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Hank dreams often.
Most nights, he wakes up in a daze, shaking off the remnants and forgetting almost instantly what it was that he was dreaming about. Sometimes all he can remember is colors and sounds. Flashes of light. A hot sun on his face. The growl of a large, ferocious thing that he can only hear, not see. An inexplicable, deep pain in his stomach that lingers when he wakes.
He always shakes it off, gets up, gets to work.
Lots of people have nightmares.
It’s no big deal.
Every so often, once a month or so, he dreams of a beach. It’s not a beautiful, bright, sunny place like you’d find in Hawaii, or some coastal city. It’s a cold, wet beach with a fierce breeze that seems to permeate through his skin, leaving him cold down to his bones. His feet are bare and the sand is coarse and freezing underneath, making his toes go numb. The sky and sea are the same color; a dark, endless gray. It all blends together and his eyes blur, leaving him unsure where one ends and the other begins.
The dream tends to go the same way every time. He’s alone on the beach. The sound of crashing waves is all he can hear. It’s not a pleasant, relaxing sound; it hurts his ears with the severity. He swears he can hear the faint rumble of a growl in the distance. He turns around to look up at a hill that goes down to the beach. There is no grass or moss, just jagged rocks. It would be dangerous to climb up.
On top of the rocks, he sees a figure, blurry and far away and yet unmistakable. It’s the same figure that he passes by every day at work, the love of his life forever immortalized and frozen in precious metals.
Cristobal never moves, and his facial expression never changes. His lips are downturned, his eyebrows set in a permanent furrow. His hands lay limply at his side. He simply looks at Hank, his eyes meeting his and never straying. He never ventures down the rocks.
The only time the dream differs is when Hank decides to try to talk to him. Sometimes he shouts apologies. “I’m sorry!” He calls over the deafening crash of the waves. “I fucked it all up! Everything’s fucked and it’s all because of me!”
Cristobal does not react.
Sometimes Hank tries to explain. “I wanted to keep us safe! I didn’t know what they would do to us—to you—if I didn’t go along with what they wanted!”
Cristobal does not react.
Sometimes Hank asks him questions. “Do you forgive me?” He asks. “Did you still love me? Do you still love me now?”
Cristobal does not react.
Sometimes Hank just looks at him back, and sometimes he cries rough and seemingly never-ending sobs that come from a deep place in his chest.
Cristobal does not react.
A few times Hank has tried to climb the rocks, piercing his feet in the process. When he looks down, they’re covered in dark red blood. Cristobal doesn’t move, simply watching him as he tries. Most times he doesn’t make it. He wakes before he can reach the top, or worse, he loses his grip and just before he’s about to fall and hit his head, he wakes with a violent jolt.
One time, Hank manages to claw and struggle his way to the top of the rocks, his feet and hands so lacerated that they dirty the white suit he’s wearing, painting it with ugly smears of red. He reaches out one rough, dripping hand to Cristobal and waits for him to take it. “I’m sorry,” he says for what must be the millionth time.
Cristobal looks him up and down, but otherwise does nothing.
In a desperate attempt to get him to reply, to make any sort of movement, even if it’s to slap him in the face, Hank grabs Cristobal’s shirt, gasping out a fragment of a word, but before he can finish it Cristobal has faded away.
He disappears, and Hank is alone, bloody and cold on the top of the rocks, holding on to nothing. He stays that way, his hand permanently reaching out, until he wakes up.
He doesn’t try to climb the rocks again.
The first few times Hank has this dream, he wakes crying, his sheets a messy tangle underneath him. He burns himself with hot shower water, trying to scrub away the scent of the sea that never quite leaves him.
After a while, though, he becomes numb to it. He still calls out for Cristobal even though he knows he won’t move; he still tries to apologize even though he knows that no apology will bring him back. But when he wakes up, he doesn’t cry, doesn’t rush to the shower even though he swears he can still feel the sand on his feet. He’s mostly able to ignore this dream, this thing that seems to be God or the Universe punishing him for what he’s done. It’s purgatory that he relives whenever his brain decides to throw it at him, never knowing when he’ll visit the beach again, when he’ll be greeted with the sad eyes of the man he loved more than anyone in the world. It stops becoming a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions and more of a cruel joke.
The last time he has the dream, he simply stares at Cristobal for a long time before saying, “you were the love of my life.” There’s a weariness to his voice, a pain radiating inside of him. It’s material he’s retread over and over before, but he still feels the need to say it, to admit it, because he can’t when he’s awake. Not in such plain terms. “You were the love of my life and you died and I fucked everything up. But I just wanted to be safe, I wanted to protect you. That’s all I wanted, but--”
Cristobal, on top of the rocks, reaches out a hand towards Hank. It’s the first time Hank has seen him move. He runs towards him, but before he can even start to climb the rocks, he wakes up.
He tells himself that he’ll stop trying. He’ll just stare at that ocean every time he’s put back there, if he has to. He can’t go on like this, chasing a figment of his imagination, a fantasy that will never come to fruition. Cristobal is gone, frozen in time forever and shimmering when the sun comes through the windows at Nohobal HQ. That’s all that’s left of him.
The same day he makes that decision, Hank is shot in the chest.
He’s not too surprised by it. He expected this to happen, and it’s not like he came prepared. He didn’t want to. He was tired. He’s tired now, his eyes glazing over as he stares at the bodies that litter his floor. They’re getting it dirty. Someone will have to clean.
Someone will have to clean him up, too.
It hits him suddenly that it’s becoming harder and harder to breathe. It scares him, even though he knows he’s dying, and he looks up to face Cristobal. I’m sorry, he thinks. He sees his hand, permanently reaching out for something, and gasps. It’s the same hand he was reaching out on the beach. Reaching out for Hank.
Everything seems to be closing in, the vision in the corners of his eyes disappearing. He can hear his own breath rattling and just reaching a hand up is a Herculean task. But he reaches up anyway, and clings on to Cristobal. He feels the cold of the metal against his hand, flooding through his body and—
Hank wakes on a beach.
The same goddamn beach as before.
Of course, he thinks, purgatory. Or maybe God skipped that and just sent me straight to hell.
He supposes that it’s about what he deserves.
Against his better judgment, he turns around to look at the rocks. No one is there. He is alone, for all eternity.
He starts walking along the beach, something he’s never done before. He guesses that this is what he’ll do; walk until his legs give out or he reaches the end, though he doesn’t think there is one. And if there is anything at the end of it, it’s probably Fuches, there to taunt him forever and ever amen.
Yet he walks, and walks, and walks, and walks. The scenery does not change. He stares at his feet. They start to ache, the pain shooting up to his shins. He keeps walking.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been when he looks up to see a figure in the distance. He doesn’t believe it at first, squeezing his eyes shut over and over until it refuses to disappear. As he continues to walk, the figure gets closer. He hears someone talking, but it’s drowned out by the wind and the sea.
It’s a voice he knows.
His feet move faster. His heart is beating so fast he thinks he might collapse, but he presses forward.
Cristobal is reaching for him, and he’s smiling. Hank’s run turns into a full blown sprint, terrified that at any second he will disappear, but he has to try to get to him. He has to try one last time.
Cristobal does not disappear. They collide, nearly knocking each other over. Hank can feel Cristobal’s smile against his cheek, hear his voice in his ear. “Mi amor,” Cristobal says. Hank tries to babble out something, an apology, an explanation, but he’s suddenly filled with the realization that none of that is needed anymore. There’s a knowledge that they seem to share without needing to say a word. Everything has been washed away, carried out to sea. It’s only them now.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Cristobal says, “for a long time.”
“Oh,” Hank gasps out. “I’m here now.”
He closes his eyes, feeling a warmth from deep inside of him start to envelop the both of them. He clings on to him desperately, not because he’s afraid that he’ll disappear, but because he realizes now that he never has to let go.
The warmth washes over Hank and Cristobal completely, and everything goes white.