Title: Come to Your Senses
Pairing: Sands/El
Rating: R, mostly for language
Disclaimer: Everybody herein belongs to Robert Rodriguez.
Author's Notes: Writer's block finally overcome, hooray. First fic in this fandom. Yes, this is slash, although it doesn't start out that way. Primarily an experiment in style and themes.
The story has been completed; there will be five parts. I can't post WIP's, because something I write in part IV will inevitably cause me to go back and change something in part II, and so on. I will be posting the remaining chapters as I finish editing them.
Feedback greatly appreciated.
I.
He couldn't get the smell of blood out of his lungs.
It stayed with him, no matter how deeply or shallowly he inhaled, that thick clotting smell that sat at the very back of his throat. Sometimes, when the door opened, when the windows were open, he could hear and feel a light breeze, a swirl of fresher air. But try as he might, he couldn't catch it, couldn't breathe it in.
He'd tried breathing through his mouth instead, but that only dried him from the inside out, filled him with more dust than the atmosphere around him. Sucking in air past his clenched teeth only made that process happen a little slower.
It was that Mexico sun, that fucking gleaming Mexico postcard sun. It had baked and caked the drying blood right into his skin. Right into his pores—all that blood and assorted ocular fluids he'd never given much attention to in the past because they'd up to now unobtrusively stayed where they were supposed to and done their jobs—right down into the core of him. Except this blood had been spilled by hands like Barillo's, hands like Ajedrez's (also, come to think of it, Barillo's), and that was no way for tainted essentials to be put back in.
Oh yes; the sun of Mexico had done him in on Dia de los Muertos.
He'd wiped at his nose, at his face, his hair, had insisted that his blanket and mattress and especially pillow were soaked in the foul syrupy liquid. Had been told repeatedly, until he'd eventually been ignored more often than not, that there was no blood running, that there was only a little dried blood where his eyes had been, that he was not choking on it. At times, he believed those words.
At other times, he ran his hands (surreptitiously if he thought he wasn't alone, which wasn't often; otherwise, frantically, or actually just efficiently) over the linens, searching for crusted dampness that he never found.
After some while, he learned to pick up on other smells as well. Bile and pus, the sharp antiseptic bite of alcohol (the medical sort, unfortunately, that went with wads of cotton and soiled rags) and ointment, the flat plasticky smell of freshly-unrolled bandages, feverish sweat. Those he associated with the visits of a hazily-deduced doctor on what he had concluded were probably the first two days, or at least the first two days he'd been conscious and free enough of agony to care. They'd been in a different motel then, but live in one, live in 'em all. There was the heavy chalky artificially-flowery smell of cheap motel detergent on the even cheaper motel sheets, which didn't entirely mask the slight mustiness of the mattress underneath. Pushing that "extra rinse" button would do you wonders, folks, or do you know how much you could reduce your annual expenditure just by not measuring your All-Temperature Crap with a wheelbarrow?
But these were all overlaid with the stench of blood. Swallowing down food (stop bringing it) was nearly out of the question.
At times it retreated a little, when he could smell other things, because somehow those things came with their own sort of quietness (accompanied by metal chiming, though usually at a distance). And that quietness let him clear his head, just a bit. Leather. Powder. Solvent. Gun oil.
But only at times.
There was no getting away from it. Maybe the floor was coated in it, although there were no telltale noises of tackiness when someone walked across it, unless it had soaked into the threadbare rug (how could anyone sleep on it?). Maybe the walls were splashed with it, like spraypaint, like obscene graffiti. It was the only way he could leave his mark on this country, now. Sands was here, once upon a time. In Mexico.
At least the doctor had stopped showing up. Which was both good and bad, because Sands had promised himself that on the next visit, the quack was getting blown away.
Maybe this was all fever-induced wish-induced delirium and he hadn't ever gotten off the streets. Maybe he was still lying in the palatial square, bullets still lodged in him, high noon sun blasting everything to unseen brilliance, still straining to hear the sound of a bicycle bell that would never come. Maybe he was at this moment staggering through some anonymous back alley, leaking himself out as he went. Exchanging dust for blood, more and less of one and the other with every passing throb of his veins; not a fair trade, but who said you ever scored a good bargain in this scalding untended catbox of a country—
"Stop," he was told, not impatiently, and not soothingly. "Breathe, now."
He stilled his hands from roaming the fraying (dry) sheets (when had he started?) but he could not persuade his lungs to expand.
Just as well, anyway. It was his choice to breathe or not breathe, fuck you very much.
Then his lungs abruptly decided to work again and he caught himself before it went too far, sucking in only a tiny gasp of air.
A metallic jingle, coming closer. "Again."
He didn't bother to shake his head. Just gave the other man the finger.
His chest was starting to burn. He gritted his teeth, wanting the heavy coppery bittersweetness hovering in his throat to just go away, but he had no air left with which to expel it, and he sure as hell didn't want to taste it going down.
Fingers touched his face, startling him into another breath. Reflexively, his stomach tried to recoil its way up through him and he thought about just letting it happen, for variety's sake—
Except.
Except that it wasn't quite as bad. The viscous odor of blood had been cut through by something thin and sharp and bracing, like a blade slicing a noose. It awoke dim recognition in the back of his mind, dim because it wasn't supposed to be here, and then he had it.
Lime.
Ah yes, lime and death, two great tastes that just didn't go better together.
The fingers left his cheek. Involuntarily, before he could think, he reached for them. Stopped himself just short of actually grabbing them. "Wait—"
They did not return, but they did not seem to withdraw any further; he could still feel their heat, a mere inch away. He let his hands drop back to the bed. He pulled in a second careful breath, very slowly, just in case his nose had decided now was a good time for some amusement.
There: lime again. (One more, and he'd hit jackpot.) The musky, unmistakable smell of tequila. Tortilla, cooked meat, tobacco. Smoke. Leather and warm skin.
He swallowed without difficulty, called up a smirk. "You mean you started the drinking without me?"
"I was bored," El said.
He drew another breath, letting his lungs fill completely this time.
Jackpot.