#tocook

[unholywood]

@tocook / the world as you know it is over, but the world as it is keeps going on. tear-stained beyond the flesh, sand grit & dirt deposits that meander the cleanse of lachrymose anguish. their voice is hoarse from the cries, from begging that aches the diaphragm & a depth of despair that trespasses to abscond composure.

it's been hours— diaphanous with sweat, with tears & a childish cloying disbelief. the gates have been motionless. high, concrete & metal distributions of the old world hold them out. the lookouts in their tower remain expressionless in the face of how the disposed begged. the sun is rising, coaxed in by heat haze that claimed the horizon is now closing in on the pair & blushing the bronze of flesh.

“ they have to let us back in. ” spoken as congestion pervades, snot dripping & sitting against their cupids bow as blood shot eyes regard jesse. the face nova remembers is their mother, despondent as they were each carried outside of the walls. the shackles would release once they were beyond the limits of the city [..] still, they sat, cuffed & staring ahead in the half-slump of stubborn disbelief.

να είστε καλά, να προσέχετε (be good/well & take care)— their fathers barely legible handwriting left on a note in their bags he'd thrown to them hours previous. the unbearable night had turned into unbearable day & the sun that came with it. they should leave.

[allevils]

JESSE PINKMAN: don't tell anyone about this .

perhaps it's the easiest thing to do. after all, everyone has a secret — most try to cover it up with lie upon lie upon lie. jesse, on the other hand, gives the truth but doesn't want it to get out. it's locked deep into lucy's mind, her brain formulating many, many reasons to use it for her own gain. still, he sees him as a kid, wide-eyed and stuck in a situation he shouldn't be in. does it make her worse or better that she's able to recognize a victim of their situation? who really knows, right? certainly not her. never her.

so, lucy does the nice thing. she does the more acceptable thing. she places an x over her heart, drawn with the sleekness of someone whose done that movement plenty of times. we don't discuss how many times she's broken those promises — the next one has to be the one that sticks, right? right?

" i promise, kid. your secret's safe with me. honest. " he should feel worse about lying. he doesn't. after all, if lying was truly awful, then why was it the easiest thing in the world? @tocook

[yourabattoir]

"what, are you gonna narc?" ↳ @tocook / manhunt

a brow raises at that, and—because it truly is the worst type of insult, it is—they not-ask with a particularly laid-on russian accent, "so you're saying that i look like a narc."

they don't think they're offended—more so curious, really. not that pinkman's opinion matters. big brother is always watching in and out of the confines of the industrial laundromat—the likes of which they've only seen in america. really, they don't know what's worse—the lack of air conditioning inside or the dry heat outside and the sand that they can practically taste.

it's unfortunate, all of it. the smell of the roach in pinkman's hand is even more unfortunate, but they push themselves off the wall they're propped against to hold out their hand expectantly for it anyway.

"i'll narc on you to that bald dad of yours if you don't share."

[disbelong]

on the nights that the world gives in and cherry puts out, she thinks she could make a living off of this. rich folks with rubber-banded bills, stuffed full of shame 'n desire 'n all their deleted search history snug against their belt. men with thousand dollar cologne, women with curiosities, people who rub 'n tug for long enough that they gotta come see somethin' for themselves. she don't mind it. the cheap thrills, the dirty results, the moans and groans and the please-don't-tell's that follow. the wants. the needs. she gets her fix, too, because even though she ain't askin' for no refund, isn't searchin' for some suck-n-fuck exchange, they always feel bad enough to give her something. (gifts, and garters, and vintage treats in blue boxes. glamour, and glitz, and guilt wrapped up in a bow.) it keeps them sane. it keeps her pretty. no matter the ugly outsides, tumbled and jumbled and jagged against the roof of their mouths, [askin' for one room, two beds, like it ain't a dead giveaway just by the tax bracket that follows,] it ain't nothin' she feels bad about. and all that crystal persuasion, housed up and shacked up in the rooms next door, well— ... that's just a perk, ain't it?

JESSE PINKMAN [@tocook] : "it's not what you think, okay?"

she's seen him before. 'course she has, with his doll-blue eyes 'n the too big clothes. fumbling 'n stumbling 'n shaking the vending machine to life in the mornings. he's an eyesore against her glossed lips, glittered jackets, false-lashes and faux-feathers and everythin' in between. (like she said before— it keeps her pretty. it don't mean she's kept.) "it looks like you're holdin'." cherry flips open a phone, then closes it. flips it open again, then snaps it shut. it slides between the band of her bra, tightened flush against her flesh, and her hand flips a stray curl from her features. "or sellin'." her tongue swipes across the bottom of her lip, gloss smearing to a peach-strawberry taste. "at least smokin', by the looks of it." a short exhale, airy. "c'mon— do i look like a cop?"

[steavia]

❝ are you okay? you’re not hurt? nothing? ❞

"i... i'm sure i'll be all right, in due time. i'm not... physically hurt, at the very least." anxious hands tremble and rub her arm, a self-soothing motion. lydia isn't accustomed to being threatened by co-workers; life with gus as a boss and madrigal under her thumb had been cushy in comparison to working with walter and his men, few as they were. jesse, however, stands out to her as the most kind of them all; few others would look out to her in this situation. ( this doesn't go unnoticed. )

"it's... pinkman, right? or do you just prefer jesse?" she makes a vague gesture towards the younger man, brows furrowed. "i appreciate what you did, looking out for me like that. not many people would. thank you, truly."

a pause. "if i'm being totally honest, you seem too ... DECENT for a job like this."

[heistfile]

where’ve you been all night? (for bonnie)

the house was permeated with the sour stench of an afterparty. musky spirals of lingering smoke. the almost antiseptic sting of broken liquor bottles. sweat . sex. whatever met in the middle between them and debauchery. jesse was sagging into the couch, looking more like a fallen king than a rising monarch.

first, bonnie yanked the blinds open on the nearest window. the day outside was overcast, dreary as a damp basement, but when she hoisted the window’s hinge—creaking all the while—to invite in the fresh air, a shaft of sunlight pushed through the clouds. when she turned her back to it, it blurred bright as flame against her silhouette. caught in the dark coil of her hair, gilded against her skin. like it was attached to her. like it belonged to her.

then, bonnie lunged toward jesse and snatched the spliff from his hand that he intended to drain for all it was worth. she wasn't his mother, so she didn't scold—not in words. she afforded him a cutting glance. over the years she’d adapted to tempering her own emotions in spaces where people didn’t ask for them. sometimes, her face absorbed them. they had to go somewhere.

“I was around… at one point. you were just too busy to notice.”

more dumpster than living room, she started picking up the trash scattered across the floor, the coffee table, the stairs—red solo cups, cigarette butts, cloudy glass pipes. she abandoned the project halfway through. too much mess for one person.

she nudged her knee against jesse’s flank, bullying enough of an angle for her to slot her hip against his ribs on the couch. “give me your palm. let me read it.”

snagging his wrist in the halo of her fingers, she studied the rough map of his palm. “just as i thought it would say - the spirits don’t lie you know.” she leveled her ferocious gaze on his face, didn't let go of his wrist. “they’re saying to get the hell up.”

/ @tocook ; the agony of unmade decisions, accepting.

[childactress]

@tocook, * tell me something that really pisses you off.

he has to know he's asking for trouble. knocking at the fiery floodgates, offering a platform to her grievances; the suicidality of the ask, the sabotage of a smoke-sweet midnight ( yeah, maybe it's comforting, even endearing, just how relatable that is. he won't tiptoe around her temper, won't flinch at her raw mouth, he'll ask for it, even — jesse pinkman, meet the real mara banks ). she was bound to wreck it any second now: nothing remains unspoiled as long as mara's around, never mind the drugs, never mind jesse's own stick of dynamite flicking closer and closer to the wick. talk about a chemical reaction.

❝ huh, ❞ she hums. there's a library of injustices to rifle through. don't they know who i am, don't they know better. the archive stretches back to her teenage years, days of youthful spite that only mutated with age ( she colored her hair blue to prove something nameless, she sunk her reputation six feet under to beat them to the punch, she slit her own throat just to show off the blood, and all it gave her was something to reminisce on a decade later ). but she lands on an answer more modern, laughing out a hollow sound. ❝ i fucking hate that everyone's got a podcast. they used to be for, like, fun murder cases and shit, and now people think they've got the credentials just 'cause they made their annoying friends laugh at brunch one time. i'm entertaining as fuck but you don't see me making you sit through a dick pill ad to hear it. maybe i should. ❞

[earthspin]

@tocook:‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎come back here. please?

(natalie scatorccio.)‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎fingers weave their way through chemically induced blonde hair, ripping at strands with a dulled morning weakness to tie it free from her face, when jesse's words catch them slightly off guard.‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎their back turned to the other‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎(‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎perfectly aimed to catch the dust ridden rays of light that come through holes in the hostel's curtains‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎)‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎hides the smallest of warm grins that lazily crosses their features.‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎"we have shit to do, c'mon."‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎yet, she doesn't move:‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎instead she tucks her chin against her shoulder, catching the curve of his arms, held up behind his head, the hint of blue in his eyes, peering out in complete opposition to the shadows at the head of the bed.‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎survival sits between them as their first agreement, an exchange of efforts and labor to ensure that two similar beings keep feeding the never ending pit in their stomachs‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎––‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎and yet, occasionally they give enough to tame the yearning for numbness, and even, as with the prior night, give enough to start feeling like a person again‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎(‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎wanted, needed, cared for‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎)‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎...‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎it's never enough, not psychologically, not biologically, but when natalie peers over their bare shoulder:‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎it's close, it's so damn close.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎plus, he said please.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎"jesse."‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎there's something light in her words, in the way she steps, if not too quickly then with slight awkward excitedeness, until she's kneeling‎ next to him ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎(‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎one knee up at a time onto the thin, and well stained mattress‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎)‎.‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎they bend at the waist slightly, hovering inches, if that, above his figure:‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎vaguely teasing, vaguely stern in tone‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎––‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎"we're running low on caps, and we have shit to sell."‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎not as much this morning as they did yesterday,‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎"we have to get up."

[lumoen]

New Message : ⠀ why aren’t you angry with me?⠀ / ⠀ From: @tocook, ⠀ Jesse Pinkman.

A company’s handbook will have its workers believe that if something goes wrong, it’s the fault of your fellow workers, not a failure on the company’s end.

SHE HAS EXPERIENCED THIS FIRSTHAND. ⠀ Lumon punishing their workers for neglecting to meet their quotas instead of improving their working conditions. ⠀ Their collective quality of life decreasing because one co-worker made a mistake. ⠀ [They want to drive a wedge, ⠀ tear their teams apart. ⠀ You can’t build trust if there’s a lack of foundation to lay it upon.]

JESSE REMINDS HELLY OF HERSELF. ⠀ Stubborn, ⠀ resentful. ⠀ A refusal to follow the rules. ⠀ She can’t judge him for the mistakes he makes ⠀ — ⠀ she’s made the same ones.

She furrows her eyebrows, ⠀ compassion strewn across her expression.⠀ “Why should I be? ⠀ None of this is your fault.”

[arcadeian]

@tocook : " everything has a price. "

ㅤif there is a tender way to remind a man of his sins, this is it. one hand clasps at the opposite wrist almost furtively, as though it's been burned. the tan line on his finger, made eternal in death, is visible despite the color being leeched from his skin.

ㅤsouls, he believes, are not weighed equally, and some are punished more rigidly than others ; a thief cannot be held accountable to the same degree as a murderer, and he believes it's the justice system's responsibility to ensure the severity of their punishments fit their crimes.

ㅤor, he used to. limbo has given him ample time to think on his philosophies and beliefs. chuck's death weighs heavy on his shoulders still, and he often wonders if jimmy and kim even spare a passing thought to his own. he'd tried to be good to them over the years, tried to support and bolster them in ways he thought were best, and what did he have to show for it? is this the price he's now doomed to pay?

ㅤ" yes. believe me, i know, " he practically croaks, his normally immaculate posture faltering. " but you need to ask yourself if it's worth paying. it's... hard, to say the least, to look back and realize you were wrong. "

[religun]

mari could say she hated albuquerque, but part of her misses the simplicity. rather, the predictability. (a cyclical image. a home base embroidered with decay. cruel, maybe callous, like some singed carcass of a car: smoking in the distance. swollen in its corpsehood. sweltering in the heat.) or, maybe it's more of the survival that she misses. mechanisms of monotonous tones, rearing and whirring and grinding against her back molars until they turned sharp. something familiar. something easy. something known.

out on the road, it's different. the state she lives in doesn't allow much room to breathe— always gasping and gaping and grasping for some kind of stability in the moments where no one is looking. (back alleys. bars. the bracketed space in the shower, where she runs the water until it burns.) the only witness to it is the insects. little motel silverfish that crawl across the tiles, and are too small to signify anything to her cries. moths that flutter towards the light, ignoring the seventh cigarette that mari lights in shaky hands. it's insignificant, regardless. things that you do because they're right, not because they're easy. an aftermath is inevitable, and just because it isn't pretty, doesn't mean it doesn't have purpose. mari tries to remind herself of that, more than anything.

JESSE PINKMAN [@tocook] : "where do you wanna be, ten years from now?"

the future's too far too look bright. a paved road of nothingness, where only the dark feels tangible. it could be worse, she thinks. they could have no future at all. "dunno." mari murmurs, lips still wrapped around a cigarette that swirls up into the moth-worn lights. her gaze flickers to jesse, and then back out towards the empty parking lot. she shrugs, one shoulder inching upward before it slumps back down. she sucks in another inhale, and then purses her lips to target the smoke outward. "i don't r — really think that far, anymore." the truth is hard to say, but a lie would be worse. spitting out rainbows and cherry-pies and candescent lights that flare in the distance of her future is unrealistic. jesse deserves the truth.

"it's hard to i — imagine anything but this, sometimes." mari's lip twists down, and her hand passes a half-burnt cigarette to the other. her lashes flutter, and she flickers her stare back out to the vacancy of the motel. "why?" a glance back, and a wry smile twists up. "you got a p — plan, or something?"

[s0fias]

@tocook said: no one has ever said those words to me.

Sofia knows the price of a compliment. She knows how its weighed. Every inch of praise ever bestowed on her has served the purpose to manipulate. To flatten the fight in her heart and make her complacent. For awhile, it worked. For awhile, she really was the dutiful daughter. Now, she spits in the face of belonging to anyone but herself. So, she doesn't compliment Jesse just for the sake of twisting his mindset to favor her side of the equation. She does so because she sees someone else who has been bitten far too often.

The only question left now is whether or not Jesse is tired of bleeding.

❛ What? No one's ever told you you''re good at what you do? ❜ She tilts her face to the side. Lies, deception, come easy to Sofia now but there isn't a need for any of that. In any way you slice it, she would pick Jesse over his teacher. ❛ From where I'm standing? You've far surpassed whatever skills your precious Heisenberg had. ❜

[pohlepen]

@tocook: YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?

       it’s a black eye. shining an unusually bright, sickly yellow beneath the dirty hues of the club lights. her concealer is too white and it amplifies the differentness of the one spot of skin she wants to hide. frankie is far removed from the girlish embarrassment of naked shame and this taste of guilt has been heavily stewed in her gut right beside the liquor she’s used to dull the leftover ache of a fist, an unfinished conversation.    ( her face is bruised, but her knuckles are too. her knuckles are too. )     it’s guilt for the pity that’s been directed her way since she clocked in, guilt for the condolence laced looks she’s been tossed all day. guilt for the knowledge that someone, someones, feel sorry for her. every dollar bill offered with a lingering glance to her face, given with a side of empathetic consolation. it’s an unwanted worry for her when she’s fine in a way that drifts closer to ruptured acceptance of circumstance and further from genuine joy, but is still fine all the same. there are other lives she could be living, this is the one she chose. no pity needed for that.

       ❛   you want another drink?  i’ve got—   ❜    cash: wads of ones and fives crumpled into a silky wristlet up on the bar between them. dancers drink for free; dudes pay twice the price. and the more drinks your customers buy, the less you have to tip out the dj and bouncer at the end of the night. but the figure next to her is familiar, it doesn’t matter how much money he spends tonight. today. whatever time it is. a door opens across the club, a hint of something sneaks in. just a flash in the corner of her eye. could be sunlight, could be a flicker of the dull moth ringed lights outside. they get inside on accident sometimes, distracted by something bright, blind to the rest of their surroundings. she finds them later on, dead. wings bleached by their proximity to luminosity. that’s how she feels right now, like she’s dragging some atrophied part of herself along toward a fluorescent end.

       so, she ignores his question. shirks whatever commiseration he might offer her and swivels her body on the bar stool to face him fully. it feels good to smile because she wants to, like she’s stretching out a neglected muscle.    ❛   or we could go somewhere else,   ❜    anywhere, anywhere, anywhere— the thought beats like a pulse, out of rhythm with the way she tries to still the fidgety shake of her knee.    ❛   i’m fucking hungry.   ❜

[bulldoged]

jesus. you being murdered? @tocook

“ in our line of work, it’s probably the most common way to go out. ” she says it like it’s obvious — because it is. bad choice road always ends abruptly. she hadn’t meant to off-put him by bringing up the idea of her demise, which in her mind was unrelentingly imminent. “ that’s why I don’t have a pension. ” she jokes, and though jesse may not realize it, seeing her jest about anything these days is extremely rare. the side of her that’s easy-going enough to let a joke slip out had been long buried under a pile of grief and frustration. it’s such an exposal compared to her regular disposition. she might as well be on the operating table, organs exposed and at jesse’s disposal.

although she had a knack for clawing her way out from under a death sentence, she had begun to think of dying as a warm and fuzzy blanket she could wrap herself up in. it wasn’t so much the dying itself — that meant someone got one over on her. someone won. but the oblivion, oh, the oblivion. the end of grief, the end of sadness, the end of her need to fill the hole domingo left behind. that sounded more than good.

she could envision it again at home, she thought. for now, she’d keep things light. jade didn’t want to make a habit of bringing up her own end in front of co-workers, but it had been on her mind so often it slipped out. she turned to him, abruptly straightening up, her eyes steely and unfeeling once again. “ you ever try your hand at a legit job, y’know, like something that isn’t illegal? ”

[craftbreaks]

( nightmare telegraph received: @tocook. ) it’s 9 a.m. and you’re interrogating me?

sure, she looks out of place in denny's, dressed up in the charcoal suit and the dress shoes. tara prefers the coffee she makes in her own home, in the way that she prefers everything she makes with her own two hands, but she'll drink whatever. that's what law school teaches you—drinking the dregs from the coffee pot, awake for the forty-eighth hour, staring down the barrel of an endless march of assignments. sitting in a shitty albuquerque diner a little past nine in the morning isn't nearly as bad as any of that, but it does feel almost as debasing.

she jabs her fork down at the hash browns, watching as they're slowly subsumed by the cloyingly bright yellow of the egg yolk. all things meld together eventually, given time.

being involved with all of these people out here in new mexico is bad news. tara knows better. it's a mess in the making. jesse pinkman has bright blue eyes, a too big smile, and a whole roster of bad jokes. she already checked over his very public myshout page to get a feel for who he was. all it told her was that he's not having nearly as much sex as he advertises, definitely. but in person, there's something else in his eyes, a brittleness, a feeling like collapse might be around the corner if someone pushes him just right.

dangerous quality to have, but she's not his keeper. she's just a lawyer.

"this isn't an interrogation," says tara mildly. the tines of her fork scrape against the plate, an aural assault just to make it feel more like an interrogation. "i'm just detail-oriented, pinkman. that's all."

she picks up the piece of sourdough bread, barely toasted, limp and soft to the touch. "besides," she adds, "i'm buying, so if anything, you're getting a free breakfast, and i get to listen to your whole sordid story. and because this is a favor, you're getting advice from a lawyer pro bono and skipping the initial consultation, the need-based applications, the fucking hassle. most people would call that a privilege."

the piece of bread gives between her teeth, too soft. no resistance. tara chews. swallows. the butter is tasteless. still, she chews, swallows, smiles. it's always good to bite down on something and feel it give.

[unholywood]

tell me something you don’t tell other people. (nova)

—mr. new vegas speaks & the mojave will listen. the dulcet tones of the artificial intelligence that croons the desolate thrill & ruin of the world war left behind.

“  i'm the courier, ” a feeble form of regret sinks their tone & brows sit heavy as a hood to the mismatched, eyes defined by mauve swathes of ecchymosis. so says to some, messianic figure— usurper of sand, where is the rain? the blood will run, but never clear. is the dirt still fresh under the nails that begged the earth back from the shallow burial? or has it dried? —pulled back in the nail bed at the grasp of drought compacted ground.

“  from goodsprings. ” in the grit of teeth [..] the pain radiates now, doesn't it? it aches in ways that feel like the the bones of you are malformed & contending your own weight; the sweat is from the heat & the withdrawal. it felt like an exchange of goods, something passed between hands that weren't held out & yet were open to the skies in venal cupped motions. one hand clutches briefly over their shoulder, a bitten back wince of exertion & malcontent at the necrotic nerves in their shoulder threnetic of an arm that still clung to it.

“ grim. fuckin'. reaper. ” the mojave sun in disagreeing clarification as defining the outlier that burns in the sinew, the bones & raws the flesh as convection fever that knows the sudor. eyes unfocused, yawning that flares in the jaw & simpers the desiccating skin of their mouth— yet still you walk, for now.