Title: Hear Those Sleighbells
Author: Kalio
Pairing: Hinted Sands/El. Only hinted. See below.
Rating: PG-13 for Sands and his language, which actually isn't all that extreme in this ficlet. Rating has nothing to do with pairing. (Sorry.)
Summary: Christmas song + too much eggnog on the part of the author + little point and less plot = this ficlet.
[A/N] It wasn't betaed, ergo all grammar/spelling/continuity errors, character OOCness, and any other screwups are mine.
This fic was posted before, closer to Christmas. It is being re-posted now because there were formatting errors the first time that have since been corrected.
Words are in Spanish.
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The sun has risen and set, the moon has circled the earth, the planets have shifted dramatically; two ice ages have come and gone, and eighteen world wars; centuries have passed since Little Boy Blue rode off on his musical bicycle and left a broken, breathing corpse behind. A ritualistic ceremony has been performed, and now all that's left is the blood sacrifice—the blood's been shed, even—and yet, he doesn't die.
And why the fuck not?
He isn't wearing a watch. He left his Timex on the rickety table in his cheap hotel room. Thought it clashed with the appearance of a reckless killing machine, that serene, domestic little Timex tick-tick-ticking the orderly seconds away. Like some perverted bomb. Now he wishes he'd worn the damn thing, because he'd convert to Christianity just to hear the seconds. Just to have proof against this growing theory that centuries have gone by or that worse, time has stopped altogether.
If this is purgatory, my compliments. Someone did a bang-up job.
He hears the jangle of chains, and from the depths of his blood-soaked stubborn consciousness, he intones, "…hear those sleighbells jingling, ring-ting-tingling too."
They stop, and he has time to write it off as an audial hallucination before he hears a voice. Dry, Spanish, and…familiar.
How long?
Footsteps approaching, and a second voice—young. Not long. A doctor—please? We must find—
Chicle?
I will. He will be fine.
I want to stay. The boy's voice is soft, tentative, as if he already knows the verdict.
Not now.
I want to stay, he insists, stubborn.
Something too quick for Sands to catch, and the boy sighs. Footsteps, trailing away. And then the other set, coming toward him.
"You…are still conscious?"
"Almighty Jesus, I hope not." He has never felt so sincere in his life. A hand, out of nowhere, settles on his shoulder, and he recoils automatically. "Back the fuck— "
"Quiet, or someone will come."
"Funny," he says, letting out a sharp breath, "I've been sitting here for hours, no one came then." It isn't funny. Not at all.
"Someone has now, if you'll let me help you."
"And why are you so suddenly full of goodwill?" Silence. "What, used up your hostility quotient for the day? Shot enough people? Killed enough fucking brothers?"
"And what do you want, another cook?"
"No, but I wouldn't object to the pork."
"Then let me take you to a restaurant. But you must at least move."
"You know, I considered that some time ago."
"And?"
"And I decided I'd just as soon bleed to death."
"You surprise me, Agent Sands." A pause. "I wouldn't expect you to give up, not when there is vengeance to be had."
"The motherfucker who did this to me is dead, Mariachi Man. Not a whole lot of vengeance left. I did get his cheap-cunt whore of a daughter, though," he adds reflectively.
Should have made it last. She got off far too easy. Fucking bitch.
Another beat of silence.
"So is that it, then? The legendary CIA agent reduced to a quivering lump in the dust, praying for God to end it all now?"
"Praying?" His laughter is dry, cracked. "Gave up praying in fucking grade school."
"Waiting, then."
"And your point is…?"
Motion, and Sands jerks away again. The mariachi's voice sounds like he's nearing the limits of his eternal patience. "Let me help you up."
"What's in it for— " suspicion changes the sentence halfway through— "you?"
"For me?" Puzzled.
"Yeah, for you. If I get up. If the blue fairy turns me back into a real boy, if I walk and talk and got no strings, what are you getting out of it?"
The mariachi makes no comment on the Pinocchio reference—probably doesn't get it—but he does understand the gist of it. "That can be discussed later—perhaps at a time when you are not bleeding to death."
Is he still bleeding? He thought he'd have run out by now, thought maybe the slow, thick trickle was a hallucination. Like this conversation. Running on empty, he thinks, and with the evoked image of a sputtering car comes the sudden illusion that he can feel himself emptying, he can feel the blood vacating his arteries, leaving bits of sticky crust stuck to the sewer walls of his veins. The image gives him an unusually sharp feeling of disgust.
"Let's go then," he says abruptly, and forces himself to extend a hand. El Mariachi helps him up, and when the Earth's orbit dips and veers wackily and Sands is deafened briefly by the dark, when he loses contact with his limbs and feels the dirt rushing up to reclaim him, when he thinks (not without his sense of irony) that this is it, he's lasted this long just to die upon human contact—
—it is El who takes his weight, supports his failing body and consciousness, and half-carries him down the road.
---fin---