humo caliente 9
All the way around the corner, all the way, pushing, pushing, teeth on the grit. It tastes like oil and smoke and all the things dying at your feet. He's breathing (that sting long gone, that ache lesser, he's got eyes permanently open by the way, it just depends on what he wants to see). It's not that you can get used to the blindness, always been a little fond of metaphors and double-meanings, it's that you learn to move and slide and pick your little broken self up around it. You turn onto sounds and feels and smells. You're a receptor (a deceptor) for all this. Your life kind of depends on you being at odds with everyone else, you knowing the heel in that motherfucker's shoe is coming loose and he's nervous, nervous as he should be, sweating like the flood gates open. And here you are, steady (plus, El's somewhere out there—listening to him, the effect's like black coffee, like living—he's got you, Sands, got you as you fall, because he's still killing you like is his magic).
Eyes, so to speak, black and smooth, beaming in sunlight. Dusty but clear. Teeth this time clenched in an open-lipped sneer, like the crack in the stone below boot clicks, below the seeing.
"I can see you." (how bored a blind man sounds even when philosophizing)
People don't know that dark shines.
It's like nothing you've ever seen before.
Because you're not seeing it. It's all in that noggin of yours.
Been looking for you, the guy says. Has the stones to.
Sands just has to, oh no, it's reflexive anymore, laugh.
Spilling out, feeling a little insanity, feeling the shift as he tilts.
"I can't really say the same, sweetheart."
It's the confusion that hands him the leverage.
It's the anger that puts the gun in his hand.
He bites the bullet and sends it on its way—that's what he does here.
The CIA operative never saw it coming. How's that for irony.
"You left quickly." He loves him, he really does, like a pet, like a tiny black dog, like certainty, like the way he's his Captain Obvious to his Insano.
"Business, El, business."
Five times a day you'll find them at each other's necks. Literal or not, it's there (growling, biting, slipping, fighting, nails digging out skin, fingers laying it back). Banter like a married couple, and doesn't that just make Sands peachy. Keen, in fact. Unlike married couples there's no money (he's working on that) to fight about, no kids (thank God, thank you Chicle-run-amuck), no business but the death business; helping people out the door, giving them the hard goodbye, sure. It's the little arguments that truly tie them.
"I left them right there. Let me draw you a map."
He's not much of a smoker out in the natural world, it's too distracting. But when at "home", when with El, it's almost mandatory you at least have one on the lips. To distract from the fact he's still a little wary of this whole partner thing. Another on the subject line his how much longer they stay in dives than they really should. Given Sands' situation, it's not the easiest to just pick up a new place (he's gotten to the point of minimizing collision, sure, and if his knees are still bruised only El would know). Not needing El to find the toilet bowl is priceless. Needing El to find his cigarettes isn't.
Sands can hear El praying for him. Everynight or every other.
And Sands listens. Playing dead never being so easy. The slow breaths he manages, as if this were his death bed, as if this were his funeral and only his Legend showed up. How sweet. He knows El knows he's awake. And that's the catch. El comes back to him smelling like hand soap, like stretched leather. Sands, like burnt rubber, like blood, like cold ashes, like some stagnant thing El likes keeping alive. Once you get a taste of something other than loneliness, well. Then you're lost. That's no new thing for this mariachi, though. He has a taste for death.
Image is subjective, it mattered only as far as you could use it. He doesn't bathe much, he doesn't sleep much anymore, keeps his hair wherever it falls, gets fleeting help with wardrobe. Somehow he lost all his jackets, his accessories and most of his sunglasses. Pretty sure his car was lit up like a candle during that whole Day of the Dead deal. Real fucking downer.
You make me sick because I adore you so.
Sounds like something El would say. Something he'd lean and press his hands together for, mumble, telling a higher being, trying to milk out some understanding, some forgiveness.
"Oh geez, El, you're not falling in love with me, are you?"
Walls, either brick or flesh this is how it goes.
El doesn't talk so much as he notices things.
You're bleeding, you're tired, you're vulgar.
"I need some convincing."
Sex was a big part of it from the beginning. From the murder-talk like flirting. Like this was as it should be: Sands here, guns here, teeth slippery wet and biting. He can't see him but he knows he's staring, looking straight at him, into him, maybe trying to pick out why he's here again. Even if for the company no one's ever stayed this long without a devious reason. The problem with that, Sands doesn't give a rat's ass anymore. Not one bit.
"You need to quit smoking."
"And you need to quit being a tease."
It's not so much kissing, it's a tiger's kiss, a biting, a snagging, tearing, blood on every lick and lunge. El grunts, and then it's fire down his spine, the run of a finger nail, the slide of a blade. El likes his toys and Sands likes sucking on his jaw, his collarbone, gripping his lower back. He's getting his hair torn out by the roots and only moans, lifting up to tell him to move, get the fuck on me. Straddle. Come on, cowboy. There's threat in the way he holds him down, just above scars where bullets tore, newer and older from way back when. He's craving a cigarette but craving El more.
"Yeah." Again with the deep breathing, under an ocean of air, trying to stay focused.
It's like fucking an idea, a concept. This is where the arms are, this is where the thighs strain, this is where the whole thing comes together as a body, human. Or slightly like it. A perversion. He's still got his boots on, he's still wearing El's shirt, and this is how it happens every time. Every time. They don't foreplay, slowly undressing one another, it's balls out, take it or leave it. They're trying to smother each other, break each other. Care and time is for loves lost.
Sands snaps his head back, lifts his hips, grabbing for anything to anchor him down.
Now a days he keeps something tied around his eyes (holes, empty holes), a torn up shirt, a bandana. Something El took to doing for him a long while back when his sunglasses kept falling off during this part. El doesn't like to see blackness anymore than Sands likes to be reminded. The first time might have been curiosity, now it's just plain avoidance. His mint Sands came damaged. How true that is. But, yeah, El, he has a way of knowing what's going on, even with Sands. The cigarettes don't come as a surprise, just a cold pack into his fingers as he's lying there. He knows he's alone when the door creaks and slides shut. The click of shoddy metal, wannabe Mexican zippos, he knows the lighter's lit when he feels heat and smells burning fluid. Plucking strings impose in soon enough, close but too far off to make rhythm. He's gone out on the balcony, like most of these rooms in Mexico come with.
One of these days he's going to go up in flames. Smoking in bed has its ups and its downs.
Devil's sick on sin, he's just going to stay here, wait for whatever to happen. Wait for the end or the beginning, or another boy Chicle to swing by. Supposes El's his new Chicle and then some though. He sighs, filling the air around him with grey. Grey, blue, red. He can't see it.
If dying's a vacation, life's a joke without a punch line.