***

There were always too many men in El's life. And now, there are too many men among his dead.

Father. Brother. Those rank the highest of his blood. Campa and Quino rank the list of his slain friends. The four of them loom high in the shadows of El's mind, darkening the faint glow of Carolina's remembered fire, of his daughter's recalled sunlit face. And at their feet skulk the shades of all the innocents that have fallen for El: for his music, for his charming silence, for his hollow eyes and bloody hands. Hands that grip a guitar as if that was what they were still meant to do.

But El has learned to live with his daytime horrors and nighttime ghosts; if not in peace, he can at least walk in resigned grace among them. It is the living who trouble him now.

Lorenzo has thrown his youth onto the pyre of El, offering up all his wide innocence and natural sweetness. He's traded himself for money and sex, for guns and revolution-the boy may play like the mariachis of old, but the beat to which he dances through the world is a new one. Is an imported one of brutality and splintering rock 'n roll, which screams and shouts and demands action even during sleep. Like now, like the insistent drumming of Lorenzo's fingers against the side of El's boots, barely masking soft snores. It asks for more than adventure. It wants a breaking.

El could give Lorenzo that. He could twist his foot just so, pin those long so-clever fingers to the wall and press till the crunch and crush of a new pistolero demon resounded throughout Mexico. But he doesn't. Not out of kindness, not out of gratitude for hot lips and eagerness. El is tired of looking at scars, and already too many surround him.

Fideo had sacrificed his insides long before El stumbled across him, drunken heap crumpled in a filthy alley. He drinks to fill the vacancy, but never does he find enough liquefied sorrow and bitterness to diminish the clawed-out recesses and concavities. A man has to piss, after all, and modern Mexico is nothing but one huge shithole. Fideo thinks it's funny; what he gains from tequila is not courage, is not willpower, but irony. The blurred view from the gallows, noose already tightening around his neck, loud laughter squeezed from his throat.

El could give Fideo that. He could brush aside the empty bottles from his unconscious friend's head and encircle that fine neck, sticky with spilled liquor and sweat and lying close as breathing to his thigh, with his hand. Then wring it once, quickly, like preparing chickens for a feast. El has done it before, has done it till sometimes when he flexes aching fingers, the impress of phantom spines snaps itself against his palm. But he doesn't. Not out of loyalty, not out of liking for slurred wisdom over his skin and silent nuzzling at the back of his neck during the quiet, sober morning hours. El is too soiled to touch anything but flaws, and too jaded to trust anything that seems perfect.

And the third man, who alone of his three companions stays awake with him, curling over his chest as a snake coils over bare worn rock-this one has El puzzled.

Sands had gambled with everything he'd owned for everything he'd thought he wanted, and when the dice had come up one and one, he had lost his one and one to his ambition. But blind and adrift, he still struggles for life: jeers at El, shoots the mocking crowd and walks the streets of hell with his head held higher than Death's. He discards his sanity like broken strings, but tosses it to El as if for safekeeping. He flickers at the borders, crackling and cackling, daring anyone to follow him over the blistering-hot coals.

El has already done that, many times over before Sands invaded his life and flung it into the whirlwind. Skin hard as diamond, El lives among the fire now, watching emotionlessly as it tickles his ankles. But sometimes, like this moment, Sands calms and slips up next to El, asking for something. For the comfort of the damned, for the harrowing of sinners-El doesn't know. He doesn't think he has it, whatever it is. El has nothing but death in his hands, nothing but destruction in his trail.

"I threw shapes, and they caught me," Sands murmurs, shifting to brush his lips with false gentleness across the base of El's throat.

"Shadows aren't worth shit if you have nothing to back them up with." Only half awake, Lorenzo instinctively grabs onto El's leg, dragging himself up over the bent knee to push the guitar out of the way. El carefully sets the instrument aside just in time for Fideo to roll over and sprinkle golden liquor over El's forearm. Which his friend promptly laps up, not wasting a drop.

"The man who has nothing is invincible." Seeing Lorenzo's frown, Fideo leans forward and kisses the tender mystification, then mingles it with the shards of affection that nestle in El's mouth. "The man who wants nothing is also invincible."

"And the men that want the invincible?" Sands asks, playfully vicious as his teeth rake the blood to the surface of El's skin, as his small slender-fingered hands slip down to coax stirring interest into further growth, like some manic gardener trying to create Eden out of the desert.

//Them?// Fideo grins sardonically, nuzzling in to mash his lips against Sands' over El's bleeding shoulder, reaching his hand around to sneak fingers into Lorenzo and prod whimpers from the younger man, making him writhe atop El. //They're nobody. They're nothing.//

//Who cares?// Lorenzo slumps down, taking Fideo back with him, and threads a hand through Sands' hair so he can force the American's mouth down to join his on El's cock. //What the fuck does it matter?//

Eyelids slipping shut, El watches silently as Fideo plunges into Lorenzo, feels the tremble of the younger man travel all the way from hip to head. He feels himself stoked to boiling by two pairs of flame-tongues, teased to murdering by two sets of lips swollen with ruin. He almost hears the hiss as everything rises to the brim and tumbles over.

When the whiteness is gone from his vision, he discovers himself with mouth locked to Fideo's, with cock slowly rocking in and out of Sands, with hands petting Lorenzo's exhausted quivers. El doesn't remember how he got here. He only knows what it is like to have already arrived, settled in the brimstone and furnace and burning, burning, burning.

"What do you want in life?" Sands gasps, twisting and jerking between El and Fideo. Lorenzo is licking at Sands' nipple, bathing the bruises that dot the other man's chest, and Fideo is eating from the inside whatever parts of El have not yet been thrown to the fires. "Tell me, skullfuck, man of no life and no rest. What?"

And now El allows himself to smile, completely understanding and being understood. He rips himself away from Fideo's warm sour-sugar lips and ferociously thrusts till Sands releases a long high cry to the space around them, full of vaporous acid and incense. //Nothing. I want nothing.//

//Freedom//, Fideo snorts, at last falling back. //And where do you find it?//

//Here.// El roughly bites his friend along the jaw, then turns to swipe the red copper oozing from the split in Sands' lip, from the scratches on Lorenzo's back. //Here. With what we've all given up.//

***