Follows on from Wires.
Huge beta thanks this time to Ms Anon and Nico.
hr
It's a direct vein-shot straight to the base of his mind, pure and not the kind that ever comes on prescription.
Okay, no, not right, not a shot, because this one's uncut coke blast all down the line and up through the nose-hairs, one sharp hit and the entire fucking world laid out as miracles all around him. Waiting for him to make the choice, just the way it'd always been, that extra kick to give it a real cliff edge.
It's the perfect fantasy; tailor-made after how he's been scrabbling around in somebody else's cast-offs for the last six months. Yeah, and that would be even fucking funnier, if half the time it hadn't been literal.
The cloth moves with him as he shifts, clinging till the knot catches on the pillow and every stray fibre rasps over his skin, lick of cat tongue along his temples and over his nose and all round his fucking eyes.
It's temptation, a crawling, sick whispering tapping through every corner of his brain that it's all okay, he only he has to reach out and take it, everything'll be juuust fine -
And that blows big hairy goat's balls, because up till now he's had this real sweet deal going with Temptation, whichever way she curls in his hands. As a tool, the perfect hook on the line, offer someone exactly what they want and see just how fast and eager they open their throat and swallow the spines. And when she turned that foxy face his way, the touch of her one of his big personal joy-candies - not whether he'd give in, hell, no, that one was a given, because where was the fun in not taking what you wanted? No, the real trip came in the when, the expectation, waiting for that perfect moment when it all fell together for the maximum snap.
And now, goddammit, even that long-time arrangement's screwed six ways through the floor along with all the others, because that bitch Temptation's looking to fuck over everything he's spent six months clawing back together, to rip ragged pits bloody through his mind to go right along with the ones in his face.
Holy Christ, why isn't he in Paraguay?
The sheets are leech-mouthed all along his skin, sucking eagerly at his fluids, wrinkles pressing damp along the length of his back, and he's been lying here all of about forty fucking seconds.
Okay, that wouldn't be any better in Paraguay, but he's lived here long enough now he's actually gotten used to the way he only feels clean the first five minutes out of the shower, the heat and the dirt in the cities, the heat and the dust outside them. Still hates sticking to the goddamn sheets though, when he thinks about it, and he's thinking about it now, thinking anything time and place to put the brakes on his two-timing, back-sliding mind.
And somewhere past the fingers dragging slow nails over his memories through the tracks left by Jenny and Sophie and Alice, there's the steady rustle of cloth and the whisper-chink of metal as El undresses and folds everything out of the way, just how he taught him. Seems a one-time-only opportunity-of-a-lifetime-style threat to his reproductives is something a mariachi takes seriously, and normally that makes him laugh, but right now he wishes El would forget all that and just get on and fuck him.
The sheets are evolving into mountain ranges between his fingers.
He'd agreed to this. He'd agreed to it so easy, because, let's face it, shades were never gonna be promoted as ideal accessories for fucking, and they limboed a notch or two lower under the bar for sleeping in.
It was only when the cloth had slid down to rest soft on his nose, and fingers dragged it tighter across his cheeks into a tie behind that he'd started to figure he might have miscalculated this one just a teensy bit.
He seems to be stitching himself a full nun's habit of the miscalculations lately, which is kind of a ball-twister, but at least he's sticking to the low level ones, the ones he can fix. Fixing things is what he does. He's decided it's got its benefits in a warped kind of way, getting The Really Big Fuck-Up out of the way early on, 'cos he can only ever screw up small scale from here on in. After that, anything else is definitely gonna be minor league, right?
He still hasn't decided if hitting on El fits as one of those screw-ups or not.
Right here and now with the past and the women (who could be dead for all he knows, or more likely fucking vanilla and bored with their rich lawyer catches) as sharp in his head as the prickling band all round the outside of it, it's starting to seem like the third worst idea he ever had.
It was reasonable enough at the time, stop them heading for the killing-each-other thing that had been looking just a bit too likely in the fuck-knew-how-long it was gonna be in that sewer-pit before the dick-brained Mexican could be prodded out of it. And then El had pleasantly surprised him by bringing up the killing-other-people-instead thing, and the sex should have stayed an easy side-benefit, but for his second little miscalculation, which had apparently been just how fucked up they both were.
And that's enough to make him want to laugh like a fucking lunatic because, Jesus Christ and the orgasming Virgin Mary, who could have thought they were both even more screwed than they looked from the outside, when everything about them was a buzzing neon thirty-footer? But the goddamn mariachi had reacted to being touched with all the shock of getting shot, and he wasn't gonna delude himself his own response had looked a whole ten degrees more subtle from the other end.
It's kind of convenient they can get off on each other without it feeling like 'normally I wouldn't touch you before the next Ice Age flattens NYC, but I'm just that fucking desperate', even though that's more or less how it is.
It's less convenient that the fucking mariachi, dense as he is, thoughts ever-circling like a loop line train, has a nasty habit of seeing things people don't want him to know. Even if he doesn't always know what he's seeing, he knows there's something, and he hangs on like a jacked-up terrier with its paws wrapped round Aunt Marcie's table leg.
And he'd seen something in Sheldon Jeffrey Sands.
Not that this is news to Sands. He knows a lot of things about a lot of people, and pretty much everything about himself. It's something he's had a handle on for a long time, and while it doesn't quite fit right in and cozy up tight with the rest of his ideas about himself, it's there, and like most things, it could either be an annoyance or useful, depending how you worked it.
So, yeah, sex gets a bit better when it gets a bit rougher, and it's not much of a deal. Except it wasn't so convenient when it ended in the mariachi fucking him hard into the bed-frame with his full cooperation less than a week after that first not-so-casual hand-job exchange.
After that, there wasn't a whole lot of point denying how it was. He doesn't like backing down, but there's always a stage when you gotta 'fess up you got oh-so-well screwed and work on twisting it back in your favour in the next round. Because there's always a next round.
And now he's about two minutes into the next round and he's got a real clear idea of just how bad this might get, but he's not gonna back out, and he sure as fuck isn't gonna have a freak out and lose it in front of the goddamn mariachi.
The blindfold's got these fine little hairs tickling over the top of his nose and along his cheekbone, and his hands want to reach up and scratch, but he really can't, 'cos he's not putting his fingers anywhere near, oh no, and all those little sounds have stopped, the brush of fabric, the tap and squeak on tile and there's only the breathing, and what the fuck is El doing?
Air rushing over the layers of sweat, creak and sag of too-old mattress, and then there are hands on him, hands that curve over his body like unsanded wood, and he shudders into the relief, the heavy, tactile proof that this isn't Jenny or Sophie or Alice because El's definitely been skipping on the twice-daily lotion and the weekly manicures.
The hands rub over him, fast and greedy, smoothed now as they drag through the damp on his skin, air swaying around him with every movement, and the girls sure as hell never wore Eau de Cordite either. He sucks it in sharp, air warm and streaming through his nose that isn't numbed by coke no matter how much his brain's dancing with the God vibes, breathes it something like valium, and hell, it's a lousy idea to mix drugs, even the metaphorical kind, but it's another link to hook onto, to keep his brain from its eager Memory Lane skipping trip.
And El's quick and seeking hands are bringing his cock right back into the game, because lying here sticky and itchy with his mind leaking faster than his dick hadn't done much for his hard-on, even after the whole groping up against the wall and getting naked part that came before. But he's hard again now, hell, yeah, he's hard, and he's gonna get thoroughly fucked, and it's never seemed like a better idea.
He should have his hands on El now, have hair scratching at his palms, have his nails scraping through the sweat hanging heavy beneath the gunpowder. Should untangle his fingers from sheets worn thin and smooth because this is one cheap-ass hotel and not too proud to advertise, grip down onto muscle and scars he'd never found on any woman, or any guy if it comes down to it, press hard into roughened skin the way El's hands now dig and bruise anchoring into his own.
And no, no, no, he's not gonna touch, clenching right back down into damp and clammy poly-blend there by his sides, 'cos he's got this stomach-heaving image if he starts that shit he might just end up clinging onto El with fuck-sucking squid tentacles, and no way, just no fucking way. That's pretty close to the top of his Big List of Things Not to Do; and yeah, it really should be topped by not getting his eyes drilled out, but that's one of those lifetime specials and he's already scratched that one. Eyes and drills, and normally it's a combination he kind of goes out of his way not to think about, but he's gonna think about it now, remember how it whined, the quick-shrieking pitch as it speeds up, remember the silver flash of it in that freaky-ass lighting (and okay, that might not have been the lights, that might have been the drugs), remember -
Sweep of air and then hair over his cheek and hellfire mouth on his, and he's not gonna touch, but this, this he can do, dragging teeth over lips and tongue, scraping taste onto his own of spice and salt and iron, and never a hint of lipstick waxy and plum. Teeth working at his own lips, his own skin, and that doesn't narrow it down so much, and he's sticking with the lack of lipstick, with the dryness rough beneath the wet of spit shared and smeared as he pushes up into more of it.
And he doesn't need to touch, no fingers, because the press of El's body is all along him now, over every inch of his skin, sliding with sweat while hair sticks and rubs between them, and he hooks his legs up and round because El always gets the big hints and not so much the little ones. He follows the script just fine now, fingers in him slick and cool and that's good, only cool thing in the room, only cool thing in the whole damn country. Fingers blunt and fast, working not teasing, not playing like Sophie or (the name he doesn't think of), and he stretches down onto them, faster and more.
This whole thing's gonna be fast, and that's the best way to take it.
The fingers are gone and the pressure-sweat-touch all along him gone with them, dipping of bed and shifting of air as the body over him rearranges, and he wants it back, needs it back, needs to know - and shoulders push up curved against his calves and his spine curls to meet the cock sliding up into him.
Shiver all through him, and his mind drops into the reality of it with his body. Because Alice had liked strap-ons, and everyone who wasn't too chickenshit to try it liked fingers and dildos, but none of that plastic or jelly-rubber even comes close to feeling like a cock, and Christ but he's so damn grateful right now he'd never gotten into kink with the guys he played with. Mexico's fucked him right over once, and that shit is not gonna happen again, no fucking way. He's Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, and, yeah, he's blind, and he's still fucking here, and Mexico can just suck that right on down and give him one hell of a blow job while she's on her knees.
Or loan him her pet Mariachi to screw his brains out of his head while jerking him off, because, hey, that works for him too. Works so fucking well, and his mind isn't going anywhere now, isn't being anything except fucked by the movement and the rough grip on his cock and how much he wants it, here, now, like this, and just that bit more, and when he comes it's with his mouth wide, and sweat and gunpowder dragging through his throat and El's cock grinding into him.
They disentangle fast when it's done, the routine carved and inflexible after only days of this.
He rolls away, hand groping instinctively under the pillow to check the gun, chill to the sweat on his palm. The pillow pushes up with the movement, snagging at the cloth so it catches on his skin, rubbing a strip of memory and fear and so much want across his face, and now's when he should be peeling it off, shaking his hair back into place and laughing, and he can't touch it.
He stills, and he's never been so aware of every nerve.
Fuck, he could use a smoke, but this isn't the best time to be dropping into the long-entrenched post-screw rituals.
He should be talking, should have been talking, needling and demanding, but his throat's been sandpapered by the heat and the (non-existent) air-con.
The gun's hard against his hand, the fabric's smooth against his hairline, and he doesn't have to be here.
He could be in Bolivia or Paraguay or any one of half a dozen little shitty-assed countries that weren't so blowingly obvious as Brazil. He could get out of Mexico without anyone tracing him, find the places where the right kind of people spent their evenings, buy a few drinks, and within weeks he'd be back to dealing in information and making a perfectly decent living.
He could do just fine alone, yeah, but he can't imagine why he'd want to. He's never been one to do things the hard way when there's a perfectly easy way being handed to him, and hanging with El means no tapping white stick - not that he's got a fucking clue what colour it is, since there's no way in hell he'd ask - and no boredom now they've quit Peasantville. Plenty of bloodshed to spare for everyone around Mexico's premiere Mariachi. Plus he gets sex good enough to make him pant and occasionally even plead, along with it. That might be harder to find on tap in Paraguay.
And if he spends half the day running damage limitation after the whole panting and pleading part, well, it's something to do. If El ever starts to get the idea he can use that shit to fuck with Sands outside of a set of sheets, he's going to find a gun shoved a very long way through more than just the thought.
El doesn't, though. He sticks right on deck alongside him with the sex as something tidied away - well, not exactly tidy, because Christ, it's anything but - but a separate thing with no life. They fuck, they like it, and more than ten feet from a bed it doesn't exist.
He figures he should be grateful the mariachi has sense on some level, even if it's not always the most obvious, up front one.
Right now, grateful isn't at the top of his list of thoughts, not when he's less than five minutes the other side of a good fuck, and everything in him's stretched tight with the cloth knotted round his head.
If squirting come all over himself and an enthusiastic bed-mate isn't gonna get him to sleep, he's doubting sheep are gonna close the deal.
The mariachi's there, touching him. Not holding him, not even close, because then he'd have to smack his palm up under his chin and kick him from the fucking bed. He wishes he would, because that'd be a lot better than lying here stilled and chilled with Temptation whispering her witchbitch ideas at him. No, he's the rough-light brush of hair against his back when he breathes, and two fingers against his thigh, fingers big enough to wrap around the Glocks, that definitely don't belong to Jenny or Sophie or Alice.
He tenses the muscle down his thigh so the fingers press harder, feels the patterns of them on his skin. Holds himself there, because it's real and not the past, and while he's focussed on that one group of nerves, he's ignoring the lies stalking through his head.
And then the fingers are gone from him, and oh, that's bad, because the cloth strips flame all across his face and the voice is louder, starting to laugh, and his hands curl on the pillow in front of his face. His fingers wrap together and his nails tighten into his palm, because all he has to do is reach around and tug off the blindfold, and open his eyes and he'll be able to see -
Air's chill swish over sweat as the arm reaches across him, and calluses grip close and clammy round his wrist.
There's another touch at the back of his head, not direct, just a brush of pressure where the fabric meets in a blob that seems to dig down into his skull. "I think I tied it too tight. You want me to loosen it? Or should I just take it off?"
The voice is low, heavy, thick black like molasses, and it's more real than anything. It's here and now, and it's Mexico in all its blood and death, and there are other memories, stronger ones, and he can't ever get away from those either.
He unwinds his muscles enough to shrug. "Whatever. But if you're going to piss around, get it done before I get to sleep. I wouldn't want to shoot you over it."
Fingers in his hair and a tugging at the knot, and if he could he'd close his eyes, but he can't. Can't close his eyes, ever, and there's no fantasy dancing in his head as the knot slips looser and the cloth starts to slide itching over him, no long oval nails scraping ghosts across his ear.
His wrists are released, and the fabric brushes over him and eases out from beneath his head, drawing his hair along with it, and he knows he's still blind long before it slips free.