WHO: Jesse Pinkman and Sherlock Holmes WHEN: Before the jump, kind of vague on that one, sorry WHERE: A coffee shop on the way to a NA meeting WHAT: They talk about whether or not people can change. WARNINGS: Talk of addiction and homicide STATUS: gdoc, complete!
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Over the course of time, Jesse had become a normal presence in Sherlock’s time, at least so it seemed. He had somehow inserted himself into both his and Watson’s lives so seamlessly that he considered him an integral part of it. He had not been speaking lightly when he’d suggested that Jesse move in with them, nor had he been speaking in jest to Watson when he had assumed that it had already happened. Nevertheless, they carried on as normal. It was a brand new year and so they had a meeting to attend. He was verging on a six month sobriety chip, not that he would voice it. Despite Watson’s insistence, Sherlock did not put much value in the chips themselves, rather the time put in to achieve them. “Shall we pause to collect a slightly more decent coffee than what’s offered?” He suggested, shooting his companion a glance. “Perhaps this time they’ll allow us into the establishment.” It helped that they weren’t attempting to walk the tortoises. Jesse had been going since … October 13th, to the day. He had a 30 days keychain attached to his sparse keys. He appreciated Sherlock, he’d never really had a friend like him. All his friends were assholes who enabled him. Or they were Walter and kept him prisoner in a partnership. Sherlock made Jesse feel like he was an actual person. And with the arrival of Joan, it had gotten even better. Sherlock’s mood improved, and Jesse gained another friend who cared about his well being. Between them and Jason, he had a solid foundation here in Tumbleweed. Jesse snickered, “Yeah, that wouldn’t be so bad.” He was dressed in nicer clothes than he used to dress in-- things that actually fit him. Darker colors. It reflected his outlook on life, maybe. At least all the websites he looked at talking about him discussed his clothing choices. It freaked him out-- being fictional. Sherlock would probably know about that better than Jesse would. He pointed, squinting in the sun. “There’s a place across the street, you like them?” It was true that Sherlock’s disposition had improved dramatically since the arrival of Joan. While he had been content in his friendship with Emma, Joan was a piece of his own puzzle that mattered. Without her, he did not feel complete. Without being in love with her, Sherlock did nonetheless love Joan in every other sense. Now, not being in New York was meaningless. He had cold cases, a decent life, and friends again. This was beginning to look like home. “I’ve no idea,” he shrugged, glancing at the place in question. “Likely not. Coffee, tea, none of it here is ideal. I suffer it for lack of other proper options outside of my home. So, let’s have a look and see if it exceeds ‘subpar’.” Jesse was happy to be in Texas. His life back in Albuquerque had ended in what can only be trouble. The last thing he remembers is running from his captors. He probably ran into the police. He’d be in a lot of trouble for just being where he was, he wouldn’t get a fair fight. Especially with Schrader dead. It was better to not think about it and focus on his new life. He had a job at the zoo and he was (mostly) sober. “Just because it’s not New York doesn’t mean it’s not good. Besides, maybe they have those little flavor pumps, those make everything better.” Jesse scoffed at Sherlock’s eliteness. How dare, Sherlock. How dare. “Flavor pumps?” He questioned, scoffing right back at his companion. “You mean the tubes of processed sugar in liquidated form? I’ll not be tainting my subpar coffee with that, thank you.” Sherlock wouldn’t say he was elite, only very, very, British at times. It was a license to complain, after all. Undeterred, he checked the street and began crossing to the coffee house in question. They had a little bit of time to enjoy a cup before heading into the meeting, at least. “Which particular pump will you be requesting, then?” He asked, arching a quizzical brow at Jesse. Jesse stood there for a moment before following Sherlock very dutifully. “Yea, the tubes of processed sugar are the best. It’s not tainting, it’s … making it better.” He trailed off, realizing he was going to lose this battle. But then Sherlock asked him what he wanted-- no one ever asked Jesse what he wanted. “Vanilla. It’s the plainest but I think it’s the best.” He grinned over at Sherlock. Sherlock was a few inches taller than him and he tilted his head upwards a bit to look at him. “It’s not bad, have you even tried it?” Making it better, he grimaced at the thought. Sherlock only jammed excess sugar in his coffee when he needed a jumpstart to his synapses--a palate cleanser, as he’d call it. Although he had multiple cold cases sitting on the table at the Brownstone, he wasn’t looking for a sugar-induced revelation. They were en route to a meeting, he had to focus on that. “Vanilla,” he repeated, mulling over the prospect. Sherlock was far from a food connoisseur of any sort. Joan had an appreciation for food, drink, fine wine, but Sherlock viewed sustenance as simply that: a means to an end. “Yes, though not in its ‘latte’ form. Are you proposing that I remedy that?” Jesse shrugged and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He peered to the side and saw a car coming, so he started to jog up to the establishment. Opening the door for Sherlock (because he was polite), Jesse replied, “You can try something new for once.” Then again, trying something new is what got them into their respective drug situations. Once inside, Jesse was overwhelmed with the smell of coffee. “God, it smells good in here.” Even though it was a bit much. Nodding curtly at him, Sherlock’s smile was forced but nonetheless appreciative. He wasn’t very good at proper pleasantries, but that he made an effort at all was a sign of how much he liked Jesse. He wouldn’t have assumed the man had moved in already otherwise. While he didn’t have the same opinions on trying new things for the very reason of it being a road to his addiction, he understood what he meant. “There are few smells I appreciate more,” he nodded in agreement. Venturing to the counter, he halted in the short queue. “Perhaps I should add this scent to the Brownstone. Watson would like it far better than half the things she’s smelt, no doubt.” Jesse let out a small laugh. “You keep some weird shit around. And the turtle food doesn’t smell great.” He paused and rubbed the back of his next, “Sorry all I got you for Christmas was the crime scene bandages and the turtle food. You deserved something cool. I’m not good with presents and I’m mostly broke.” Jesse wasn’t looking at Sherlock when he said all this, instead his attention was on the pastry case. For many reasons. He liked Sherlock not just because he treated Jesse like a person. He liked Sherlock because he was different than everyone else. He was kind of weird… and Jesse liked it. He liked the strange and unusual. Jane taught him to look at things that people would normally ignore. Like that woman who painted door a gazillion times. It wasn’t the same painting every time. People were different every time you met with them. “It’s far more than I got you,” Sherlock reminded him. Christmas, birthdays, times for presents--they were his forte. “Furthermore, those are all relevant gifts to my interests. Both Clyde and Bonnie require sustenance, and the bandages will get use when I must reconstruct crime scenes.” The people who genuinely liked Sherlock came few and far between back home. He had Joan, of course, the captain, and so on. Being one of the displaced had shifted that, at first he had only Emma. As one of the few who had supported her after the ordeal she had caused, she had taken root in a place akin to Joan’s. To Sherlock, people were not different. People were inherently the same, he was the stranger in the crowd. He was the monster solving the mysteries revolving around the rare few who could elude capture. “Are you also hungry?” He asked, glancing at Jesse as he took a step closer to the register. One more person, then they could get coffee properly. “There will be donuts at the meeting, I suspect.” Jesse shrugged. He didn’t expect a present from anyone. He didn’t take it hard that Sherlock didn’t get him anything. He couldn’t remember the last time he got a gift. “I’m okay, I can wait for donuts.” His stomach rumbled, giving him away. Jesse silently prayed Sherlock didn’t hear that. Jesse’s friends back home were just thugs and drug dealers. No one that understood him on a deeper level. No one that would go to meetings with him, helping him to improve himself. So this was a big step up. He remember the time he saw a big beetle and let it crawl over his hands-- only for Skinny Pete to come along and crush it under his sneaker. Jesse needed softness in his life, kindness. Something real. He hadn’t seen that since Jane and Andrea. Figures it was girls who did that for him. Sherlock was the sort of person who gave gifts because he saw something a person he liked needed, something he believed would better them as a person; he didn’t buy them out of holiday “obligation” or some other such occasion. He was in tune with details, but not always ones deemed important by the masses. The fact that Jesse attempted to hide his hunger prompted Sherlock to take a quick glance at the displayed food, then ordered himself two vanilla lattes and a couple of sandwiches swiftly. Accepting the receipt with his number, he gestured for Jesse to follow him. “They’ll bring us our order at our table,” he nodded toward an open table by the window. He took a seat patiently, eyes immediately glued to the outside view. Sherlock was constantly observing. “Do you intend to speak at today’s meeting?” He was hit or miss -- some days he was in the mood to share, on others he was the epitome of cautionary silence. Jesse never had anyone to give gifts to before Tumbleweed. His parents didn’t talk to him anymore… his brother, as much as he loved him, lived with his parents so it was hard to get to him. Skinny Pete, Badger, and Combo weren’t really the types of guys you got gifts for. Unless it was letting them borrow a cigarette. When Sherlock ordered the sandwiches, Jesse’s mouth dropped open and he tried to stop it. But then he backpedaled and decided against sassing Sherlock. Sherlock would win that argument. “I don’t know. Last time I went to meetings, I challenged the moderator. Told him that it had no point, nothing did. Might go off on that tangent again,” he said sheepishly. Few arguments went unwon by Sherlock, those that he did lose had surely been against Joan. She was the guiding light in his life, to be sure. Nothing could eclipse the pedestal upon which he placed her, but that was not without its own acknowledgment of her personal flaws versus his own. She had taught him to care, which was how he’d come into the genuinely good graces of the Captain, Detective Bell, and his former sponsor, Alfredo. Perhaps, too, in a way, Jesse reminded him of the latter. Hearing someone voice a similar thought process to his own appeared to catch Sherlock legitimately off guard. Immediately, his attention swiveled back to Jesse. How many meetings had he practically condemned the entire point of the meetings? It was hypocritical, but his criticism did not forgo voicing an understanding of their importance. “If that is what you need to say, then say it,” he encouraged. “That is the point of the meetings.” Jesse noticed Sherlock’s attention snap to him. His icy eyes shyly darted down to the table. If Joan was on a pedestal for Sherlock, then Jesse put Sherlock on one of his own. He looked up to the other man, thought he was a genius, thought he was the most interesting person in Tumbleweed. (Which, considering the amount of superheroes, was a big deal). “I don’t want to bring anyone down. The only times I’ve spoken before was just to share that I went through the same thing as someone else. To just agree. I don’t want to … throw someone off their healing process.” “It is important that you consider how many people at these meetings share that sentiment, myself included,” Sherlock offered. “Simply voicing it does not discredit their efforts anymore than it subdues your own. Someone will inevitably remind you of a singular merit to attending them: a continual effort is nonetheless being made.” Just then, their coffee and sandwiches were delivered. Sherlock uttered a customary word of gratitude, then drew the steaming mug closer to his grasp. The vanilla scent coming off of it was enough to prompt a tiny scowl, but he would drink it. The amount of arguably more disgusting substances he had ingested previously prepared him for overwhelmingly sweet tastes, or so he supposed. “I have once stated at a meeting that I was the most brilliant mind in the room, that in itself was a suffocating and isolation notion. It was not met with shame nor was it condemned, because it was no more inappropriate for me to say than it would be for you to speak a personal truth of that nature. You will only be promptly reminded, whether by the moderator, another member, or myself, that the key is the routine itself. Without the routine, sobriety would not last.” Jesse perked up a little when Sherlock said he shared Jesse’s thoughts about the meetings. “Yeah? I just-- He was going on and on about acceptance. I can’t accept myself. I’m not an good guy. I’ve done terrible shit. I can’t just accept myself. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not a switch.” He closed his eyes tight and their order was placed in front of them. Jesse said ‘thank you’ softly and picked up his sandwich. He tried not to be too messy with it. “Routine,” he said it as if it was a dirty word. “I’m sober here, for the most part, I’m not doing meth, at least. But that’s because I can’t find any.” Genuinely proud of Jesse in that moment, Sherlock let it show for a sliver of a moment. That wasn’t the easiest thing to confess, that much he had surmised early on in his tenure with Joan as his sober companion. She had put so much emphasis on the meetings to the point that he had initially found them exhausting, moreover--pointless. While his position on that had not completely changed, he focused now on the routine instead of how bleak maintaining his sobriety truly felt. “I am not a good man,” Sherlock stated plainly, vanilla-tainted coffee poised at his lips. “You would argue to the contrary, but the fact of the matter is: we are both users in recovery. That we used is not what makes us bad, it is the actions taken while under the influence that defines the very content of our collective character. You have done bad things. I have done bad things. Those are facts. You are not doing them now, nor do you intend to do so in the future. That also defines us, and let that intent or lack there of drive you further, Jesse. Even if it drives you to encouraging me to try this sweet concoction masquerading as coffee.” Jesse frowned when Sherlock admitted to not being a good man. He solved crimes. He was completely sober-- not like Jesse who smoked and drank and partook in a little weed from time to time. He thought it was enough that he wasn’t doing meth. Or making it. Selling it. Just…not being in that business anymore felt like it was enough. Jesse couldn’t imagine what Sherlock could have done. “No, no I don’t intend to do anything like I did before again. I’m not that person anymore. But that doesn’t make me a good person now. You don’t change. People don’t change.” He took a greedy bite of his sandwich and smirked with a full mouth, tilting his head to the side. “You’re wrong in that,” Sherlock disagreed. “People change, for better or worse, it is part of our nature. We are, as a species, fluid. You yourself have changed, you’ve said so yourself. It does not mean you are a good person, no, but it does mean you are better. That is itself the point, is it not?” No matter the pacing, progress was a positive in his eyes. Jesse grabbed a handful of napkins and wiped his mouth. He was still chewing when he repeated, “Better.” He did feel better, and he was working at the zoo. That in itself made him better than he was before. Maybe he was thinking of changing the wrong way. It happened over time, and it made him see things different. “Okay, you’re right, Sherlock. But you knew that.” “Indeed, I am always right,” Sherlock responded easily, the began to dig into his sandwich. Daintier than his companion, he alternated between munching on his sandwich and drinking the latte (that he would be loathe to admit was not half as bad as he had initially decided). It was, at least, far superior to the coffee he would go on to imbibe at the meeting. “I suppose, once you are ready, shall we be off to our original destination?” Jesse watched Sherlock a little bit while he sipped his coffee. The other man fascinated him, he was such a weird kind of guy. But in a good way. A good weird. He balled up the napkins and stood up, “Yeah, let’s get this shit over with.”