Many beta thanks to Ms Anon. Robert Rodriguez owns as much of this as he wants to, which probably isn't a lot beyond the characters and the basic concepts.
Awake.
He was awake, and somewhere in the back of his head was the dull throb that said it hadn't been anything like long enough, somewhere lost under the shrieking of his senses, and for all that screaming, everything was almost barren when he reached for it –
Heat soft over his neck, heat in a pattern with air, slow and steady; and he was listening still, checking, pillow scratching over his hand and gun smooth-ridged under his fingers, but the static all dropped out of his head, leaving just the expected, and the nothing that was night instead of threat.
Whatever had dragged him awake again, it hadn't bothered El.
He had no idea what the hell kind of senses the Mariachi had rigged up as alarms, but if it was all about to go screwy, El usually knew about it right before.
His hand stayed curled on the grip, thumb over the safety.
The hotel had the early hours quiet; no voices or TV babblings through the walls, no footsteps echoing up the concrete stairwell or along the corridor. His breathing and El's breathing, not even a car from the street outside, everything dead in this piss-ant town. And it figured he should like that, knowing he could hear anything if it happened, but it was still creeping him out, every time, the world seeming so fucking empty.
He was starting to think maybe some things wouldn't ever quit.
The one thing there, the one thing he could sense besides himself, changed, each breath sliced shorter, blunter instead of fading through into the next. "Go back to sleep," El muttered, accent thickened and drowsy, words warm past his neck before El rolled away in a rustle of shirt and sheet and stilled back down to just the movement of air.
'Go back to sleep.' Right. Good plan, and easy as taking a piss for a goddamn mariachi who settled back and slept in the car down a fucking forest track when he had to. Sands liked sounds, but he liked ones he knew and could predict, not some fucking animal snuffling round, all sneaking and furtive. Especially when most of the time sneaking and furtive meant some dickless bastard was gonna start shooting at him any second.
Not that he was entirely averse to a little mayhem, but he'd always been more a behind-the-scenes guy than the full-frontal-assault kind, only the bugfuckers they played .38 tag with these days weren't too big on respecting the distinction. He had a more limited range of lifestyle options than he used to, it was true, and this one was still a whole flight of stairs up on the Mexican peasant idyll, but the fighting and the running and the never staying one place long enough to have a motherfucking clue where he was started to grate him like he was mozzarella after a couple of months. El might be the fucking automaton - just wind him up and let him run, oh but look out while you're priming, 'cos one tug on the wrong wire and he'll go up right in your face - but Sands was thinking he'd like to maybe get a through night's sleep more than one in four.
So Paraguay-stroke-Bolivia-stroke-wherever-the-fuck-wasn't-Mexico was right back on the top of the Sheldon list, but he wasn't deluded enough to think it would be entirely that easy. The shit-shovellers had some interesting cross-border tentacles, true international businessmen that they were, and some even longer memories - just ask dear El about that one - and the Company cunt-suckers would keep one sleepy eye all over the Americas.
El didn't know it yet, but he was coming along too.
He'd pried the guilt-steeped dickbrain out of the Happy Jesus-Freak Guitar Hovel and the rigor-mortised finger-hooks of a wife who wasn't gonna be anybody's nomination for sainthood, with the knife-rack and the tendency to shoot her exes. It was really no surprise El had gone for her - hell, she sounded like someone Sands might have enjoyed passing some time with himself - but bodies rotted just fine without babysitters.
With the Bride of Satan down, it should only take a bit more effort to kick Lucifer out of Hell and into some country that, if just as backward and shitwit screwy, at least didn't have it in for him personally.
And maybe sleeping could take a step down for now in favour of working through the potentials.
All it would need - all anything ever needed - was the right angle to push from.