'Sup?"

[magnets]

Jesse lets out a very long puff of breath, looking down as he rubs a hand over the back of his head, fingers pulling at his hair for a moment - there's actually hair for him to pull at, it's longer and spiked, stands up in a few odd directions. "She, uh-"

"Isn't he, though?" Rude? Jane asks with a roll of her eyes skyward, before Jesse can even get a word in, and swings her legs up and over the arm of the chair, and she smiles at Kenzi as Jesse takes a very long and deliberate pull from his beer bottle. "Ignore him," she adds with a wave of her hand. "I mean, I never picked him for a shy drunk-"

"Yo!"

"-but it's his own prerogative what kind of a crappy host he's going to make himself out to be in a situation like this." She speaks lightly, picking up a snack off the table and ripping into the foil. "Thankfully, I am more than capable of making my own way in this world, and I am Jane," she finishes with a glance up at Kenzi, and holds the snack out for her, temptingly. "Yodel?"

[onteamdyson]

Pffff, oh my god. Kenzi smirks at Jesse before looking back to dreamlady, Jane, wow. She's actually kind of hilarious. And sassy! Kenzi can't help a snicker at the whole strong-woman keeping him in check thing with all his talk about moves the other day. Poetic justice! She loves it.

"Kenzi. Nice to... meet you." Sort of. Is she real? Does this count? Is she dream-hopping like everyone else? Kenzi doesn't think so, but that doesn't mean she has to offend her! The dreamsnack is far too tempting, even though imaginary food isn't all that filling, you still get that taste-memory stored away which is always awesome. "Yeah, sure. Thanks." She takes the cake, hah, and takes a bite before leaning against the side of the chair, already a little too familiar.

"So what are you guys up to? Not interrupting movie night, am I? Pinkman, why didn't you tell me your gf was so awesome?" Maybe because of the similar look-- oh. Oh shit. He DID tell her she was awesome. She slowly turns her head to look at him, wide-eyed and kinda feeling like a jerk. You remind me'a somebody, ya know. Chick I used to know. This would be that chick, huh? Nice going, Kenz.

[magnets]

But he did tell her. Sort of. He looks up at her just as slowly, and he kinda gets the impression that she's starting to remember that idea, she's got that look on her face, but he still replies a bit sarcastically, "Guess I forgot."

"Happy Gilmore and a mountain of disappointment," Jane speaks up as Jesse watches Kenzi for a few long more seconds, and then leans forward towards the coffee table to retrieve the bong off of it. She's looking intently at the screen, snack cake pinched between her fingers. "I hadn't seen it since high school. Though I distinctly remember it being funny-"

"Uh, that's because it is funny."

"-the content? Not holding up so well as we'd all hoped."

Jesse sighs and rubs a hand over his face, even with a lighter cupped between a few of his fingers. But he holds the bong up towards Kenzi after a beat without lighting it for himself yet. "Want some?"

"We should do something fun," Jane interrupts, looking over at Kenzi and waggling the Yodel a bit. "The humdrum of the movie night, it doesn't suit our company at large."

[onteamdyson]

Oh, Jesse. You're just trying to dream about something back home and she's all up in here ruining it and invading it and she's totally sorry. She even says so, silently, just kind of mouths the word at him while Jane isn't looking. Sorry, dude.

"No, hey, he's right. It's totally funny. Did I miss Bob Barker kicking some serious Sandler ass? Bo never wants to watch this kind of stuff with me. Luckily she's into slasher fics and B movies." She grins, trying to share some of her own stuff to make this even. It's still WAY uneven, but she's trying.

Kenz shakes her head at the offer with no consideration. "Nah, I'm good, thanks." Not even in a dream, she can't risk it. Gotta be alert. Survival instinct. Old habit.

And then there's a suggestion that she can really get behind. "Fun, huh? I'm totes a fan of fun. What exactly did you have in mind, Lady Jane?" What can they even do in here? Anything? ANYTHING! Probably anything. She's crossing her fingers that Jesse's subconscious comes up with something like riding dinosaurs in a giant moon bounce with a sky made of denim.