Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4117552.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Breaking_Bad
  Relationship:
      Jane_Margolis/Jesse_Pinkman
  Character:
      Jane_Margolis, Jesse_Pinkman, Donald_Margolis
  Additional Tags:
      Heroine_Big_Bang, Community:_heroinebigbang, Drug_Use, Heroin
  Collections:
      Heroine_Big_Bang_Round_Three
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-06-11 Words: 5009
****** Imperfect Drug ******
by SegaBarrett
Summary
     Jane tries to figure out Jesse, but she's not sure she can.
Notes
     Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this!
Jane Margolis raised the cigarette to her mouth and took a deep inhale. Sure,
smoking was bad for you and all of that, but nothing else helped her think like
that.
Nothing else she was still supposed to be doing, that was.
She’d read somewhere that rehabs where they made people quit smoking had a
fraction of the success rate of the ones where they didn’t, and she could see
why. The smell of it, the calming flicker of light… it was something else. It
made her feel momentarily at peace with the world. And if she was at peace, she
could work.
There were four tattoos on the schedule for tomorrow, and she wasn’t all that
excited about a single one of them. It was all names and stupid flash crap.
Lots of skulls.
Admittedly, Jesse’s tattoos weren’t all that great, either… but if she got a
chance to work with him… well then, maybe she could get something accomplished
that actually made some sort of statement other than “I want to look vaguely
like a badass but instead look like I’m fifteen and trying too hard”.
That was part of why Jane had never decided on a single tattoo. What was
something that would be meaningful enough to etch on to her body for life?
She took another inhale. If she was going to figure it out, she’d have to clear
her mind. See her creation out there in the world, projected and within reach.
Instead of seeing her creations, however, her mind kept making her see Jesse.
And not just see him – her mind had visualized her hands touching him, running
up and down his body, over that tattoos she had just been mocking in her mind a
few seconds ago. She wanted to press her tongue up against one of them… maybe
the one on his back, the one she objectively like least of all. She wanted to
press her tongue against it, feel the wetness between them… The same wetness
that Jesse made her feel when he…
Her head snapped up and she shook her head swiftly. She was getting
disastrously off-topic and there was no way that she was ever going to get
anything done if her brain kept drifting off like that. She needed to keep her
eye on the ball, not on the memory of Jesse’s balls.
Jane sighed. If she had the motivation to stand up, she’d splash herself with
ice water already. But she wasn’t sure that she did. Everything seemed to be
moving slower these days. Everything was playing on a loop, like she was in
some kind of a rut or was stuck in a groove in an old record. Her father had
had one of those, until he had decided to get rid of it. It had kind of bummed
Jane out – she had loved to watch the record going around and around.
Her father had bought a nice new CD player instead, one that held six CDs at
once.
Maybe she would convince Jesse to go buy her a new record player.
She pictured them listening to old music together and dancing. Being so close
to each other that no one could tear them apart.
But that was too much. That would have to be too much, wouldn’t it? That would
be a commitment. That would mean that she cared more about Jesse than she had
about any man, ever.
More than the man who had taken her virginity, for instance?
***
He’d been older. Jane had been sixteen years older, and he had been nineteen.
She’d done her research. It was legal, technically. She had been on the look-
out for just the right guy, and she had been reading about it for months
beforehand. It was important to start one’s active sex life off on the right
foot, after all. So research was key.
It wasn’t like she had anyone to talk about this sort of stuff with, anyway.
Her mother had died when she had been in diapers and her dad’s sister in
Phoenix had only ever stopped over a handful of times to make an appearance and
ask Jane’s dad for the occasional car loan. It was depressing.
So she had been reading My Secret Garden since she had been old enough to find
it on the bookshelf (looking for The Secret Garden instead and getting a hell
of a shock), and the internet had certainly been helpful. But experiencing
things for herself… That had been a rush. A hell of a rush.
But not nearly as much of a rush as what had been still to come. The highest
high, the needle that entered her vein and made her see clearly what had always
been hidden, which made her mind dance with music that she couldn’t explain.
When she tried to, her mouth didn’t want to move. Not yet.
It had all jumbled together, and Jane would be lying to herself if she said she
didn’t enjoy that time in her life. She had been on top of the world.
But she’d started skipping school, flunking tests, and talking back to her
father. It hadn’t taken long for him to spot the tract marks on her arm, to fly
into a frenzy, and to drag her – pretty much literally – to rehab.
Fun times had been over, then, though she’d tried to go all One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest on the place. She’d tried to analyze all the therapists asking
her why she shot junk up her arms.
Especially, she had hated it when they’d tried to convince her that there was
some deep-seated pain in her childhood, some Freudian excuse. Maybe, they’d
suggested, being raised by her father had led her to not understand how to be a
woman in today’s society.
She had laughed in the face of the therapist who had said that.
“Who the hell knows how to even be alive in the face of all this bullshit?” she
had asked, “I don’t need cue cards on how to be who I want to be.”
“Well, you certainly seem to be looking for a sign from somewhere. For advice.”
“Advice,” Jane had mumbled. “I don’t need advice from anybody.”
***
Now, she fiddled with the key in her hand, ready to let herself back into her
side of the duplex. She was torn between two equally appealing alternatives –
heading over to Jesse’s side of the place and getting exhausted together, or
being exhausted all by herself and just collapsing on the bed and sleeping the
night away. God, at almost twenty-seven she already felt like an old woman.
What was it, eight o’clock? Seriously.
If she was going to go over Jesse’s later, she ought to hop in the shower, get
herself looking nice. Not that Jesse would say anything if she didn’t look up
to snuff – she got the distinct impression that no matter what she looked like,
he would act like Aphrodite had just risen out of the sea whenever she talked
to him. It was actually a little embarrassing sometimes, but the fact that she
liked him made it more on the endearing side of embarrassing. He was such a
babe in the woods about this kind of stuff. Oh, she could take him on a ride.
Looking him over that first day, the day he had come to see about renting half
of the duplex, she had thought she’d been able to sum him up. He was a little
boy lost, that was sure, but he was also mixed up in something too big for him.
Jane ought to have known better, ought to have sent him on his way, but
something in his nature had made her give him a shot, the way he had begged for
it.
Some part of her had smiled at his big screen TV without cable. The “getting
signal” button that kept flashing. The way he held her hand, like they were
kids instead of twenty-somethings whose lives seemed to be rushing away, fading
away right in front of their eyes.
His blue eyes. They had seemed so innocent, so trusting.
Her head had kept telling her not to get involved with him, but her heart…
well, her heart could be a tricky little bastard when it wanted to be. Her
heart kind of wanted to keep him around. The same heart that whispered in her
ear from time to time that maybe she should just bite the bullet and get a
tattoo, of anything. Of something.
Maybe of Jesse’s blue, blues eyes.
But that was silly. She wasn’t the type of girl to let herself fall in love,
not like that. She had seen what happened when guys got too close. Most of them
had some ulterior motive, and she’d threatened to break guys’ necks more than
once in her days. Most of them were liars and cheats, just looking to get laid.
Jane wasn’t having that. Why wait around allowing yourself to get played? Life
was too short to cry on someone’s shoulder.
Life was too short in general, and that was something she had been aware of
since she was very young, indeed. Her mother, pretty Dinah, she only really
knew from the pictures that had hung on her father’s wall. She had been young,
too. Not much older than Jane was now, actually. She couldn’t imagine marrying
or having a child at her age.
But somehow, she could imagine dying.
***
“Jane?” Jesse was knocking on her door. She could almost see the eager puppy
eyes gazing back at her, and she kind of wanted to draw them. Hell, she wanted
to draw him. She wanted to draw him in various states of undress, which was
something she’d have to figure out how to do on relatively small pieces of
paper in case her dad dropped by again. That was not something she needed to
have it out with him about; he’d probably tell her she was peddling pornography
or something. He was always so dramatic.
Jane walked over and opened up the door. She smiled at Jesse.
“Hey. Didn’t know you were coming over today?”
He shrugged.
“I wanted to see you…” he told her. His hands were in his pockets.
“Oh, you did… did you?” She flashed a flirtatious grin. “And what, my good man…
in what stage of undress did you want to see me?”
Jesse chuckled and ran a hand over his ear.
“Uh… Well, honestly, I’d take any. There definitely aren’t any where I would
ask you to, I dunno, take it back to the store or something.”
Jane burst out laughing.
“You don’t think I should have bigger boobs? Smaller hips?”
Jesse shook his head.
“Oh, hell no! You’re perfect in every way, Jane. And I really mean it, too.
You’re something else.”
“Yeah, well… that may be true. But what something else is that?”
She looked away for a moment, her heart flooding with something she didn’t want
to name. She was starting to feel more of those uncomfortable tingles, the ones
that were telling her that the way she felt about Jesse wasn’t just sexual
attraction, but that maybe her heart felt something for him too.
She didn’t want that to be so. She knew where following your heart led you – it
led you astray, led you into a wall, led you into wishing dead people were back
with you and never, never feeling truly whole ever again.
“I mean,” Jesse said, breaking into her thoughts, “That when I’m with you,
that’s all I can think about, and you’re all that I want. You make me feel like
I’m on some kind of other planet. Like… you make me feel things I’ve never felt
before.”
There was a little alarm going off in Jane’s brain, saying, dangerous,
dangerous, dangerous.
But she smiled, and thanked him. She pulled off her shirt and held him close,
let his fingers unclasped her bra and let him kiss her on the shoulder. Let him
believe this was going where he wanted it to.
“Jesse,” she whispered out, and a moment later he was unzipping her pants and
sliding them off her waist. He was whispering her name in her ear, and she’d
never liked the way it sounded quite so much.
Every neuron was firing, telling her to stop, that this was too much. She
should call “stop” now, she should just give it all up. She should just stick
to casual, and in Jesse’s mind, it was obvious that this was anything but
casual.
But she couldn’t stop. She pulled her legs up and put them on either side of
Jesse’s head. How had they gotten on to the bed? It had happened so fast…
“You smell good,” he whispered. She liked that he liked her.
“Get inside,” she whispered back, and closed her eyes.
***
“You seem distracted, Jane.”
Jane looked back up from the coffee she had been stirring for the last ten
minutes. Her father was trying to get into her head again; not a place she
really wanted him to be. She didn’t want him to see Jesse and all the things
they’d been doing together. It was her little secret.
“Oh, no,” she looked up at him. “Just thinking… about this tattoo I’ve got to
get done. The guy’s willing to pay top dollar but you know how some of these
guys are. He wants it to be perfect but he’s just so vague with everything. All
kinds of dragons and stuff.”
“Are you sure that you’re okay?” Donald pressed. He was always able to see what
was going on with her, at least to some extent. And he definitely cared, if a
little too much.
If Jane was being honest with herself, she was all that he had left. Half the
time, she was pretty sure that it was also the other way around. After all, he
had put up with her all these years – well, and some would say, enabled her too
– when everyone else had gotten tired of her shit. He had forced her into rehab
and been there when she got out. He had given her this job managing the
properties – it definitely hadn’t been because of any qualifications on her
part. He just refused to give up on his only daughter, his only child. Maybe it
was some weird legacy thing – if his name was going to live on, it was going to
live on in Jane.
Jane wondered if he was ever disappointed about that. If he ever wished that
Dinah had lived long enough to give him another kid, the one that when Jane was
utterly impossible, he could tell himself “at least he had so-and-so”.
Instead, there was just Jane. And if he refused to give up on her, she had to
try and not give up on herself. At least in theory. Some days she thought she
had given up long ago.
Not that Jesse would want that, either. Why was he in her head so often these
days?
Could she even tell her dad that? That she wasn’t sure of what she wanted, that
she liked this guy more than she thought she would and now nothing made any
sense?
She shook her head.
“Just thinking,” she said again. “There’s stuff on my mind but, you know,
nothing serious.” She looked up at him. “You know, I could never do what you
do. Your job, I mean. All those planes and people depending on you. I would be
terrified.”
She hadn’t meant his job, though. Of course she hadn’t.
***
Jesse was lying on top of her, and Jane had her bare feet in the air, rubbing
against his. She’d never known a relationship could be so… fluffy, and that she
could actually like that.
There had to be something wrong with all of this. She’d long since figured out
that Jesse was a drug dealer but he had to be a serial killer or something,
too. There was an inevitable shoe that had to drop. She shouldn’t let herself
get too invested. “No commitment” had been her motto; it was like “hakuna
matata” – it was a wonderful phrase.
She was going to get caught up in his crazy world, no matter what it ended up
being. She couldn’t help it.
“Jesse,” she whispered, slipping him back inside her, letting him rub against
her walls. It had never felt quite this good.
Not as good as the best rush, however. That was still out of reach and it would
be, forever. For her own good, of course. If humans felt as good as one crazy
girl on heroin did, then the entire human race would die out. No one would want
to do anything else – they would just sit around and shoot up all the time.
Nothing would ever get invented or accomplished, because what could be done off
the needle that couldn’t be better done on?
She had to promise herself… That’s why she had to promise herself to never let
Jesse get a taste of it. She knew that once he did, he wouldn’t be the same
person. The looks he had, the secret looks that were only just for her, well…
those looks would be for the needle instead.
And she refused to get into a love triangle with a damned bag of heroin. She
was above that. At least she hoped she was.
“Jane.” Jesse was whispering in her ear. She loved the way that he always said
her name, the way that he made it sound like something beautiful. Like
windchimes, or fireflies.
That made her think of things tucked away in the back of her mind, tucked away
back in her childhood. When things had been simple… at least she thought they
had been.
“Jesse,” she whispered back. “Don’t leave me. Never leave me.”
He looked over at her.
“Never would. Never even thinking about it, not ever!”
He sounded even more desperate than she did.
***
“Jane.” Jesse was looking up at the ceiling, not looking at her. She wondered
what exactly he was thinking about. She was thinking about space, about the
space between people, about how they spent their entire lives trying to bridge
those spaces and trying to find other people to be in their spaces with them.
Trying to touch other people, trying to be happy.
But always ending up alone at the end of the day. Because people always died
alone, no matter what. Didn’t they? What, then, was the point of getting close,
only to leave people behind or to be left alone by yourself?
So she asked it.
“What are you thinking about?” It was one of those stereotypical wife
questions, the ones that men are always joking about having to figure out fake
answers for, when they’re really thinking about some other woman or tonight’s
poker game or something.
But she had asked it, and she didn’t really know why, other than that maybe,
she wanted to know.
“I was thinking about how beautiful you are.” Jesse kept looking up at the
ceiling. “And how I wish I could stay here forever, and didn’t have to go back
out to…”
“To what?” She knew what.
“To the world… To… to anything that isn’t you. To anyone that isn’t you! You
know what we should do, Jane? We should just… we should run away together. Like
off into the sunset. If we had… I mean, if we had enough money we could just…
start over completely.”
Jane chuckled.
“My dad would never let me,” she told him, “He’d track me down to the ends of
the Earth. I could be on Mars and he’d be there knocking on my door, asking am
I okay and telling me I’m in for it now.”
“Must be nice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Having folks who actually care.”
Jane sighed.
“Yeah. But sometimes it’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” she told him. “You
always worry about letting them down. Like if you screw up here, you screw up
there, and you’ve got them running around trying to clean up after your
mistakes, but you keep on making them…” She reached out to pull his arm, to
roll him to look directly back at her instead of up at the ceiling. “It’s a
commitment. And commitment… Well, it’s terrifying, basically. It’s like opening
up your heart to someone and not knowing whether you’ll break their heart or
they’ll break yours. Or both. It’s bullshit.”
Jesse’s eyes looked as if they were tearing up.
“Why is it bullshit? Why is it bullshit to let somebody into your heart? Just
because you might get hurt? Is that why you wouldn’t introduce your dad to me?
Because then it might mean something and then we’re not just playing some
stupid game together?”
Jane shrugged.
“I don’t know what we’re doing, Jesse. Do you care to tell me?”
He shook his head.
“I can’t tell you anything.”
***
He was writing her name all over her stomach, all over her breasts, and he was
whispering her name as if something was going to happen to make him forget it.
Like somebody was going to come in and erase his mind and all of his thoughts
and he was going to need to look at her to remember it.
Because, Jane guessed, if all of that was happening, that must mean that she’d
forgotten her own name, too. Jesse was just looking out for the both of them.
Holding on to whatever this was that they had.
“Jane,” he told her, “It doesn’t… None of it matters. All that matters is that
I’m with you.” He leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to her breasts, let his
tongue dance out against them, teasing the nipples. “I just want to stay with
you. That’s all I want.”
That was all anyone ever wanted, Jane knew. All anyone ever wanted was to stay
with their loved ones, not to be left alone.
But the easiest way to not be left alone was to not cling to things that didn’t
exist. There wasn’t going to be any white picket fences. Not for her.
She wanted to push him away, to tell him that she could never be the girl that
he wanted her to be, the perfect girl who could stay locked away.
Instead, she pressed her lips to his and drank him in, whispered things with
her tongue that she would never say in the light of day.
She had promised herself to never tell a man that she loved him. Because that
would be just another thing that fate could come in and decide to take away.
***
“I have to go to work.”
The illusion always had to shatter sometime, didn’t it?
“Okay.” She turned away, trying to act like it didn’t matter. Of course it
didn’t matter. He was allowed to go off and be a drug dealer. It wasn’t like
she didn’t know what he did, didn’t know what he was.
She was a fool for even getting wrapped up in this thing to begin with, for
coming up with all these stupid fantasies about the way life could be.
He looked at her with all these questions in his eyes, pleading with them, with
her, not to make him go. Not to send him away. To plea for him to stay, to sit
with her, to make love again – because that’s what Jesse would call it,
wouldn’t he? He’d dash it up, put a bow around it and call it making love, like
it was something fancy and Victorian.
Jane had always thought of it as fucking, after all. It was fun, and it was
good, but there was no need to dress it up. She felt like people who did that
just embarrassed themselves, like someone walking out of a trailer park and
into Le Becque Fin. Just… why? Why would you want to make everything more than
it was?
“Jesse,” she started. She wanted to tell him, wanted to tell him that she could
never be what he wanted her to be.
But she wanted to be, or at least wanted to try.
“Jane?” Jesse echoed back.
“Have a good day at work,” she said eventually. “We’ll talk when you get back,
okay? Be safe. Please.”
***
When Jane had been in rehab, she had snuck away, off in a janitor’s closet, and
pressed up against some guy who was there for alcohol abuse. She wished that
she could find a rush to rival the needle, something that wouldn’t make her
look as bad.
But she’d felt empty. Nothing felt as good anymore, as right anymore. She had
kicked him out and walked off, back to her room, kind of wanting to shower
because right now, it all felt so stupid. It felt ridiculous.
She had gone through rehab, gone through the whole nine yards and come out
again on the other end. She had gone to the meetings, listened to everybody and
told her story, done all the right things.
That was what people were meant to do, right? All the right things? They were
meant to stay on the straight and narrow, to not interfere in other people’s
lives and to just do her own thing.
That was the plan, wasn’t it? The plan had been to sit in the duplex, to be the
manager, to go into work every day and draw out tattoos for everyone. To smile
and act like that was enough. Like everything was enough, even though every day
felt like quicksand, like a malaise.
Could she bring Jesse into all of this? How long before she dragged him into
the quicksand, until it wasn’t enough for either one of them? Could she subject
him to that?
Or was he too pure for all of this? He was a drug dealer, after all, so not
that pure, but sometimes… sometimes he seemed so young. Too young, almost, like
she should send him back home to the parents he said hated him. They should
have taught him not to trust people, not to fall in love with the first pretty
girl to show him attention.
She should have been the girl that they warned him about.
But even if they had, Jane was pretty certain that Jesse wouldn’t have
listened.
***
Jane felt like she had a cat on her chest. It was a weird thought – and a
weirder feeling – but that’s what Jesse seemed like. He was quiet and constant
and warm and just… there, and she didn’t really want to move him from where
he’d fallen asleep with his face in her cleavage.
Eventually, however, Jane realized that she really needed to pee. Jesse needed
to be unceremoniously pushed off, and she stood up on the floor and stretched.
He rubbed his eyes and looked up at her.
“Jane?” he asked.
“Yes, Jesse?”
This seemed to be a theme.
“Do you want to… I mean… I’ve got today off. Maybe we should do something.
Catch a movie, maybe?”
This was all couple-stuff, wasn’t it? Normal couple-stuff, the kind of stuff
normal people did who didn’t feel a needle tapping on their arm, always trying
to get their attention like a child who wasn’t getting what he wanted.
“A movie…” Jane said, trying to push those thoughts out of her mind. “What did
you want to go see?”
Jesse scratched his head.
“I mean, it’s been a while. I really don’t care. I’ll watch anything. Even
chick flicks. Though, I mean… Please not a chick flick? People are always
crying a lot and then laughing and I get really confused.”
Jane laughed. Jesse had a way of making everything feel kind of new and
exciting. It was like opening her eyes and looking at the world for the first
time.
“So you’re admitting that you’ve watched chick flicks? Like, which ones?”
“I, uh...”
“Nope. You let the cat out of the bag. Now you’re going to have to spill, won’t
you?” She leaned in, smirking at him and putting her hands on her hips.
“Okay, okay,” Jesse replied. “I lived with my aunt for a while, and she… well,
she loved chick flicks. Used to watch Lifetime all the time, but those were
really depressing. She also watched all that stuff like, what was it called?
The Sweetest Thing. It’s really uncomfortable to watch your aunt find out what
a glory hole is.”
Jane burst out laughing.
“What about Bridesmaids? Does she like that one?”
Jesse’s face fell.
“Well… She probably would have. I think that one’s a little more recent, you
know, and… she passed away seven years back, when I was in high school.”
Jane’s heart did a little flip. Jesse was injured, all right. Naïve and injured
and mixed up and the best thing she could do is have nothing to do with him at
all.
That’s what her father would tell her. He would tell her not to confuse this
kid any more than she already that. That if she didn’t know what she wanted,
she owed it to him to step away and let him get on with his own life while she
got on with hers.
That’s what he would tell her, if he knew. If he knew what her mind did,
sometimes…
***
But she didn’t want to let him go. And when she finally let the needle touch
her skin, then she finally thought that maybe, just maybe, she could love him
like she wanted. Or maybe she just loved the rush, loved the needle, loved the
feeling of not caring, and maybe that was all that mattered.
Maybe it wasn’t him that she wanted at all. But now they were tied together,
for better or worse.
They were going to New Zealand. They were going to make the world their own.
Nothing was going to stop them.
Never.
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