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Hal wakes to sunlight slipping through his windowblinds.
The warmth is comforting for a moment until he realizes that something is very, very wrong.
The room he sleeps in faces west, not east, and shouldn’t receive any direct sunlight until mid-afternoon.
Besides, Hal is usually up and awake by then, drinking coffee or perusing global news sites or walking Sunny to school, keeping himself busy however he can.
Hal stretches out languidly beneath the covers and tries to remember what he did the night before to warrant sleeping in. He racks his brain for a decent explanation, but he can't recall.
The sheets enveloping him are stiff and overstarched. Slightly dusty, but clean. Not his, clearly.
Did he crash in a hotel room? Unlikely, Hal thinks immediately. He hasn't had a reason to book one in ages.
His arm brushes against something solid at the tail end of his stretch, and Hal finally opens his eyes.
Snake is sleeping soundly to his left, blanket haphazardly bunched up around his waist. No surprise there. In the years they've spent sharing beds, Hal honed his skill of drifting off despite the constant movement beside him. Apparently, his partner is full of restless energy around the clock.
Hal blinks away the last bits of sleep from his eyes and rubs at his sockets with his fists until he sees bursts of purple and green. When the grains in his vision clear, Snake is still there, breathing.
His fingers give a small twitch, and an intelligible whisper floats from under his breath. He has an arm strewn over his face to block the stream of light creeping toward his eyes.
His lips are chapped, slightly parted, and it looks like he hasn’t shaved in a day, maybe two. Upon closer inspection, Hal realizes that Snake is wearing one of his shirts.
Hal can’t hear him breathing- Snake, blessedly, doesn’t snore- but he can see it, the way his chest falls then rises toward the ceiling.
Fifteen breaths in sixty seconds. Heart rate of forty. Completely and utterly relaxed.
Hal feels anything but relaxed at the moment. Somewhere in the back of his mind, dread begins to bloom, seeping slowly throughout his consciousness.
Drops of red blood, inking white now. 100,000 gallons of crude oil spilled in the Hudson River.
As he watches his partner sleep, the pressure in his chest builds and builds and builds.
Until-
This is a dream, Hal realizes.
It has to be, because Snake is dead.
Sweat breaks at the back of his neck as he stares at Snake beside him, pins and needles crawling up his limbs.
Everyone knew that it was coming. Sooner, rather than later.
The thought still makes Hal feel like he’s falling. A helpless, nauseating feeling that knocks the air from his lungs.
He thought they'd have more time.
Naive, like a child.
Most of their belongings are still packed up in cardboard boxes, half-sorted in their new home.
Hal had been riding the high that came with false hope and borrowing confidence from the past. Snake’s prognosis was improving slowly, so why rush? Why hurry when they were finally retired?
The day it happened, Snake was feeling fine. Or, at least, that's what he insisted.
The only thing Snake grumbled about was being tired. That was it. Hal hadn’t even bothered to look up from his computer when he left the room. Snake gave him a quick peck on the cheek, went to lie down on the couch, and never woke up.
It was a peaceful death, after a lifetime filled with anything but.
Beside him now, Snake sleeps soundly again, though Hal knows that this too isn’t the case.
The thing is, Snake has never been a convincing actor.
Back when Philanthropy was in its heyday, and they collected missions faster than they could clear them, undercover work was always out of the question.
Snake was absolutely terrible at playing any role that wasn’t just a different flavor of himself; even Pliskin only lasted half a day. The moment Snake tried to practice acting as someone else, he’d grow awkward and stiff, and Hal would be reduced to stitches on the couch. Hal had always found his honesty endearing, among so many other things.
Even now, it isn’t hard to tell that Snake is faking sleep. He must’ve felt Hal stir at some point, but hadn't felt inclined to get up just yet.
So Hal reaches over and squeezes his shoulder, the tips of his fingers sinking into hard muscle. It feels real, even though it can't be. Impossibly tangible, in a way that his mind can’t work out.
A mirage shimmering in the desert. A distant star in space.
On Snake’s bicep, right beneath the hem of his sleeve, is a thin scar from three years ago. A grazed bullet. Had it been aimed half a foot to the right, it would’ve shot clean through Snake’s heart.
Hal had disinfected the wound himself at four in the morning with a flashlight clenched between his teeth because their safehouse was a shithole and its generator was unreliable.
He sewed the damage shut with shaky fingers, and Snake had to talk him through his own stitches. Afterward, Hal had thrown up from the stress and all the blood.
Funny, how clear those memories still are. Feels like it was only yesterday that they were still on the run.
Snake finally stirs beside him, stretching out with a restrained yawn, and his face finally comes fully into view.
Hal doesn't blink even though his eyes burn. He studies his partner desperately, like if he memorizes enough details, he'll be able to bring Snake back with him when this ends.
2008? Hal wonders. 2009?
A morning like this must exist somewhere in the depths of his memories, pulled from some time between Big Shell and the Nomad, back when Snake’s health was no cause for worry.
A time before the aging, the fruitless doctor's appointments, and the asinine arguments they’d have over whether they should keep going or finally stop.
This was a moment in time where they still believed that they had a future. And Snake still wanted to fight, because he said that that’s what he was made for.
Hal reaches out, touches Snake’s face without asking, drags his thumb across the stubble of his jaw, the not-quite deep lines around his mouth.
Snake’s eyes watch him, half-lidded with sleep, half-blue, half-green. Hal can’t quite remember anymore, and there’s no way to know for sure. Hal will never get to look into his piercing eyes again.
Every time he dreams of him, smaller details slip away.
A copy of a copy, losing fidelity with each pass.
Looking at pictures doesn’t help. Videos fail to capture everything. Snake had always avoided cameras after too many years on the run, and later, when the running stopped, the habit remained.
Hal wishes he’d pushed harder. Wishes he’d insisted on taking more of the three of them together, back when there was still time. He has an entire USB drive worth of photos of himself and Sunny, but Snake is absent from most of them, his presence only revealed by a thumb obscuring the lens.
As far as Hal knows, there’s only one photograph of Snake and Sunny together.
It’s old now, printed on 4×6 glossy stock and framed on his desk. The picture was taken by Hal the night Raiden completed his mission. Snake is holding Sunny in his arms, head turned away from the camera as he peers down at her face.
Sunny probably won’t remember Snake when she gets older. Hal can’t possibly fault her for that. That’s just how kids are.
Hal knows, because it happened to him, too. His childhood was a blur of states and countries, never in one place long enough to find his footing. There’s a collection of faces in the back of his mind that he can’t put names to: teachers, friends, distant relatives, even though he knows they must’ve been important to him, once.
He can still picture them if he tries hard enough. He just can’t remember who they were.
One day, Snake might be something like that to Sunny. A distant memory, and nothing more. Someone who took care of her for a while, and then disappeared.
Sunny will move on quickly. Kids are resilient like that. Hal used to think he was the same.
Now he isn’t so sure.
He traces his fingers along Snake’s left cheek, smooth and wholly unmarred. His skin looks healthy here, tan and slightly sunburnt by too many long runs at high noon. But Hal’s hand still treads carefully, instinctively avoiding touching the scar that isn’t there.
The side of Snake’s mouth quirks up slyly, like he knows something he doesn’t.
Snake always smirked. Very rarely did he give a symmetrical smile, though the joy always managed to reach both of his eyes.
God, how long had it been since Hal saw him smile like that?
Hal drinks it in, dedicates the expression to memory. He knows that sooner or later, all of the little details about Snake, all the little idiosyncrasies that separated the man from the legend, all the little quirks that Hal collected like classified intel, will be lost to time.
Memory is an unreliable, fragile thing.
Eventually, he’ll forget little things. He’ll forget the way Snake used to move through rooms like a ghost, always scaring Hal by accident, or on purpose. He’ll forget how Snake always drank from mugs with his left hand, or how he used to chew on the inside of his cheek whenever he craved a cigarette.
For now, Hal remembers. At least, he remembers enough to recall the rough timbre of Snake's voice, right when he wakes.
“Morning,” Snake grumbles, and that’s all it takes to make Hal’s chest ache. It's a dull, hollow feeling.
Snake doesn’t know he shouldn’t be here, it seems.
“You’re dead,” Hal tells him.
Snake smirks, as if amused. “Am I?” he says teasingly, like Hal just told him a smart joke.
He never seems to understand when Hal tells him, and Hal learned that the hard way. He used to insist upon it, used to grab Snake by the shoulders and repeat it again and again and again, until he’d wake up shaking and tangled in his sheets in a bed too big for one.
Snake ignores him, as always. “You sound tired,” he says. His face is half-mashed against the soft pillow, sinking into it. He continues to half-smile warmly at Hal, unbothered by the rising sun, like they have all the time in the world.
That was true, wasn’t it? Once upon a time?
Snake blinks slowly, the fan of his lashes shadowing his tired eyes. He looks so relaxed, so pliant, body free of all the chronic pain that’s to come.
Hal swallows down the lump in his throat and quickly swipes at his eyes with the back of his hand.
“I, uh, had a bad dream.”
Technically, it’s the truth. No point in denying it. Hal’s never been a good liar, either.
“About?”
The truth, again.
“You.”
“Oh,” Snake says, puzzled, as if it’s baffling that he’d be the subject of any of Hal’s dreams, good or bad. “Me?”
“Yeah, you,” Hal manages.
“Sorry to hear that,” Snake says.
Snake’s ‘sorry’ is tentative and quiet, as if he’s apologizing for something small, like hitting an unsuspecting pothole on the road, or for leaving an unwashed dish in the sink.
He’d said sorry the same way years ago as he handed Hal a card from the drug store for his birthday, apologetic for not getting him anything else. What he didn't know is that Hal kept that card with him for years to follow, stashed between his passport, driver’s license, and a photo of Emma.
“Don’t be sorry,” Hal manages. He means it, too. Snake always seemed remorseful about his aging. Hal knew he felt like a burden, and he did his best to make it clear that it wasn’t the case, especially at its worst.
Snake reaches out, arm hovering like a bird offering its wing, and Hal scoots in close until his face is buried in his chest, close enough to hear the steady living beat of his heart.
“Go back to sleep,” Snake says, chin coming to rest atop the crown of Hal’s head. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Hal almost laughs. He almost cries. He wishes, more than anything else, that it could be the truth.
“You’re dead,” Hal murmurs.
Snake’s chest vibrates against Hal’s ear when he answers, but Hal can’t make out the words.
Hal closes his eyes, grants himself a small respite from the storm of churning in his mind. Snake’s hand cradles the back of Hal’s head, fingers brushing gently through his hair.
It’s what he used to do whenever Hal was sick, or shaken, or too amped up to sleep. Hal remembers doing the same for Snake, who suffered from nightmares more often than Hal did.
That’s what really bonded them, back in Alaska. It was hard to feel like strangers when they both had the same kinds of dreams.
Hard to believe that Snake was ever a stranger to him at all.
The faint sound of robins chirping reaches his ears. Up and early, the way they used to be, back when everything was firing on all cylinders. Hal presses closer to Snake’s body and tunes it out.
Snake’s warmth surrounds him, and Hal’s thoughts slow until he falls asleep to the steady beat, beat, beat of his partner’s heart.
I’m going to lie down.
Alright. See you in a bit.
Hal wakes up freezing in the dark. Outside, nothing but the sound of wind battering against the walls.
Hal wipes at his eyes with his sleeve and reaches blindly for the space beside him. His fingers close around the empty pillow, and he pulls it tight to his chest, breathing it in even though it smells like clean detergent now instead of smoke.
He clings on to it anyway. He squeezes his eyes shut, slows his breathing, and tries to fall asleep for just a little while longer.
A small, foolish part of him hopes that Snake will be there when he wakes.