Archive of Our Own

Early as it is in the season, the sky hangs overcast in baby blue while the sun rises. Passively warm. It’s too mild in the off-season here for the mornings to be cold, but the pale yellow of the sun that hits the ground is deceptive all the same. Lalo pulls from the cigarette between his lips, lets the breeze send flecks of ash at his feet. He watches them fall but doesn’t note where they land. Anyway, it’s all ash now, the land around him; it’s all wrecked.

In the night, he had watched a barn burn from the bottom up, red flames soaring until the last wooden beam had gone crashing to the ground. It was damage control he relished more than the kill. The livestock had gone quickly; smoke stifling squeals and screams as soon as they reached the air. He had cut the bands from the hay, kicking over bales and scattering the grass outside the walls, and the fire caught quick. Lalo stood back. His eyes burned to stare so readily into the flames and his skin was red-hot, but he stood watching through the night until all that burned was ash. When the smoke cleared, he’d walked into the ruin.

He kicks over a soft board of black wood. It crumbles into charred cremains.

Caution would dictate he disappear into the night before the bodies had finished burning. But fascination, if not sentimentality, keeps Lalo pinned to the scene well into the morning, though not towards the couple laying in dust next to the horses. With all the destruction he causes there is a bond that tugs him near. Lalo figures it’s not too far from the bond God feels for that which He creates and that which He destroys. It’s pride, a little sense of duty; so he stands in the warm air and black light of his divine act.

He is fourteen, and there is a family that disrespects, a family who sets his own’s blood to boil. Tío Salamanca shoots the wife and the force blows the brains out the back of her skull and all over the wall behind her. It’s that fact, or the body as it folds, or the eyes as they turn inwards, that draws from the husband an anguished cry. That, or the simple loss. Anyways, he, too, goes, soon enough.

Tío turns to Lalo, clasps his shoulder. “You know how to clean up a mess, don’t you, mijo?”

He does. In fact, he finds he enjoys it immensely.

On the drive back, he thinks of the fathers and brothers and sons, cousins as numerous as his own, perched like birds on a powerline and ready to avenge two little candles snuffed out in the night. A row of scavengers, squawking cowards like the eagle, who, for all their prowess, swoop low to catch prey that’s already dead. ‘The Salamancas have made them the roadkill,’ he thinks. Feels the outline of his pistol through his jeans with a thin hand. Lalo had learned to shoot with cans on tree stumps, which is not all too different. He’ll be ready, when they come.

///

There’s no pleasure he draws from violence, not the way it’s dealt like a chore, as a duty to his name. Tuco, he observes, enjoys it, relishes blood and bone beneath his fists. As a result the sum of his kills are split between those marked for execution and those marked for bursts of violent spontaneity. Wrong place, wrong time, in other words—and Tuco, who blows through life like a red-blooded hurricane, treats misfortune like a capital offence. Mostly when he’s using, but not exclusively.

Of course, Lalo, too, thinks it’s all just one big game of chance and convenience, that any man whose life he’s taken one day had simply turned the wrong corner a year or ten ago. That for him to snuff out a life is a preordination. It’s rare he’ll feel malice towards his victims because not one of them can really be at fault, unless one could fault God for being so stingy with providence.

His point, anyway, is that he feels something akin to nothing when he takes a life. Rather, it doesn’t affect him at all. The difference between him and his sweet sweet cousins lies in how keenly aware he is that most others see more value in human life. It’s not the sociopath who slits the throats of stray cats to feed some perverse fascination nor the hothead who kills to prove a point, but he can’t help but detach himself from it. Quite like a God, maybe, who has so many fumbling creatures beneath Him that it’s impossible to watch them pass between life and death with anything more than passive attention.

He thinks all of this as he sits before the judge, all the way up in Albuquerque. His only regret is handing Fring ammunition against him on a silver platter by killing the Travel Wire kid. It’s vague irritation, but Lalo reminds himself that after an onslaught of strikes against him Fring could only retaliate once Lalo’s own misstep fell into his lap. It’s almost too easy. And once he gets his bond, he’ll be primed to finish what Tío started.

Saul Goodman nudges him with an elbow, tells him to humble himself before the judge to improve his chances. Humble, maybe not. Its exact absence in his demeanour is a key part of the charm he lays so thick on those he needs under his thumb in some way or another. But Lalo complies. Sits with open eyes and relaxed lips while Goodman runs his shtick.

His family is a nice touch. He thinks, the power of family is enough to move him to this courtroom; it’s reason enough to commit murder and commit arson. Family would have set a jury on fire, Travel-Wire-kid’s parientes sitting teary-eyed as they are a couple rows down. But it won’t come to that. The pretty gringa, the apple-cheeked kids wondering what they have to pretend for as the strange man in the orange jumpsuit waves at them: they’re a family priced as chess pieces who stand shiny still enough to make Albuquerque blink. He gets the hell out of dodge.

///

“Ignacio, you ever been inside?”

In the late afternoon, Lalo pops the question bent over the engine in his monte carlo, casting upwards his eyes. Nacho shifts his weight and, though he’s facing out the garage door, Lalo watches the muscles in his back flex as he crosses his arms. “A few times.”

“Yeah,” he grins, “I figured. Hanging around with my cousin, you gotta get wrapped up in some crazy shit sometimes.”

With as much of a cue as he can expect from his conversation partner he continues, tapping the wrench in his right hand against the hood of the car twice. “Yeah, I remember the first time I got latched.

Of course, to get picked up in México you gotta be guilty of some real shit. Not like here—here, the feds have got some sticks up their asses like I’ve never seen. It’s crazy. They’ll pick you up for just about anything.”

Lalo pauses at the sudden stillness in the air around Nacho. “You’re worried about your friend there—ocho loco,” he says pointedly.

“Well, don’t be. The kid’ll be fine.” He wipes the grease from his fingers onto the rag tucked into the waistband of his pants. “That lawyer of yours looks like he’s got a good head on his shoulders—a big mouth too, but what can you do? He’ll be great.”

Nacho nods, several times, like he’s convincing himself to agree. “Besides, what’s a couple ounces of meth?” Lalo continues. “The way Tuco tells it, they had you in for murder and you never saw the inside of a cell. Either Saul Goodman is an hechicero or the justice system here really is full of fools.”

“I never killed anyone. They found the supposed victims camping half a mile from their house.”

“This time, maybe. Guilty or not, it doesn’t really matter for guys like us. So long as the feds can’t make it stick, it’s all the same.

Still, I can’t lie to you, Nachito; it’s always just a little sweeter getting off for something you definitely did do.” Lalo chuckles, distantly. “ Something bad.”

“Something unforgivable,” Nacho says, just as distant. His voice is slightly too tinny when he says it, slightly too strained. Lalo stares at the unmoving shadows in the creases of his shirt.

“Yeah, well, it depends who’s doing the forgiving. No, I never ask for forgiveness for anything I do. From who, right?”

“God?” Nacho asks, sounding just a little exasperated in his sarcasm. Lalo kisses his teeth.

“Nah, man,” he says. “Even Marco and Leonel don’t need that shit. Besides, what is God gonna do? Tell us we’re wrong?”

Nacho shrugs. Finally turns around, eyes wandering the garage as he does. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

“Of what? Religion?”

He nods, simply. “Yeah.”

Lalo hums. Pensively, he shifts his weight from his arms, hooked over the lip of the monte carlo, to the heels of his feet. Ducks his head, and then looks up, silver glint in his eyes and humourless smile when Nacho meets his gaze. “Didn’t God set fire to Sodom because the people there were sinners?”

Lalo watches the discomfort set in in Nacho’s expression, in his stance, and it feeds something evil deep inside him. “Yeah,” he says.

“Yeah, exactly. Maybe I’m just taking a page from the Good Book.” He runs his thumb over the rust on the helve of the wrench, tosses it to the side as he straightens. “Some sinners just have to be punished.”

“So in this scenario, you’re God?”

“In every scenario, Nachito.”

Ignacio holds his gaze as he grins at him, almost defiantly, though Lalo can gleam from the expressionless look in his eyes that the gears are turning feverishly behind the scenes. There’s no surprise there, and no fear, either, so Lalo lets the wolfish smile shift sheepish. He leans against his car. His neck tilted up, arteries and such all exposed just in case quiet Nacho, tough and distrustful Nacho needs reminding that Lalo’s a different kind of predator for him.

“You know how I got arrested the first time?”

Nacho shakes his head, brow furrowed.

“I was fourteen. It was pretty stupid, actually. It was for assault too, if you can believe it.

Yeah, it was in Juárez, at this bar in the middle of the night, and I was drunk because I could not handle my liquor back then, if you can believe that too. But there was this man—he must’ve been thirty, forty years older than me. Anyway, this guy drove trucks across the border all the time for our family. We had a bunch just like him but this guy had been working for us for so long we all considered him pretty dependable.”

Lalo shakes his head, and finds Nacho’s eyes. “It’s always the ones you trust the most, isn’t it? He was bad mouthing my family, going on and on about how we were all soulless bastards and this and that. “That Hector Salamanca, he’s gonna get his,” he’d say. So I go up to him, right? and I get all up in his face and I tell him very respectfully to shut his mouth ‘or I’ll do it for you,’ you know?

Well, one thing leads to another, and suddenly me and him, we’re out front at each other’s throats. I get some good hits in, I’m all “Say it again, coward,” and “How’s this for soulless?” But this bastard’s pretty tough and we’re going back and forth for ages, causing enough of a disturbance, I guess, and—well, I was a hothead back then. Now you know where Tuco gets it from.” He smiles wide. Nacho watches him with uncharacteristic transparency, jaw taut and eyes narrowed in morbid curiosity.

“I found out later that this guy was so mad because Don Eladio had his brother killed. Got caught up at the border, or whatever. Guess he decided he was something of a liability. But I didn’t really care either way. All that mattered was that he’d disrespected my family. So I take out this knife and I push it right in his shoulder, real hard so this guy’s still screaming bloody murder when the cops show up. Anyways, with all the blood and bruises between us, the cops don’t have much trouble hauling me off in handcuffs.

I end up spending the night in a cell until Tío twists some arms and gets me off the next day. Once he’s done chastising me for acting like a child he tells me, “Mijo, this man is gonna pay.” So we wait until it’s night again and we drive all the way to his farm. For all his gusto the day before, I think the moment he saw me and my uncle at his porch he knew it was all over. Tío shoots the wife, first, right in front of him, just to torture him a bit. And then he hands me the gun and I shoot the bastard right here—” Lalo taps the center of his forehead. Nacho stares at the spot where his finger was even after he’s lowered his hand.

“Behind every crime the cops cook up trying to put us behind bars, there’s always a dozen deeper and darker ones. Dios, with my name, I’m sure the ones who got me knew that even before I was skipping out on some hefty charges for a crime they caught me committing. That’s probably why no one came after us when they found the bodies. Or lack thereof,” he adds.

Nacho’s curiosity seems, he thinks, to have faded into regret, regret of knowledge and of understanding. His eyes betray him.

“Cheer up, Nachito,” he says, gleefully. “I’m telling you that these things always have a way of working out for us.

Krazy-8 will be fine and so—” he stands up straight and juts a finger in Nacho’s direction—”will you.”

“Yeah,” comes the reply. His voice is dry and he stares at Lalo’s hand like it’s stained and dripping in blood.

///

One day, Marco and Leonel come seek him out, eyes wide with some unspoken agitation. They practically trip over their own feet running up, and Marco trails slightly behind, weighed down by water that drenches the collar of his shirt. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. They both do.

Lalo sits on the wooden fence that outlines the property, his legs are posed precariously along the length of it. Resting between his thighs is The Catcher in the Rye and he’s only half paying attention. He gets bored several times before the chapters are over, folds the corners so he can take a swig from his beer and close his eyes to the sun. When his cousins glance curiously at the cover, he waves them off; it’s an English read and they don’t speak the language and anyways, he doubts severely that it would resonate with them. They’re smart boys, but he can’t help but suspect the point would go over their heads.

He looks at them with an amused expression when they fold their arms simultaneously over the fence, out of breath. “What’s up, primos?” They look to each other, almost at loss for words, and Marco still has droplets of water on the features of his face as he shakes his head in disbelief.

Leonel spills. “Tío, he tried to drown Marco—I had to hit him hard so he’d let go.”

“Oh? and why did he do that?”

“He said family is everything.”

Lalo hums, leafs unbothered through the novel in his lap. It’s hardly uncharacteristic for Tío to deliver his sermons as viscerally as possible. The lack of context, though, makes this one seem quite offensive and for that, he laughs a bit. “And you don’t think so?”

“We do,” they insist in chorus. And the point sets in a bit more.

“So what’s the problem?” They share a look again, searching for an answer in each other’s faces. And they don’t provide one.

Lalo pivots on the fence, swinging his long legs over so they brush against the yellow grass that peppers the dirt paving. Facing them, he grips the wood beam at his sides, tosses the book lightly so it lands beside his beer. They look to him then, open expressions and expectation. “Look, you’ve loved each other your whole lives. You've never had to think about it. But you forget it for one short second and suddenly…” he gestures offhandedly at Marco, still sopping wet.

They’re silent, though Leonel looks both defiantly and desperately up at him. “So you want to know why?” Lalo asks.

Leonel hesitates, and says, “yes. It’s not—why does it have to be life or death all the time?”

Lalo hums. He tilts his head sideways and looks down at Leonel, sees the guilt of a child being chewed out, under raised eyebrows. “Because that’s how it is out there. There are things you can’t forget in the real world, primo. Things you can’t take for granted. Like it or not, it is life or death. So look out for each other, okay?”

He leans backwards to snatch his beer by the collar. The glass is wet and cool beneath his touch. “Not everyone is lucky like you boys are, always having someone to watch your back.”

He watches them share another look and thinks wistfully to himself how strange it must be to exist on the same wavelength as another, so natural and so effortlessly. Their doubts are all he can glean from their private conversation and he blinks. “What is it you want to say?”

Marco turns to him with big eyes. They both still have the morbid curiosity of children and Lalo sits above them with the hierarchical superiority of an almost-adult. It’s how he knows they come to him out of love and admiration and deference.

“How come you only visit us during the summer, then?” Marco asks. Lalo smiles, holding his gaze as he contemplates.

“I come visit in the winter, too.”

“Not for long, though,” Leonel says.

“Well, that’s subjective.” He glances at his feet, however, and finally pushes himself off his seat on the fence so he can crouch down before them. “I’ve got family in Texas, too, you know. Mi mamá, she’s from there. I’ve got responsibilities there, to them, so…” he trails off. Clasps Leonel, then Marco, on the shoulders in sudden cheeriness.

“But it doesn’t matter where I am. I’d do anything for you boys; you know that. Doesn’t matter if I’m halfway across the world. I never forget what my family means to me.”

He watches them go, afterwards, side by side and likely unaware of how precisely in sync they are. He smiles to himself and picks up The Catcher. True, he studies in the States on account of his mother. It’s terribly boring compared to Juárez, though he supposes it makes the homecoming all the more sweet. But there’s always still the sense of duty within him to finish what he’s started, to come back wholly smarter and more observant. If it makes him a bit of a cartel brat, so be it. His mother tells him what’s the point of having all this money if you don’t use it for something worthwhile? and he takes it to heart, not the message but the constant reminder to herself of the one regret she doesn’t have: him.

The most important lessons he receives are always from his Tío, though. In school he always takes away the wrong conclusions, learns the wrong sides of what the instructors teach him. I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw. But Tío gives him only one option, one point and one takeaway, and it’s just lucky for Lalo that he always can take them in stride. And he’s got family who can teach him and family who can learn from him. Maybe duty is the wrong word because if he matures fast for them, it’s with devotion to the Salamancas.

///

In the fall they set off fireworks because it is Veteran’s Day and she jolts at the first explosion. The ones that follow, too. Shakes in the silence that separates them.

He looks up slowly, because in a fit of trembling she kicks over the stack of building blocks he’s been raising and knocking down all evening. “What’s wrong, mamá?”

“Nothing, Lalito.” She reaches over to run a hand through his dark hair, and he wonders who the gesture is supposed to comfort. “I thought that—it’s just the fireworks. I got scared, is all.”

“It’s fireworks?” he blinks. “I thought it was guns.”

She stares at him until he makes a face and giggles. She’s frowning at him and biting the insides of her cheeks like he’s done something wrong and her hand, which had frozen still, she draws back to her chest like he’s burned her.

Another firework goes off, and he laughs and he thinks of Juárez and he turns back to his little building blocks.

///

The clouds of smoke he blows into the air glow white under the moon. Almost enchanting, the blur of cold lights from the buildings around them, the streetlights and the headlights stories below where he sits on the balcony. He’s lounging comfortably in the dingy lawn chair but the railing exists purely to meet some safety code so it’s easy for him to watch with passive interest the scenery below. It’s not relaxation, per say. But it’s quiet.

He takes a long drag from his cigarette when there’s shuffling from behind the screen door, and then Nacho joins him. He gives him a stiff nod. In his jeans and a plain tank—one of his own, he suspects—thrown hastily on.

Nacho stands somewhat awkwardly for a beat while Lalo watches him, waiting for any hint, any clue as to what he’s thinking, why he’s out here with him. An hour ago he’d left him sound asleep in bed, face buried in the pillows. Now the only signs of sleep are the tiredness in his eyes, his face now again graced with the unrelenting crease in his brow. It’s more disappointing than he would have anticipated.

Before anything is said, Nacho turns outwards to the city. Instead of sitting he rests his arms on the glass railing and leans against it. His eyes leave Lalo and follow the cars that drive by beneath them.

“What are you thinking, Ignacio?”

In the beat of silence that stretches between them, Lalo watches Nacho’s bare arms and shoulders tense, just slightly. He can picture the clench of the jaw, too. But Nacho just deflates instead, tension trumped by exhaustion as he shakes his head softly, looks downwards.

Quiet Nacho is reticent so often the silence sometimes speaks for itself.

Lalo hums. “Wanna light?”

He wordlessly passes him a cigarette as he sits down in the chair next to him. Lalo lights him up then stares in silence at the object between his lips, the soft shadows of his eyelashes on his skin, the smoke that curls upwards from his exhale. Nacho’s eyes flutter shut, and Lalo wonders what prevents a man so obviously and consistently exhausted from sleeping.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m thinking about, then?”

“What are you thinking about, Lalo?”

“You.”

The tension returns, and Nacho’s hold on the cigarette between his forefingers tightens minutely. “What about me?” and his voice still rasps even though he is more awake now than he was a second ago.

Maybe it’s how tired he seems now, or how serene he’d seemed an hour earlier, or maybe it’s something like post-sex haze. Maybe he just doesn’t want to, right now. But he doesn’t press Nacho further, doesn’t play around or test how tightly his chain can be drawn. He shakes his head. “Just you. And you tonight,” he says. Grins. Nacho softens.

“Mmh,” he says. Closes his eyes and leans back, blowing another cloud of smoke into the air.

“Nachito,” he says, only to the air and only to hear the name out loud, on his lips. In the silence that follows he allows himself to admire the other where he sits back, his profile and the glow of sharp angles in the moonlight. Nacho tends to close his eyes, he’s noticed, in a very particular way, like it’s neither natural nor effortless but a struggle. And for all his struggles he grows less and less refined. And they keep him on edge and they make even the respite of sleep seem a risk. At the end of the day, there is more of a chance of him drifting off out on the balcony, with Lalo, than there was of him staying asleep in bed, alone.

And even if he didn’t hold his cards so close to his chest, Lalo doubts Nacho would admit to how dependent he’s grown on him. Likely not even to himself, though, Lalo hears the judgmental, self-aware whispers about pots and kettles from the back of his mind.

It’s not a discussion he’s willing to entertain, really. For now, at least, this mounting concern over restless attachment can subsist quietly, low in his heart because it’s not business, yet. He’s here still to do a job. If his and Nacho’s arrangement impedes on that, he’ll deal with it as he always does.

You’re not so naive as to think there won’t be consequences, he scolds himself. The pulse of these thoughts, however, is only the familiar carousel of his frenzied mind: easy to ignore. At least for the night.

And perhaps he isn’t so naive. But he also thinks he’s on new grounds, for the first time in ages, when he now has a man, who should by all means be no more than a business partner, in his bed. It's thrilling, knowing everything between them is tied to the real world. When he was younger it was a question of caution, but…

For what it's worth, he likes that it's not just Nacho one time but Nacho again and again for as long as he's here. He's never been sentimental, and nor is he now, but the familiarity between them monstrously electrifies the times he has him. There must be something innately, genetically wrong with finding a lover in a subordinate and that's why it's so addictive.

Well. Lalo could ponder for hours on the nature of their relationship but the why hardly matters right now anyways. He was never raised to psychoanalyze. His focus is on Fring, and if he gets the all-terrain bedfellow by his side, he shouldn't look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, right?

Lalo let's the cigarette butt fall to the ground and crushes it under his heel. Nacho looks at him then, eyes low and dark, with his mouth set in a straight line. There are words, or thoughts, or maybe just ambiguous sentiments he seems to need to say but he stays silent, and the silence hangs as heavy as the humid summer air between them.

“What are you thinking, Nachito?”

Nacho flicks his own cig to the cement and leans in, close, slowly so Lalo meets him halfway, and they kiss, languid. When he pulls back Lalo still feels the lingering warmth and softness of his lips. Almost sweetly, he grins. “Come on,” he says. “Let's get you back to bed.”

Later, when Nacho is asleep and his head resting against his chest, Lalo again thinks of how long it's been since he's fucked a man whose name and face he'd remembered the morning after—a man about whom he could actually say he gave a damn. He thinks of the why, too. Why it's never worth it, why it always crashes, in the end, why it's wrong and why it's dangerous,...

But his arm is around Nacho, his body warm under the weight of him. And he closes his eyes.

///

He never regrets. Never regrets, never takes a single word back, never wishes he could undo something he’s wasted blood and sweat into getting done.

But he comes close, once.

He doesn’t make the connection until one early morning he’s dreaming. Tío shoots a man’s wife so his last moments are of painful grief and Lalo watches with apathy. And then he’s seventeen, and Tío knows—has seen the sly looks between him and the 20-something-year-old in Chihuahua, seen them sneak off in the night, or maybe someone talked—he knows he’s the wrong type of deviant and he can’t abide by it. And then Tío kills him and it’s with pure disgust in his eyes when he says to Lalo—

“Clean up this mess.” And walks off into the night.

Growing up in this family of his, he’d been raised blind to some unconditional truths of his life and of the world he lives in, which was his mistake. Whether the mistake was getting fucked by the man who lived next door or simply getting attached to a stranger, letting himself feel normal… he doesn’t waste time thinking about it. He just learns to be on alert always. Always. Always.

But sometimes he thinks about the look on the man’s face when his wife had crumpled to the ground next to him, the wide watery eyes and the trembling lips, agape. Wonders if he maybe had that same look on his own face. It’s not regret. Solidarity, maybe. Understanding.

///

Nacho is on edge.

At least, visibly. Lalo will admit to some degree of his own unease, but only that which manifests itself as a momentary quiet and quickly fades into his usual wantonness. As of right now, hours after they’ve left Goodman’s place and have been driving down one long road since, he knows he seems as carefree as ever. Nacho, not so much; his jaw is set tight and he’s been staring straight ahead for an hour now in a way that makes Lalo a little grateful there’s no traffic this late at night.

Maybe he’s wary now that he’s being whisked off across the border without a moment’s notice. Truth be told Lalo hadn’t considered that when he’d made the split second decision to take him along with him. But for someone as cerebral as Nacho, it’s likely he’s overthinking right now.

Nacho thinks too much and it’s bad for the both of them. And it’s exactly why Lalo is so attached.

Well. Lalo should apologize but it’s a show of trust as much as an order, and he doesn’t particularly feel like revisiting Goodman’s wife’s little tirade with him tonight. Still, he wants Nacho to know he’d made a mistake trying to go back to Mexico without him, and he won’t make it twice. Like hell he doesn’t have anyone in his operation he trusts.

“You alright, man?” Lalo asks.

Nacho startles and makes a sound as though he’d forgotten Lalo was there—maybe he’d forgotten he himself was there. He glances sideways for a second, and turns back to the road before answering. “Yeah,” he nods, “of course.” It’s not very believable and they both know it.

Sometimes Lalo wonders why Nacho doesn’t quite trust him, either.

“Pull over,” he orders. It comes out harsh, harsher than he’d intended, and he thinks maybe he’s still a little on edge, too. Nacho complies, though he looks more tense than ever.

Down South in Texas the roads are mostly dirt, the scenery in the rural areas plain and warm under any light. Though there are still a couple hours until sunrise and the moon hangs low in the sky, the terrain still gives off a yellow glow, the sparse vegetation green and brown when Lalo pays close enough attention to notice. Nacho slows to a stop on the side of the road, though neither one of them expects any other car to come down this way for a long while.

He puts the car in park and turns to Lalo, expectantly. “What is it?”

And Lalo reaches over and cups a hand under Nacho’s chin, leans over to kiss him. It takes a second but he kisses back, his lips moving lazily against Lalo’s own so he feels the tension fade from his features where they rest against his hands. He brushes a cheekbone with his thumb. They stay locked until the position becomes uncomfortable, and Lalo slowly pulls back, catching Nacho’s bottom lip between his teeth before he goes.

“What was that for?”

Lalo quiets for a moment, and Nacho’s peaceful curiosity grows solemn. “It’s a thanks,” he says, finally.

Nacho stills. “Thanks for what?” and Lalo shakes his head.

“I want you with me, in Mexico. That’s why I changed my mind.”

He nods, brusquely. “Ok.”

“It’s a good thing.”

“I know.”

Something about the way he says it strikes a nerve in Lalo, the tone so restrained in the face of the drop of his own iron guard. He never frustrates, not when it comes to people because people, he can control. He can understand. But Nacho says everything like he’s both being held at gunpoint and better than everyone at the same time. “So?”

“So?”

Lalo speaks low in his throat. “You don’t act like it.”

“What do you want from me, Lalo?”

They both, apparently, are taken aback by the bite behind the question, Nacho with his flickering eyes and Lalo, who feels a cold breeze climb his spine. He thinks for a second Nacho’s going to take back his words, turn back to the road like nothing had happened, but he holds steadfast. The silence between them grows acid as Lalo finds himself on the receiving end of yet another burst of bitterness.

He stares at Nacho for a long breath, stone faced. The part of him trying to read his mind might be, he hesitates to think, compensating for how unable he seems to be to come up with an answer with his own.

“What do you think I’m asking of you?”

Nacho shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“I said I need you.”

“You said you want me.”

And Nacho doesn’t respond when Lalo asks: “Yeah, what’s the difference?”

He sighs, leans back in the passenger’s seat of his own car. “I need you, Ignacio. That’s it. Just come to Mexico with me.”

After a beat, Nacho looks at him, gives a tight-lipped smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He is, which is something. Lalo wants to take it as a win and run with it, but he knows that with every thought Nacho shares there are ten more stuck beneath the surface. It’s endearing, sometimes intriguing. Very rarely does Lalo find reason to doubt what the thoughts are, what makes them so objectionable Nacho can’t bring himself to open up with them. At the same time, Lalo thinks; he says he’s here with him but whether that means all of him,... Nacho may not even know himself. He may not even know a part of him is tied down somewhere else.

Well, Lalo thinks, he’s here. He gives a toothy grin and Nacho’s own restrained smile relaxes, just the slightest bit. “Right,” he says. Thinks of turning back to the road, but there’s still the problem of Nacho’s unease. “That you are, Dios sea loado.”

“So can we get back on the road now? Chihuahua’s still a ways to go.”

Lalo pouts, but it doesn’t reach the smile lines by his eyes. “You’re saying you don’t enjoy the talks we have?”

“I can talk and drive at the same time,” he says, looking puzzled.

“Sure,” Lalo says, “but you never do.”

Nacho rolls his eyes, but it’s more initiative than Lalo’s seen him take in days. “I will,” he says.

“Give me a kiss.”

Nacho complies, leans across the arm rest so Lalo can pull him into a chaste but warm embrace. Lalo tugs his bottom lip between his teeth when Nacho pulls back, and he looks at him with raised eyebrows and enough of a smile for Lalo to grin back. “I can never tell whether you’re trying to flirt with me or start a fight,” Nacho says.

“Well, which would you prefer, Ignacio?”

“You know.”

“Of course I know,” Lalo purrs. “I just want to hear you admit you like it when I flirt with you.”

Nacho shakes his head, scoffs, with an expression painting his face that tells Lalo he thinks he’s unbelievable, or something to that effect. “I tolerate it,” he says, and Lalo scoffs in mock offence as Nacho sets the car to drive again.

It takes a moment and no small measure of willpower for Lalo to pull his gaze from Nacho once they get back on route. Now, at least, he seems present in the moment, eyes following the road instead of glazed off into space. And there’s more concentration, signs of attention in the details of his profile like the lines at his brow and the set line of his lips. Lalo lets his own attention drift to the night sky, but even without the big city smog masking the stars he finds they’re hardly more captivating. Even silent, Nacho beckons shamelessly for his attention.

“Once we’re past the border, I’ll drive,” he says. Nacho shifts.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m offering, man.” Lalo laughs, but the other just shrugs.

“I don’t mind,” he says. “Really.”

Lalo makes a sound, in his throat. “You like the long drives then, eh?”

Nacho nods his agreement. “Yeah,” he says.

“Yeah, me too. It’s… sin prisa, you know?”

“It’s like we don’t have to be us.”

Lalo looks his way. For a second he thinks he’s misheard him, because God knows no one in this business talks like that. But Nacho’s still watching the road ahead intensely, like his mind is elsewhere, like he doesn’t realize what he’s saying.

Lalo indulges him.

“No?”

Nacho glances briefly over to him, before he looks away and continues. “I’m just saying—we could be anybody right now. Going anywhere for any reason. It’s like a—like a different life.”

He looks uncomfortable, Lalo thinks, with the silence that grows. He watches his grip on the wheel tighten, the clench in his jaw. Waiting, but restless as though he wants to amend the hand he’s already revealed.

“Nah, man, I know what you mean,” he lets himself say, at last. “You’re thinking like you’re not in the business.”

It’s not a question, but Nacho says “Yes,” in a soft voice. “Don’t you wonder, sometimes?”

“Wonder?”

“What you’d be doing if you weren’t?”

He stares at him in silence, for a long draw. But for all the discomfort it causes Nacho he need not stress, because Lalo might as well be looking right through him. Thinking. “No,” he says. Turns to stare out the window of the passenger door.

In the quiet that follows he thinks he’s supposed to ask the same of Nacho. But he figures there wouldn’t be much point. It’s clear one of them does wonder, sometimes; wander to somewhere they could never be in this life they’ve both chosen. Lalo doesn’t want to hear it. And the sooner Nacho understands there’s no use of it, the better.

Hours later the sky is turning purple when Lalo pulls him down in the backseat of his monte carlo. And Lalo is fucking him like they’re teenagers when he wonders himself, can’t help his mind’s lens warping, drifting to a different life as if every circumstance that led them here isn’t as it is. As if they both aren’t as they are.

Damn Nacho for all the depths of him beneath the surface. When he bites down on the skin of his shoulder, he does it to ground himself.

He smooths over the mark with his tongue, though, when he notices how close it is to the hardly healed bullet wound.

Lalo rubs him to a slow release, follows soon after, and he rests his weight against him so they can kiss properly before Nacho protests and tugs back on his clothes. Nacho has that look on his face, when they pull apart, like he wants to say something. But he just closes his eyes, sinks into the leather. That’s fine, Lalo thinks. He presses his lips against the scar by the shoulder and, when Nacho doesn’t object or flinch, kisses it.

“Does that hurt?” he asks, brushing a thumb over the nastier wound by Nacho’s hip.

He shakes his head. “Not so much anymore.”

“Mmh,” he says. Presses lightly and feels Nacho tense beneath him. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s a lot better than it was.”

Lalo ducks his head into the curve of Nacho’s shoulder, the skin and muscle there warm against his cheek. “Good,” he says. He pauses. “I never thanked you for it.”

“Thanked me for what?”

“That,” he says, presses into the scarred tissue of the wound again. “You took it for my family.”

He continues. Nestles deeper and breathes in the scent of him. “That’s how I always thought of you, before we met. The man who bled for the Salamancas. Marco and Leonel didn’t talk it up much, go figure, but I always pictured it like something out of a western.”

“Yeah?” Nacho asks, with a strange, strangled sound to his voice.

“Yeah,” he says. “And a scar like that—that’s there for life. You’re always gonna be the one who almost died for us.”

He holds himself up on his forearm and holds Nacho’s gaze for a long breath. Kisses him, then, waits to feel Nacho relax and his lips move against his own to finally pull away.

“Stay here,” he says, finally. “I’ll drive for a bit. You look like you need to sleep.”

“I’m fine,” Nacho insists. Stifles a yawn as the opposite of a point. Lalo just laughs, kisses him firmly. He pulls his clothes on properly once he’s stepped outside of the car. It’s barely dawn, and regardless, he expects theirs to be the only party travelling this way for the whole length of the day.

When he’s driving he thinks darkly, eased, though he’d loathe to admit, by the soft breaths coming from Nacho sleeping in the backseat. For once he feels like he isn’t driving without rush, as though every kilometer that goes by leads him closer to something hurried and impending, as though there’s a countdown to something, for something, over his head ticking away with every minute. The quiet mood he’d been in leaving Goodman’s, he thinks, was inspired by dread.

He still thinks of what the wife had said. Sending the lawyer to get the money was an oversight. And so was distrusting Nacho. But he feels, very deeply and very certainly, that it will soon become clear to him if there had been any truth to her accusations, after all.

As the sun rises, Lalo flips down the visor ahead of him. The pinks and oranges of the dawn are beautiful but he keeps his eyes on the dirt road. It’s something drilled in him, maybe. If he could overthink like Nacho, he would take the quiet peace as something other than wholly insidious. He would pretend they were driving somewhere out of choice, out of desire.

Sightseeing, maybe. Maybe a road trip for road trip’s sake. Maybe it had been a long time coming and he was introducing family to sweetheart, sweetheart to family at his sister’s wedding and nobody would bat an eye to see them together.

Just not this...duty. He would pretend it was just the two of them, and that it was just the two of them, together, where they came from and wherever they were heading.

But it doesn’t work that way. Lalo, you fool.

When they’re in Chihuahua he’ll wake Nacho up so he can see the drive to its end. He’s fine to sleep for now, but he should see his home when they get to it. He knows, inevitably, that however much time Nacho spends with him there, it’ll be less than he wants, and more than he deserves.

///

It is dust of black ash, breaking in flakes from the cracks in his skin, late in the night. Neon vision renders it particularly difficult for him to realize this, but yes, the world is not as solid as it would claim to be, and it is crumbling. Where he leaves scorch marks and trails of thick smoke in his wake, the window creaks and stiffens, locked closed. There is no air coming out, no growing flames drifting out. Every minute the pressure grows.

If he blinks the metaphor will change. If he is a creature of rock and ash now, it is the lazy shift in perception that sets him aflame, or ices him cold, or strikes him electric. He is utterly, utterly in control of his own reality.

When he was younger it was a beautiful thing. All the power, influence, money, all the fine things in his life, they shaped reality for him. And for all the self-awareness he can boast nowadays it does nothing to soften the all encompassing presence of his own family name, its thick and deep roots in his world. It’s the understated glamour, the pronounced terror. Something he was so easily, and so naively swept up in.

But he learns. He learns that he won’t be content as one of the brat Guzman children, professionally inept and fighting each other for the chance to take over the business their father built. Good for flexing and stunting, drawing each other’s blood but with none of the shark’s lust for it. He wasn’t raised that way. Even with the learning curve that comes with wanting to like life, a little bit, and wanting pretty boys on his arm, he does better as he gets older.

And there are still a great many things that set him on fire. A great many more fill him with a lust to burn the world down instead. Sometimes, somebody else tends the flames for him.

No, he thinks. Not sometimes.

Just once. Trust was a mistake. Intimacy was a mistake. Blood and rage haze the corners of his vision when he stares ahead, into the plain night sky, the tops of the trees where the leaves are deep and colourless. If he has to walk every step alone to retribution, bloodied limbs and bruised soul and all, he will. He’s been shot from close and afar and stabbed in the back and now he knows that damned lawyer was right.

Something unforgivable, indeed.