V.
The next time he awoke, he figured it had to be some hours later. His fever felt like it had finally broken. The air was chilly enough now to be the dead of night, and there were absolutely no sounds of traffic or pedestrians from the street below.
El had been right; the bed really wasn't big enough for two. But damned if Sands was going to admit it. They were wedged against each other; he was perilously close to his edge of the mattress, and to judge from El's muttered comments before he'd fallen asleep, it was the same on the other end. Sands' handgun had made the move with its owner, and now reposed beneath his side of the pillow.
El, he was willing to bet a nonexistent year's salary on, had his own firearm tucked under the other half. Hell, if they kept this up, they should get them monogrammed.
Sands slept on his back as always, because otherwise the temptation to bury his face in the bedding (result: lots and lots of pain, not recommended) was too strong. Consequently, El was sleeping on his side, pressed tightly against him. El's chest rose and fell, evenly now in slumber, against Sands' right arm; in perfect synchronicity, his breath whisked lightly over Sands' ear.
Sands tapped his fingers thoughtfully where they rested on El's arm, which in turn was wrapped around Sands' waist. He couldn't sleep, so he was thinking: what the hell would the cartels think if they burst in on them like this in the morning?
Maybe they'd be shocked; he could just hear the stunned silence, the bewildered cellphone calls to their superiors. ("I know you said the room at the end of the second floor, Boss, but…uh…") Maybe they'd just laugh themselves sick. Maybe they'd take lots of pictures.
He rubbed the fabric of El's sleeve between his fingers. They could use black-and-white film, he mused. He'd insisted on staying in black himself (and if letting El find new clothes for him hadn't been the highest expression of trust in humanity, he didn't know what was), and El, as everyone knew, was forever in white and black. El didn't have on his jacket right now, so between the both of them they'd make big, monochromatic blocks.
Only, that wasn't really fair. El's eyes, if he remembered them correctly from his first and only five minutes of staring into them, were a deep, rich brown. Coffee and molasses. They were mesmerizingly dark, but they couldn't be represented by plain black, not by a long shot. And his skin…the pasty gringo was one thing, but the mariachi's skin was sun-bronzed, almost golden next to the crisp blank canvas of his shirt. You couldn't capture that on crappy film.
And then those lips. A very pale shade of dusky rose, and pardon him if he sounded too much like a fucking interior decorator for saying so. He had a sudden overwhelming urge to find out if the kisses tonight had reddened them any, and stopped himself just before he could turn.
Oh, yes…the son of Mexico had really done him in.
And then, and then…he'd probably left a row of tiny bruises there. Would they show up in the morning (would anyone looking at him notice), a small violet curve under El's lower lip?
He'd caught the rumors one day, from outside the window, two old women chatting eagerly about the coup. El Mariachi, they'd said (voices hushed in reverence on the name), had been seen in the streets surrounding the palace, prowling his terrain like a lion, draped in the colors of Mexico.
It was a laughably grandiose image (he'd have to find out if there was any truth to it—then again, he was talking about a man who annihilated bars left and right) but if they were correct, why, he'd have to add a host of new paint samples to El's palette. Emerald and scarlet, copper and sky-blue and yellow. Navy and gold, too, if those murmurs about El Presidente's jacket were anything to go by.
And the guitar, of course. The one El had idly strummed in the cantina the day they'd met had been a light sandy-ash, simple and unvarnished, like a child's awkward rendition. That was not the guitar El was carrying now. Another mystery Sands intended to solve.
There were, come to think of it, a wagonload of things he didn't know about the man next to him.
He pulled his fingers away from El's sleeve. He let El's arm remain where it was, but reached his own hand under the pillow until it settled on cold metal. It meant he'd have to sleep with his left elbow extended beyond the mattress, but that was a minor inconvenience. El's left arm was trapped between their bodies, his right arm around Sands, neither hand near a gun. Advantage: Sands.
He hoped, anyway, because the man was fast as a snake, and twice as deadly. One could never be too careful, especially with a man like El Mariachi.
He wondered what El would do if he found out.
They had to be up at first light. Rosy fingers of dawn, amber rays of new sun, and all those other overused clichés. It occurred to him that he could picture those colors now, but that one day, inevitably, he'd forget even how to imagine them. They'd leak right out of his mind, seep inexorably between his clenched hands, lost to the barren Mexico soil along with everything else. Bronze and rose and molasses-brown. And there might be nothing there to remind him.
He'd just have to see where tomorrow took them.
—fin—
Author's Notes: As I mentioned, this was an experiment in themes, and I hope it came off well enough. The story follows a very specific structure, the biggest aspect of which led to the title and the fact that there are five parts.
Thanks for the lovely feedback. I manage about one story a year, so this is a real encouragement.