Title: Drive
Author: fangirl_lizzie
Rating: Rish, I'd say.
Pairing: Sands/El
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. All you'll get is a collection of my trashy fanfic and a well-thumbed copy of LotR anyway.
Notes: //Spanish//.
Summary: El goes back for Sands.
***
He went back for Sands. He wasn't really too sure why, because at the time he didn't even like the guy; he was a no-good, scheming, completely fucked- in-the-head American, claiming some sort of affiliation with the CIA, but really El suspected he was just a spoiled, psychotic little rich boy with entirely too much time on his hands. So he had no idea why he went back for Sands.
He found him with his back against the wall of the building across the bloody, dusty street from the town hall, bleeding. El muttered something insulting under his breath and Sands 'looked' up at him with a huge shit- eating grin on his face. El was a little too preoccupied with the blood that was running unnervingly from behind the sunglasses and over Sands' high cheekbones to be truly angry when it hit him. That goofy, dumbass smile said it all. The bastard *knew* he was coming back.
El took off the President's sash and bandaged Sands' gunshot thigh with it. Sands handed over all the cash he had on him to the chewing gum kid. Then, Sands' arm around El's shoulders and El's arm around Sands' waist, they left Culiacán.
With Barillo and Marquez and the cartel dead, El wanted to go back to his village. He'd buried Carolina and their beautiful daughter there. He had friends there. But when he told Sands where they were headed, he just said, "No, c'mon, where's your sense of adventure? I've always wanted to see Acapulco." El didn't think it polite to point out that he'd never *see* it at all, nor did he understand it when he swung the newly-stolen Chevrolet around, tyres screeching, and headed south.
Sands slept almost the whole way, doped up on some mysteriously produced and seemingly inexhaustible supply of Percocet. He snored. El listened to guitar bands on the car's ancient and barely-functional radio. It wasn't a bad trip, all things considered. They almost didn't have to speak at all.
Then they were there, the next day at 3pm under the blazing sun, Sands still loopy on pain meds and El about to collapse from lack of sleep and minor blood loss. They checked into a hotel – the first hotel they came to.
It was a dive with roaches behind the gnarled old reception desk and a well- used rattrap behind the front door; the place obviously wasn't busting at the seams with paying customers, but that didn't seem to bother Sands. He just pushed his sunglasses further up on the bridge of his nose, leant forward against the counter and asked, in English, for a double. El just rolled his eyes, suddenly grateful that he *had* eyes, and picked up his guitar case.
He knew Sands couldn't see the disapproving look on the owner's face but he had a sneaking suspicion that he was ignoring it anyway. The man's nonchalance was a thing of beauty, especially considering his state – eyeless, currently in the company of a man of fairly uncertain loyalties packing three guns of various sizes and six shiny throwing knives, dressed in a CIA t-shirt, Bermuda shorts and an ungodly fake moustache. Not to mention the idiotic sombrero. Ordinarily El would've been moved to make excuses; as it was, for unknown reasons, he just plucked the keys to their room from the desktop, put his hand on Sands' shoulder and strode over to the stairs. The coordination they showed was surprisingly good.
"I think I'd like to fuck now," Sands said, sprawling on the bed, the back of the sombrero he'd bought in a cheap little gas station folded up against the back of his neck.
"Don't be ridiculous," El said, putting down his guitar case – their only luggage – and watching as Sands tugged up the hem of that God-forsaken CIA t-shirt. He watched as Sands ran his hand over the strip of tanned skin it revealed before tucking his fingers up to the knuckles into the waistband of his obscene neon green shorts.
"Ah, but obviously I *am* ridiculous." Sands pulled off the ultra-wide- brimmed, touristy sombrero that El hadn't bothered to tell him not to buy and frisbeed it across the room. It hit El on the forehead; he caught it as it dropped, tossed it to the floor, and sighed.
"You have a point," he said, and he took off his shirt.
***
Sands loved Acapulco.
Spreading antiseptic in another man's eye sockets had never exactly been high on El's to-do list, but to his credit Sands did start to heal with remarkable speed; after the first week, spent drugged almost insensate in the dirty hotel room, they went out during the day to see the sights. El told him where they were and then Sands described it back to him, all from memories of tourist guides, complete with snide-ass socio-political commentary. Though, he didn't mention the President even once. El figured that if he did, he'd kick him out on his blind, sarcastic ass.
Then, at night, El played in the bar down the street. Sands sat at the same corner table every night and pissed away El's earnings on slow-roasted pork and tequila. El knew that it annoyed him on some level, playing Lecuona night after night to keep Sands in tequila and lime, but he never once came close to telling him to stop. They'd leave together at 3am with Sands' .38 pressing into El's hip. Five weeks on and they were still sleeping it off in the same shitty hotel room.
But the honeymoon had to end. Lying naked in their sweat-damp bed, flushed, the almost-cool breeze from the open window lapping over his skin, El turned to Sheldon Sands.
"I'm going home," he said, lowly, with his eyes still closed. He didn't want to see Sands naked in the moonlight with his tousled hair and perfect, scarred skin. So he kept his eyes closed.
Sands sniffed and stretched with a cat-like arch of his back as he threw his arms wide, catching El across the forehead. "Don't be absurd," he said, as El batted his arm away with oddly lingering hands. "You're taking me to Veracruz. Now go back to sleep."
So he took him to Veracruz. In the morning he kept himself busy packing their one small case into the trunk of the car and pretended not to notice when Sands shot the guy that cooked the bar's apparently excellent pork. After he'd accidentally shot the barman and two waitresses. What could he say? It got confusing shooting to kill with a .38 special and a distinct lack of eyes.
***
They were in Veracruz for two weeks. The inevitable sun, sea and sand, with some fishing, busking, tacky touristy shopping and a hotel room that would probably smell like sex for a month after they left. The place was both too commercial and too traditional, trying too hard for either of them to enjoy much outside of the bedroom. Not that El was in it to enjoy himself anyway; he had no idea what he was doing, where he was going or why. He was in the driving seat, but that was only because Sands had a slight problem with visual impairment.
They left. Sands toyed with the idea of a quick trip to Cuba, but in the end they just toured around Yucatan, El playing in bars while Sands harassed the unsuspecting locals - he turned out to be quite the little hustler. Somewhere along the line they graduated from near silence to snarking to semi-coherent conversation. He still thought Sands could do with a good psychiatrist or a pretty white coat with arms that tied in back, but at least the nutcase was entertaining.
In the smallest town they could find, in the seediest bar, El played his guitar and Sands polished his guns. No one seemed to care much about the eyeless American with the gun fetish who spent all the mariachi's cash on tequila. And the pork was just mediocre enough to spare the chef his life.
In that bar one night was when El started to wonder just what the hell was going on with his life. He was sitting, perched on a stool at the end of the bar with his guitar in his arms, plucking out some tune he'd learned way back when he was still a boy, before... well, before *everything*, and he caught sight of Sands reloading a magazine for his new, illicitly-procured Glock. He could still feel Sands' rough hands on his skin, Sands' hot, pliant body beneath him. He had the sour-sweet tequila taste of Sands' mouth on his tongue. What the fuck was going on? Was it just that Sands was willing and was there, or was it more? Spending his nights playing guitar in a cheap bar 'til his hands and wrists ached and then going upstairs to fuck a sarcastic American sociopath had never been the plan. He wasn't sure he'd ever had a plan at all.
It went downhill from there. He found himself thinking Sands' mussed morning bed head was kind of cute, and when the girls came onto the antagonising Yank down in the bar, he felt himself getting possessive. Sands was *his* antagonising Yank, damnit. It was pitiful, truly. Except Sands seemed to feel the same way – he blew off the girls in his trademark unsubtle way, ordered another tequila and drummed his fingers on the table in time with El's guitar.
When he asked him later what he'd said to the girls, Sands just grinned that huge I-own-you grin for a moment before he replied.
"I told them I'm with you," he said, his arms circling El's waist, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps to him it was. And somehow those words and that touch made everything okay, whether or not they and that over-bright smile meant that Sands was taking him for granted.
They left the town before El could figure out what exactly he was doing with a guy like that, caving to his every demand, sharing a bed every night so they'd wake every morning with their limbs entangled. In the end, El just stopped asking questions. Things seemed much less complicated that way.
***
"Were you ever really with the CIA?" El asked in the hotel in Ixtapa, strumming idly on his guitar on the terrace as Sands cleaned his gun. Guns. And all of El's. And polished their knives.
Sands didn't seem particularly perturbed by the question. "Sure," he said. El had seen him a good deal more perturbed by overcooked pork or sleeping in the damp spot. "You think I'm a fraud, honeybun? Or just a spoiled psycho rich kid with a bloated trust fund and a flair for the dramatic?"
"The thought had crossed my mind, *honeybun*."
"Then uncross it. I worked for those fuckers for twelve years. *Twelve years*. Of course, you shoot one too many chefs and they toss you out on your ear."
"Strange, no?"
"Yeah."
El licked his lips, watching as Sands' hands played deftly over the blade of one of his knives. He hadn't cut himself in weeks. "Not to mention coups d'état. *Attempted* coups d'état."
Sands sat back in his seat at the gun-spread table and tapped the tip of El's best throwing knife against his front teeth. Then he took off his glasses and leant forward on his elbows in some sort of horrible travesty of sincerity.
"It's been five months now," he said. "You haven't mentioned that once, 'til now."
El played on, something soft and not quite sad that he could barely hear but felt just fine through his fingertips. "It had to come up sometime. Eventually."
"Stop playing that fucking guitar and look at me." It was still surprising that Sands could make cursing sound like a term of endearment, in that ludicrously sibilant voice of his.
"I *am* looking at you."
"You know what I mean, snookums, sweetums, light of my life."
El stopped playing. Sands slipped from his chair and fumbled forward, hands outstretched. He found El's cheek, and slipped his fingers into his hair.
"Thank you, joy. My darling, my rapture. Boobookittyfuck."
El smirked. "Boobookittyfuck? You're insane." He stood, put down his guitar, rested it against the far edge of the table.
"You've only just noticed this? I'm in awe of your dizzying—mmph!"
El had him up against the wall in less than a second. Sands' .38 special dug into El's hip. El licked the rim of one empty socket, then nipped at his earlobe.
"Does this mean I'm forgiven?" Sands asked softly, almost hesitantly, his hands tracing the line of El's spine, straying down to his disappointingly still-clothed ass. It was too much for El to analyse, so he pressed to his lips to Sands' throat instead.
"Perhaps," he said. He bit down hard on Sands' collarbone, then swiped his tongue over it. The bedroom was just a few feet away, behind the double doors, but El wasn't sure that he wanted to wait. He sank to his knees. "Ask me again in half an hour."
***
A village in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, a small restaurant with outdoor tables, dark out, everything lit by a thousand tiny white lights. Sands' battered cowboy hat was sitting on one of the spare chairs at the table meant for four and he was resting one foot on the other. El was watching him as he ate, watching the goosebumps breaking out on his forearms. He'd left his jacket back at the hotel, hanging on the hook behind the door, and they couldn't sensibly go back for it. He had his hair tied back, showing off all the angles of his face. Watching him was distracting El from his food. Idly, he wondered if the chef was going to survive the night.
"What's your name?" Sands asked unexpectedly, loading his fork with rice.
El frowned. "El," he said, blinking.
Sands smirked. "Yeah, yeah. Your real name, genius."
"El," El repeated, now suppressing an amused smile. "El Mariachi."
"C'mon, your *real* name. The one on your passport."
El shrugged, which was a bad habit considering Sands couldn't see it. "I don't have a passport."
"Smartass. The one on your birth certificate."
"Sorry, it was burned. Accident." Pause. "Okay, arson."
This is where Sands would've rolled his eyes, had he had them. As it was, he settled for flipping him off.
"Okay then, *El*, how does this grab you?"
Sands put down his fork and dug in his pants pocket, producing two US passports; he tapped them briefly against the back of his wrist – probably because he knew the delay would make El crazy – then tossed them across the table. El opened one, saw his own picture; he opened the other and found Sands'. He read the details. He blinked. He read them again, slowly.
"We do *not* look like brothers," he said.
"That's the beauty of it!" Sands picked his fork back up and recommenced shovelling. "Who *wouldn't* believe it? Besides, we're only half brothers - if anyone asks, your mom was Mexican and mine was part Cherokee or something. Perfect cover."
El stared at the passports for a moment, then looked back up at Sands. Maybe once upon a time he would've been aghast, shocked at the very least. Now nothing shocked him. He just smiled.
"You're insane."
"You say that like it's such a bad thing."
El turned his attention back to the passports. "John and Robert Ewing," he read aloud.
"Uh-huh."
"You've made us JR and Bobby Ewing, from Dallas, Texas. You crazy son of a bitch."
Sands beamed, the wattage of his smile really quite considerable. "Uh-huh." He took another mouthful of pork and rice.
"Then maybe I'll wake up and find this is all a dream."
Except the dead Mexican drug lord in their hotel room and the guitar case full of bank notes by their feet weren't a dream. And neither was Sands, though El sometimes wondered if he were.
"Where now?" he asked, standing, tucking a stray note into Sands' jeans pocket, tugging him closer. Sands put down his fork and didn't resist; he took El's wrist in his hand, pressing his fingertips to it like he was feeling his pulse.
"I feel like El Paso. How about you?"
It wasn't really a question that required an answer, and El didn't give one. They left the next morning. El had never been to El Paso – he'd never even left Mexico. He tried to forget as they crossed the border on Sands' forged passports that as far as he knew he'd never even thought about leaving. Besides, he had a feeling they wouldn't be gone for long.
***
They crossed back three days later, and drove to Tijuana. Then Mexico City. Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Zihuatenejo, Cancun. Soon Sands stopped telling him where to go; they headed north, they headed south – it didn't matter. They started to forget the names of the places, where they'd been before and where they hadn't.
Towns, cities, villages all merged into one. Shitty hotels, rooms above bars, an apartment over a bookshop that they let for three weeks in a small town whose name El couldn't recall. Gas stations. Nights driving, listening to Sands gabble on about the time he throttled a guy in Singapore and cross- dressed in Bangkok. Nights sleeping scrunched up in the front of the car by the side of the road with Sands sprawling bonelessly on the back seat and using his best jacket as a blanket. Days roasting under the sun on dusty roads, eating under worn café awnings, busking for gas money though Sands always seemed to have a huge wad of cash in his back pocket.
They sat in a bar one night – El told Sands he drank too much, that he was starting to remind him of Fideo, and despite the that fact Sands had fuck all idea who Fideo was, he went up to the bar (thwacking his knees on a stool as he did so) and ordered a glass of milk. He spent the rest of the evening with an oddly endearing milk moustache hovering on his top lip. El thought maybe that was in Mazatlán.
They shopped for clothes one day – El picked out shirts and pants for Sands, black and white so maybe he'd blend in a little and stop looking like such a glaring tourist, but somehow Sands knew exactly what he was up to. Fifteen minutes later the guy was dressed in black combat boots, a Motorhead t-shirt and a dusky pink sarong. El almost regretted using the sombrero for target practice – it would've finished the look off nicely.
El just bought himself a pair of black jeans to wear while his pants were being laundered. Sands pressed up against him in the launderette, wearing that ugly-ass sarong that hung just past his knees. He slipped a hand into El's back pocket and one to his crotch and brought him off right then and there while cursing his fashion sense in some of the most colourful language El had ever heard. He thought maybe that was back in Mexico City, but he couldn't be sure.
Road led into road, traffic thinned, the tyres kicked up more and more dust. The gas got low. At last, the car stopped. El killed the engine.
"Where are we today, sugarplum?" asked Sands.
El took a deep breath, wanting to smile as he looked around but not quite daring. "Home," he said.
"Oh."
They left the car. Two sets of Cuban heels scuffed through the dust, El's clinking with all their metallic adornments and Sands' very close by, clicking loudly against the hard ground. They walked closer to the stalls, the hanging guitars, players, sellers. A few shouts of 'El!' went up, and he smiled, waved a little, keeping one hand firmly planted on Sands' shoulder though he knew that in the seven, eight months they'd been on the road Sands had ceased to really need a guide. El just wasn't sure what he'd do if he weren't anchored somehow.
"El." He stopped by the stall, ran his gaze over the rows of guitars that were swinging there in the slight morning breeze before nodding at the owner, his old friend. //Who's the gringo?//
El frowned then glanced at Sands. He'd got so used to seeing him that the bright yellow Hulk Hogan muscle shirt he was wearing with the ill-fitting black jeans he'd stolen from El hadn't even registered.
//Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, pleased to meet you.// Sands held out his hand in the guy's general direction and El's eyebrows crawled up toward his hairline at the sound of Sands' perfect Spanish. Somewhere along the line he'd worked out that Sands probably spoke better Spanish than El spoke English, not that he *ever* spoke Spanish. He'd broken into Portuguese once or twice and had a fifteen-minute conversation with a German tourist in Cancun, but the most Spanish El had ever heard him speak 'til then was ordering his Goddamn pork and tequila.
The old man grinned and shook his hand. //He'll do,// he told El. //He'll do.//
***
It was strange being home. It was strange sleeping in his own bed, playing his guitar in the daytime in his own house, in streets he knew, for people he considered friends. He watched as Sands started to memorise his way around the place, feeling his way along the walls, touching every inch of El's property. He started to think he could stay there forever and never leave again.
Three days in the dry, blistering heat, lying in the bed he'd shared with Carolina. He watched Sands sleep that third night, facedown against the pillows with his lengthening hair spilling over his shoulders and the sheets twisted low around his hips. He was nothing like Carolina – not pretty or curvy and not nearly so hot-blooded. Sands was cool, easygoing. Sands was...
Leaving.
Morning now. El woke alone for the first time in eight months and almost panicked when he didn't find himself wound up tight with the antagonising American. He went to the window and looked down – there was Sands by the village's makeshift bus stop across the square, case at his feet. El frowned. He was leaving.
He pulled on the first pair of pants he came to and then his boots; he was still pulling on his shirt as he strode from the house and across the square toward Sands who was sitting there stock-still on the bench by the dusty road. El had no idea how he'd even found out there *was* a bus.
Sands looked up. To be more precise, Sands lifted his head as if to look up as El approached. It was like he knew the sound of El's boot heels on the street, like he could tell it was him by the way that he breathed. He shook his head, smiling softly to himself.
"I'm leaving," Sands said simply.
"So I see."
He half expected him so say 'don't try to stop me' or 'aren't you going to ask me to stay?' – maybe even 'come with me' – but he didn't. He just lowered his head, pushing his hair back behind his ears. And suddenly El knew; shit-eating grin or no, Sands had thought he was on his own that day in Culiacán. And all this time he'd just been waiting for him to leave, to leave him lying there. Leaving now was just a pre-emptive strike. Goddamn him.
El sat down on the bench next to him, close enough that their shoulders and thighs were touching, just brushing together. Sands didn't move away.
"Where are you going?" El asked.
"I'm not staying."
El nodded, turning his head slightly and seeing just a little way behind Sands' glasses, into his empty sockets. He'd had brown eyes, he thought. Maybe one day he'd ask.
He rubbed his own eyes for a moment, looked up at the house, sighed. "That's quite a coincidence," he said.
"Oh?" Sands turned just a fraction.
"I'm not staying either."
"Where are you going?"
El stood, and he tugged on Sands' arm to get him to follow. They left the bench, crossed the road, walked back toward the house; El tossed Sands' case onto the back seat of the car that was waiting there.
"I don't know," he said, pressing him up against the car. He brushed his hands over Sands' thighs, his lips brushing at his throat. "You tell me."
Sands slipped into the passenger side and slammed the door. There was that huge grin again, showing all his sharp white teeth, but it was somehow different. It wasn't forced. El found himself grinning, too; he could get used to that.
"Just keep driving," Sands said. "We'll get there in the end."
El just nodded and revved the engine in reply. It was strange how after all that time away, leaving meant almost nothing at all.
***
He never knew why he went back for Sands. But in the end, down the dusty roads and in the cheap hotels, he couldn't find a reason to leave him behind, either.
*** End ***
Author: fangirl_lizzie
Rating: Rish, I'd say.
Pairing: Sands/El
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. All you'll get is a collection of my trashy fanfic and a well-thumbed copy of LotR anyway.
Notes: //Spanish//.
Summary: El goes back for Sands.
***
He went back for Sands. He wasn't really too sure why, because at the time he didn't even like the guy; he was a no-good, scheming, completely fucked- in-the-head American, claiming some sort of affiliation with the CIA, but really El suspected he was just a spoiled, psychotic little rich boy with entirely too much time on his hands. So he had no idea why he went back for Sands.
He found him with his back against the wall of the building across the bloody, dusty street from the town hall, bleeding. El muttered something insulting under his breath and Sands 'looked' up at him with a huge shit- eating grin on his face. El was a little too preoccupied with the blood that was running unnervingly from behind the sunglasses and over Sands' high cheekbones to be truly angry when it hit him. That goofy, dumbass smile said it all. The bastard *knew* he was coming back.
El took off the President's sash and bandaged Sands' gunshot thigh with it. Sands handed over all the cash he had on him to the chewing gum kid. Then, Sands' arm around El's shoulders and El's arm around Sands' waist, they left Culiacán.
With Barillo and Marquez and the cartel dead, El wanted to go back to his village. He'd buried Carolina and their beautiful daughter there. He had friends there. But when he told Sands where they were headed, he just said, "No, c'mon, where's your sense of adventure? I've always wanted to see Acapulco." El didn't think it polite to point out that he'd never *see* it at all, nor did he understand it when he swung the newly-stolen Chevrolet around, tyres screeching, and headed south.
Sands slept almost the whole way, doped up on some mysteriously produced and seemingly inexhaustible supply of Percocet. He snored. El listened to guitar bands on the car's ancient and barely-functional radio. It wasn't a bad trip, all things considered. They almost didn't have to speak at all.
Then they were there, the next day at 3pm under the blazing sun, Sands still loopy on pain meds and El about to collapse from lack of sleep and minor blood loss. They checked into a hotel – the first hotel they came to.
It was a dive with roaches behind the gnarled old reception desk and a well- used rattrap behind the front door; the place obviously wasn't busting at the seams with paying customers, but that didn't seem to bother Sands. He just pushed his sunglasses further up on the bridge of his nose, leant forward against the counter and asked, in English, for a double. El just rolled his eyes, suddenly grateful that he *had* eyes, and picked up his guitar case.
He knew Sands couldn't see the disapproving look on the owner's face but he had a sneaking suspicion that he was ignoring it anyway. The man's nonchalance was a thing of beauty, especially considering his state – eyeless, currently in the company of a man of fairly uncertain loyalties packing three guns of various sizes and six shiny throwing knives, dressed in a CIA t-shirt, Bermuda shorts and an ungodly fake moustache. Not to mention the idiotic sombrero. Ordinarily El would've been moved to make excuses; as it was, for unknown reasons, he just plucked the keys to their room from the desktop, put his hand on Sands' shoulder and strode over to the stairs. The coordination they showed was surprisingly good.
"I think I'd like to fuck now," Sands said, sprawling on the bed, the back of the sombrero he'd bought in a cheap little gas station folded up against the back of his neck.
"Don't be ridiculous," El said, putting down his guitar case – their only luggage – and watching as Sands tugged up the hem of that God-forsaken CIA t-shirt. He watched as Sands ran his hand over the strip of tanned skin it revealed before tucking his fingers up to the knuckles into the waistband of his obscene neon green shorts.
"Ah, but obviously I *am* ridiculous." Sands pulled off the ultra-wide- brimmed, touristy sombrero that El hadn't bothered to tell him not to buy and frisbeed it across the room. It hit El on the forehead; he caught it as it dropped, tossed it to the floor, and sighed.
"You have a point," he said, and he took off his shirt.
***
Sands loved Acapulco.
Spreading antiseptic in another man's eye sockets had never exactly been high on El's to-do list, but to his credit Sands did start to heal with remarkable speed; after the first week, spent drugged almost insensate in the dirty hotel room, they went out during the day to see the sights. El told him where they were and then Sands described it back to him, all from memories of tourist guides, complete with snide-ass socio-political commentary. Though, he didn't mention the President even once. El figured that if he did, he'd kick him out on his blind, sarcastic ass.
Then, at night, El played in the bar down the street. Sands sat at the same corner table every night and pissed away El's earnings on slow-roasted pork and tequila. El knew that it annoyed him on some level, playing Lecuona night after night to keep Sands in tequila and lime, but he never once came close to telling him to stop. They'd leave together at 3am with Sands' .38 pressing into El's hip. Five weeks on and they were still sleeping it off in the same shitty hotel room.
But the honeymoon had to end. Lying naked in their sweat-damp bed, flushed, the almost-cool breeze from the open window lapping over his skin, El turned to Sheldon Sands.
"I'm going home," he said, lowly, with his eyes still closed. He didn't want to see Sands naked in the moonlight with his tousled hair and perfect, scarred skin. So he kept his eyes closed.
Sands sniffed and stretched with a cat-like arch of his back as he threw his arms wide, catching El across the forehead. "Don't be absurd," he said, as El batted his arm away with oddly lingering hands. "You're taking me to Veracruz. Now go back to sleep."
So he took him to Veracruz. In the morning he kept himself busy packing their one small case into the trunk of the car and pretended not to notice when Sands shot the guy that cooked the bar's apparently excellent pork. After he'd accidentally shot the barman and two waitresses. What could he say? It got confusing shooting to kill with a .38 special and a distinct lack of eyes.
***
They were in Veracruz for two weeks. The inevitable sun, sea and sand, with some fishing, busking, tacky touristy shopping and a hotel room that would probably smell like sex for a month after they left. The place was both too commercial and too traditional, trying too hard for either of them to enjoy much outside of the bedroom. Not that El was in it to enjoy himself anyway; he had no idea what he was doing, where he was going or why. He was in the driving seat, but that was only because Sands had a slight problem with visual impairment.
They left. Sands toyed with the idea of a quick trip to Cuba, but in the end they just toured around Yucatan, El playing in bars while Sands harassed the unsuspecting locals - he turned out to be quite the little hustler. Somewhere along the line they graduated from near silence to snarking to semi-coherent conversation. He still thought Sands could do with a good psychiatrist or a pretty white coat with arms that tied in back, but at least the nutcase was entertaining.
In the smallest town they could find, in the seediest bar, El played his guitar and Sands polished his guns. No one seemed to care much about the eyeless American with the gun fetish who spent all the mariachi's cash on tequila. And the pork was just mediocre enough to spare the chef his life.
In that bar one night was when El started to wonder just what the hell was going on with his life. He was sitting, perched on a stool at the end of the bar with his guitar in his arms, plucking out some tune he'd learned way back when he was still a boy, before... well, before *everything*, and he caught sight of Sands reloading a magazine for his new, illicitly-procured Glock. He could still feel Sands' rough hands on his skin, Sands' hot, pliant body beneath him. He had the sour-sweet tequila taste of Sands' mouth on his tongue. What the fuck was going on? Was it just that Sands was willing and was there, or was it more? Spending his nights playing guitar in a cheap bar 'til his hands and wrists ached and then going upstairs to fuck a sarcastic American sociopath had never been the plan. He wasn't sure he'd ever had a plan at all.
It went downhill from there. He found himself thinking Sands' mussed morning bed head was kind of cute, and when the girls came onto the antagonising Yank down in the bar, he felt himself getting possessive. Sands was *his* antagonising Yank, damnit. It was pitiful, truly. Except Sands seemed to feel the same way – he blew off the girls in his trademark unsubtle way, ordered another tequila and drummed his fingers on the table in time with El's guitar.
When he asked him later what he'd said to the girls, Sands just grinned that huge I-own-you grin for a moment before he replied.
"I told them I'm with you," he said, his arms circling El's waist, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps to him it was. And somehow those words and that touch made everything okay, whether or not they and that over-bright smile meant that Sands was taking him for granted.
They left the town before El could figure out what exactly he was doing with a guy like that, caving to his every demand, sharing a bed every night so they'd wake every morning with their limbs entangled. In the end, El just stopped asking questions. Things seemed much less complicated that way.
***
"Were you ever really with the CIA?" El asked in the hotel in Ixtapa, strumming idly on his guitar on the terrace as Sands cleaned his gun. Guns. And all of El's. And polished their knives.
Sands didn't seem particularly perturbed by the question. "Sure," he said. El had seen him a good deal more perturbed by overcooked pork or sleeping in the damp spot. "You think I'm a fraud, honeybun? Or just a spoiled psycho rich kid with a bloated trust fund and a flair for the dramatic?"
"The thought had crossed my mind, *honeybun*."
"Then uncross it. I worked for those fuckers for twelve years. *Twelve years*. Of course, you shoot one too many chefs and they toss you out on your ear."
"Strange, no?"
"Yeah."
El licked his lips, watching as Sands' hands played deftly over the blade of one of his knives. He hadn't cut himself in weeks. "Not to mention coups d'état. *Attempted* coups d'état."
Sands sat back in his seat at the gun-spread table and tapped the tip of El's best throwing knife against his front teeth. Then he took off his glasses and leant forward on his elbows in some sort of horrible travesty of sincerity.
"It's been five months now," he said. "You haven't mentioned that once, 'til now."
El played on, something soft and not quite sad that he could barely hear but felt just fine through his fingertips. "It had to come up sometime. Eventually."
"Stop playing that fucking guitar and look at me." It was still surprising that Sands could make cursing sound like a term of endearment, in that ludicrously sibilant voice of his.
"I *am* looking at you."
"You know what I mean, snookums, sweetums, light of my life."
El stopped playing. Sands slipped from his chair and fumbled forward, hands outstretched. He found El's cheek, and slipped his fingers into his hair.
"Thank you, joy. My darling, my rapture. Boobookittyfuck."
El smirked. "Boobookittyfuck? You're insane." He stood, put down his guitar, rested it against the far edge of the table.
"You've only just noticed this? I'm in awe of your dizzying—mmph!"
El had him up against the wall in less than a second. Sands' .38 special dug into El's hip. El licked the rim of one empty socket, then nipped at his earlobe.
"Does this mean I'm forgiven?" Sands asked softly, almost hesitantly, his hands tracing the line of El's spine, straying down to his disappointingly still-clothed ass. It was too much for El to analyse, so he pressed to his lips to Sands' throat instead.
"Perhaps," he said. He bit down hard on Sands' collarbone, then swiped his tongue over it. The bedroom was just a few feet away, behind the double doors, but El wasn't sure that he wanted to wait. He sank to his knees. "Ask me again in half an hour."
***
A village in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, a small restaurant with outdoor tables, dark out, everything lit by a thousand tiny white lights. Sands' battered cowboy hat was sitting on one of the spare chairs at the table meant for four and he was resting one foot on the other. El was watching him as he ate, watching the goosebumps breaking out on his forearms. He'd left his jacket back at the hotel, hanging on the hook behind the door, and they couldn't sensibly go back for it. He had his hair tied back, showing off all the angles of his face. Watching him was distracting El from his food. Idly, he wondered if the chef was going to survive the night.
"What's your name?" Sands asked unexpectedly, loading his fork with rice.
El frowned. "El," he said, blinking.
Sands smirked. "Yeah, yeah. Your real name, genius."
"El," El repeated, now suppressing an amused smile. "El Mariachi."
"C'mon, your *real* name. The one on your passport."
El shrugged, which was a bad habit considering Sands couldn't see it. "I don't have a passport."
"Smartass. The one on your birth certificate."
"Sorry, it was burned. Accident." Pause. "Okay, arson."
This is where Sands would've rolled his eyes, had he had them. As it was, he settled for flipping him off.
"Okay then, *El*, how does this grab you?"
Sands put down his fork and dug in his pants pocket, producing two US passports; he tapped them briefly against the back of his wrist – probably because he knew the delay would make El crazy – then tossed them across the table. El opened one, saw his own picture; he opened the other and found Sands'. He read the details. He blinked. He read them again, slowly.
"We do *not* look like brothers," he said.
"That's the beauty of it!" Sands picked his fork back up and recommenced shovelling. "Who *wouldn't* believe it? Besides, we're only half brothers - if anyone asks, your mom was Mexican and mine was part Cherokee or something. Perfect cover."
El stared at the passports for a moment, then looked back up at Sands. Maybe once upon a time he would've been aghast, shocked at the very least. Now nothing shocked him. He just smiled.
"You're insane."
"You say that like it's such a bad thing."
El turned his attention back to the passports. "John and Robert Ewing," he read aloud.
"Uh-huh."
"You've made us JR and Bobby Ewing, from Dallas, Texas. You crazy son of a bitch."
Sands beamed, the wattage of his smile really quite considerable. "Uh-huh." He took another mouthful of pork and rice.
"Then maybe I'll wake up and find this is all a dream."
Except the dead Mexican drug lord in their hotel room and the guitar case full of bank notes by their feet weren't a dream. And neither was Sands, though El sometimes wondered if he were.
"Where now?" he asked, standing, tucking a stray note into Sands' jeans pocket, tugging him closer. Sands put down his fork and didn't resist; he took El's wrist in his hand, pressing his fingertips to it like he was feeling his pulse.
"I feel like El Paso. How about you?"
It wasn't really a question that required an answer, and El didn't give one. They left the next morning. El had never been to El Paso – he'd never even left Mexico. He tried to forget as they crossed the border on Sands' forged passports that as far as he knew he'd never even thought about leaving. Besides, he had a feeling they wouldn't be gone for long.
***
They crossed back three days later, and drove to Tijuana. Then Mexico City. Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Zihuatenejo, Cancun. Soon Sands stopped telling him where to go; they headed north, they headed south – it didn't matter. They started to forget the names of the places, where they'd been before and where they hadn't.
Towns, cities, villages all merged into one. Shitty hotels, rooms above bars, an apartment over a bookshop that they let for three weeks in a small town whose name El couldn't recall. Gas stations. Nights driving, listening to Sands gabble on about the time he throttled a guy in Singapore and cross- dressed in Bangkok. Nights sleeping scrunched up in the front of the car by the side of the road with Sands sprawling bonelessly on the back seat and using his best jacket as a blanket. Days roasting under the sun on dusty roads, eating under worn café awnings, busking for gas money though Sands always seemed to have a huge wad of cash in his back pocket.
They sat in a bar one night – El told Sands he drank too much, that he was starting to remind him of Fideo, and despite the that fact Sands had fuck all idea who Fideo was, he went up to the bar (thwacking his knees on a stool as he did so) and ordered a glass of milk. He spent the rest of the evening with an oddly endearing milk moustache hovering on his top lip. El thought maybe that was in Mazatlán.
They shopped for clothes one day – El picked out shirts and pants for Sands, black and white so maybe he'd blend in a little and stop looking like such a glaring tourist, but somehow Sands knew exactly what he was up to. Fifteen minutes later the guy was dressed in black combat boots, a Motorhead t-shirt and a dusky pink sarong. El almost regretted using the sombrero for target practice – it would've finished the look off nicely.
El just bought himself a pair of black jeans to wear while his pants were being laundered. Sands pressed up against him in the launderette, wearing that ugly-ass sarong that hung just past his knees. He slipped a hand into El's back pocket and one to his crotch and brought him off right then and there while cursing his fashion sense in some of the most colourful language El had ever heard. He thought maybe that was back in Mexico City, but he couldn't be sure.
Road led into road, traffic thinned, the tyres kicked up more and more dust. The gas got low. At last, the car stopped. El killed the engine.
"Where are we today, sugarplum?" asked Sands.
El took a deep breath, wanting to smile as he looked around but not quite daring. "Home," he said.
"Oh."
They left the car. Two sets of Cuban heels scuffed through the dust, El's clinking with all their metallic adornments and Sands' very close by, clicking loudly against the hard ground. They walked closer to the stalls, the hanging guitars, players, sellers. A few shouts of 'El!' went up, and he smiled, waved a little, keeping one hand firmly planted on Sands' shoulder though he knew that in the seven, eight months they'd been on the road Sands had ceased to really need a guide. El just wasn't sure what he'd do if he weren't anchored somehow.
"El." He stopped by the stall, ran his gaze over the rows of guitars that were swinging there in the slight morning breeze before nodding at the owner, his old friend. //Who's the gringo?//
El frowned then glanced at Sands. He'd got so used to seeing him that the bright yellow Hulk Hogan muscle shirt he was wearing with the ill-fitting black jeans he'd stolen from El hadn't even registered.
//Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, pleased to meet you.// Sands held out his hand in the guy's general direction and El's eyebrows crawled up toward his hairline at the sound of Sands' perfect Spanish. Somewhere along the line he'd worked out that Sands probably spoke better Spanish than El spoke English, not that he *ever* spoke Spanish. He'd broken into Portuguese once or twice and had a fifteen-minute conversation with a German tourist in Cancun, but the most Spanish El had ever heard him speak 'til then was ordering his Goddamn pork and tequila.
The old man grinned and shook his hand. //He'll do,// he told El. //He'll do.//
***
It was strange being home. It was strange sleeping in his own bed, playing his guitar in the daytime in his own house, in streets he knew, for people he considered friends. He watched as Sands started to memorise his way around the place, feeling his way along the walls, touching every inch of El's property. He started to think he could stay there forever and never leave again.
Three days in the dry, blistering heat, lying in the bed he'd shared with Carolina. He watched Sands sleep that third night, facedown against the pillows with his lengthening hair spilling over his shoulders and the sheets twisted low around his hips. He was nothing like Carolina – not pretty or curvy and not nearly so hot-blooded. Sands was cool, easygoing. Sands was...
Leaving.
Morning now. El woke alone for the first time in eight months and almost panicked when he didn't find himself wound up tight with the antagonising American. He went to the window and looked down – there was Sands by the village's makeshift bus stop across the square, case at his feet. El frowned. He was leaving.
He pulled on the first pair of pants he came to and then his boots; he was still pulling on his shirt as he strode from the house and across the square toward Sands who was sitting there stock-still on the bench by the dusty road. El had no idea how he'd even found out there *was* a bus.
Sands looked up. To be more precise, Sands lifted his head as if to look up as El approached. It was like he knew the sound of El's boot heels on the street, like he could tell it was him by the way that he breathed. He shook his head, smiling softly to himself.
"I'm leaving," Sands said simply.
"So I see."
He half expected him so say 'don't try to stop me' or 'aren't you going to ask me to stay?' – maybe even 'come with me' – but he didn't. He just lowered his head, pushing his hair back behind his ears. And suddenly El knew; shit-eating grin or no, Sands had thought he was on his own that day in Culiacán. And all this time he'd just been waiting for him to leave, to leave him lying there. Leaving now was just a pre-emptive strike. Goddamn him.
El sat down on the bench next to him, close enough that their shoulders and thighs were touching, just brushing together. Sands didn't move away.
"Where are you going?" El asked.
"I'm not staying."
El nodded, turning his head slightly and seeing just a little way behind Sands' glasses, into his empty sockets. He'd had brown eyes, he thought. Maybe one day he'd ask.
He rubbed his own eyes for a moment, looked up at the house, sighed. "That's quite a coincidence," he said.
"Oh?" Sands turned just a fraction.
"I'm not staying either."
"Where are you going?"
El stood, and he tugged on Sands' arm to get him to follow. They left the bench, crossed the road, walked back toward the house; El tossed Sands' case onto the back seat of the car that was waiting there.
"I don't know," he said, pressing him up against the car. He brushed his hands over Sands' thighs, his lips brushing at his throat. "You tell me."
Sands slipped into the passenger side and slammed the door. There was that huge grin again, showing all his sharp white teeth, but it was somehow different. It wasn't forced. El found himself grinning, too; he could get used to that.
"Just keep driving," Sands said. "We'll get there in the end."
El just nodded and revved the engine in reply. It was strange how after all that time away, leaving meant almost nothing at all.
***
He never knew why he went back for Sands. But in the end, down the dusty roads and in the cheap hotels, he couldn't find a reason to leave him behind, either.
*** End ***