Hope For Me Yet
Sands' Suite – 12th Floor
6:01 PM
I'm just a worn out pair of boots and a beat up old guitar...
The song from only days before was on repeat, a button that took him twenty minutes to find on the remote. It's words, the singer he still only knew by voice, by tempo, filled every last corner of the space around his weary head. He heard himself in the lyrics, he saw everything he'd done wrong, all the stupid choices he'd managed to make in his need to travel to Florida, to finish the Tuzla case for good. He'd fucked up, and well enough to have ruined more than one person's spirits. Sands' let the music continue on and on, shuffling through now familiar words as he slowly eased himself from the couch and tore across the room, tripping on his boots and kicking at the chairs in his way. He decided to put in another call for room service, if only to give him a mental shortage for a half hour or so as he ate.
He ordered chicken wings, more beer, and an entire key lime pie. He didn't know why, it just gave him a small piece of mind.
He returned to the couch thereafter, another unlearned trip over his dirtied boots, and he slid down to the cushions with Hank steadied on his thighs, his fingers wired into place. Strumming was the object, the goal to announce himself above the sound of another man's guitar, another man's love song. He pounded at the aged, abused beast that had been his only friend on so many lonely nights in Mexico, in the states, wherever he was and wherever she wasn't. Lily's memory was like a drug that fueled the ever existing devil in him, forcing the guitar to play her songs, her scent, her every lasting detail, over and over again, until the sun rose in the west, in the south, anywhere he was alone without her.
Girl you just might be, that outside chance for me…
…Yeah you're the one good shot, at redemption that I've got.
It could have been hours passing, days, weeks, months, years, and he would have never known the difference. He couldn't see anything that told him the time, he couldn't feel the hand of any one person that he knew to sense their aging, and he couldn't think beyond the present, his state of depression. Every second found him falling further into nothing really. Sands' was worse off now than he had been the day he lost his sight, or the moment that he was betrayed by the woman he gave almost everything to, even worse off than the day he lost Tommy to Tuzla, or Lily to her own fear. The state he was in now was wretched, all based on memory's sake, and only got worse with each step she made toward him on the blank canvas, every fairly impure thought he managed to concoct in her absence. It was killing him, the way she insisted the pills were.
Jeff thought about calling her room, asking her what the weather was like on her floor, sunnier, breezier. He wondered if he could call her and apologize. Would his blackened heart allow such a thing to happen? Would he find himself a victim instead? He couldn't answer the questions rhetorically, and figured that the reality would be twice as difficult on his brain. Could he drift up 6 more floors, wander aimlessly in counting doors, feeling the gold plated numbers for the 5…1…4… the one's that belonged to her for the whole of two weeks, Lily's number, 514? He knew he was capable of it, he was blind, not a psychopath after all. Or was he? Was he so dangerous to her, to himself, to the world that he should instead just limp down to the lobby, use up his assistance with the valet, and get a quick limo back to the airport, a red eye back to Washington, and a taxi back to his lonely, empty apartment? Maybe so. Maybe this was what was stopping him from doing everything he wanted to. All the things he knew could fix what he'd broken this time.
Sands' hated admitting that he actually had feelings other than pride, anger, and wickedness rolling around inside of his gut, but they were undeniable at any cost. If he didn't learn to accept them himself, he would never find the cure for them, in all the millions of days he would be alone and lost in the dark, from then on. No one would help him the way he feared Lily could, and now, even she wasn't willing to bother it seemed. Not that he blamed her at all. He would rather her stay away, free and clear of his risky behavior, his mental instability, than be an accidental target for another empty bottle.
There ain't much of nothing in me…left to be saved, but baby I bet…
It was as if the song's insistence met the destiny of a knock on the door. Figuring, as any logically blind, disoriented man would, that it was the room service, he took his time. He turned down the music as much as he could manage, limped on his worsening, bad leg and counted his hobbles to the doorway. He tore his glasses out of his back pocket to hide what he otherwise hated to show off, wiped the drool and beer from his chin, and rustled his hair into some sort of decent state. As if he actually cared what anyone thought of him?
The doorknob spun in his hand, the door clicked open, cracked gently toward the lighter grey of the hallway, and he spoke normally, "That was really quick…I figured it would take at least an hour for the wings."
There was no response and no sound of cartwheels.
His stomach jumped into his throat at the wisp of perfume in the hall, and he knew.
If you could love somebody like me…there might be hope for me yet.
Chatham Bay – Hanson House
Christmas dawn 1995
The room, her room, was colder than she would have liked it to be. Her feet were bundled into the quilt her grandmother had sewn for her as a child, and her wool sweater was on, but still Lily froze for some reason. As she twisted against the yellow glow from the open window, she blinked hazily to see a figure standing at a distance across the otherwise small bedroom. It was no wonder she was cold.
"Jeff…?"
He turned quickly, a smile brightening his face as he pulled his hands out from the front pocket of his hooded Boston P.D sweatshirt and came to sit on the bed.
"I'm freezing because of you." She smiled up at him, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"Well I'm glad you're up…" pulling her hands away, he tried to get her out of the bed quicker, "You're missing it."
Tumbling down from the mattress, shivering in his arms, she tried to keep her eyes pried open from sleep as he walked her to the window. "What?" He stopped her at the glass, his arms tight around her waist, making her feel instantly better as they watched the snow lightly fall across the beach, sticking to her window. Snow was a rare event each year on Chatham, with the coast too warm to usually harbor such storms. But it had on this day, this year, their last Christmas together.
Lily felt Jeff's lips brush over her ear; her partially exposed neck, and hold her closer to his chest.
"Let's go." He whispered, to which she only laughed and followed him out of the room. She found a comfortable grasp as she jumped on his back and he skipped down the stairs quickly. As they plowed through the living room, she saw the twinkle of her mother's perfect wrapping job under the tree, presents scattered, and her Grandpa Samson snoozing in the recliner already. She laughed and clung to his neck tighter, her legs wrapped around his waist as he held onto her, running, darting for the back door. She waved to her mom and Aunt Susan cooking in the kitchen as they went through the sliding doors to the deck, down the same wooden steps they had always trampled from, and into the sandy snow.
For a moment, Jeff stood motionless, holding onto her in the middle of the beach. Lily kissed the top of his messy, sleep deprived hair, and glanced down at where her hand sat against his shoulder, her ring sparkling in the early morning light. "I love you, Sparky."
When he let her slid down his legs, turning to stand a foot higher than her, he was only smiling. He never wanted to forget how she looked at that moment in time, how she looked like Christmas morning to him, the way her ring danced on her slender finger, the way her hair melted with falling snow, the way she called him Sparky, the honest glow in her eyes. The glow that said, 'You're mine, buddy. Get used to it.'
He wanted to remember it forever, just in case, he was forced to forget.
"Wow."
Her exclamation was one of both shock and despairing guilt. Sands only heard the mockery in it.
"What now?" He replied, annoyed at her voice, her scent, her everything.
"I just have to admit…" she paused, stepping towards the open doorway closer. "I don't think I've ever seen a person deteriorate so quickly before."
Lily stood with an awkward smile as she noted every facet of his downfall from the previous evening. His hair, tangled, greasy and hanging across one of his Ray Ban lenses. The previously sexy stubble on his chin, jaw, above his lip, had grown twice the length overnight somehow, giving him the appearance of a Motley Crue disciple. He stood in his boxers, which were ripped at the leg, and an ancient, unreadable band tee. All of this notwithstanding the odor he'd acquired, of tobacco, angered sweat and lack of deodorant and cologne.
He was a mess.
"I should have guessed you would be up here to bash on me soon enough…"
"No bashing. I swear…" She held her hands up in defense, although he couldn't see to acknowledge it anyway, and had only to trust her voice. Leaning against the door as it sat half open, he ignored the opportunity to invite her in for another minute, listening to her breathing, her few choice words. "…my plan was actually to apologize."
He perked up at this, standing tall again, noting the strange honesty in her voice. She wanted to apologize to him, for a conversation that went badly, only because he was the asshole. He couldn't understand it, but was too curious to deny her the option of giving in herself.
"I…I haven't been doing my job very well, at least not with you…this time. I missed a lot of things. Things, that if it were anybody else…I would have seen."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Jeff…I wanted so badly for you to, well I wanted you to be you…and I ignored the fact that you had changed. I was looking past your injury. Too far past it."
"And that's a bad thing because…"
"Because I'm your doctor. It's my job to help you."
With a deep cough and shake of his head, he stepped back from the door a ways, hoping she would know to follow him inside the room. And she did.
The room was in nearly the same shambles as his body was, torn apart, shattered in places, dirtied, a wreckage of something deeper, something she should have seen weeks ago. While he stumbled through the mess to find the bed, she picked up a few items, empty beer bottles, clothes, trying to do what she could in his ignorance.
"Stop cleaning it up, Lily." He grumbled from the edge of the mattress as he sat down.
He was better than she still, had given him proper credit for. After dropping a small pile of dirty clothes into the nearby armchair, she walked slowly across the room to where he was seated, keeping her practiced distance. In her mind, from the 6th floor to the twelfth, from elevator to hallway, hallway to his door, she had prepared herself for the coming of this moment; she had gone over her method forty different times at least. First, her eyes began to scan the floor, the bed, tables, bar, for the bottle of pills, or at least what she pictured was left of them. When she could find no evidence, she looked down at his slumped form solemnly.
"I need the pills, Jeff."
"Why?"
"Because you don't need them."
"New personality trait of yours…? Hypocritical endurance?"
Rolling her eyes, she came closer to him, not touching but making firm grounding on her request. "Where's the bottle at?"
He sighed haggardly, and pointed into the middle of nowhere in his head, "It's in my jacket pocket."His arm remained outstretched, fingers limp, and as she stepped aside to walk in the direction he pointed, she grabbed his hand softly, and squeezed it before drifting away. Sands felt every part of him seize up into an electric current at her renewed touch, although he loathed admitting it.
Lily took little time finding the jacket crumbled into the corner near the bathroom door, ripping the bottle from its inner pocket, and shaking to reveal the bittersweet end to its contents. There were two pills left, tapping against one another crudely as she walked into the bathroom, dumping them down the toilet with a quick flush, and then returned to where Jeff sat on the bed, miserably playing out the soundtrack of what she was doing.
"I sure as shit hope you have an alternative scheme to replace those."
"I do." She smiled down at him, feeling better by his easy acceptance of the pills dismissal. "But you have to trust me."
He knew he did; there had never been any reason for him not to in thirteen long years. Even the eight of which she ignored him, ran away, escaped from him, he trusted her more than anyone else. With a quick nod, he stood up from the bed to feel the patter of her breath between the holes of his shirt's neckline.
"Do your worst on me, Hanson."
With a giggling step toward him, she accepted his confidence, and without saying a word more, leaned up on her toes to press her lips warmly to the hollow curve of his neck. An uneasy flinch came from his body against her mouth, the tenderness of her moist lips upon his already stifling skin, and it sent shockwaves through his throughout him in places that had been neglected for too long. Either it was the effect of the alcohol, or it was the reaction of his sobriety from the pills for almost twenty hours. Sands only knew for sure that he had never experienced the sensation of a woman's lips, of Lily's mouth, the same way before, and when she finally dropped away from his neck, he found himself groaning lightly in displeasure of her absence. He wanted her back in the same place again, whether it was part of her method or not, he needed the heat again.
Lily knew this and smiled up at his saddened face. "Well…was that better than the pills?"
"What…" he struggled, reaching his hand out to take hold of the back of her neck, pulling her towards the heat of his mouth, "What the fuck do you think?" As he tried to force their lips together, she stopped him with a laughing shove of his stomach.
"That's not how it has to work, Agent Sands. You're abusing the medication again. You seem to have a real problem with that…"
"Fine, you caught me, I want to slam you up against the nearest wall…well the nearest one I can find…and abuse your body…" she bit her lip to keep from laughing at him, "You better shoot me if sex is a crime now."
"Sex isn't a crime, although in your case I think it should be." He chuckled at her briefly, still desperate for the sensation to return, and fearing it would not. "I'm giving you an incentive, Jeff."
The sex-kitten tone of her voice drove him insane very quickly, and he let it be known. "You need to explain yourself…and fast…before I find that wall…I'm stronger than you whether I have eyes or not."
"Jesus, calm down." She smiled, her hands still pressed into his low stomach, holding him back. "The rules are simple, if you think you can follow them?"
"I can dig whatever the hell you can lay out, baby."
"Alright…" she grinned, spinning about his nervous form, her fingers teasing at his hardened chest under the thin material of his t-shirt, as she slowly came behind him. "…it's easy. You have to answer my questions…each question. You have to tell me everything I want to know…without lying."
The coming stipulations were difficult for him to accept as coolly as her lips. He knew at least the start of what she was curious about, the very fine details that he had refused to share weeks ago in her office. Mexico was his brain tumor, the memories keeping him from sleeping most nights, the phantom pain of his eyes constantly drilling through his head, forcing him to be angry, to swallow pills for non-existent aching. Releasing the demons was not a good idea on any account, but with her hands situated somewhere between his ragged t-shirt and the envelope of his jeans, Sands found himself a weary participant in her polygraph charade.
"What do I get?"
She smiled as she hugged him tighter, resting her chin into his lower shoulder blades. "What do you need Sheldon?"
A haggard sigh. A desperate growl.
"You…"
It was all she wished to hear, was his need, for her. To know that the desperation for her rose above the medication, the alcohol, all forms of bodily abuse. Lily had her sights set on getting Sands back on track with life, defeating the monsters that clouded his otherwise healthy spirit, and helping him to see, that his eyes weren't everything in the world. That it was possible to live between the blackness, and see the light in the things that truly mattered, the things that would never let him down.
As she stepped out from behind him to come back to his slouched, frantic face, she kissed him lightly on the cheek. He seemed to accept the gentle greeting with pride in himself, as she began to speak in a hushed peace. "Why did they send you to Mexico, Jeff?"
He bit his lip once, "They wanted to dispose of me quietly…."
"Explain please?"
"Hmm…alright. The head of the cocksuckers is Dane," she laughed as he went on, "Then there's Jack…he's sort of like the Colonel Sanders of all the little agents."
"Okay…"
"Jack wasn't too happy with how I had handled a Denali prostitution ring…so he found this makeshift purgatory for me again in Mexico City. I'd been there once before, years ago, for a month. This was so fucking different though…he sent me down there to work on terrorists threats from the counterrevolutionaries to the Governor of Texas. Apparently the Alamo is still an issue with them…"
"I guess that makes sense. So he sent you on a case that was otherwise pointless…to get you out of his hair?"
"Yeah. Nice government the two of us work for, huh?"Rhetorically, he chuckled, taking a step toward her scent, hopeful once again. "Do I get my meds now…doc?" Lily sighed as she felt his arms wrap around her waist and pull her into him. She ignored his lips though, and went for the heat of his neck, slowly tickling his Adam's apple with her tongue, and stroking up toward his ear, where she kissed him. His entire body grew firmer at her every touch, and without embarrassment, he thanked her with a squeeze before she pulled away again. There was no doubt to him that it was working better than the yellow tablets ever had; Lily was just as smart as he had always given her credit for.
"So they sent you to deal with terrorists? Alone?"
"No, Shane was set up as re-con in the upper city. She was my stealth source…did all the checking, all the spying from a broader perspective, and then sent it to me at ground level."
"And you were what…playing dress up?" He cocked his head at her question oddly, while his mind was a rush of interests for her, how she had guessed that was his style, his way.
"I gotta tell ya Tiger Lily…" he cooed with a drunken murmur, "…your intelligence is killing mine off completely. Did Shane say something about--?"
"No." She cut him off, reaching into her back pocket for something. "But I did find this…" she placed a small, rumbled mustache into the palm of his hand with a laugh, "…in the pocket of your jeans a few nights ago." He chuckled proudly as he stroked the furry identity in his hand, remembering the way it made him look, and how he had brought it along for old time's sake on this trip.
"One of my old pals." She laughed at him, shifting her weight with the thought of more inquiries.
"So you disguised yourself, and what, went undercover?"
"Yeah."
"Who were you after?"
"How many questions is that, four?"
"Oh…" she smirked, understanding him immediately.
"I'm cashing in." Without warning, Sands reached out to take hold of her waist again with one hand, while the other moved up to press firmly around her breast, through the thin cotton of her tee. His mouth came crashing down to hers before she could speak again, and as his thumb rolled over the peak of her yearning breast, his tongue drove harshly between her lips. The harder he held her to him, the wetter, the hotter her mouth became against his, the less he felt the striking pain in his leg, the less he heard the demons growl in his head. Lily's knees melted at his touch, from the sensation of his saliva mixing with her own, his thumb and forefinger kneading through her shirt. Seconds passed like minutes when she realized he had pulled away slowly, still holding her up from falling to the ground below. "I like this prescription better…" he sighed against her lips, kissing once more lightly, and then helping her to stand.
"Feel any pain?"
"Only the good kind." He smiled down at her.
"I'm glad. Now…tell me who you were hunting in Mexico."
Running his hand through the mess of his hair, he concentrated on the approach to the response, eventually divulging. "Well, the Texan threat passed and Shane and I were on our way out, when there was this gun scare at the capital. We went down there hoping for one last fucking waltz in the city…and ended up walking into a storm of government takeover by the Barillo Cartel, an attempt at it anyway. That was almost a year and a half ago."
"So you basically got hit with a double case down there?"
"If that's what you want to call it, then yeah. We got screwed, ended up having to follow the cartel around for the next year. I swear I thought Shane was going to lose her mind after a while…just from absolute boredom."
Lily was silent as she calculated his details, how Shane fit into it so far, and what there was still left to be found out, to be answered.
"Don't leave me hanging, kid. They sell aspirin in the gift shop downstairs…" Glancing up and out of her mind, she saw his wiry smile as he leaned in towards her face, longing for her again. Lily grinned at him, wiping his cheek with the back of her hand. Sparing the moment for the tenderness of his face, to stare at him, different than the action before, tired looking now, she sighed and met his lips quietly. There was no force this time; it was somber, remorseful, as if his apology was settled on his mouth, as if he were whispering it to her. When she accepted, she let herself drift away, still holding both sides of his face.
"When did the boredom end?"
"When the war began." His answer was quick, almost deadly silent in nature. Almost as if he were afraid to recollect the images, too scared to bring about the past for re-nullification. Lily sighed as she ran her hands through his messy hair, a feathery kiss to his chin.
"Is that how you…well I mean, your eyes…did they…?"
"I got in too close with the disguise."
"What does that mean?" He remained unspoken for a long minute, breathing deeply when she did, and tiptoeing through his memories one by one. The sound of certain guns, the laughter of an enemy or two, the taste of a woman's lips after the deception had already taken effect. He could feel Ajedrez in the room around them, her cackling spirit draining what little was left of Lily's revival with him, the devil's hand washing him away while she held onto him. "Jeff?"
Kicking himself back into the reality, he pursed his lips together tightly, and spoke.
"I trusted the wrong person…the wrong…woman."
Lily kept her breath, her words in check for a moment as she watched his previously high attention span, his focus on her lips, her body, disappear. Jeff stood taller away from her hands and turned around slowly, ignoring her watchful eye as he remained motionless. She knew tears were impossible for him, as they always had been before, even with eyes, but she felt that strangely, in that moment, he had wanted so badly to do nothing other than cry. Either that, or tear apart what was left of the room. She stopped herself from comforting him too closely, and instead kept her hands at her sides, waiting for him to come back to her. She wanted him to accept his own need first.
Clenching his fists tightly against the pummeling nightmares in his head, he tried not to think about the girl standing behind him, and instead, found himself replaying the sound of his traitor's body dropping to the stones at the center of Mexico City, the sensation of her fingers, her mouth in places that he shuddered to think they had ever been. He couldn't imagine now why or how he had let himself get so close to her. The sex was some of the best he had ever enjoyed, but had there been more to it? She had taken it all from him, left him high and dry in the world, while she took the easy way out with an unexpected bullet. Scheming whore…he thought to himself, biting down on his lower lip so as not to shout and scare Lily, and then slowly moved to shuffle in her direction again.
"She was a daughter to the Cartel…disguised just like me."
"Disguised as…" Lily tried, not fully understanding.
He heaved an angry breath, "AFN." Lily knew exactly what this meant, for him, for the CIA working the Cartel, for the entire situation. He had gotten in close, but in the worst of ways. He had shacked up with the enemy, while she pretended to be with the good guys. Bad news.
Without apologizing or trying to soothe the pain she could see riddling his face, she stepped in closely, and coughed before asking, "Did you…love her?"
The question came more quickly than he had been prepared for. Through the darkness, he heard every hint of anxiousness, of almost jealousy in her tone, as well as the sprint of confusion, of sorrow. He had never known whether he loved her or not, whether the good times they had spent together, in their tiny room in the heart of Mexico City, were love or just a fixation of his constant boredom. No one had ever asked him whether he had loved a traitor or not, only if he had been with her. It sent a different jolt through him altogether, a strange, enigmatic one, one that revolted him even. The thought of having loved the woman who took his sight from him, who had taken what little he had of life from him, was disgusting, sinful even for a man with no faith. He winced at the inquiry once more, before tilting his head in her direction, before his lips began to part with the response.
And then a phone rang somewhere in the darkness, and he placed the answer on hold.
Move your body, ooo baby…And dance all night.
Do that groovin', feel all right.
The tune interrupted everything instantly, with a strange glow of repressed giggling on Lily's face, as well as his own. As it went on, she waited for him to answer it, not thinking as clearly as she should. Eventually though, it struck her, the reality outside of the past they had been bordering in for a good half an hour, and she turned to find the phone that continued to sing to her.
Move it up…
Turn it down…
Shake it down.
After a few long seconds of searching through the mess of his bags and clothes, she found the phone hiding in the bottom of his jeans pocket, slung across the empty barstool. Taking it out, she fumbled nervously as it lit up: Shy. It was Shane. Ignoring that the call was for her blind accomplice in the room, she pressed the green button and pressed the phone to her ear, worried for some reason by it.
"Shane?"
"Lily?" It wasn't Shane at all. It was Andy.
"Yeah, it's me. Jeff couldn't find his phone."
"Lily…you need to find Carter, get Sands now…"
"Why? What's wrong? What happened…?" The worry in her voice fell through the room, catching Sands' attention as he crossed through the mess, tripping a few times, to come and take the phone from her.
"Miles?"
"Sands…shit man; you need to get to the hospital now! It's your sister…Shane she…she got shot."
