humo caliente 4
The room is congested with hot air, sweat dampening the curve of Sands' back. He's hung sideways over the bed, flat out, cursing and digging his fingers as far as they'll go into El's back. Really hoping to leave a bruise.
He'll deny anything like begging was near the surface when he tells El to move faster. Pick up your feet. Get a move on.
He will admit however, that El doesn't smell half as bad as he does.
Dirt, smoke, alcohol, sweat, and dried blood. He smells like everything you wouldn't want to smell like. Not that he can help it, he isn't so keen on washing. Now, especially. Say if you gouge an eye out, going deep, all you're left with is blood vessel and optic nerves. In open air, it scabs and tries to heal.
Take hot water, totaled optic nerves, and mix. It's a kind of burn you'd get from tequila, but without the satisfying mellow chaser.
Sands is still dressed. Head to toe. Black jeans, black shirt, boots, guns. And when El's hands are touching and opening his shirt, there's a distant thought about losing buttons; little plastic ones down his front.
Everything he has on him now, is where he's at. Guns, cash, sunglasses. That's it. He lost most of his clothing and anything extra to the turn of the coup. You couldn't ask for a worse situation.
You couldn't ask for a better situation when you meet a certain mariachi in a bar at the end of the night, after a week of sterile agony. Sauza tequila, talk, day old bread. That was it.
El's fingers undo his belt buckle, they pull the belt itself from the loop of his jeans and snag on his zipper. It isn't entirely friendly when El kisses him on the mouth. Sands wasn't hoping or expecting it to be all rainbows and furry animals. Their teeth click, the whole thing tasting like a mouth full of change, coppery.
The air gets hotter.
Grinding against a virtually invisible man while he pulls at your hair so hard your scalp tingles hotly, is new. All the while wanting to shoot him dead because of that, but, Christ, being kind of busy, is not.
Kind of busy not trying to picture El's face in your head, or listening to the bed creak protest after protest. Kind of busy remembering you're Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, who works for the CIA, worked is more like it, and doesn't like interruptions, or taking no for an answer.
Sands grits his teeth, hard enough to get a funny tang of pain, and gasps when El's open palm finds its way through his jeans and to the source.
Thud, thud, thud.
"SeZor, seZor, solamente una noche es pagada."
Sands hisses, grabbing El's wrist to stay it from moving. He breathes.
"It's for you."
It's nicer outside in the morning, when the sun's coming up and the land's still cool. You can breathe steadily and not coat the insides of your lungs with dust. The winds eased, chill breaking.
It would have been nice, if standing out in the open were a temporary thing.
Sands can hear El's voice explaining the story, but he isn't listening. He's thinking. Expecting the mariachi is leaning against the wall of the closest building, one leg up, smoking through words. He can smell smoke, so that's true enough.
Let's call this a game he plays. The game of manufacturing pictures to replace sight. Take a place, sound and smell provided, and give that place an image. For instance, he expected the spread on the bed was green and the furniture was cherry red. He expected El's hair was tied back when he kissed him because he didn't feel it against his face.
"He booted us because you happened to mention I was there?"
"That is what he said."
Sands sniffs and turns his head to the side. Apparently your sinuses suffer some undoing in the event of an eye gouging. His nose runs. He rubs it on the gloves on his hands, and then his jeans.
"Well, that gets me right here. Not that we were doing anything. Nothing. We weren't loud—"
"He said we were."
"Never mind, then."
He sniffs again.
"What time is it?"
"Five in the morning."
Not much you want open is open at 5:30 in the morning, when the air still smells like air and not exhaust. But life goes on. Then again, when your day's been shot, you feel like getting someone shot. Like shooting someone clean between the eyes just to feel their blood fleck your skin.
So it's an acquired taste.
Take chocolate. Have a bite, get the flavour, go back for more.
Sands won't say murder, he'll say expendable and reload his gun.
"What time is it?"
"Five forty-three."
They're sitting on the curb of some street Sands doesn't know the name of, smoking their lungs black, and not talking. So cartels may be stalking the streets, and one might just round the corner, unload a magazine, and start a true blue Mexican stand-off...
The sun hasn't even risen yet. None of that is relevant until you have proof you're not the last man on Earth. You're blind, you're paranoid, and until someone's footsteps kick by, raising dust, or El talks, and it clicks, you're the only one there.
Early morning is life without expendabilities.
El's boot skids across the dirt on the ground. Cue jingling.
Early morning is life without much expendabilities.
"Alright. This is all well and good, but I'm thirsty," Sands says.
"There is a store open across the street," El replies, breathing smoke in Sands' face. The time now 7:42.
Sands blows the smoke right back before he gets up.
"I'll just be over there."
If this wasn't Mexico, it might be strange to walk into a store with four guns completely visible and hanging out. Two in shoulder holsters and two at the belt. Not that no one is nervous, but Sands can't really tell now can he? And if he could, he'd only smile. Dry ice.
"I feel like doing something a little extreme... Are you with me?"
He's speaking to the clerk.
"¿Qué usted está diciendo?"
Sands pulls a gun from his holster, levels it on the clerk, or wherever he last heard paper, and says, "I'm taking that as a yes."