Work Text:
He’s offered a plate of food. “Vas a morir.” His new boss tells him pleasantly, a grin cracking his face. It’s a strange default in work where men only scowl. What luck he must have, his new boss, to land this. This job, north of the border, in this town, born to this family. What luck.
He knows it, and he dances in the kitchen, cooking and singing to himself. His life doesn’t revolve around survival, as so many in the business do. His cares aren’t even tangible. “It’ll be like I’m not even here.” But he’s always been here, even if no one’s noticed.
Nacho has his instructions. And for a while, that's all he has. He’s good at improvisation.
They’re driving through the desert because Lalo has requested to see some drop off point belonging to various gangs. Nacho thinks of him as a tourist, excitable and critical, dragging his old world baggage across their meticulously arranged new world systems.
Out in the middle of fucking nowhere, he wonders if anyone would hear him beat his patron to death in the car, splashing his blood across the handmade white vinyl upholstery. It’s nothing personal. Dust climbs into the air behind the speeding car, into the orange sky. Lalo turns the radio up and it sings of heartbreak and betrayal.
The stars come out as they reenter the city, white light pricking at the fallen darkness. The asphalt is hot still, and the scent of fast food and gasoline lingers in the haze.
“Let’s get dinner.” Lalo tells him.
“Okay… Where at?”
Lalo makes a dismissive gesture, and Nacho suppresses an adolescent sigh. Jesus. He pulls up to a late night Korean restaurant. If Lalo complains, he’ll take him into the back kitchen and introduce his pretty face to their industrial griddle.
They sit at a corner table, sitting across from each other. Lalo has his back to the wall, and Nacho is left with just the view of his boss, and all that he can catch in the reflection of a framed painting hanging above Lalo’s head. They order their food, and the restaurant is silent save the clatter of dishes sounding through the take-out window.
Lalo talks about something— the food, probably— waves his chopsticks around but Nacho doesn’t listen. He orders another beer for his boss and Lalo smiles still, as if he’s in on it. The bottle sticks to the linoleum tablecloth, and they come apart only with some force. Lalo compliments him on the choice of restaurant and sits smug, a hen on a clutch of stolen eggs.
Later they walk back to the car, and Lalo leans into him like they’re drinking buddies. Nacho holds upright, the steps familiar but the partner a stranger.
“What is there to do in Albuquerque, Ignacio?”
Nacho shrugs his shoulders and regards Lalo across the hood of his car. “There’s a club, some bars…”
“‘No, no, no. What do you do?”
They get back in the car and it’s a short drive to the 24 hour liquor store. The clerk knows him, of course, and Nacho has to deal with those eyes on the back of his head as his guest makes himself at home amongst the stacked cardboard boxes of still wine and champagne. Nacho almost tells the clerk to call the police; he’s being held hostage by a man with a penchant for Modelo and paisley. But in the end, he pulls a twelve pack from the fridge, and Lalo settles on a bottle of Canadian bourbon, for some godforsaken reason. Nacho pays the clerk, who thanks him by name, and they’re back on the empty surface streets.
“So you’re friends with the man who sells you your beer?”
“Not everything is a game up here, man.” Nacho tells him, still playing into his role as tour guide. Just letting him know how it works. Letting him know that, under all this, he and his men get a chance to be regular people once in a while.
Lalo is silent, not keen on being spoken back to. Nacho has figured that much out about him, and anticipated every moment he had the opportunity to do so. He’s Lalo’s aid, but he’s also his aggravator, his matchstick to kerosene. That is, until he gets burnt.
The city thins back out into desert. The stars are visible once again against the black sky. Nacho drives until the city is just a gentle twinkle on the horizon. Then he parks the car, and climbs out to sit on the hood.
“This is it? I didn’t take you for the reflective type, Ignacio.”
“I just like the quiet.” Nacho tells him, and cracks open a beer from the case. A hot wind kicks up from the sand as they’re lighting cigarettes, and it turns cold as they delve into the cheap bottle of bourbon thereafter. The constellations have drifted from their original places in the dark.
Lalo is quiet. Nacho gets the notion he does something similar in his own time, as well. He doesn’t want to know the waves of thought drifting through his boss’ head, but he’s curious as to what that ocean looks like. He imagines standing on the beach before a tsunami, the deceptive quiet, the sudden recession of the tide and dread as a wall of water builds before him.
Lalo turns beside him, leans to grab his thigh, kisses Nacho on the mouth. He’s surprised enough, sure, but he hasn’t yet known Lalo to deny himself anything he wants. His mouth is hot, sweet from the bourbon and cigarettes.
It’s a strange sensation, pushing his boss into the backseat of his car. He shivers a bit, against the cold when he lifts his overshirt off. Lalo’s face is obscured by the dark, just two pinpricks of light reflecting off his black eyes, watching him. Nacho shivers again from the alcohol or nerves or whatever mess is awaiting him back in the city.
Lalo sweet-talks him, of course, unable to close his mouth even now. He turns him and shoves Lalo’s head into the cushion, face-down and holding him by the back of the neck, just to imagine he’s fucking a man who isn’t an inheretor of the Salamanca fortune. He knows he’s only allowed because Lalo likes it.
The ride back to the city is unbothered; Lalo fills the quiet with his bullshit. He’s insistent Nacho visits some local market he gets queso and tortillas from. The road ahead of him swims in the headlights, and a hare darting across the blacktop gets caught under the wheels. Lalo exclaims in surprise when the car bumps over the little creature.
“Shit. Sorry.”
Lalo laughs. “No te preocupes. He got in the way.”
Nacho doesn’t know why he doesn’t pull the car over and make Lalo dig his own shallow grave. He can see the sun on the horizon when he finally shoots Lalo and pushes the body into whatever hole the living man had dug for himself. Nacho wouldn’t even have the decency to fill it back up.
He drops Lalo off at a safehouse he’d seen Hector use once before when things got hot. It’s an interesting discovery: another layer he’s uncovered, like peeling away calloused skin. He picks at them, piece by piece until he finds living, breathing flesh somewhere underneath. The condo doesn’t look like it’s been lived in for years. It’s a completely empty front, no landscaping to even speak of.
Maybe fucking in the desert was the closest to a real human interaction Lalo’s had in a long time.
He isn’t sure if Lalo is trying to invite him inside, but Nacho pulls away before the man can overcome his own ego to ask for such a favor. In the morning, Nacho finds a dent in his bumper from the hare, now getting torn apart by buzzards on a backroad.
They visit Hector in the nursing home frequently. Standing in the same room as Hector is as punishing as it is satisfying. The old man has no idea. His gaze tracks Nacho across the nursing home.
The old man suspects, he’s sure.
Lalo, though. Lalo still thinks he’s in on it. They share a funny silence when Hector looks between them, eyes just as intelligent and cruel as they’ve ever been. If only their secrets were as innocent as fucking. The old man must know, and those words are trapped inside his mouth forever. Beware, sobrino, your lieutenant is a back-stabbing coward.
In front of the men they betray nothing. It’s an eerie sort of acting, coming from someone who’s so robust in his expression. Nacho knows now he watches everything behind a hand of cards, laughing at them all. He’s suspected everything Lalo’s shown him is a bluff, but it feels good to have his paranoia affirmed. But he’s on one of those cards now, getting leered over by his boss, deciding when to play him again. Once in a while though, Lalo will give him a dark grin across a room, like he wants to eat him alive. Nacho’s startled upright as if he’s been caught in headlights before pulling back into himself.
Finally, Lalo invites him inside after collection day. Nacho tells him no but goes inside anyway, crossing the barren concrete yard for a house as bare and unexciting as its exterior. He can barely tell Lalo’s been living there. There is a fruit bowl on the counter, though, recently stocked, and a crumpled blanket on the couch. It doesn’t encroach on the dusty emptiness, though.
Lalo gives him a glass of wine while he loots the guts of the refrigerator, the only thing in here alive. The air is shortly filled with cracking grease and the aroma of something savory. The house momentarily breathes with life. Nacho watches his wine glass; a black liquid turning blood-red when it catches the light. It’s some old variety out of Spain, Lalo told him when he pulled it from under the sink, no doubt expensive and coveted by a certain people. It all drinks the same to him.
He nods in agreement when Lalo speaks of business plans, of his speculation on Fring’s territory. Nods when he’s asked about the food, the wine, its bottle now empty. And he nods when Lalo approaches him with that hungry look in his eye.
Lalo brings them to his bedroom. He’d been expecting just the couch, or the floor if he was unlucky. He’s still young but he forgets his boss isn’t. Lalo bites his lower lip in their kiss, passionless and violent. They unbutton each other’s shirts, shed them to the floor. In glimpses between Lalo, he sees the bedroom near empty, white walls with picture frames holding nothing at all. The room is blue through the open curtains, letting in sparse starlight. Lalo is made pale and washed out, each flat plane of his body a ghostly hue.
Nacho’s now laying on his boss’ bed, wondering what it is that’s landed him here. He sure as hell isn’t drunk. Is it his instinct for survival? He’s learned by now he doesn’t have one to speak of. The thrill of it all maybe; the self immolation with a hope he’ll come out the other side all right. Maybe it would fix whatever’s wrong in him.
Above him, Lalo lingers, savoring him as if he’s that red back in the kitchen, holding a mouthful on his tongue while he watches Nacho, pensive. He leans down to kiss him again. He doesn’t know what Lalo gets from this. Never has Nacho kidded himself that his boss is capable of romantic feelings, or has any affection for Nacho outside of sexual pleasure. That, he could live with. This, he isn’t so sure.
Lalo undresses him, starting with his undershirt. When he has Nacho’s jeans around his ankles, he shuffles down, hot breath on his naked thighs.
It’s unsurprising, the way Lalo goes down on him. Practiced, confident yet impersonable. It makes his toes curl, and he grabs at Lalo’s hair involuntarily. He catches himself before he pulls when Lalo swallows him down completely. His mouth feels so fucking good, nothing like the slack jawed bobs his girlfriends would give him, full of crank and pills. Lalo feels alive, despite it all.
Lights dance across the wall as a car drives by the condo. Nacho keeps his eyes fixed on the blank wall opposite him, on the receding lights. If he looks down he might forget himself. The obscene image flashes in his mind, begging to be realized. It will haunt him, regardless.
Nacho steals a look. Lalo looks self-satisfied even with a cock down his throat. His dark eyes are heavy, and they flick up to meet Nacho’s just as he realizes what he’s gotten himself into. A breath catches in his throat and Lalo pulls away slowly.
His boss sits up on his haunches, straddling Nacho, still in jeans and boots.
“Undress me and I’ll ride you.” He tells him, offering like it’s a favor.
Nacho tries to make a show of unbuckling Lalo’s belt, then his pants, rubbing his cock through his jeans. Lalo rocks against him, betraying his impatience. For once, Nacho would have the upper hand, had he not jerked up against Lalo involuntarily.
It makes Lalo push him down into the mattress. His boots drop noisily to the floor, and he pulls off his pants before climbing back onto Nacho and pressing his lips to his throat. There are still teeth below the gentle graze and the breath tickling his skin. Lalo reaches to the solitary bedside table. He pulls Nacho’s hand between them and coats his fingers with lube.
“C’mon baby.” He enunciates the English word like he hates it. Nacho feels his way down Lalo’s back, leaving a slick trail down to his ass. He reaches his hole and begins to finger him, and Lalo breathes out a groan from between teeth.
He gets up to three fingers and Lalo shakes a bit when Nacho starts to fuck him with them. Nacho’s cock is hard and pressed between Lalo’s legs, the head just under his Nacho’s fingers. He pulls out when Lalo waves his hands away.
“Estas astuto.” He pants. His hands find Nacho’s erect cockhead and carefully penetrates himself with it.
Nacho sucks in a ragged breath.
Lalo leans back down to his neck, bites the thin skin there, holding Nacho to the mattress by his wrists. He worries about the blood bruises blooming beneath his neck, and the issues concealing them. A sudden movement from Lalo has him arching his back, digging his fingers into his own palms. Lalo pulls away from him and there’s a smudge of blood on his lips. It makes him look cruel.
He meets Lalo’s downward thrust, painfully, driving a gasp of effort from Lalo’s lips. It’s satisfying to hear. He meets him again.
“Aye, chingado…” Lalo mutters, moves his hands from Nacho’s wrists to his neck. He squeezes gently, and Nacho fucks up into him, gritting his teeth in effort. He wants nothing more than to flip them around, flatten Lalo to the mattress and make him beg. Nacho almost sneers at Lalo when he grabs Nacho’s throat in earnest, with his other hand jerking himself off. It’s insulting.
He’s seeing stars or some kind of celestial bodies behind Lalo, from an approaching orgasm or lack of oxygen, he doesn’t know. He takes Lalo’s hand from his cock and guides it back up to his chest. Flattens Lalo’s hand on his tits, feeling the damp of precome coat his skin.
“Mírame.” Nacho tells him, holding Lalo’s hand on him. He’s trapped him, keeping him reliant. He won’t be able to get off without thinking of Nacho, fighting off the fatigue of old age, the apathy of his own human emotions. He doesn’t know if Lalo can feel anything outside of lust, of anger, of petty amusement. He’s hoping that he might.
Lalo comes before he does, and Nacho leans up to grab his hair and kiss him. It benefits neither of them. They kiss like it’s the last moments of their lives. Nacho comes inside of him and Lalo grabs his hips so hard his fingers leave bruises.
Eventually Lalo climbs off him and lays on the bed. He sighs deeply but stays silent. He’s a mess, disheveled in a way Nacho feels a pang of affection for. It makes him want to crawl out of his skin, leave himself behind.
“Do you… want me to stay?”
“If you want.” Lalo tells him.
He does. So he gets up, grabs his boxers off the floor and puts them on. He can feel Lalo watching him with that look of his. Like he’s capable of anything but hunger.
From the doorway Nacho looks back at him before he leaves. He’s hoping, for once, that Lalo will say something, but he’s dead quiet. Passing headlights travel across the bedroom wall and dance across the ruined bed and Lalo, half-hidden by sheets.
Nacho passes by the bathroom on his way out. He peeks inside momentarily as a last ditch effort to see if Lalo has something akin to heart medication laying out on the counter. He has no such luck.