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Gustavo lays against the surface of something rough, something soothing, itchy and damp against his skin; he’s facing upwards, enveloped in the silence that surrounds him and the faint sound of crickets that break the noise. For a moment he does not care to figure where he is - he last remembers resting his head upon a pillow.
His eyes open. The sun that fills the sky with eternal heat feels as if it should blind him, but his eyes are wide and the sky holds a surreal shade of blue; his sense of reality blurs a little. Still, Gustavo holds the realisation that the peaceful setting fills him with comfort like never before.
He lays in a field - it’s green and luscious, the grass smells fresh and he cannot find a dead blade in sight. His hand suddenly registers to his brain: it’s occupied, and the rough feeling of flesh holds it.
Everything starts to register. A palm touches Gustavo’s hair, stroking it softly, lovingly, a tenderness that feels so familiar but one he hasn’t felt in such a long time that his heart forgets to beat.
A figure sits beside him.
’I’m dreaming.’ Gustavo cannot meet his eyes. He wants to, he wants to more than anything, but he can’t. He just can’t.
’Maybe. I wouldn’t know.’ Max responds. Gustavo knows he’s dreaming - none of it’s real. The field is not real. The sky is not real. But just the touch of him feels human enough to make Gustavo doubt his rationale.
Max’s voice is soft, closer to a whisper than the mumbling softness it holds, comforting and as if to say just enjoy the moment.
‘Gustavo, Gustavo, Gustavo…’ Max chuckles, still stroking his hair and smiling at the decreasing tenseness he feels against his palm.
‘Look at you, mi amor. Everything you’ve done.’
Gustavo’s eyes soften. A part of him feels he should be, if not just a little, shameful. It never comes.
Max looks down at him with adoration. Gus notes the expression doesn’t hint pride.
‘Only you could trick the cartel.’
The pressing feeling of Max’s eyes on him give him the courage to look. And he looks exactly like he did the day he died, only somethings missing. He holds his breath.
’It wasn’t easy. I don’t want it.’ He says, and his voice is so small and vulnerable and in such a real tone he cannot imagine using it with anyone else.
‘Mm…’ Max’s palm moves down to his cheek, tracing his skin’s texture and caressing his face gently, ‘You want me.’
Gustavo looks back at the sky. Now that he thinks about it, the blue is more familiar than he thought, though still surreal and sickeningly contrastive.
‘Are you here to send me a message?’
’A message?’ Max queries, genuine curiosity in his voice. ‘What makes you think that?’
Gustavo’s mouth thins and he exhales, ‘The mind often seeks comfort. It digs down into even the most hidden, intimate part of the human psyche. I know that much.’
He doesn’t know that much.
Max’s eyebrows raise, both amused at the man’s logical resort and sympathetic to his conflict.
‘I really couldn’t tell you. I’m simply here, same as you. Isn’t that enough?’
The anxious look in his face must be apparent because Max gently grabs his head and turns it towards himself, and dios mío the boyish-like, smitten feeling of butterflies fill his stomach, eating away at him, and he realises that whether this was real or not didn’t matter. Not one bit. Gustavo finds himself wishing he passed in his sleep and awoke in heaven.
He quickly remembers what he stays alive for and brushes the thought away.
‘You feel that warmth, Gustavo? Touch me, feel my pulse,’ he offers his wrists, ‘My blood is pumping, I’m sharing your oxygen, I’m here.’
He accepts the invitation, and his eyes well up - not enough to cry - just enough to power himself to sit up and get a better look at the details of an otherwise forgotten face if not for the frozen expressions that pattern his home.
Gustavo’s hands, slightly shaking, cup Max’s cheeks, rounder than his own and healthily plump, warm and full of life. Max’s hand covers his own and he kisses the tip of Gustavo’s finger tips, sending a sensation he feels not even the demise of the cartel or the Salamanca’s could live up to.
‘You have given up your life for mine.’ Max whispers, his lips parting and his thumb caressing his hand.
‘I wouldn’t change it for a thing.’
Max freezes for a millisecond, so subtle most wouldn’t notice it, but Gustavo does - he always has - and it’s blatantly telling.
‘You wouldn’t?’ Somehow, his voice becomes quieter.
‘No.’ He assures - though he cannot tell to whom he is assuring - and the words come out of his mouth harsher than anticipated.
Max doesn’t even flinch. He never did. ‘…Okay.’
The air feels tighter.
’Do you doubt me?’ The conversation now feels confrontational, but neither man holds any sense of bitterness, rather the opposite.
‘I can’t view this any other way, Maximino,’ his name rolls on his tongue smoothly, like that was where it belonged, and he wishes he didn’t spare it as much as he did, ‘I love you. I’m nearly there, and once they’re all dead, justice will finally have been brought home. You’ll-’
A finger is placed on his lips and a moment of silence helps him realise the unusually quickened pace his words took on. He chooses to ignore how good it felt.
‘Your love will be the death of you.’
Gustavo swallows, and catches his breath after letting out what could have either been a show of the greatest devotion or utmost insanity.
‘I know.’
Max gazes at the determined glaze of Gustavo’s eyes, and the wash of sadness he’s certain he sees only tells him that the path chosen is one Gustavo would gladly walk into even if it meant certain death.
He gently pushes Gustavo to the ground, and still gripping his hand, lays down with him. Max stares at the sky. The sky stares back.
‘Was the sky always this vibrant back home?’ Max questions, and he isn’t the first to do so.
Gustavo lets out a sigh, ’This has to be Chile. I don't figure where else.’ The scenery feels familiar, and he cannot in good faith call his home country familiar, not anymore. Still, the sky is otherworldly and the grass is too, for lack of a better word, alive.
’Still… It is beautiful.’ Max remarks.
Gustavo doesn’t voice it, but something in that shade envokes what could only be described as uneasiness. It’s almost too familiar.
Max turns his head to look at him and finds Gustavo has already turned towards him.
’You refuse to look at it.’ The silence that follows tells him everything he needs to know.
Gustavo’s gaze feels as if it pierces through Max’s skull, and his eyes have chosen his temple - unscathed - to focus on. His entire face relaxes and his lips part, the expression on his face longing and melancholy.
‘I need you by my side.’
Max doesn’t have an answer for him this time.
The breeze that runs through their hair starts to simmer and the outlines of Max’s handprints he’s unknowingly been tracing begin to become unclear. But he’s not ready.
Gustavo becomes uncharacteristically frantic as Max begins to become less and less distinct by the second, and begs him to meet his eyes, locked upwards and life draining by the minute. Something forms on his temple and the grass below them takes on a horrid yellow, dying and weeping; it begins to rain. Dark red liquid seeps into the grass, oozing out the now gaping hole that’s appeared on Max’s forehead - the image is all too familiar - before the field soon takes in its colour, somehow managing to make him more sick than the rotting shade it had before.
As the rain falls down its sharp contact on their skin turns it into solid; He assumes it’s hail, but as they begin to cover both him and Max with rapid speed and its disgusting blue he finally recognises its familiarity for what it is - but it’s too late. They’re already drowning in it. Gustavo makes no effort to save himself.
He thinks it’s the truest to life his mind has conjured up yet.
———
‘He’s insistent he needs this Jesse Pinkman. Says he can’t do it properly without him.’
Gustavo allows faint confusion appear on his face, ‘Is Gales assistance not satisfactory?’
Mike Ehrmantraut lets his confusion appear even more apparent, frustration mixed in there too, with just a hint of exhaustion and he scoffs. ‘Cook’s been perfect.’
Gustavo inhales, a notable sign to all who work for him hinting an upcoming order. ‘Let him.’
Mike looks as if he’s about to enter a back-and-forth, but stops before his mouth can form a word. Instead, he sighs, scans his surroundings in typical fashion and hums a sound of affirmation.
Silence fills the car as Mike waits for the usual dismissal. Gustavo instead looks distracted.
‘I had a dream.’
The older man furrows his eyebrows. He makes sure to relax his expression so not to seem as if he’s ridiculing his boss.
Gustavo’s voice is quiet and somewhat threatening, despite the lack of threat he’s faced with. It’s not directed towards Mike, either, but holds a sort of interrogative tone.
‘Someone I once knew appeared.’
The show of vulnerability surprises him. Gustavo pauses for a second, ‘But that doesn’t matter. What I mean to say is…’, He looks at Mike who’s listening with intrigue, but so clearly trying to solve him like a puzzle, cogs turning in his brain.
’This blue meth … This Walter White …,’ He says his name as if it was a slur, ‘I believe he could be one of our biggest threats in a while.’
Mike lets out a dragged ‘uh-huh…’ and it’s all but subtle to what he thinks: ‘The high school chemistry teacher?’
’We let him have what he wants. We’ll find a way to remove Pinkman. Gale returns and schedule continues as planned. Walter White, however, must be monitored.’
Mike nods and let’s his distaste for the chemist to overcome his tendency to advise otherwise.
‘The guy’s dying of cancer anyhow. Should he become an enemy, an early death won’t be nothin’ out the ordinary. I reckon we only need another month before Boetticher can take over.’
Gustavo nods at him and signals his entrance to leave, but for the first time ever he looks as if he has more to say. Mike doesn’t entertain this.
And he does, but Gustavo knows better than to order the death of what has otherwise been an innocent man with an ego. A man providing for his family, dying of cancer. A man on his last leg. The danger he poses feels exaggerated in his mind.
In what world could he lose to a man like that? What warrants his omen?
This assurance keeps his rationale, but that sinister sense of dirtiness stays with him. He’s just going to have to trust that all will be well.