When he woke, he was holding Sands, curled in behind him, his arm stretched along his ribs and over his hip.
It wasn't surprising. This was what he'd been used to, what sleeping with someone had always meant. Not always love, but always liking and enjoyment, a desired closeness. He accepted it as an inevitable hangover from his old life. There would be more.
He thought about pulling back, about walking out of this room and leaving Sands to wake alone. It would be safer. But safe had no place in his life any more, and Sands' reaction would at least be interesting.
He lay, relaxed, his eyes closed, inhaling cigarettes and sex with every breath. Sands felt good against him, warmth and contact if nothing more. His body fed him the soft ache of bruises where Sands' fingers had gripped at his hips, at his arms. It was a low, throbbing stiffness, worth it for being touched and wanted.
He circled his jaw carefully, and winced. He could have done without that first punch, though.
He knew the moment Sands awoke, his body locking rigid beside him; and then his hand flashed out to his gun on the chair.
He couldn't stop the tension that jarred through him, but he didn't move for the shotgun. He lay entirely still, and so did Sands, his fingers white around the grip.
He had marks circling his wrist where El had held him.
"When you've decided whether or not you're not going to shoot me, let me know," El said. "If I'm going to live, I'll have to think about breakfast." Sands didn't cook. He said he'd never cooked when he could see, and certainly wouldn't now.
Sands took the hand from his gun and straightened his sunglasses. "Sorry, El." He didn't sound it at all. "You know, the last person who was in my bed went and had my eyes drilled out. I guess that kind of thing will leave a guy on the cautious side of crazy."
El remained still. He'd wondered about Sands and Ajedrez, if Sands had made that error; about how someone like him had been trapped by Barillo's daughter.
He had no place to judge him on that mistake - he himself had only been stupid enough to sleep with drug dealers' girlfriends. He supposed some would say he had escaped lightly, with no more than the loss of them and some bullet scars to punish him.
Sands coiled his body into himself before he even moved. El could feel his skin crawl away from his touch moments before Sands slid away to the far edge of the bed.
It was the obvious reaction, and had in truth perhaps taken longer than he had expected, but the abrupt withdrawal still left him missing the touch.
It wasn't what he used to have, but it was more than the nothing.
Sands sat upright and ran a hand down his stomach with an expression of distaste. "Christ, that's messy. Now I remember why I hardly ever fuck guys."
El felt like telling him to get used to it, but that would definitely put him far outside the bounds of luck. Mostly, he was glad that one of them knew something practical of sex between men, though he'd assumed as much when Sands made the suggestion. "So take a shower," he said, his disinterest in Sands' complaint clear. "It washes off."
It clung to him more than the blood did. The blood washed away so easily for what it was.
"If that's your idea of morning after charm, El, it's no wonder you weren't getting laid."
"I'm letting you use the shower first," he said. "And the women never threatened to shoot me in the morning."
Sands half-turned his head over his shoulder, barest twitch of his lips at the corner. "Then you must have picked a better class of woman, because I can't always say the same for mine."
There was a line along his cheekbone, a curving mark where the sunglasses had lain crooked. He doubted Sands normally slept in them.
They were annoying anyway. They would have to go.
Sands would refuse, of course, but that could be worked around. Maybe, a cloth... like a blindfold. Dark, like his hair, dramatic, like him.
Sands had a deep sense for the dramatic, a conscious flair to almost everything he did, but he suspected he might take some persuading to apply that to his sexual involvement with El.
He knew what they did physically would progress; it had smashed through them both with too much starved intensity not to, and he wasn't wired to ever take percentages. He either did something or he didn't, and in wanting Sands now, he wanted him.
Sands had lines of wound steel, curled and ridged into strength beneath the touch, but that would only slow, not stop it.
The bed shifted beneath him as Sands left it, walking over to the cupboard to take one of the towels from the second shelf. El had noted the disappearance of some of his linens over the months and said nothing, recognising Sands' need to claim some simple things as his own, instead of everything being El's.
It was more annoying that Sands had taken the best ones.
He came back towards the bed, lifting the holsters from the top of the neat pile on the chair before making for the door, and El watched him through every precise and deliberate step.
He'd been living with this man for close to six months, and until today he'd seen no more than his hands, the skin that clung along the angle of his jaw and the curve of his throat. And now he walked naked and casual, pale where his clothes kept the sun from him, and distinctively bullet-scarred, uncaring of anything except the presence of the plastic shield curled around his face.
He really shouldn't walk through to the bathroom that way, because the windows on that side of the house were overlooked. He suspected Sands had worked that out just fine for himself, and was only doing it to see if it would get some kind of reaction from him.
Given the things his neighbours already knew about him, the things they had watched him do, they could probably live with knowing that he and Sands wouldn't always feel the need to be clothed around one another.
It wouldn't matter after today anyway.
Sands stopped by the door, one arm up supporting him against the frame, in full view of El and of anyone in the street who cared to look.
El saw the faint lines of bruising on his throat, fading into the shadow of his hair, remembered Sands stretching into the graze of his teeth. It made him want to touch again, follow him to the shower and run hands and mouth over his skin.
That would be one of those lines, and he wouldn't push those yet.
Sands didn't move. He stood naked in the doorway, head tilted towards El's silence, towel slung over his shoulder and gunbelts spilling heavy from his fingers.
"So, we're going."
It hadn't really been hope, because he had known better, but whatever it had been was gone now.
"Yes. We're going."