The cab driver asked him if he was sure about the address when he gave it, which wasn't scoring as the most auspicious of signs to start.
The planes tracked them on the drive, parallel courses on approach, louder with altitude drop as the highway headed north from Saltillo itself towards Ramos Arizpe, closer to the airport. Drivers didn't often try to screw him, but it was always smart to be paying attention.
The jets whined high, close in and engines revved up for climbing, but the planes were losing out badly to the people once they got into the centre of town. Voices chattering, yelling, music from guitars and cheap trumpets and blaring out of radios, shoes on concrete all round as the cab slowed and slowed to crawl on through the streets with the other traffic.
He told the driver to stop right by the entrance, so he'd know exactly where it was.
The noise was too obvious inside the cab, but when he opened the door, it hit him like a goddamn wall. What the fuck was this, carnival day? He was a month late for Independence and it sure as hell wasn't the Day of the Fucking Dead, but the goddamn country had so many local excuses for over-indulging in the margaritas in every single piss-basin village, it was impossible to keep track of them.
This street at least wasn't quite so busy, off the main traffic route, some flow of people round the open door but not heavy enough to be choked and stuttered by the obstruction. He stepped out into the protected lee it cast over the sidewalk, sweeping his cane out wide and obvious before he shut it behind him and let the cab rattle off. Most people who saw the stick could at least be relied on to keep the fuck out of his way.
A few steps forward, and he found a building and a doorway where they were supposed to be. He'd just have to believe it was the right building. He tapped out the width of the doorway, the height of the step, the shape of wood and stone and the cracks in the sidewalk nearby, so he'd know it again.
Time for a quick scope around before he went in - he wasn't going down any kind of hole without knowing where the outs were first.
Easier to move with the stream of people, so he slowed his normal steps to match with the feet ahead of him, tracking the edge of the building with the cane. The street was a clinging mire of smells, worse than the usual - all kinds of food from spiced through candy, perfume, sweat, cheap smoke. He could probably give a half-decent description of the last six people who passed him, and none of them would be flattering.
Going with the flow was leading him in the direction of the worst of the noise, predictably, and when the wall dropped away from his cane, everything beyond went with it. Space opening up all round within a couple of steps, space that was nothing but people, pulsing, disorganised, random and constant change. He stopped dead, twisting to swear at whoever the fuck walked into the back of him, some bitch in heels and cheap scent, probably stitched into a dress ten years too young for her. She cursed him right back in fast, vicious Spanish with a creativity he might have admired if he hadn't been a little occupied, before she tripped and teetered off past him over uneven stone.
So many hundreds of feet and voices, all echoing off distant concrete from every angle, and he couldn't pick out a goddamn thing more than ten feet away.
This place was the fucking pits. And didn't that just figure?
He backed up, finding the wall again where it headed off at ninety degrees, anchoring himself to it.
Stalls set up all through that open space, vivid-clashing food and cooking stench, sellers pitching trash merchandise, individual voices close up yelled loud to be heard over everyone else doing the same. Feet flowing and twisting between them, everywhere, strangled tight where streams met in slo-mo whirlpools, and Christ, if he got sucked into that, his directions would be completely fucked in under a minute. No solar assistance in that department either, still tight enough to the tail of the rainy season to be hanging overcast.
He'd never much liked the mass of humanity, and he liked them a lot less now.
He considered leaving this till later, but he'd a suspicion if he did that, there wouldn't be anyone here.
At least if he found himself needing to lose somebody in a hurry, he knew exactly the place to do it. And yeah, he'd lose himself too, but that could always be fixed at some more convenient and less bullet-filled later.
He echoed the buildings as he walked, tracing walls a foot out to allow for window ledges and doorsteps, circling fast with sweeping stick, the oncoming feet skirting automatically round him. Found himself in the corner of the plaza and being steered further from where he wanted to be, so he retraced to that first side street. Moving entirely against the people now, narrow sidewalk and choking, slow-moving traffic fumes, and most of that was everybody else's problem because he was swishing along the wall, and let the other fucks figure out how to get around him.
He hooked himself back up to that distinctive doorway of his, found the handle and let himself in. A couple of minutes too long with the hygienically-challenged mental deficient out front had him directions to the room he wanted, and he headed on up the predictable one flight of stairs.
The stairwell didn't smell too good, something very stale and not too well disguised, and he decided against trying to name it. Concrete echoing round him and uneven underfoot, cracking and crumbling at the edges with long wear. He was glad he wasn't going right up top, however far that was.
He brushed fingers along the wall, marking the doors he passed, and he hoped the retard downstairs had got that part right because he'd probably been counting with his fingers too. He wouldn't want to go tapping his way down the hallway, preferring to stick to a low warning approach for now.
He was getting quite the slice of life as he strolled on towards the end of the corridor, conversations drifting clear and inane through half the doors, people fucking behind a couple of them, and some brat screaming shrill from past the other side of the stairs. His fingers found a patch of stickiness on the wall, stretching after him tacky when his hand moved on, and he didn't want to think about the possibilities for that. So many practical reasons for choosing a good pair of gloves.
Eight doors later, and this should in theory be the one. He listened a minute, and didn't hear a thing as expected, so he flicked his cane up to knock.
The door only opened a crack, air swished, and a barrel smacked itself cold and nothing like gently against his temple before the hinges even finished grating through his ear.
Always nice to know his information was still good.
El breathed light and steady and the barrel didn't move.
"You don't seem all that surprised to see me," Sands commented mildly.
"I heard you were looking." Flat, nothing in El's tone to give him a clue, and that all by itself told a lot more than the Mariachi wanted it to.
"And you didn't bother to drop by and say 'Hi'? I'm offended, El."
Silence - one second, two, then something darker in El's words. "I hadn't decided if I wanted to be found."
"Well, now that's not an issue any more, how about we get inside before the other nice people in this hooker-stop get interested?"
The gun disappeared at last, not that it bothered him either way. El had such a thing for the big, dramatic gestures - he'd almost missed it, playing poker with the stick-asses in Caracas. The door-frame shrieked again - didn't anyone believe in oil in this dive? - and he swung his cane up under his arm and followed El the whole two steps he backed into the room before the door was kicked shut behind him.
The room stank, or maybe it was just El. Gunpowder, smoke, sweat, solvent and blood in the order they crawled up his nose and waved, that last one a bit downplayed, so if it was El's, it wasn't much. Christ, had he smelled like that when he was shooting back-up to Zorro? Probably, only with added Chanel Number Fuck-Juice for that perfect, lace-edged detail.
Oh, well. It hadn't bothered him then, no reason it should bother him now.
"Why are you here?"
El wasn't sounding any friendlier. He always had to make such a big production out of everything, never could just chill and run with whatever happened along. Sands tipped his head the smallest fraction and smiled wide. "Would you believe I just happened to be in the neighbourhood?"
"No."
No hint of returned humour - Christ, he'd figured this was gonna take a fair bit of effort, and sometimes it was a complete pain in the ass how he always turned out to be right. "I guess it seems the tiniest bit unlikely - this isn't really my kind of neighbourhood."
El huffed vague amusement at that, but not the promising kind. "Nobody's stopping you from leaving."
"Well, I figure since I'm already here, I may as well soak up the local flavour for an hour or two."
Glass exploded off to the right, ringing high in a sharp automatic jigger-blast, and Sands was on the floor with silenced semi and auto, distinctive gun-draw rattle from the Mariachi with the thud as he slammed himself up against a wall.
Window over there, stay down. Got it.
"You let them follow you here?"
Oh, El was pissed, his daily special of self-righteous scorn ladled out in front of Sands at full volume over the gunfire, and that gave him something close to a mouthful and a half of cardamoms to chew on.
"Fucking Christ, El, I'm blind! There could have been twenty of the fuckers in chorus girl outfits with signs for all I know!"
El bounced and jingled off closer to that window. "I think there were, only without the dresses." More breaking glass and an explosive boom, and of course El had to use the goddamn shotgun that practically deafened him.
He crawled on his elbows back towards the door, pistols up. Scrape and pressure of barrel on wood. "So next time you hear I'm looking for you, either show yourself or hole up down a nice quiet back street, not right off the fucking market square." Hinged on the left, so handle on the right, and El muttered something he lost in the gunfire behind him as he found it and hauled open the door.
He stuck the M11 out and fired an auto arc knee height across the corridor in each direction - no way he was gonna get screwed by the same shitty trick twice. A shriek, and a door slammed further along on the same side. The next stupid gawking fucks would get their heads taken off.
He slithered on forward, both guns shoved round the doorframe and nobody fired back, but there was what sounded like a goddamn herd on the way up the stairs. And fuck it all to Christ, but he didn't have enough ammo on him for this shit. "Where's the case?"
"Under the bed," El called back over the reload of shotgun shells.
Yeah, and a real fucking useful that answer was. "Send it over this way." The first of those feet reached the hallway, lighter as the sound came direct without echoing up the stairwell, and he weaved another burst of automatic fire towards them - nicely satisfying flesh-splatter and rattle-thump.
El had emptied the shotgun again and moved on to pistols. "I'm busy."
More coming Sands' way, and he took one down, but the other bastard dodged back into the stairwell before he got to him. "Well, fuck, so'm I!"
El's pattern of fire and reload was constant, repetitive behind him, and the on-off whistle-thud of automatic bullets through the room into bed and walls slowed, then stopped. Sands was getting seriously pissed with the goons on the stairs playing chicken with him - they took a quick step or two out, jumping back to cover the second he opened up. He was keeping them pinned, but he was blatting through his ammo way too fucking fast, and he needed to be killing the bugfuckers.
He let the next bird out of the bush get closer; six steps towards him before he unleashed the automatic, and that one wasn't making it back, shout high and sharp cut off as he raked the fire up.
Baked in a pie.
But he'd already chewed through one thirty-mag and was well into the second, and then he'd be down to the handgun. "Gonna need that case real soon," he warned during a lull in the gunfire.
El emptied the shotgun out the window again, second round tight after the first. Swivelled back against the wall with a scrape of boots and low metallic whisper. "Get in and close the door."
No fucking way!
Sands slammed that reaction back before it got out, but its fingers were still wedged tight in his vocal chords and wriggling.
They were on the second floor, like most times - El's rooms always were when he had a choice, so nobody was likely to try coming in the window, but he could get out that way easy enough if he had to.
It was the kind of El logic Sands had lived with because it was less hassle to ignore, and no problem when the circumstances never came up. Only now they had, and he'd never actually gotten around to explaining the part about how blind guys didn't jump out of fucking windows.
But he had to be close to empty, and if El thought the window was the best way out, then it was.
"Fuck it," he muttered, and angled the last of the M11 clip towards the stairs. He curled back in past the door, slamming it shut with the back of his hand, hearing the lock catch automatically. He stashed the empty auto away and stayed low as he crawled over towards El. Found the corner of the bed with his shoulder along the way and swept his hand under it, dragging out the guitar case. Nice to know El had kept the habit of everything tidied away.
He flipped it open and helped himself to one of El's pistols, checking the clip and thumbing off the safety.
"I think I've got them all," El said over the sounds of latches and creaking frame, sudden inrush of air and traffic fume stink entirely different from the gunfire. "Ready?"
Up and flat against the wall by the window, opposite side from El. "Yeah."
Movement fast as El brushed past and out, and Sands swung around, guns out the window as El dropped, but nobody was firing. Barely a second till El hit the deck and rolled, and Sands holstered a pistol and slammed the guitar case shut, dropping it down, hearing the easy slap as El caught it.
"Come on!"
Jump. Right.
He climbed up onto the window ledge, and fuck, gunfire blasting and splintering loud through the door, and it didn't have an angle on him but that cheap piece of laminate shit wasn't gonna hold up for ten seconds.
He shoved El's gun in his pocket, hooked his fingers onto the ledge and slithered over the edge.
And while he knew where the ground was, knew because he'd heard El land and call up to him, some part of his brain that was stuck at the evolutionary level of a small lizard was shrieking alarms through every muscle he had at the idea of just letting go and dropping into Something Unknown.
Sands was really learning to hate his lizard brain. He'd told it to go fuck itself when it was screaming he had to stay with El, and it could definitely go fuck itself when it wanted to stay clinging here and get shot.
He let go.
He unlocked his knees, relaxed for the impact, but it was kind of tricky to be ready for the re-brace without knowing just when it was coming. He staggered on the landing, his feet dragging him out away from the wall of the hotel - no traffic noise this side, at least he wasn't about to get hit by a truck.
"Move!" El's hand was on his arm as he re-balanced, then firing up over his head at the window before El was off along the - close, heavy echoes, narrow - alley. Sands had his guns back out as he chased after El, ready to go the second any shots came after them, but so far nothing. Thud, thud, thud, too closed in, tight distorting echoes, and he fucking hated this shit; so much harder to follow El at speed, couldn't put his feet in exactly the right places, expecting every step to trip on uneven path or loose stone, and having to ignore all that and just keep going.
El took a left from the alley - wider road, no echoes, traffic - and Sands followed him straight across the road through the tyre squeals and horns, through the shrieks and gasps of people scrabbling to get the hell out of their way.
"Right a metre," El told him, and he swerved and stuck his hand out left as El veered the other way, swearing when his fingers smacked into the car's metal. He knew the kerb was likely to be there and still stumbled at it, shoved one of the guns in his pocket as he followed the bodywork to the handle to let himself in.
El threw the case in the back and started the engine, the sound of it wrong, off, and Sands banged his knuckles on plastic as he reached out to the glove compartment. "Fuck!"
"Different car," El said mildly. "They knew the old one."
Shitting Virgin Mary, everything had to go and change on him. "Got too close, did they?" He had the glove compartment open, groping through it for ammo. Nothing rigged for the M11, of course, useless goddamn Mariachi, but he found a couple of clips for his semi and stuck them in his belt.
Now he couldn't find the fucking window winder. Didn't even know if he was feeling for a button or a handle in these ancient Detroit boat-wrecks El drove.
"How the hell do I get this window open?"
"Three centimetres down and ten back. Don't stick that thing outside, not here."
He did the math, wishing again he'd been able to train El to talk in feet and inches, and found the tip of a handle. That figured. "We got friends?"
"I don't think so."
His tails would have had to park up after they followed the taxi, and now they'd have to get back to the cars before they could come after them. They might just lose them from the start.
He had the window open, fumes and dust flowing faster by him as they picked up speed, El taking the turns that gave them a clearer run with some last second lane switches and horns blaring around them. He turned towards El and smiled. "Just let me know if they show up."
El didn't seem too willing to share in his good humour. "Where are your things?"
"At my hotel, where else? The Quinta Real, Boulevard Sarmiento."
"You should have brought them."
Standard procedure with the Mariachi lifestyle - never leave anything important where you might not get chance to go back for it. El had apparently forgotten he'd opted out of those living arrangements. "Show up on your doorstep with all my worldly goods in tow? I came to chat, not to move in. I don't think anyone would be offering to move into that dive."
"And what did you come to say?"
He let his smile slide crooked and flashed his eyebrows high. "Well, as it happens I was planning on telling you there are people interested in me, but I guess you know that part already."
Soft rustle as El shifted, and he could feel his eyes on him. "People other than cartel?"
The pause had been too long, and El sounded... curious, and - "They were cartel?"
"Yes."
"You're sure?"
"I've seen a couple of them around before."
That didn't make sense. They had to have followed him, the timing too tight, but why the fuck would cartel do that? He'd been missing from the picture for months, they knew El had been alone - they should've shot him, not tailed him.
"We stop by your hotel for your things and then we leave."
So El wasn't planning on kicking him right back out the door again, which hadn't been such a given twenty minutes ago. He guessed he was moving in, under the circumstances, at least for now. "You stay with the car. You're not coming in my hotel if you look anything like you smell." Not that he'd be looking much better himself after crawling all over the floor in that shithole of El's, but at least people would read him as the blind incompetent, not the town psycho.
El's fingers tapped fast on the wheel. "If they followed you, they might be waiting there too."
"Well, if they are, I'll shoot the fuckers." And he was just the right amount of pissed off with today to really have fun with it. "There won't be many, they'll have sent just about everyone in the neighbourhood after you."
"Only if they knew I was there. Not if it was just about following you."
That was true, so far as it went. If any of this had been making any kind of fucking sense at all, he could have taken a good guess at which it was, but none of it was hanging together.
"Drop me at the entrance, then keep circling the block till I come back out."
"I think I'll wait out front."
"Looking not the least bit suspicious in a beat up old wreck with the engine running. If anyone's there, they'll be trying to keep it down. Cartel don't hold running shoot-outs through the hallways of hotels full of foreign businessmen, it's bad for their image."
"What's your room number?" El's voice came to him direct now, head turned his way.
"Two-twelve. You'd like it."
El wasn't taking him up on that comment. "I'll circle for ten minutes, then wait where I drop you. More than twenty, and I come in."
More than twenty and no question he'd be leaking blood lakes all over the fine ceramic floor of his hotel room. But he'd prefer El to double check on that before he got the hell out. "Fine. Just don't blame me if you have to shoot the doorman to get in."
It was another ten minutes of weaving turns with no sign of a tail before El announced, "We're here." Ten minutes Sands spent finding his way among the more obvious and important things on his side of the car, like the door handle and locks, between giving El directions. And the radio controls, because while El had ignored it for this short trip, he'd start listening to some bad shit later when they got out on the highways.
Sands tucked the gun away back inside his jacket while the car still had some speed - this would be a lousy time to ruin his rapport with the doorman. El pulled round the arcing driveway into a smooth stop.
"Door?"
"Right here, ninety degrees. Three paces to the step."
His fingers went to the handle, and his boot found the sidewalk, stepping out easily enough and pushing the door closed too hard behind him. Something rattled in the slam, and he hoped El's latest heap of bolts wasn't so fragile in the important parts.
The engine revved up behind with an unhealthy stink of burning oil, and El pulled away.
He didn't have his cane - that was somewhere back in El's room, when having two hands free to shoot and hang from window ledges had felt more important - but he'd been here a few days now, and he could find his way from the lobby to his room just fine without it.
Provided no inconsiderate fucker had left their luggage sprawled everywhere while they checked in.
He took the first couple of strides forward, aiming a smile slightly over to his left. "Hi."
"Welcome back, sir." The words and the faint swish of the door opening set the world into place around him, and he walked in confident and unhesitating, the step right where it should be beneath his boot. "Would you like any assistance, sir?"
The guy was wondering about his clothes and the missing cane - not completely unobservant, apparently. Sands smiled slow and let it widen - maybe he'd tell him the truth about it on the way out. He wondered if there was any chance a brainfart who held doors open for a living was smart enough to take him seriously. "No, I'm fine."
Left thirty degrees, heading for the stairwell.
He didn't do elevators. They were fine when they were empty, but too often it was too many people all squashed up close, no way to know who was staring (and somebody always was, he could feel it) and what they were planning, and no room to ever get to his guns fast enough.
He crossed the lobby slower than usual, same length of stride but keeping his weight over the back foot while he felt forwards a little cautiously. The lobby was quiet this time of day, and he didn't find anything to fall over before he reached the fire door, which was good, because that would really have stripped the varnish from his little performance out front.
The stairwell sounded out footsteps like gunshots, and nobody was moving around higher up. And sure as hell nobody with plans to stay discreet would be starting a gunfight in here, even with silencers. He jogged on up the first flight, stairs always easy once he found the first one, same rise and depth of tread all the way.
He was more cautious about the doorway, still not seriously expecting trouble at this stage, but the chances were warming up if not quite starting to bubble. He listened close against the panels before he moved out onto the second floor, holding the door so it closed with only the softest click.
A lower floor made sense for a guy who didn't use elevators, but it was useful sometimes when his own preferences just slid right in with El's obsessive habits.
He took it slow along the hallway, quiet on every step, left hand trailing light along the wall and counting the doorways. He had his pistol free of the holster, but still tucked beneath his jacket till he was close up by his door. And Jesus Fucking Christ, twice in a day with the deliberate stalking of hotel rooms, and wasn't it just that obvious he was back in Mexico?
He stood tight to the wall alongside the doorframe for over a minute, counting, breathing slow, and heard nothing.
No big surprise. If anyone was here, they knew he was blind, and they'd be keeping real quiet.
He could wish the doors here were thinner. Or else thick enough to stop a bullet instead of some useless place between.
He reached round the frame to push his keycard in the slot - the goddamn thing had better work first fucking time or he was screwed way in past the head - pulled it out and let it fall to the floor, slamming the door back wide with his hip as he drew his other gun, stepping in crouched with both semis angled forward and out.
Silence over the poolside murmur, and eventually a door opening back along the corridor, someone wondering about the bang.
They'd better not come for a closer look or he'd just have to shoot them.
He edged on up to the bathroom, swinging a gun round to cover it - unlikely anyone would be in there, too much tile and echo, too hard to keep it down - waited again for the sounds that weren't there.
On past the bathroom to where the room opened out wide, expecting the shock impact in his chest with every single fucking step.
Christ, some slick show-off bastard could just walk straight up across the rug and slice his throat open with the right shoes and training, and he wouldn't know about it till the blood emptied out hot all down his front.
Carpet under both his feet and still nothing.
He stood in the middle of the room, head angled, unmoving for minutes. Not easy to convince himself nobody was there waiting him out when there should be, had to be.
And there wasn't.
He slid one gun away, went back to the door and toed around till he found his keycard, pocketing it. His bag was still in the bottom of the closet exactly where it belonged, and he ran a quick check through its more important contents and then over the rest of the room.
There was no hint anyone unfavourable had been in here, everything right where he'd left it, the only trace of stray smell that cheap perfume the maid wore. She made the bed up every day, but he was unconvinced she put much emphasis on the dusting while the guest wasn't going to be complaining about appearances - the ashtray, the lamp, the phone, they never moved so much as an inch from the lines he'd set them in, and they hadn't now either.
He didn't like this. He didn't like it one fucking bit. It felt way too much like he was being played.
But whether he was or he wasn't, there was jack shit he could do about it right now. They had to get clear of Saltillo and the goddamn coke goons before they could work on anything else.
He grabbed his bag - packed and ready to go, because he might be slacking a bit on El's level of precautions, but he wasn't ever going to get too casual - and strapped on another set of his holsters, then took the stairs back down to the desk to check out. Wouldn't do to give his new ID a record for unpaid hotel bills, even if it was already leaking at the edges and due another overhaul.
His day's luck was sticking right where it'd started, and some dicktard at the desk was bitching about his room and the quality of the amenities. The goddamn linen closet in this chain had to be better than some of the places El had introduced him to, and it was getting seriously tempting to make that statement at gunpoint to the brainfuck in question.
Christ, this whole scenario was really pissing him off. He could use a handy excuse to shoot another fuckwad this afternoon.
He wondered how he was running on El's twenty minutes - it had to be getting tight by now. Hopefully he'd notice him standing right there in the lobby before he made any unsubtle decisions on barging in.
Or maybe he'd make just the entrance to get this American donkey-sucker out of his and everyone else's fucking face. The Mariachi could be attention-grabbing enough anywhere, just by being El on a mission; he'd certainly catch everyone's interest if he came clinking into this place with his spur and his scorpions. And while anyone getting too close to Sands right now would find themselves wondering what the hell kind of weird cook-out he'd been to, one whiff of El and they wouldn't be thinking anything but gunsmoke.
There were notable pros and cons either way.
The desk clerk finally called out some luckless under-manager to deal with the whining fuckwit, and Sands checked out routinely enough. No time to have fun baiting the doorman after all that - coming here had given his tails plenty of chances to find them again.
If they even wanted to.
That different car note was right there pulled up out front. He'd only felt the one door when he traced along the body to get in the first time, and that door clicked open as he headed over to it. He ran his hand down the edge of the seat to find the tilt lever, and dropped his bag through into the back.
El waited till after the door was closed and they were pulling away to ask. "Anything?"
"No."
El didn't need to be told just how fucked that was.
Click of lighter, then a second time, and El passed him a cigarette, sudden harsh stink of burning and smoke as El breathed out, touching the filter to his hand. Sands took it and dragged hard on it, smoke rough in his throat and half-bitter with something he figured was gonna leave a lousy aftertaste. He breathed it out fast from between his lips, saving himself the double insult of inflicting the whatever-the-fuck on his nose. "Your latest brand tastes like camel shit, El."
Whisper of cloth and hair in El's quick shrug. "They're not so bad."
"They're some local dung-grown no-name pipe tobacco reject, and cheaper than a Tijuana hooker."
El didn't bother denying it.
It wasn't so much of a surprise El had fallen right back into the no-income peasant village habits - the guy set like Quickcrete and just as rigid.
Sands opened his window an inch, letting the airflow suck the smoke out. He'd stick with the stink of gunpowder saran-wrapped all round him for preference. El took a couple of lazy turns from the hotel and stopped at an intersection, cars rolling across slow in front.
"Where have you been hiding, anyway?" El was watching him again, cautious, full-on voice with no reflections, the deliberate studying of him and his answers.
He could stare all he wanted as far as Sands was concerned, he'd no plans right now to lie. "I took your advice and got out of Mexico."
"And they followed you."
Sands shook his head. "If they followed the paper trail, it was too slow. If they didn't, it was too fast." He took another pull on his smoke, and it still tasted foul. "I'm left with the unfortunate conclusion it's someone who knows me."
"The CIA." El spat the letters out black, deliberate emphasis on the English pronunciation. Apparently his willingness to fuck Sands on a regular basis didn't mean he'd forgiven that little thing with the President.
"Not necessarily." Sands cracked open the door and flicked the cigarette into the street half-smoked. "I've some thoughts of my own on that one."
He figured the pause before El spoke again was about more than just the lights changing and the engine rev. "So where do we go to check on your thoughts?"
"Lázaro Cárdenas."
"Your 'old friends'?" Who were now shipped into the same El category as the CIA. Interesting.
Sands angled his head El's way and smiled. "I seem to recall mentioning they might be trouble, El." He reeled the smile back, muscles tightening down around it. "But if it was them, they're just the middle men, and what we really need to know is who's paying them."
El's words dried right out, mud cracking in the Chihuahua and just as life-sucking vicious. "So we should go and ask them nicely."
Sands curled his lips up tight at the corners. "Oh, I think we should ask them any way that works."
And with anyone else, that would have been the end of it right there - agreement reached, no more hassles. But shit, no, he was sharing this car trip with El Morality, and apparently Sands was still floating oily on top of the list of suspects for interrogation. "So what have you been doing while you've been outside Mexico?"
"Oh, just the usual nosing around where not everyone might want me." Quick flicker-smile of amusement, knowing El was watching for it. "Don't worry, El, I didn't kill too many people, not who didn't have it coming anyway. That bitch on the ferry doesn't really count. When a guy's throwing up in the privacy of his own cabin, anyone banging on the door and telling him to keep the noise down deserves what they get." She'd given this interesting little gurgle when he'd opened the door, like she couldn't quite shriek. Puke round his mouth, shades off so they didn't drop in the piss-pot, he'd have looked a bit different from the Latino drunk she'd likely been expecting. Silence in the corridor behind her, and she'd stopped gurgling quick enough when he'd slapped a hand over her mouth and snapped her neck.
A couple of days in port before they sailed on to Caracas had given his gut a much-appreciated break, and it had been amusing watching the police trying to figure out who'd murdered the woman in her own cabin. As it happened, her husband had been elsewhere on board when Sands had returned the body, so most of the questioning automatically fell on him. The blind gringo in the next cabin was no murder suspect, and no use as a witness either, since he spoke lousy Spanish and didn't understand anything he might have overheard.
El didn't say a word. No moral lecture, no dark comments, and Sands wondered just how much leeway he had with the Mariachi these days.
It might be fun to test that out once they weren't quite so otherwise occupied. Though he'd plenty to amuse himself poking around with just for now.
He stretched himself out across his seat a little more and crossed his ankles in the footwell, settling in for the ride. "Well, it's nice to know you went on fighting the good fight in my absence. I'd half-wondered if you might have found a convenient hole to hide yourself down again."
"I can't do anything else." Every syllable clipped back as short as the accented vowels allowed. "You showed me that."
"You're sounding a little bitter there, El. You're not still blaming me for every reason your life stinks, I hope?" Christ, the self-pity gig from El got so fucking old. He really didn't have so much to bitch about, not while he still had all the body parts he was born with.
Literally all of them. It had felt interesting, the way the skin slid so freely over El's cock in his hand, and he suspected it felt interesting for El too.
"I have better places to lay that blame," El said finally, slower with the thick red Mariachi thought-stamp bright all over it.
"But blaming the dead's not too satisfying, is it?" Sands half-dipped his chin, as if to peer at El sideways. He'd discovered some amusing reactions to that; the effect seemed to be disconcerting. "Revenge done, and your life still sucks a lake's supply of leeches - it's easier to keep moving your target on up the line." He smiled, small and crooked. "Maybe you'll get to God, eventually."
"No, I did that long ago." El's answer was immediate, voice strung high across rueful and amused, swaying the rope-bridge between.
Sands felt the smile tugging, and jerked his head briefly in El's direction. "That didn't work out so well for you either, huh? Pity, it was probably the best place to aim. You know, any God you pray to, El, has to have one fucked up sense of humour."
El didn't answer that. He never had responded to any of Sands' cracks on religion, giving him either a matter-of-fact answer or just ignoring him. Hell, even if El still believed, really believed it, he had to figure he'd mislaid his free pass to God a while back now. It would take the most forgiving Jesus variant on offer to want El Mariachi socialising with his holy virgin mom at any of heaven's alco-lite cocktail parties.
He seemed to have successfully kicked El out of the twenty questions phase anyway, which improved prospects for the rest of the trip immensely.
Except, as they drove out on to the highways, El seemed to have been kicked out of everything.
The car rumbled steady in a way that said 'cruise control on', catching no other traffic, the odd one catching them, probably right on the speed limit. El's movements were smooth, casual, as much as he needed to control the car and a little more, and for anyone else, it would have been normal. For El, it was missing all of the restless time-filling habits, the still tension or the grated humour, driver running on auto-pilot as much as the car.
He didn't even bother with music, leaving the afternoon all about the rolling tyres and constant wind and El's tiny, frequent movements, too quick-soft for Sands to pick up specifics. Sands would have guessed the radio was broken, if it hadn't worked fine when he fiddled with it earlier.
He'd spent enough time sitting through El's patented brooding silences, and this was different, more. Nothing stilted or forced about him, but there was something seeping through, El more than just there; something not completely unfamiliar, only rare or altered.
El was almost buzzing. And not the pure, compass-point-focussed hum when he needed to kill.
They stopped briefly to eat in some dive they passed, and El lifted the menu and ordered after a glance, easy decision with no feeling behind it, because that was someplace else, not suppressed but... considering, maybe. Distracted?
Sands listened to him eat, fast, regular, economical sweep of fabric and chink of fork, and wondered what he had here. Whether this was El as he had always been, what he became when he was caught in the endless two-way hunt, alone, or if this was reaction, something Sands himself had provoked, created.
It was a fascinating question, and more than enough to keep him from getting bored when they got back in the car.
There was enough of El there familiar and obvious, immediately recognisable, that the vibes weren't disturbing. It was only the proportions that had changed, a different mix of colours to muddy the pattern; it should be easy enough to tease him apart over a few days, to judge El's reactions once he'd decided where to start probing for them. El was a little different, but that was a change that had happened, not an active choice, and one of the consistencies Sands recognised was that there was no deliberate attempt to disguise or conceal himself. El became so very unnatural and artificial when he tried that, it was actually funny.
Sands jerked out of his assessments when his elbow smacked hard onto the inner door handle, and fuck, but that was an inconvenient place to put a nerve. He flexed his suddenly tingling fingers repeatedly while the feeling died back.
The car was bouncing and jiggling over some road that was more hole than surface, and this probably wasn't leading them to any kind of hotel, even one that lowered itself to El's standards.
There was breeze out there beyond the slow wallowing of the car, uninterrupted flow without the high sway of branches and leaves.
"Just so's you know," he said, "my plans for tonight don't include an impromptu camping trip in a field."
"That's good, I hadn't allowed for one." El responding easily, normally, whatever had been going on in his head all day, and he arced the car round a one-eighty before he switched off the engine.
Sands tipped his chin and raised an eyebrow. "Home for the night, I take it?"
"Of a kind." Light, amused answer that told him pretty much what he was going to find. He hadn't been expecting a choice of restaurants.
He followed El's odd, weaving course from the car - more potholes, he supposed - and through a door that creaked the full sixties stalker flick. Everything smelled musty and cardboard-stiff, like the air in here hadn't moved in decades. "What the hell is this, a cow shed?"
"It's... safe."
Sure it was. Too much hope and not enough fact, because nobody knew better than El Mariachi there was no such fucking place.
His shirt was glued damp over every inch of his skin, and he was guessing this joint didn't come with air-con.
He propped himself against the doorframe while El gave the place a quick scan over from room to room - there obviously weren't many, and not big ones either, just a few strides each way - and El was heading back in under a minute. "I assume from the lack of gunfire that we're all good."
"No," El said. "Not quite yet." And El moved, fast, cloth and air shimmer, El's hands on his shoulders hard, wall pushing at his back and mouth sharp at his throat, and Christ, El had to have skipped on the shaving for days. El's body curved all along his, cock pressed hard and distinct at his hip, and while fucking wasn't exactly unexpected, he'd been expecting it to put in an appearance a little further along the line.
"Okay - that's - okay, yeah." More than okay, really. Sex wasn't one of the things at the top at of his priority list right now, but it wasn't something he usually turned down when it was offered. And yeah, El still needed to meet up with some soap and water, but hell, so did he by now.
El's hands were good on him, always had been, moving over him fast and hungry, and El's breath close on his skin sucked half the tension from him so fast it almost gurgled as it spiralled out through the drain. His spine shaped and flattened to the wall, his weight dropping back, feet sliding forward to brush alongside El's.
He groped a hand out to his right, some kind of flat surface there, and he peeled off the gloves, sliding them onto the whatever-thing and back against the wall so he'd find them again. And if the acrid-cheap taint of the smoke beneath the gunpowder was off, everything else was right, was what he remembered, the weave of the fabric rubbing past his palms, the lines of the muscles beneath, and it would have been embarrassing how fast his body and his cock reacted if El hadn't been hard before he'd even touched him. Pushing into El, sliding himself up against him, head back to the wall at the scratch of teeth, El's hair stroking along beneath his jaw and then pressing and twisting to force him higher, skin taut and stretched all down the length of his throat.
He laughed, soft and light mocking. "I'd almost forgotten how obsessed you are with necks." Felt the buzz of his words against the shifting pressure of El's mouth. "If people knew, they might have given you a different name, though I'm not sure El Hoover would carry quite the same mystique."
El's hands were at his waist already, tugging at belt and zipper. "I'm not so sure people would think of necks if you gave me that name." Breath and lips brushing over him with the words, a hand pressing down inside his jeans to grip him, and oh fuck, yeah, he was right there with that. And not above returning the favour, but it wasn't so easy getting at El when the guy was rubbing over him with his hand and damn near the whole of his body, and everything right in the way of where his fingers wanted to be.
He stroked light along the hairs at El's wrist where it was pressed up against his belt buckle, tendons moving smooth beneath his touch as El's fingers tightened and eased round his now fully hard and very happy cock. "You'll have to let me in if you want your share."
El's lips curled along his jaw, and his thigh pressed in tighter. "Oh, I plan on getting mine, don't worry."
Sands tugged his smile high enough that El would feel the quick movement of it against his mouth. "I'm not worried, El, I just don't want you hassling me too long after I get off." He twisted his head round, his lips brushing over harsh, rasping chin as he chased down El's mouth, because El's tongue could be put to much better uses than talking, as every bad porno script would say. But El was sliding away instead, freeing his hand from Sands' jeans and pushing them lower, turning him round to press him down to the wall. Arms crossed and forearms along the plaster to support him (no fingerprints even in this unlikely rat pit), cracked stucco scratching rough against the back of his hand, braced hard with his asshole already twitching as El's fastenings chinked and scraped behind him.
"Up against the wall? That's real classy, El, I'm assuming this place does have a bed. But on second thoughts, I'm guessing this dive isn't so classy either, so maybe I don't want to think about the bed."
"Won't you shut up, just for once?" El's breath came fast, his words rustling rough alongside the fabric he shoved from his skin.
"I guess that's my invitation to say, 'Make me,' but it's a bit too cliché for me."
El's voice backed off a few inches and dropped low. "There are many different ways I could make you."
Sands grinned at him wide over his shoulder. "But not so many you wouldn't be regretting for a long time afterwards."
El seemed to be through with the chat, shoving two slicked-up fingers high into him instead, and he shivered with the fast shock of it. "Christ, you could have warmed it first."
"That wouldn't have been so much fun." And with El's fingers pushing and twisting inside him it was pretty fucking obvious how this was going to be, and while he wouldn't normally be objecting, there were some practical considerations to the deal. El pressed in deeper, another finger, quick stabbing move that had him twitching up onto the balls of his feet; not exactly away, just a little less. "Fuck, take it easy, okay, it's been a while."
He wasn't expecting much in the way of a response from El, the way he was coming at him with full headlight glare, and it wasn't like he was entirely against a little recreational pain. He'd no plans for stopping this unless El really crossed a line. But El's hand stilled instantly, other fingers brushing at his hair for a quick whispered "Sorry" up close by his ear; and when the fingers inside him moved again it was easier, slower; and El was all about the rhythm, the mouth on his neck slowing with it, stubble brushing light not scraping as the pressure eased.
And El damped it back too much, or maybe the bastard was feeling sly and got it just right, because that even, gentle pressure circling steady over the muscle inside him wasn't what he wanted from this, his spine flexing and arching moments later as he pushed deeper onto El's willing fingers. El smiled into his skin and nipped at him, fucking him lazily with his hand, only not right, and Sands angled his body and dipped his knees and spread himself wider, El moving with him so he never quite got those fingers where he wanted them.
"Fucking Christ, El, this was your idea, so why don't you stop farting around?"
El seemed to hum and vibrate alongside him. "Gladly." Damp fingers slipping out and spreading him, cock pressing against him and right up and into him, all the way, his head dropping forwards onto his arms, shift of his sunglasses to rest lower over his nose.
No pause, no holding, the slide back immediate and steady, his body relaxing around it and into it, moving with it naturally so the next push was perfect, muscles shuddering all through him with the delayed rush of it, and tightening down onto El's cock as it slipped back.
And then El stopped playing it easy, and just fucked him, and that was fine with Sands, arms locked against the wall and hips angled so he took it exactly how he wanted it, the push and the buzz and the weave of his jacket sleeve pressed sharp along his cheek. El's fingers gripped tighter through the sweat on his hips, and he dropped one arm from the wall to curl a hand round his own cock, second set of nerve endings splitting the rhythm of El's burn over the first, flaring signals into his balls and his brain and every part of his skin that touched anything, and oh, fuck, he'd almost forgotten how goddamn sweet this part of the deal was. Jacking himself nothing compared to jacking himself with a slick cock tight in his ass, searing fabric friction over his skin with the drive of it, El's breath short and heavy by his ear, and this wasn't gonna last, not with both of them strung up so high, and he slid his fingers faster, twisting over round the head of himself, because El was not leaving him behind in this, and he came sudden and gasping, jerking through it with El's continued fucking, head forced to the wall as his muscles sagged; still quivering round every thrust till El finally shuddered and stilled, and draped heavy across his back.
El's heart thumped hard through his shirt alongside his spine.
Sands smiled, face still pressed down into his sleeve - always good to know his partner had been putting the effort in.
El might not always like him, but he obviously appreciated having him around on at least one level. It was useful to know what he had to work with.
He wondered if El had ever thought of him when he was jacking off, or if that was a sunset-tint Carolina special. The music-moping mariachi would have clung desperate to Carolina, all loyalty and guilt and regret; but the killer - the blood-stained, barrel-seared man who fucked as hard as he fought - he suspected that El would have gripped his cock as he showered away the gore and thought of Sands.
It seemed a reasonable division - Sands had no use for Carolina's El.
El stepped away to settle against the wall alongside him, steady, regular movements of hands and fabric and metal. Sands tugged his jacket down to snag a tissue from the pocket and cleaned himself off, or at least the worst of it - cock, hand, stomach, ass, his hip where El's lube-slick fingers had gripped him, and damn, he'd almost forgotten this end of it too. Pulled his jeans up and buttoned the fly to hold them, because he liked to keep some dignity and pants round his knees wasn't it, but he left the belt.
Rustle of El with the whisper of chains, then a sharp lighter snap and burn.
"Want one?"
"Christ, no, I'll stick with my own." And even that heavy, clinging leaf-stink from El held some appeal, and it had been a pretty good fuck given the limits of the location, so he fished one out and lit up, settled back against the wall. Let the cigarette hang from his lips, smoke in his lungs and seeping through his nose almost drowning out that bitter-tang of El's cheap-ass stick, while he reached out with the back of his hand to find his gloves and tugged them on. El made no mention of an ashtray, so Sands just flicked the residue off sideways, treading the butt into the floor when he was through.
He pushed himself away from the wall and turned to raise curious eyebrows at El still lounging beside him. "So now we've got the potentially awkward reunion fucking issue out of the way, how about you fill me in on where the hell we are?"
'Here' turned out to be predictably nowhere, buried somewhere in the vicinity of a backwater mining town in Zacatecas, an area notable for its lack of frontwaters on show to start with. And also for being probably the most northerly state in Mexico where El hadn't killed anybody yet, which made it as good a place as most to hide out the night.
El gave him the fast summary of the house - this room, a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen, and Sands wasted some twenty minutes checking the place through. He'd been in bigger hotel rooms once or twice, but it was still plenty big enough for the dust that had it in mind to suffocate him, drifting choking in his nose and throat when his fingers followed corners and window ledges.
He grabbed his bag, still sitting by the doorpost, and wiped off the table with a really cheap T-shirt, then shoved it under a leg to stop the nodding dog effect before he started on the day's guns. El sat opposite with his own set of familiar clicks and cloths, the double thunk of shotgun shells on wood as he unloaded.
It was easier with a cleaning kit each instead of having to split one. He should have gotten hold of his own right back at the start, then he wouldn't have had to go through the annoying stage of relearning a different packaging layout, after being so used to El's.
He made a point of cleaning that pistol of El's he'd never actually fired before he gave it back, wiping the clip too before he replaced it. He didn't want El running round with his prints all over the magazine for the next year, and it wasn't something El gave much concern for.
El's fingers ran through the motions entirely smooth across the table, the series of snicks and slides and springs of unloading and stripping semis rhythmic and flawless fast. The things the Mariachi did without thought were unchanged - driving, weapons, no indication through them of the differences. But El still had that buzzing vibe wrapped all round him like a generator coil - seemed it was about more than Sands being just that hot and El needing to get laid.
His attention snapped to the break in El's sequence, the pause, the rustling - and then the lighter flick-flared, and moments later El's hands were back with the pistol, instant pick-up of the routine, and Sands ran the swab through the M11, smoke kicking heavy and sharp through the solvent in his breath. Not exactly health and safety, but he'd done it himself often enough. The banks weren't going to be giving either of them a mortgage.
He reversed the patch and ran the swab again, and the El-sounds in his head were all holding the pattern, slick like synchronised swimmers, but there was a feeling some way beyond it, and El was watching him. Genuinely watching him, not the intermittent make-sure-the-blind-man-doesn't-screw-up-and-accidentally-kill-himself shit.
"You smoke less," El said, curiosity a gold-rich vein threaded through his voice.
Sands lifted his head towards him. "And you smoke more, but as a conversational topic it's a little uninspired."
"I was wondering why." And there was the other half of it, the granite stubbornness that wouldn't let it go short of dynamite.
His face turned back towards the kit beside him while he found the next swab.
He didn't fight the old, empty habits. The actions weren't pointless while they stopped him breaking the illusion of sight when he played it.
"It screwed with my sense of smell." Something that hadn't bothered him so much back when he didn't have to be entirely aware of every hint of anything, every single fucking second. "So why d'you smoke more?"
Light twitch of fabric that was El shrugging. "I always did."
He smirked half in El's direction. "Goes with the killing people full time, does it?"
"It seems to." Casual words, clear right down to bedrock, no muddy resentment circling the waters.
Quick twitch at the edge of Sands' lip - El was getting much better at that.
And maybe that was some part of the change, a deeper level of indifference that went with the long-term lifestyle.
Possible, but hardly convincing. El had always flipped in and out of killing and contrition like an MPD case, no reason that should have found a miracle cure after ten years as a chronic condition.
He finished up with the auto, El's silent guidance kicking in just fine for the details. He wondered about that while he stripped his pistol, because he'd been dissecting through El's oddities half the day, but he hadn't questioned whether the basics would work. Probably because everything had flowed so smooth when the bullets had kicked off in El's rat-hole, goal line freshly whited, straight and bright.
Nothing uneven about El when he had a gun in each hand; it was only off the field of play he went a little warped.
Sands ran through the semi and silencers, and El chinked and rubbed metal opposite. Sands didn't think either of them were really there with the guns.
He packed everything away back in holsters and bags, and went to find out what he could achieve in the bathroom. The place actually had running water, but only cold and the shower didn't work anyway, so the best he could do was splash himself down from the washbasin. It wouldn't make him too much cleaner, but it at least made him feel less sticky. And he could change out of the clothes stiff with sweat and come and gun grease.
When he left the bathroom, El was standing by the window, still, only his breath telling Sands he was there.
They'd ended the drive with lights, the off-on click of full beam distinct and regular surrounding every car that passed the other way, and there couldn't be a whole lot out there to see.
El left the window moments later and crossed to the other, pausing there again, then walked into the kitchen. Sands tracked his movements through the three rooms, since the bathroom didn't have a window, repeating pattern of steps and stillness, till El returned to the main room and padded past the table towards that first window again.
"Will you quit that? Christ, if I could see, I'd be dizzy."
El stopped without turning, words thinned by reflection. "Something's wrong."
"Well, no shit, El. Got anything I don't already know?"
He did face him then, swivelling fast on a single boot. "What exactly do you know?"
"Not enough. Not even close." And no nearer to getting it, despite the inconvenience of being shot at again. "Next time we're getting a place with internet. What the fuck kind of hole are we hiding in anyway?"
"It's abandoned," El said simply. "I've used it in the past, and now it belongs to a friend of mine."
"You should tell him it could use some fixing up."
"Then people would wonder why no-one lives here."
Sands snorted, amused. "As opposed to now, when people wonder why someone pays to keep water running to an empty hut."
El only shrugged. "Less people will notice that to wonder."
That was true so far as it went, though Sands would have preferred any of a half dozen tidier arrangements. But El had given up on the perimeter check at least, and was headed for the bathroom, so Sands went on through to the bedroom. If you could call it a bedroom when the bed was a mattress on pallets. But his watch would bleep eleven before long, and insomnia was a fucking witch with a sleep-wake cycle that couldn't reset naturally to daylight, and he'd found it plagued him less when he kept a routine.
He took the guns from his holsters and stashed two under the pillow and the others where the pallets met the wall, because while he had no plans to undress, they were a bitch to sleep on. No table for his shades, so he put those with the spare guns.
Not that he was likely to be doing much sleeping, given the entire set of circumstances, but he could at least lie half-comfortably. Like the running water, the mattress was a pleasant surprise, half-decently sprung instead of the sagging wreck he'd anticipated. Nice of El's 'friend' to make a few practical concessions.
He stretched himself out along the bed - the sheet over the mattress and the pillowcases were dust-free, El had fished those from some cupboard earlier, wrapped in plastic. He automatically followed all the sounds through this downmarket flophouse, shitty construction letting him hear everything in every room from right where he was, but he'd gotten used to hearing El take a piss long ago.
Gotten used to hearing every movement as El stood by the bed and slid pistols from sleeves and waist and shotgun from along his spine.
He'd wondered if they'd fuck again after El's earlier impression of an eighteen-wheeler low on brake fluid, but El didn't make a move. Obviously once was enough to clear the angry-horny combo from his system.
Pity. Sands could have used something to take the edge off right now, but he wasn't close to desperate enough to ask for it.
Maybe El was showing his age and his recovery time wasn't so good - it wasn't something they'd ever tested, with the inflexible fucking-and-sleeping routine. The idea was almost - almost - amusing enough to get him to prod the mariachi and find out.
But not quite.
"We need to ditch the car before we go much further," he said. Too big a chance someone had seen them leave either hotel. At least he hadn't wasted much of his time getting to know this one.
"I know a place we can pick up another tomorrow." Immediate, simple answer, and El had spent part of the trip down doing some forward planning, which was good to know.
"Can I put in an advance vote for working air-con in this one?" Zacatecas wasn't so hot in October, but Lázaro Cárdenas would be.
"Only if you pay for the gas."
Sands sniffed, short and deliberate. "You can't seriously be broke again, not when you've kept yourself so busy. One or two of those dead junk-shovellers must have supplied you with something along the way."
"I never did get so much of a taste for stealing from corpses." El wasn't quite making the deadpan he was aiming for.
"You shouldn't be so picky, El," Sands told him lightly. "All you really need's a supply of good quality disposable gloves. Remind me to fix you up with some."
El wriggled alongside him, and he got the feeling he was being watched again, though it was unlikely unless there was a good moon at the right angle. "Sometimes I wish I knew exactly when you are being serious."
He smiled, just in case. "Oh, I'm almost always serious. It's just useful now and then if people choose to assume I'm not."
"I know," El said softly; and then he shifted again, the mattress stilling back right after.
The house dropped into quiet with it.
The humidity and cloud cover were still high enough to even the temperatures, no fast swings in October to make walls and floors settle and creak, and Sands lay listening to the flow of air even and smooth beside him.
It wasn't odd, after the months without it. The breathing had been there, and then it wasn't, and now it was back.
That was fine, because it was the same breathing.
No traffic, airlessness hugging the house in the non-shuffle of grasses.
The breathing spread through the silence, so it wasn't.
He didn't sleep, but he drifted, comfortable considering where he was and that he was all out of practice at sleeping in jeans. The mattress was good, and everything was regular, and his watch disturbed him briefly as it bleeped the hours with improbably short gaps between, El shifting alongside him each time.
And then he was fully awake, and the glitter-ring of shattered glass was still in the air with the end of a heavy thud, and his hand was under the pillow finding his guns, while he stayed low to the bed. "I think they followed you this time, dickbrain."
Jingling shiver of mattress and a low thump as El rolled away onto the floor. "They can't have, I -"
And there was no gunfire, why the hell was there no gunfire? Just El breathing and creeping and a soft whispering.
"Get out! The door! Move! Move!"
"Wha-?" But he was already rolling across the bed and swinging his feet out to find the floor, and he was reaching, he was listening, but he couldn't hear anything to tell him what the fuck was going on, just himself and El scrabbling for the lock and -
Whispering that was kind of more of a soft, steady hissing, and something sharp in his nose and his throat and -
Gas? Fucking gas?
He heaved out all the air inside him, forced his lungs empty till his chest felt like it was going to collapse with the ache of it, his lips clamped tight, and the door wasn't where it should be, he should have reached it by now -
Oh shit, oh shit, oh motherfucking shit, they were drugging him, they were drugging him, and he couldn't stop it and he'd wake up strapped to a table and there'd be drills, and the guns, the guns were there in his hands and he had to - and they shivered in his fingers and he was shivering and they were heavy, too heavy, and –