[OUATIM] Three Kinds of Kindness (PG-13)
Jan. 21st, 2004 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterSo I was sitting in the International Finance exam, finishing up the test with 40 minutes to spare and no bloody hope of getting out early because someone had the bright idea of cramming the lecturer's three courses into one stuffy exam hall. Sands popped into existence in the seat next to me, looking about as bored as I was with the common characteristics of US money market instruments. I told him to tell me a story.
Pairings: Sands/Ajedrez, El/Carolina mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three situations, three women, three conclusions
Dedicated to: Whatever bloody idiot schedules the exams at the Warsaw School of Economics. And![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lasergirl69 for finding a tidbit.
THREE KINDS OF KINDNESS
by Beth Winter (renfri @ astercity.net)
~ ~ ~
THE MAIDEN
~ ~ ~
Ajedrez looks about fifteen years old, no make-up and hugging her pillow like she still wants to sleep with stuffed toys. She'd have his ass if she knew Sands was watching her: she kicked him out six hours ago, but here he is, crack of dawn and watching her like some fucking Romeo high on teenage hormones.
Sands isn't a kid, and he knows why he's here. The pieces are starting to fall into place, and the time has come to decide which gambit he'll use this time. He hasn't decided what to do with her. Not a pawn, but a bishop or maybe even a queen. Maybe being the operative word.
Ajedrez is a mystery to him, all woman with an adolescent boy's temper and an even shorter fuse. Just as likely to shoot you as to laugh at you, and he can't figure her out at all. At first he thought she was clear-cut, simple as a gun. Ambition, bloodlust, hate, Mexico in a nutshell. He didn't expect the way she'd sit cross-legged on his thighs, sketching weird shapes on his chest with her fingers, hair falling into her face so that he could not see her eyes.
Sands compares her to other women he watched like this. He remembers the one who was truly fifteen, and how jaded she looked on his pillow, queen popularity sleeping with the outcast just to spite her jock boyfriend. In college he switched to innocents for a while, then went back to his jaded women, used and battered and tough as nails. Innocents make him cringe.
Ajedrez is tough and innocent as she sleeps, and Sands doesn't know what to do with her.
He has a sudden flash of a vision, him in a Hawaiian shirt and her in a bikini, guns and money and sun and surf. Then there's three of them in the picture, and he's teaching the kid to shoot, and he breaks into cold sweat.
How fucked-up and twisted is that?
Then he realizes it's every damn boy-meets-girl story he's ever read. Not just normal, Stepford normal. And he doesn't do normal, period.
"Stop staring at me," Ajedrez says, and her lips twist into a pout that's half child, half sex on a stick.
"I like what I see."
And he knows he'll try for it, his bright shining fucking dream with sun and surf and the two of them rich and away and together. After all, what has he got to lose?
~ ~ ~
THE MOTHER
~ ~ ~
Her frequent guests call the woman who takes care of Sands "Mother", Mama Renarda. Sands can't see the resemblance, but he admits that he might not have the most normal idea of maternal attributes. A gruff but warm voice, a generous shape and brisk efficiency at changing his bandages combined with tenderness when mopping his fevered forehead are not on his list.
Maternal attributes according to Sheldon Jeffrey Sands: Parisian perfume and perfect manicure. Reading Stephen King out loud, with sound effects. When thoroughly annoyed by her son's second-grade teacher, using the offending woman's body as a demonstration of where to shoot to cause maximal damage, then fussing over the blood on little Sheldon's clothes.
Mama Renarda is not Genevieve Sands, may she rest in fucking pieces like the bitch she was, and that's probably a good thing for all concerned. Sands smiles just a little as he digs into a plate of scrambled eggs spiced up with something he can't quite identify. Mama cooks better.
Mama sits by his bed once she sees off Paco the Chiclet boy. Paco comes around every day, as much for Sands as to take advantage of the woman's cooking. Mama is Paco's relative, not an aunt but one degree further. (Was it second cousin once removed? Or third?) Now Mama has her fingers on Sands' forehead again, checking his temperature.
"You ever get tired of looking after a dead man?" he asks.
"I know death," she says in that gruff-warm voice, like a mountain river that carries enough gravel to cut through a mountain to the bone. "And I know life. You'll live."
"You know death?" Sands' laughter is a rattle that echoes in the hollows that used to be his eyes. "You ever shot anyone, Mama Renarda?"
She rummages under the bed and brings Sands' hands to rest on steel that's polished with lots of use. Two guns, long-barreled revolvers from a Sergio Leone movie, and two ammo belts to go with them. Good to know where they are if he ever feels like playing another game with fate. Russian roulette's about the only thing a revolver's good for in his world.
"I have shot people, young man," Mama Renarda says.
"So I guess I should bow to your superior expertise. I'm alive."
"You will be."
~ ~ ~
THE OTHER ONE
~ ~ ~
The grave is simple, smoothly polished stone under his fingers. First names only, which is what Sands expected. He's getting good at reading engraved letters with his fingers, so he knows he's got the right one.
"Hey, Carolina," he whispers. "Came to pay my respects. Thought I'd like to meet the lady behind the legend."
There are flowers on the grave, fresh ones. That old kind of roses, the ones with so many petals you can't see the centre. The name floats towards him from some book on poisons and remedies. Damask. Like Damask steel, patterned-chaos perfect blades. Didn't Carolina use blades in Bellini's story?
"You're like this person I almost see," he says. "Just there behind the curtain. You're dead, but it's you it was all about. Without you, El'd have no reason to get involved. Hell, who knows. Without you Marquez might have never turned rogue. How's that for playing Lady Luck?"
He smiles, drops to his knees, puts his hands on the dirt of the grave. It's sun-scorched, sun-baked like everything around him, like everything in his head. The darkness behind his not-eyes is warm, and he thinks it's better than the ice-shards before.
"Isn't that what you women do? You push us down into the dirt, you pull us up when we think it's all over. You bring us to life, to idiotic guy things, to death. Fuck's sake." And his smile is bright now, bright and fevered. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. You made me the man I am."
He hopes the lilies he brought fit with the roses.
~ ~ ~
THE THREE AND THE ONE
~ ~ ~
Sands leaves the cemetery behind him. He walks straight, quick, no hesitation at all. His feet tell him when the road crosses with another one, and a cold shiver runs down his spine. Three pairs of eyes are looking at him, three pairs of eyes as dark as the ones he used to have. He knows that. The knowledge is part of him, like his balance and his ears and the way he always knows who wants to kill him.
He walks away from the crossroads. He can hear guitars in the distance.
~FINIS~
Author's Notes:
Mama Renarda is the older woman with the guns who has a cameo during the fighting in Culiacan. Renarda is a form of Leonarda. Genevieve Sands is just my idea of the kind of mother whose tender care would result in a son like Sands.
Damask roses are one of the oldest kinds still cultivated. They're mostly used for perfumes, but I for one love the way they look with the full blooms. Let's just say El has a friend with a very good rose garden :)
Pairings: Sands/Ajedrez, El/Carolina mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three situations, three women, three conclusions
Dedicated to: Whatever bloody idiot schedules the exams at the Warsaw School of Economics. And
lasergirl69 for finding a tidbit.THREE KINDS OF KINDNESS
by Beth Winter (renfri @ astercity.net)
~ ~ ~
THE MAIDEN
~ ~ ~
Ajedrez looks about fifteen years old, no make-up and hugging her pillow like she still wants to sleep with stuffed toys. She'd have his ass if she knew Sands was watching her: she kicked him out six hours ago, but here he is, crack of dawn and watching her like some fucking Romeo high on teenage hormones.
Sands isn't a kid, and he knows why he's here. The pieces are starting to fall into place, and the time has come to decide which gambit he'll use this time. He hasn't decided what to do with her. Not a pawn, but a bishop or maybe even a queen. Maybe being the operative word.
Ajedrez is a mystery to him, all woman with an adolescent boy's temper and an even shorter fuse. Just as likely to shoot you as to laugh at you, and he can't figure her out at all. At first he thought she was clear-cut, simple as a gun. Ambition, bloodlust, hate, Mexico in a nutshell. He didn't expect the way she'd sit cross-legged on his thighs, sketching weird shapes on his chest with her fingers, hair falling into her face so that he could not see her eyes.
Sands compares her to other women he watched like this. He remembers the one who was truly fifteen, and how jaded she looked on his pillow, queen popularity sleeping with the outcast just to spite her jock boyfriend. In college he switched to innocents for a while, then went back to his jaded women, used and battered and tough as nails. Innocents make him cringe.
Ajedrez is tough and innocent as she sleeps, and Sands doesn't know what to do with her.
He has a sudden flash of a vision, him in a Hawaiian shirt and her in a bikini, guns and money and sun and surf. Then there's three of them in the picture, and he's teaching the kid to shoot, and he breaks into cold sweat.
How fucked-up and twisted is that?
Then he realizes it's every damn boy-meets-girl story he's ever read. Not just normal, Stepford normal. And he doesn't do normal, period.
"Stop staring at me," Ajedrez says, and her lips twist into a pout that's half child, half sex on a stick.
"I like what I see."
And he knows he'll try for it, his bright shining fucking dream with sun and surf and the two of them rich and away and together. After all, what has he got to lose?
~ ~ ~
THE MOTHER
~ ~ ~
Her frequent guests call the woman who takes care of Sands "Mother", Mama Renarda. Sands can't see the resemblance, but he admits that he might not have the most normal idea of maternal attributes. A gruff but warm voice, a generous shape and brisk efficiency at changing his bandages combined with tenderness when mopping his fevered forehead are not on his list.
Maternal attributes according to Sheldon Jeffrey Sands: Parisian perfume and perfect manicure. Reading Stephen King out loud, with sound effects. When thoroughly annoyed by her son's second-grade teacher, using the offending woman's body as a demonstration of where to shoot to cause maximal damage, then fussing over the blood on little Sheldon's clothes.
Mama Renarda is not Genevieve Sands, may she rest in fucking pieces like the bitch she was, and that's probably a good thing for all concerned. Sands smiles just a little as he digs into a plate of scrambled eggs spiced up with something he can't quite identify. Mama cooks better.
Mama sits by his bed once she sees off Paco the Chiclet boy. Paco comes around every day, as much for Sands as to take advantage of the woman's cooking. Mama is Paco's relative, not an aunt but one degree further. (Was it second cousin once removed? Or third?) Now Mama has her fingers on Sands' forehead again, checking his temperature.
"You ever get tired of looking after a dead man?" he asks.
"I know death," she says in that gruff-warm voice, like a mountain river that carries enough gravel to cut through a mountain to the bone. "And I know life. You'll live."
"You know death?" Sands' laughter is a rattle that echoes in the hollows that used to be his eyes. "You ever shot anyone, Mama Renarda?"
She rummages under the bed and brings Sands' hands to rest on steel that's polished with lots of use. Two guns, long-barreled revolvers from a Sergio Leone movie, and two ammo belts to go with them. Good to know where they are if he ever feels like playing another game with fate. Russian roulette's about the only thing a revolver's good for in his world.
"I have shot people, young man," Mama Renarda says.
"So I guess I should bow to your superior expertise. I'm alive."
"You will be."
~ ~ ~
THE OTHER ONE
~ ~ ~
The grave is simple, smoothly polished stone under his fingers. First names only, which is what Sands expected. He's getting good at reading engraved letters with his fingers, so he knows he's got the right one.
"Hey, Carolina," he whispers. "Came to pay my respects. Thought I'd like to meet the lady behind the legend."
There are flowers on the grave, fresh ones. That old kind of roses, the ones with so many petals you can't see the centre. The name floats towards him from some book on poisons and remedies. Damask. Like Damask steel, patterned-chaos perfect blades. Didn't Carolina use blades in Bellini's story?
"You're like this person I almost see," he says. "Just there behind the curtain. You're dead, but it's you it was all about. Without you, El'd have no reason to get involved. Hell, who knows. Without you Marquez might have never turned rogue. How's that for playing Lady Luck?"
He smiles, drops to his knees, puts his hands on the dirt of the grave. It's sun-scorched, sun-baked like everything around him, like everything in his head. The darkness behind his not-eyes is warm, and he thinks it's better than the ice-shards before.
"Isn't that what you women do? You push us down into the dirt, you pull us up when we think it's all over. You bring us to life, to idiotic guy things, to death. Fuck's sake." And his smile is bright now, bright and fevered. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. You made me the man I am."
He hopes the lilies he brought fit with the roses.
~ ~ ~
THE THREE AND THE ONE
~ ~ ~
Sands leaves the cemetery behind him. He walks straight, quick, no hesitation at all. His feet tell him when the road crosses with another one, and a cold shiver runs down his spine. Three pairs of eyes are looking at him, three pairs of eyes as dark as the ones he used to have. He knows that. The knowledge is part of him, like his balance and his ears and the way he always knows who wants to kill him.
He walks away from the crossroads. He can hear guitars in the distance.
~FINIS~
Author's Notes:
Mama Renarda is the older woman with the guns who has a cameo during the fighting in Culiacan. Renarda is a form of Leonarda. Genevieve Sands is just my idea of the kind of mother whose tender care would result in a son like Sands.
Damask roses are one of the oldest kinds still cultivated. They're mostly used for perfumes, but I for one love the way they look with the full blooms. Let's just say El has a friend with a very good rose garden :)
