Sorry, this took so long to get done. Have only the excuse that other fics have gotten more attention of late, and that this seems to be something I can only write when the mood is on me.

TITLE: El Corazon de la Leyenda, part 3
AUTHOR: Garnet
RATING: NC-17, at last, whoo…
WARNING: Sands' mouth and the sex edges non-con
SUMMARY: Sands finally gets what he wants, or does he?
NOTES: Since it's been a while since the last bit got posted—El saved Sands and then dragged him to sanctuary at some out of theway monastery, where Sands has been less than cooperative, to say theleast. This seems to have reached a sort of an ending, but who
knows?


Well, fuck all.

When he had first heard the story, he hadn't believed it. After all, hang around in Mexico for a few million years and every damn song you hear starts to sound the same. They all start with a little thing called amor and end in a big old tragedy guaranteed to rip your heart out, or at least to make you dig deeper into your pockets in thanks for hearing such an inspirational tale. Only the names change. The dust remains the same. And the beautiful woman. And the man with the guns.

Peasant farce. Cactus country soap operas. Larger than life. Certainly, larger than the lives that most people around these parts had for themselves or ever would have for themselves. And, why not? Why not dream of beauty when everything around you is ugly. Imagine yourself a hero when it's the cowards who always live to tell the tale.

But the dust knows. The dust always knows. It travels on the dry coyote winds that skulk from town to town. It sneaks in and out of the cracks in people's homes and skins and souls and flavors their food with the castoff dead of countless generations. So it's no
wonder they spice up the shit they eat until all that's left to taste is the burn; better that than sucking down somebody's great great grandmother whole and bitter and brittle.

Sugar candy skulls, yeah. Like the dead are really that sweet. Like they're fucking sweet at all. After all, what the hell have they got to be happy about?

El dia de los Muertos?

Right. Sure. Fucking A. Like the dead didn't rule here the whole freaking year round already. Like you couldn't see them peering out at you from the burnished brown eyes of the newest born bambino, the one clutching at his mother's arms as she loiters on the steps of some crumbling stone church as if to say she was once a virgin, too. Her own eyes like bittersweet chocolate, like fertile earth, the kind of gaze that saints and martyrs dream of when they remember the world that they died for.

All the while hoping that heaven would be better.

Even though hell tells prettier lies.

But the Mariachi wasn't just a story and he had way too many fucking issues to be a hero. Though he was beautiful enough, if you liked your legends dark and deadly and spending shitloads of their time moping around the place like they had nothing better to do and no
place better to do it, not to mention if you really didn't care for much in way of meaningful conversation.

Leaving your own self time enough to loiter around imagining the potential audience reaction to your charmingly dear attempt at farce. A genuine five star tragedy which had broken the mold by starting in the throes of lust rather than a crazy little thing called love—since love was for wusses and idiots who still believed in shit like tooth fairy and happily ever after and the freaking two party system—but had ended in a fancy fuck up to end all fancy fuck ups just the same.

Not that nobody but nobody better end up singing any sweaty little songs about that mother fucking greasy taco farting straight into the bowels of hell backseat taxi ride of yours truly or one lousy gringo just might have suck it up, pry his skinny ass out of bed, and ride that big old white horse outta here so that he could perform a few freakish Halloween accidents on a couple more dusty brown faces just to show em what good shit they were missing out on.

Yep, could do it to them but good. Show these local yokels that bones made out of candy had a bitter enough marrow all the same and that the best lies were closer to the truth than most people ever knew or ever cared to know, and that scratch any given hero and you would find an asshole of the first order.

Grouching around wondering why his spit tasted of dead grandmothers.

***

Two weeks.

Two whole fucking weeks of nothing but silence and prayers and bells, always with the goddamn bells, as if the country couldn't run without them sounding out God's favorite flour hour every goddamn hour on the hour. Some pseudo Bob Barker invitation to come on down and spend a little prime time wearing the shit out of your knees so that you,
too, could go around with rosary burns on your fingers and freckles of holy water running down your face, like it really could impart some kind of super secret sacred code that would keep the Devil from doing his big dirty on you come the day after the morning after the world ended.

Like you couldn't just bend over at that point like every other silly fucker and just jolly well kiss your ass goodbye rather than thinking you were better than that. That you were meant for greater things. Like sitting on God's right hand or some shit like that, as if even
in the hereafter one hand didn't wash the other.

Nope, it was a big old mess of pure blood and bullets that had turned this skuzzy little dry hump hole of a country into what it was today and let no one ever forget that. No fucking one. Not even God—who if He actually even existed, had a hellavalot to answer for—or the Devil—who it seemed had the hard-on of all hard-ons for God, if He actually even existed—let alone the guy in the brown skirt with his mouth sewn shut by his stupid vow of silence and his grungy little hand on the rope, marking out all those perfect little parcels of time with one goddamn bell after another until Judgment Day could finally decide to take a hit, come out smiling, and let everybody know it was way past time everybody got their end of the world groove on.

Let alone the lone joker in the deck who had brought his sorry ass to this sorry place, and then somehow thought that if he could only manage to scrunch himself back behind a guitar far enough it would somehow conveniently hide his darkest sins. And let him go back to his previous hobby, the one where he spent all his days convincing himself that he was really nothing more than a Nice Guy who had been Hard Done By.

Oh, yeah…that was his precious Mariachi. The man whose past was his present and whose tomorrows somehow looked a whole lot like his yesterdays.

The man hovering in the far corner of room even now, his fingers dragging over the strings of the cheap-ass guitar that he'd scrounged up somewhere, as if his very soul depended on him stroking music out of that could seduce an angel to drop a little forgiveness his way.

Of course, there weren't any angels in this here room. Just a rather dusty and like way the fuck tired former Company man, who was just about freaking dying for a cigarette, especially since it didn't much look like he was going to die for real anytime soon.

Oh yeah, God had ever so much to answer for. The sick fuck.

"Yo, El," he said. "You know Stairway to Heaven?"

The other man answered with a whole waterfall of discordant notes and some soft Spanish insult that was seriously meant to be even less pleasing to the discerning ear.

But he found himself smiling all the same, before he pried himself off the bed and put a hand out to touch the nearest wall. Cool stone, roughly dressed, cracked here and there and probably chock full of spiders and scorpions. Still, he traced his fingers lightly
along it as he walked in El's direction. And heard the music stop just before his foot ran into the leg of the man's chair.

He looked down, and somehow knew that the Mariachi was looking up. Into the cozy little blindfold that had replaced his sunglasses in this place for some reason. Probably so some bad ass monk could go around making like a Blues Brothers reject, some south of the border would be John Belushi who wanted to pretend he had a bad habit to go with his favorite brown habit.

He wanted his shades back. He wanted a drink. He wanted a fucking cig.

He wanted the other man to quit noodling around and just tell him already what he really wanted from him. Just so he could have the rare pleasure of telling him to go to hell.

"Your eyes are healing," El said at the last.

He snorted at that. "My eyes are gone, my good man. But the holes in my head feel a whole fucking let better, yeah, thank you for asking."

"But still you are angry."

"And thanks for that, too. Like I should be what instead? Grateful? I didn't ask for a helping hand, let alone for some midnight serenade. Not that it isn't always midnight now, as in dark as, blind as, wanta get some fucking sleep around this place sometime soon if you really don't mind prying your hand from that fucking guitar for a few fucking minutes."

But he already felt El's attention had turned from him, a moment or two before a passable, though thoroughly mariachisized version of Stairway to Heaven filled the room they'd been sharing for the past two weeks.

And he found himself shaking his head and surrendering to the absurdity of the moment.

After all, why not? What was he doing here? What was he any good for anymore? His former life was gone, shot to hell and back and then some, and even if he could go back, they would only put him out to pasture. Some little apartment no doubt in Smalltown, USA, him with his white cane and cheap shades and maybe even a scabby old pooch for company, the kind who would sit patiently at his feet as he sat on some park bench somewhere and waited for his life to continue passing him right on by.

Yeah, like just terrific. Just what he always wanted. To be a cherry of a charity case for somebody. To be the kind of loser that other folks looked after rather then had to look out for.

Though he could cheer himself up with the thought that it was far more likely that they would just kill him should they stumble across him somewhere out there. After all, a bullet to the back of the head solved so ever many problems. Clean, cool, case closed. Quite neat, really. They liked that sort of thing back home, made for a nice footnote at those long boring meetings where not even the strongest coffee in the world could keep their piggy little eyes from glazing over.

Yep. They would be quite happy to snuff him out like a half-smoked cigarette. After all, he was trunk fodder now, man. Destined for the cleaners, for the nearest river, lake, or landfill. They paid men just like him to take care of shit just like that. Job security. Always was somebody around who needed taking care of.

El finished off his musical serenade with a passable rendition of Sympathy for the Devil, then crashed to an abrupt halt in a jangle of strings and bad attitude.

"Satisfied?" he asked.

"Not hardly," he replied dryly.

"Too bad," El said, then he heard the other man stand up and put the guitar aside—finally—a moment before strong hands closed on his arms. Holding him firmly in place, even as he felt the warm breath gust along his cheek. As if El were studying his face up close and personal.

"Like what you see?" he asked.

"Do you?" came the response.

He couldn't stop the laugh which emerged, even as the pain struck home. Boy, did old El have a way with words. No wonder he always got the ladies, even if he couldn't keep em alive after.

"Fuck you," he said.

"Now you're just being charming again," El replied, even as his fingers tightened to the point of leaving bruises. "I could have killed you, you know."

"You still can. Or you can try."

"I could kill you right now."

Close, so close, and God it was instantly there, and he could feel his heart pounding in his head now, his blood ticking around his brains. Like a rattle of bones and a clatter of loose bullets. Yeah, punch my ticket my good man, my pretty little Mariachi. Punch it but good. Get me out of this place. I never wanted to be here anyway. I never wanted to live past that day and the dust. Except that you made me. Except that some part of me just couldn't lay down and die when it counted. Even after I held a gun to its fucking head.

Survival instinct, shit. It was just a freaking parasite. One that didn't have the first clue that sometimes dying was better than living, when living meant you didn't really have a life anymore.

But he couldn't ask for it. He couldn't beg for it. He could only stand there, imprisoned by the other man's words as much as by his grip, watching one blind moment tick by after another, and try to keep each breath from tearing him apart. Armageddon, come on down.
Been waiting for you. Cross my fingers and wish to die.

Except that he didn't and he wouldn't and he couldn't…unless…

"But I won't," El said at last.

"Oh, joy," he replied, even as mute relief moved through him, hand in hand with an even more acute sense of disappointment. Too bad, so sad, no E-ticket ride straight to hell for this Company man. Not…

"Today," the other man added, then released him so abruptly he almost ended up sprawled on his ass on that stone floor.

He heard El moving away and snatched out, almost surprising himself when his fingers closed around the other man's wrist. Then was even more surprised when the Mariachi allowed the grip, allowed himself to be drawn back around.

"Tell me," he hissed. "You think you own me now? You think you know me? You think I give a flying fuck that some spick guitar-maker died rather than just hand you over like he should've? He made his own choice, my good man. And you have to live with that."

"No," El replied quietly. "You do."

"I don't care. I never cared."

Fingers closed tight over his own, twisted hard and pulled, and the next moment he felt El's face brush up against his own. He smelled the sharp sweat and resin scent of the man, even as a whole slew of silvery dark words poured right in his ear. As if the other man
might melt his brain with just the sound of his voice. Sugar and spice and everything nice, but the Mariachi wasn't a little boy. He hadn't been a little boy in ages and ages, and not that he felt like complaining about that. Only about the way his fingers were being ever so slowly peeled free from the other man's wrist, one by one, the relentless pressure only a hair's away from breaking bone.

"You're a good liar, Agent Sands. But I've met better. You came here and thought you could pull one over on us. You thought you could play us. But this is an old land. It guards its secrets well. Better even than you do. I don't own you. You're already spoken for. You're already dead."

"Pull the other one," he said coldly, and the man did. Which left only one finger more holding him fast to the other man, one finger which was being ever so slowly pried away and then it would be over and El would be gone again. He didn't want that, but already the pain was almost unbearable.

Not that being alone here, alone in his head, half out of his head—with all those fucking bells for his only real company—wasn't worse.

"You're my brother now, mi compadre," El said then, a mere whisper. "Welcome to hell."

And then with a sharp stab of pain the Mariachi was free, he was walking away, and it was all he could do to fumble his way back to bed. Before he could try and go after the man and make a complete dickwad of himself by attempting to kill him or kiss him or just smash that stupid guitar over his stupid head and see if that might make everything or anything any better.

"Yeah," he said, knowing nobody was listening and not giving a fuck. "Well, that and a dime will get you a phone call to Who Gives a Shit."

And he threw himself back on the bed, feeling it groan and moan and give way beneath him. His fingers throbbing and his head aching, even as he felt more blind than ever before, more alone. Wanting like mad to shoot a few holes in somebody just so that they would feel worse than he did.

Then wanting to shoot himself even more as those goddamned bells started up all over again.

***

He had never been a crack shot. But he could certainly shoot straight when he had to.

He had never had a genius with languages. But he could curse like a sailor in half a dozen native tongues if you really got him going.

He had just enough savvy to get other fuckers into exactly the right kind of trouble, while keeping his own good self out of as much of it as he could manage and still get his job done.

He certainly knew the way the world worked, and knew how to work it when all the chips were down and the pawns in place and the clock was running down, running out, running for the hills.

So where did it all go wrong? Where did he go wrong? Did he just get out of the wrong side of some whore's bed once upon a time—stumbling too quickly into his pants as she purred some completely insincere but dick flattering compliment up at him from the tangle of their hot wet and none too clean sheets—and not realize until now that this wasn't the Mexico he knew and walked and occasionally despised and despaired of, but some weird alternate ass backwards Mexico. Red Kryptonite for the soul. A gen-U-ine shock to the system.

About as welcome as waking up every morning to the fact that you just couldn't fucking see. Even though you still dreamed in bright vivid Technicolor.

But then red was an underrated color. So was black.

So was the fact that sometimes sheer horniness drove you to do the dumbest things. All in the name of getting your rocks off.

He really had to stop lusting after people who were crazier than he was.

It brought out all his competitive urges.

***

"El?" he called. "Oh, El?"

They had told him the Mariachi was in the garden. What this place was doing with a garden he didn't know, anymore than he knew why a man like El would hang out in one. He did not seem a roses and marigolds kind of guy. Except that love and death did seem to go hand in hand in these here parts, and El knew all about love and death.

He wouldn't be The Mariachi if he didn't. Even he knew that much.

Not that anything else was making much sense lately.

Not even his own impulse to follow the man into what the monks clearly regarded as God's own private sanctuary. Knowing in his heart of hearts what he wanted most was to sin the fuck all over it.

Did colors have a smell? `Cause, it certainly seemed to him that this place smelled green. Just like it felt quiet and soothing and private, with the tinkle of some kind of waterfall or fountain right in the middle of it. That relentlessly dry wind of the damned rustling through cooling leaves here, across real grass even.

The path beneath his feet was stone, though, and he followed it slowly, and after a while it seemed he could almost see it in his mind's eye. A maze. A monster. A knot he couldn't begin to unravel. With a man at the very heart of it who, for once, didn't have that stupid guitar glued to his lap.

Instead, he heard fingers trailing through water, felt the man breathing—deep and rhythmic—and then sensed him looking at him.

"To your left," the man said.

He reached out as instructed and his fingers connected with metal. He traced it out enough to realize it was an old iron and wood bench, and then sat down on the edge of it, stretching his legs out in front of him. Hearing El's fingers still busy dabbling, as if half his problem was that they could never be still. Gun, guitar…the man needed something in his hand.

He had something he'd like to volunteer for the job, but as he was rather fond of it remaining attached to his body—especially in light of recent threats to the contrary—he found himself asking something entirely different from the man.

"Tell me," he said. "Why did you decide to save the President? I never asked you to do that."

He could almost sense the shrug. "He's a good man."

"Good?" he repeated, turning his face upwards now. The sun here was cooler, too. Must be under the shade of something. "You meet the man once, at some freaking party where you and your buddies mooch around making like mariachi eye candy on the hoof, playing all your sad little songs of love and revolution with more enthusiasm than any real talent, and now you think you know him. A guy who wouldn't look twice at you normally. At anybody from your pissant little village of guitar makers. Good, like yeah, sure."

"He wants to get rid of the drug dealers," El replied, his voice entirely unimpressed, that hand still pissing around in the water. "He wants to save this country. His country. My country."

"You mean the same country that wants to see you dead or behind a lovely little set of bars? Yeah, that's gratitude for ya."

"You don't understand."

"I understand more than you, my fine friend. I understand we're both in the shithole here and that there's no climbing out of it this time. That you gave my future away to a bunch of sad sacks who never did anything their whole lives to try and climb out of their own
shithole. So, gee yeah, I'm a little bitter. I'm a little angry. After all, what else have I got left. And that was a fucking rhetorical question, before you ask."

"You have this day," came the quiet answer. "That's all anyone can have."

He leaned back on the bench and let out a long breath, smiling toothily before he could stop himself. "Is that what you tell yourself? When you think about the people that you've fucked over? All those lucky ones who died just because they hung out with you? Like your pretty missus for one…what was her name again?"

He didn't know it. He had never known it, and honestly he didn't expect El to provide it. But the name came all the same, with a soft sigh, with an undertone of such mingled pain and love and hunger and regret that not even a blind man could miss it.

"Carolina…"

It brought back the feeling from the dream and, for a moment, he could taste dust and blood in equal measure. Could feel his heart crying out…dying inside him…

And it made him angry. Not that he had been given a glimpse into the inner workings of old El, but because he had never known such a thing for himself. Had never felt anything like that for anyone ever. After all, he had never met anybody worth trusting that far into his life, let alone somebody that he was okay with dying for. He doubted there was any such beast out there. Not before, and certainly not now.

No, the only reason for dying was for yourself, same as it was the only reason for living.

`Cause, when push came to shove, everybody but everybody was alone. And anybody who said any different was either a damn fool or a liar.

Or a love-sick Mariachi.

"You, my friend," he said conversationally. "Are purely fucked. I hope you know that."

"Oh, I know that," came the quiet answer. "I just don't think you do."

He started to laugh, but then all pretense to humor faded as he sensed the other man coming towards him fast. Like something blacker within a field of black. A rabid shadow. An angry ghost.

He kicked out, but the other man easily avoided him, and then his arms were caught up behind his back, tendons straining, pain shooting through his shoulders, the wounded arm throbbing like a son-of-a- bitch, as El frog marched him forward. Across more stone and then what felt like grass, leaves brushing across him, the sound of the water fading away behind them.

And the world was spinning around him, and he was fighting it, fighting El, twisting to break his hold on him despite the pain, but then he was abruptly released. Abruptly being thrown forward. His hands flailing into nothingness and finding only nothingness to
sustain him, and he was falling, falling hard, and he hit the ground even harder. He rolled to his side and one hand caught in something soft and prickly at the same time, melting petals and the funeral scent of roses, the needle press of thorns.

They tore at his clothes, at his skin, even as rough hands clenched themselves in his shirt and half-hauled him back up off the ground.

El's spit right in his face. His breath coming ragged and smelling faintly of something sweet.

"I should have left you there. I should not have come back. But I felt sorry for you. Do you understand? Do you understand anything?"

"No." The word escaped before he could stop it, before he could catch it and nail it down and torture it to death.

The hands abruptly let go again and he fell a second time and his head rattled on the ground like so much loose change.

"I didn't think so."

He sensed the other man leaving, and hurriedly levered himself up, feeling lost and helpless and more than a little crazy around the edges, far far beyond pissed. The smell of crushed roses filled his head, making him so dizzy he couldn't hardly stand it. Let alone
stand the thought of stumbling back out into that endless black night that had somehow become his entire world.

"El…" he said and would have said more—the words were already lining up at the back of his throat, more for the mile and pissy as all get out, words that would rip this man to fucking shreds—but then those stupid bells were sounding again and suddenly those hands were back and they were ripping at him, the buttons on his shirt popping away as the shirt was yanked down off his shoulders to hang loosely from his wrists. And an arm snaked around his neck, violently dragging him up close to a body that felt entirely too real, entirely too solid for words. Another hand moving between his legs to claim what
lay behind thin cloth there, to cup, to caress, to squeeze down hard.

"Is this what you want?" that sugary voice asked, angry and tormented at the same time. "Is this?"

And then the other man was grabbing his hand and pressing it roughly to his own crotch. Letting him feel sun-warmed cloth and heated flesh in equal measure. The snake in the garden. The one who had a little more than an apple to offer, this time. Okay, a whole lot
more.

But, before he could answer, the Mariachi was spinning him around. That arm still around his throat and that ever so solid body using its own greater weight to push him forward. Half stumbling. Half falling. Only stopping when his legs abruptly ran into something hard.

He winced and started to struggle again, but that arm was implacable. As was the hand that suddenly tore at his pants, stripping them down off his hips. Fingers palming the bone there, bruising it, before sliding down the crease of his thigh until they could take hold of his dick. Holding tight on to it as El bent him forward, down and down until his forehead impacted with stone.

He grabbed out and caught hold of the edge of what he was lying on and realized that the sides were carved, that his fingers were tricking across raised wings and an upturned face. That he was resting on a small stone bench, one being held up by angels. Though it could have been an altar for all he knew. Even a freaking crypt for that matter

Here likes Juan Monk. Prayed himself to death.

"El," he whispered, but even he wasn't sure if it was a plea to stop, stop, stop, or a breathless request to go on and never mind the man behind the curtain. Let alone any live monks who might be wandering around, looking for a piece of God behind every rosebush.

He winced again as the other man pressed up against him, as he ground himself up against him, hard and hard, that rough-smooth-sweaty hand squeezing and kneading his prick, but part of him was already melting inside, screaming and wanting and needing this. Just this. One bright moment in all the dark. All the shit he had ever asked for.
A reality he knew and could still cling to.

"Yeah…God…" he breathed, hardly able to get even those two words out. Only to find himself shivering uncontrollably, almost comically, as the Mariachi suddenly pulled back and let go of his hard-on. For a moment he thought it was all over, that the other man
had finally realized what he was doing and was appalled at it. That El was leaving now. That he was going to leave him here just like this. But then fingers curved into the top of his pants again and dragged them further down, down until they fell in a puddle around
his ankles, and he heard the snap of a buckle being undone behind him.

And then El was back. Oh sweet Jesus, was he back. Big and hot and freakishly hard and jammed up against him, scrubbing up and down the crack of his gringo ass like he was laying down his own personal bit of road burn, and mumbling something in that dark silky scary voice of his. Something half in England and half in Spanish. Something that didn't make a lick of sense.

But then most of his blood had already flown south for the winter and the rest was pounding in his ears and he felt teeth close on his shoulder, then that arm go round his neck again, tighter than before, and El's dick was leaking on him now, leaking all the fuck over him, and he wanted to taste it. He wanted to drink it down, the bitter with the sweet, every last deadly drop of it.

Because then it would make sense, wouldn't it? Then he would know. Everything really, but most especially what he had to know. What he had to figure out. The only shit that mattered anymore…

Where were the eyes of the dead?

Where were the hands of the dead?

What really lay at the heart of every legend? Not the truth, that's for sure. But not a lie, either.

No, something much better than a lie. Something beautiful and terrible at the same time. Something that reeked of blood and burnt sugar. Of sweat and vengeance.

The same something that screamed and wailed deep within him as El finally pushed the slick head of his dick up against him, and then grunted and pushed and twisted it inside. Like he'd heard the word screwing once and took it as a challenge. As a direct mission from God.

"Morte," El hissed.

But he didn't understand anything. Christ, no. Not even this impulse to get the shit fucked out of him. To have the Mariachi be the one to do the fucking. The man was, after all, the next best thing to the kiss of death. But he pushed back against that big cock all the same and let it burn him, blood him, take him. Deep and hard and then deeper still. Until he finally felt the other man's balls slam up against his ass at the last with an acute and somewhat uncomfortable sense of coming home.

It hurt. Not as bad as getting his eyes ripped clean out their sockets, yeah, but it hurt all the same. Like someone had jammed a steel spike way the fuck up inside him. Like he might never walk again.

But to cry mercy had never been his thing. Instead, he called the other man a fuckmook, a dickless wonder, a clueless freak with no more talent than dress sense, even though who was fucking who right now was quite clear at the moment. But the words were all in his
head and he couldn't talk because that big dick of El's was ever so far up inside him that he was just about choking on it, and El was no more freak than he was, come to that. And far less clueless than he'd ever thought…

As El's arm tightened and tightened around his neck, until he could barely breathe anymore, let alone figure out how to speak. As the other man hauled him half-up off the edge of that rough stone, forcing his thighs even wider, forcing himself even deeper. As if he wasn't already as deep inside him as he could go.

Which hurt even more. Which hurt so damn good that it made him ache all over, yearn like mad to scream. To turn and shoot the other man if he didn't get off his duff and actually start fucking him already.

God knows, the man should know how.

And as if that big old fucker in the sky had heard his prayer, El pulled back and then thrust in again. A grinding movement. Skin sliding on skin and hot breath in his ear, both sounding desperate. Like this could never last.

But he didn't need it to last. He just needed it.

It scared him like nothing else really ever had and he really didn't understand, but he needed it all the same.

His fingers digging into stone, immovable and uncaring, as the other man pulled back and pushed, pulled back and pushed. Forcing a rhythm into his flesh. Making his head pound and his heart clench. Until spirals of light suddenly began flashing in his mind, interlocking visions of things he hadn't seen, never could have seen, but found himself seeing all the same.

An angel standing in front of a church, stone-faced and cold, but with a string of yellow marigolds stretched between her outthrust hands. Flowers brighter than the sun.

A little girl laughing and calling out to be lifted, to be held, and then flying high against the sky, as if she would be an angel herself. Her own eyes like new-minted copper.

Then blood, so much blood, as he stood there and let them shoot him, as he stumbled and crashed to the earth and felt the life running out of him. As he stared at a lovely woman fallen to dust, her lips like the petals of a rose. A little girl whose copper eyes were tarnished now.

Whose mother's eyes had turned to stone.

All of them staring, staring. Seeing nothing.

And then at the last he saw his own body lying on the ground as well, black-gloved, black-haired, black blood weeping down his face. Black holes where his eyes should be. And he knew the blackness was still inside him. That it had never gone away. That it was eating him up.

Except that El was here with him. El knew what to do. El was pounding the dark into submission like it was no trouble, no trouble at all.

And he turned his head to the side, feeling sun and shadow on his face, strands of hair slipping like salt into his mouth. El's hair. His own. Their bodies moving slick and hard against each other now. Fitted like a key into a lock. Until there was nothing left between
them but sweat and fallen rose petals and the sense that he might die soon if he didn't come. If El didn't come.

Except that he wanted to die.

And he didn't want this to end.

Even though his own dick was burning and his thighs were aching and if there was any real pleasure to it, he had only found his way there through the pain.

Ahgodfuckingshithathurts…

Sogoodsogoodrightthere…

And the words were quickly forming a mantra in his head, a mute paean to some great uncaring saint of love and death and need. Even as El pulled back, way, way back this time, and then thrust home again. Ramming himself so deep inside him that he swore the other man was going to push his heart right up out of his throat.

It was a sweet thought. A real Valentine's Day massacre. Almost frighteningly appealing. If he absolutely had to go…

Death by dick.

It did have a nice ring to it.

But El was breathing hard now too, gasping for air, and that arm was finally loosening around his neck, tracking downwards across his stomach so that calloused fingers could grasp his cock. Half-stroking it, half-mangling it, even as he jabbed his own dick inside
him in rapid succession. Kick-boxing his insides. Sending him slamming into the stone beneath him until he knew he would have bruises on his bruises before this was finally over.

But, thankfully, here in Mexico no one could hear him scream over the sound of all those prayers, over all those damn bells, let alone tend to notice that one tiny whimper that escaped when he finally did come. When El shuddered to a halt and poured white hot seed up inside him, spraying like a fucking fire hose. And then falling on top of him the next instant, like he had given him the last of his strength as well.

And maybe he had, because he finally found his voice again. Or a pale reflection of it, anyway.

"You fuck pretty good…for a dead man."

El didn't move, but he did laugh a little all the same. As if that was the least he could do considering.

"So do you."

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