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The first thing he does is buy Pete a new hat.
Badger spends money on it - actual money. He’s always been the type to lift T-shirts at the mall or drop a twenty on Wal-Mart brand essentials rather than actually buy clothes for himself. But the hat is a gift, and it’s for fucking Pete, so of course he’s going to mask his surprise and fork over a crisp fifty when the cashier tells him a black beanie with a grey skull embroidered on the front is fucking $29.95.
He doesn’t wrap it or anything, doesn’t even manage to save it for a special occasion. It’s a regular-ass day on a regular-ass weekend when Badger decides he can’t handle the change of seeing Pete’s greasy hair a moment longer. He gets up from his place beside Pete on the couch during a late-night episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and slinks into their room. It’s irregular for him to disrupt movie night, especially when the show is one he chose, but the plastic T.J. Maxx bag has been sitting on the top shelf of the closet for nearly a week now. Badger craves normalcy even if he can’t find the word for it, and giving Pete this hat seems like the best way to fill the hole in his gut that’s been slowly eating him alive the past month.
“What’s this?” Pete’s forehead creases have been getting more noticeable as of late. Pete might bitch about his old man wrinkles, but Badger sees them as a welcome reminder that they’ve survived this long. Despite everything, it’s always the two of them who manage to make it out in the end.
“It’s a gift, dude.” Badger holds out the beanie like a peace offering when he’s seated next to Pete again on their smoke-stained couch. “You looked cold and shit. S’posed to be warm, but not so warm it makes you, like, sweaty.”
They haven’t talked about what happened to Pete’s other hat, the one he’d been wearing since they met over a decade ago. If all went well, that hat is probably in Alaska right now. That’s what Badger tells himself despite the whispers he hears on the streets. Jesse Pinkman had been declared missing, and his face was featured less and less on the national news. It stung to hear spectators drag one of his oldest friends through the mud like Jesse had been fuckin’ Heisenberg himself. But wounds heal slowly. Albuquerque hasn’t forgotten yet, and Badger makes it a habit to skip over the local channels.
“Yeah?” Pete turns the hat over in his hands as though he’s considering it. After a pause he rips off the tag and pulls the beanie over his head. “Sick, Badge.”
Warmth blooms in Badger’s chest, and he’s struck with a sense of normalcy, of relief. It’s one thing made right in a world of a thousand wrongs, but Badger takes a win when he can. He breathes – in, out, in, out – like one of his old parole officers taught him. In with the positive vibes, out with the negative. He’s a visual guy, and seeing Pete with his face framed in cotton-cast shadows is a physical reminder that some bad things can turn good again.
“Looks fuckin’ dope on you, Skinny.”
Pete shoots him a crooked grin. “You think I look good?”
“Oh fuck yeah. Better than good. Seriously rad.”
“Keep that up and you might get your dick sucked as a thank you.”
Badger makes a face. “Dude – that’s not why I did it. I mean, I won’t say no, I’m just saying –”
Pete laughs, wraps his arm around Badger and pulls him close. “Couldn’t think of anything smooth to say, dog; I was gonna do it anyways. No fuckin’ clue what’s going on in your nerd show, so I thought I could give myself a little distraction.”
“Okay – dude, fuck you. You’re sucking my dick, but not until after this episode. This is, like, when the political intrigue starts getting gnarly.”
There’s another laugh from Pete, and Badger smacks him with a half-eaten bag of Doritos.
If Badger tries hard enough, he thinks he could believe that things are slowly getting back to normal.
-
The feeling doesn’t last.
No matter how many times Badger visits the cemetery, he can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s now older than his ninth grade best friend. He and Pete had paid for a portion of the funeral, scraping together enough cash to help out Mrs. Ortega and the rest of her family. It had been a somber event, and to Badger, it was as though the despair he felt at the funeral had taken up residence in the San Jose de Armijo Cemetery. New Mexico dust settles across the graveyard in a way that makes everything look bleak – or maybe it’s the headstone inscribed with the birth year “1984” that feels wrong. With a pang, Badger realizes most of the deceased he and Pete walked past had lived twice as long as Christian Ortega.
“Hey, Combo,”
Badger hasn’t visited Combo since before Jesse went missing. As an apology, he’s got a bouquet of grocery store roses and a can of Budweiser under his arm.
“Brought you some stuff, man.” Pete settles down into the yellowing grass next to Combo’s grave. He pats the ground beside him, and Badger follows suit.
“Yeah,” Badger’s mouth feels dry. “Figured we’d bring the party to you.”
“But, uh, only cigs to smoke.” Pete adds, pulling a crumpled box from his pocket.
Badger nods. “Cops can smell ganja a mile away. And I made Pete promise he’s not allowed to talk to a cop again until he’s, like, fifty.”
“Can you believe I’m actually listening to this guy?” Pete fumbles with his cheap lighter. “Times have fuckin’ changed.”
No one else is at the cemetery today. They’d planned it this way, going on a Tuesday afternoon when most people are stuck at their offices or classrooms or wherever the hell else normies spend their time. Headstones cast shadows over the climate-burnt grass, and little specks of dust keep getting stuck in Pete’s eyelashes, making him wipe his eyes and curse under his breath. It’s small, but it’s enough to coax a smile from Badger. He’ll take any distraction available to him to pretend he isn’t sitting at the grave of a friend. To pretend that their group hadn’t dwindled from four men to two in just as many years.
The air is too dry. It makes Badger cough after taking a couple puffs from Pete’s cigarette. Everything is dirt and wilt and heat. He uses the sleeve of his hoodie to dust off Combo’s headstone, but there’s too much and he ends up smearing dirt in mismatched swirls over the surface.
Usually, Badger would have more to say to his friend. But what’s there to say when the last five months have been the most batshit insane time in Badger’s life? Not to mention the way the year and a half before it have all culminated into the present chaos. Just thinking about it is exhausting.
“Brought you a beer,” Badger finally says. He cracks the Budweiser and sips it, grimacing when he realizes the beer had gone warm in the time it took to drive from the house out to visit Combo.
“Let me try some.” Pete snatches the beer and Badger lets him, if only to snicker when Pete comes to the same realization about the temperature of the can. “Okay – no, fuck that. Combo, this is all for you.”
Badger watches the beer saturate the ground as Pete pours it. There’s a sticky splashing sound as some of the liquid pools on clumps of dust that refuse to soak through. If Badger had paid attention back in high school chemistry class, maybe he’d understand why.
“I miss him, man.”
“I know, Badge.”
They smoke the cigarette until it goes out. Badger doesn’t know whether to blame his mood on the already-fading nicotine levels in his bloodstream or the fact that the cemetery has covered him in grime, but he feels shittier than normal re-reading “Para siempre en nuestro corazon” from Combo’s headstone. Badger’s never been one for self-reflection, but he can’t help but consider his actions over the past year and change and wonder if he could have prevented it all somehow. But no – that kind of thinking is a waste of time and a bad trip waiting to happen. Instead of dwelling on the past, Badger takes the roses out of their cellophane wrapper and arranges them in the little plastic holder next to Combo’s grave.
“Think we should put Jesse’s memorial somewhere close?” Pete asks.
Badger feels a chill travel through his nervous system. “What?”
“I’m sure Combo’s old lady wouldn’t mind. Still have her number saved and everything, you know? We could check in –”
“Jesse’s not dead.”
Pete raises his hands in defense. “Chill, man. Didn’t say he was. All I’m saying is that everyone else thinks he’s dead, and I’d rather we’re the ones who make the memorial. You know? Honour him proper and shit.”
“Nah, man.” Badger shakes his head, his resolve hardened. “You don’t make memorials for living people. It’s – it’s unnatural. Weird as shit.”
“So what?” The lines on Pete’s face deepen again. “You want fuckin’ Mr. and Mrs. fuck-ass Pinkman burying an empty casket in six months? Huh? Putting the wrong name on his stone? ‘Cause sooner or later, when no one finds Jesse, they’re gonna come to the same conclusion as the rest of the world. That Heisenberg’s right-hand man got what was coming to him and the world’s a better place for it. So excuse me for wanting to remember him as something more than that before the fuckin’ wolves come for him, man.”
“Hey dude, fuck you.” Badger stands from the ground, anger shaking him from the core outwards. “I don’t want to be here anymore. You’re making this all suck.”
Pete looks like he’s about to snap back, but his tight shoulders loosen and he breathes out a sigh. “Yeah, fine.” He stands and turns from the grave, digging his heel into the butt of the cigarette they finished smoking ages ago. “Let’s go home.”
-
Badger doesn’t like change – he never has. It’s part of the reason he and Pete work so well together. Living with a guy you’ve known since graduation rules out most forms of unpredictability. He never has to second-guess himself with Pete, and ever since their relationship shifted from friends to something a little more than that, it’s been even easier to exist in the same space.
But when Skinny Pete acts as a catalyst of change, Badger feels like his life flashes before his eyes.
There are a lot of things they don’t talk about. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – with the lives they’ve lived, sometimes it’s just easier to ignore the lows. They didn’t talk about it when Pete was in lock-up for ten days following Jesse’s escape. In the end, the charges hadn’t stuck, but Badger knew then that that was the closest he’d ever come to really losing Pete. Despite all the life-or-death situations, the deals, the shit they got into selling blue meth – the consequences of those actions seemed small compared to surviving it all together and Badger still ending up alone.
So he’s got a spin-off episode of Star Trek on again and he’s curled up next to Pete. It’s been a few days since the fight at Combo’s grave and his body physically aches with the thought of disruption to his routine. If nothing else is stable, this is. This has to be.
“Wait, so the dude with the shit on his face got captured?”
“Dude, that’s like, kinda racist. He’s a Klingon, it’s not his fault he’s got shit on his face. They’re called cranial ridges.”
“Klingons, yeah? Tight. They the ones that don’t feel emotions?”
“Skinny, just shut up and watch the show.”
Getting high, Badger realizes too late, was a mistake.
Badger likes keeping his hands busy. It helps him focus, and better than that, it helps keep unwanted feelings at bay. But THC is coursing through his bloodstream and his hands feel like lead. It’s distracting him from the show, and Badger had planned for science fiction and make believe to keep him from his thoughts tonight.
The screen seems fuzzier than usual as Badger tries for the umpteenth time focus. The characters are stuck in a POW detention center. Two of the characters are Starfleet officers, the other a disgraced former spy. He’s seen the episode a million times, always coming back to it as a favourite.
“Hey, Pete?”
“Yeah, Badge?”
“I… got some shit on my mind.”
“Yeah?” Pete’s arm tightens around Badger’s side. “I’m a pretty good listener.”
The weed has put Badger into a lull, and part of him forgets that he’s supposed to feel upset as the on-screen alien spy sits at the deathbed of an alien who looks eerily like him.
“There wasn’t another way.” It was meant to be a question, but Badger hears the words fall flat from his lips. “With – you know, with Jesse, I mean. We did everything we could.”
“Yeah,” Pete says quietly. “We gave him his best shot.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
The TV murmurs a little quieter. The spy is saying goodbye to his father, a man he neither loves nor knows particularly well. A man whose entire life was shrouded in lies.
Badger doesn’t know exactly when he began crying.
“Brandon, hey.” Pete doesn’t use the name lightly. He sits up straighter, pulling Badger into his lap as the younger man shakes with a sob. “Hey, I’m here.”
“His dad fucking died, man.” Badger feels his face grow damp. His tears are warm. “Garak’s – his dad. What kind of dad puts that kind of pressure on his son? Fuckin’ – disowning him. He – he wouldn’t even admit Garak was his son until he was on his way out. Like, put him through the fuckin’ wringer.”
Badger feels thin arms tighten around his shoulders, a quiet voice in his ear saying I know, baby. I know. And Badger knows he does. He knows, and it doesn’t make him hurt any less.
-
Mourning is a new concept for Badger. Accepting he’s in mourning, however –
Well. That’s an even bigger can of worms.
He starts spending more time within the four walls of the house than he thinks is particularly safe. Pete’s got a new job – a legit job – doing odd-hours landscaping for a local company swamped with the demand this season. Badger knows he should pull his weight, start applying for anything that’ll take a guy with a record. But he feels a little too much and too little of anything to feel like lying on a resume for a position at the local Los Pollos Hermanos.
“Chick-fil-A,” He mumbles to himself. “It’s a fuckin’ Chick-fil-A now, bitch.”
Smoke fills their home for weeks on end. It settles into the second-hand couch, outlines the walls with yellow, seeps into Badger’s pores. He thinks of his grandmother finding him with a bong at fourteen. Her lips had pressed together – disappointed, not angry – and never seemed to come unstuck after that. Age and nicotine had jaundiced her skin, and something inside Badger told him he’d aged her even faster. There came a point where she didn’t laugh anymore. Not at him, not at the papers, not at the stacks of Star Trek reruns recorded on VHS.
Jesse had liked Star Trek. Tolerated it, at least. He’d been one of the few kids in eleventh grade not to snicker at Badger’s Halloween costume.
“The fuck’s on your face?” Teenage Jesse had asked him by the lockers.
The shoulder pads under Badger’s decorated thrift store sweatshirt itched horribly.
“The fuck does it look like? I’m Commander Tomalak of the Romulan Fleet, bro!” Badger had reached up to his face, feeling the grease of a Maybelline pencil lifting his eyebrows skywards. “Had to borrow my grandmother’s makeup and shit.”
“Yeah?” Jesse had grinned. “Gnarly. You know she’s gonna fuckin’ kill you.”
“So worth it.”
“Your funeral, bitch.”
Badger’s grandmother had liked Jesse. It still boggled him now, Jesse’s occasional charm.
The three of them had gone to the funeral the summer between eleventh and twelfth grade – Badger, Jesse, Combo. There had been a time before the world swallowed them whole. They’d been young and stupid and happy, smoking weed on swing sets and not believing in the future. By that time, they’d all had trouble with the law, but they were juveniles and the charges weren’t that serious and none of it would fucking matter anyways once they left Albuquerque in the summer dust.
But no one ever made the first move to go. Something had changed three boys in ill-fitting suits, and before long there was big money and real drugs and charges that stuck.
Then came Pete and there was the four of them, the three of them, the two.
Badger hasn’t thought of his grandmother’s funeral in years.
He starts smoking on the porch, just for a change. To keep the jaundice from his own skin. He watches smoke curl up the paint-peeled walls of the house, up past the mountains on the horizon, up to the final frontier of the stars.
-
“I dunno what I thought this would be like.” Pete squints against the sun.
“Thought what would be like?”
“Sitting at Jesse’s grave, I guess.” Pete taps a pattern inside his hoodie pockets. Badger watches the movement of his partner’s fingers under cotton. “Feels lonely. Like, I wonder if he’s got friends wherever he is.”
Badger blinks. “Like in fuckin’ heaven?”
Pete shoves his shoulder against Badger’s, and Badger feels the weight of the motion ripple through him in slow-motion. Like it’s not quite real. But he’s spent half a year pretending nothing has changed, and his body aches with the pretense. His feet are on the ground and in the ground stands a humble rock slab. Jesse Bruce Pinkman. Badger remembers when Jesse chose his middle name, hands greasy with popcorn in the parking lot after opening night of Batman Forever. They were barely double digits and Badger felt like he’d been trusted with the world.
Jesse’s memorial was paid for with legitimate income. Badger wants to ask him who’s the real Bruce Wayne now. He thinks Jesse would have never stopped laughing.
They didn’t talk to the Pinkmans about their plans. Skinny Pete had been right about Mr. and Mrs. Pinkman omitting Jesse’s name in the newspaper obituary. It was a surprise to Badger they even published one at all. Pete said they were trying to keep up their image as good parents, to cast responsibility off themselves. The Pinkmans are like pearls falling in an alleyway. Dead parents don’t need to take responsibility.
“It’s typical rich parent bullshit.” Pete had shrugged. “Their kid went off the rails, testosterone is a gateway drug, blah blah blah. Makes them look like saints even though they were the ones that didn’t give Jesse a choice.”
They had to coordinate their days off to go to San Jose de Armijo together. Most people in the real world don’t bat an eye at two guys trying to turn their lives around. Keeping their noses clean, only doing the natural drugs. No one looks at them and sees Jesse. Not at the odd manual labour jobs Pete picks up every couple weeks. Not at the 7-Eleven where Badger accidentally got promoted to assistant manager. Jesse Pinkman is a ghost, and some days Badger thinks they’re the only people on the planet keeping his memory alive.
“To Jesse,” Badger doesn’t think about his maybe-dead-friend’s parents.
Pete lifts his chin in agreement. “Jesse and Combo, man. Best of the best.”
There are no drinks to pour today. Sobriety is something Badger doesn’t think he’ll ever have, and he’s okay with that. He just didn’t want to keep the memories at bay this time. He wants to lean on Pete’s wiry shoulder and tell him about the Jesse and Combo Pete never knew, the boys with bloody knees and bubble-gum and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He wants to laugh about the times they got drunk and the times they sold ice and the girls who never gave them the time of day.
Combo is dead, and Jesse might be, but nothing will fix that and Badger is so tired of trying to fit together the pieces.
Pete’s beanie smells like wood chips and cannabis. Badger leans into him, and Pete leans into Badger, and the strings of Badger’s hat get tangled in between them. Somewhere there is cold air and carved spruce and a cabin in the mountains. But here there is Jesse’s name, the one thing he chose, and two men who will say it like a promise.