Title: Eyes for the Birds
Fandom: Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Pairing: Sands/El
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They're not mine.
Summary: Sands thinks someone is in his room during the middle of the night.

Sometimes, through the parchment thin texture of his eyelids that are so softly, delicately scarred in vicious, tearing marks, Sands thinks he can see. He imagines fluttering shapes, half-seen bodies and guns scattered across an empty building. In the blank space, he can see the circling, scavenging, ever-watching crows clinging with pointed talons to the ancient wood of the rafters. Their claws leave marks, angry, torn stripes like the scars on his eyes.

He doesn’t know what it means, and, most of the time, he doesn’t want to.

* *

He wakes, and, even though the pitch-black still clings to his eyelids like super-glue, he thinks he can see El. He sits up weakly in his sick-bed, glancing about in a wild search.

There isn’t silence in the small room. He can hear the sounds of beating hearts, one steady and solid, the other, his own, fast and racing like that of a terrified kitten. Yet, Sands reminds himself, he still has claws.

“I know you’re there, The,” he snaps, blindly reaching out a hand in front of his face.

Nothing interrupts the two beating hearts except the soft sound of a breath, wickedly frightening. Sands turns in its direction, though he knows there is no point. No matter how he turns, he still can’t see. Sometimes, he wonders if he could trick his empty eye sockets, turning just fast enough so that memory and old habit will give him sight again for a few brief seconds before remembrance and the familiar blindness strike.

“Fucking bastard,” Sands whispers, turning his head away from the beating heart and the soft, whispering breath.

He pretends desperately that he is really alone, trying to force sleep into claiming his weary mind.

* *

“I can play this game, too, you sonovabitch!” Sands screams to the supposedly empty room.

He grabs at a knife from the table leaning crookedly against his bed, grasping it so tightly that he can almost feel the blunt handle cutting into his thin hands. He sits up, knowing what must be going through the mariachi’s mind.

Yet, instead of attacking El, he places the knife to his own throat, delicately caressing the fragile lines of his veins. He can feel a sharp sting at even that slight touch, and wetness begins to drip down his neck.

“Talk to me, El,” he says maliciously.

A hand grips his, wrenching his own hand and his own knife from his own throat. Strangely, it leaves Sands feeling naked, curiously vulnerable. He doesn’t speak, caught by his own nature in a situation he never wanted.

“I hate you,” he whispers angrily, choking back his own furious tears.

He can almost feel El nodding, agreeing perhaps, or maybe just recognizing the truth. For several long moments, the room is bizarrely quiet, even the heartbeats seeming to fade into silence.

The warmth of a body presses against him after a few moments, and he rolls over, letting El pull him into a tight, vicious embrace.

At times like this, Sands wants to die, and, before his forever-closed eyes, the birds begin to feast on the rotting, decaying flesh of the dead, cleaning up the mess of human mortality. In the midst of it all, Sands can see his own body, hideously broken and waiting for the oblivion of a bird’s stomach.

Beside his body, draped across him in some weird semblance of protection, is El.