Chapter Text
It would be nice if Lalo Salamanca could claim that he wooed Nacho into his bed with a series of seduction techniques and a well-thought out plan, but that's not the case. After learning in one adrenaline-packed ten minute period what Nacho Varga is capable of, Lalo falls hard into vicious, unforgiving lust, and is uncharacteristically too uncertain to act on it for longer than he ever is. Two entire weeks pass with Lalo stewing, staring, burning, but one night they share a couple of beers together at his place like two normal dudes, and he can't ignore just how excruciatingly painful it's become to just sit beside Nacho and pretend that everything is the same.
He has to act or he'll lose his fucking mind.
Nacho doesn't seem surprised when Lalo kisses him. He sits stock-still at the first kiss, then Lalo draws him out with the second, draws his mouth open, and he finally tilts into the contact, his breath caught for just an instant.
He's absurdly attractive like this. Lalo is almost trembling with desire as he breaks the kiss, not moving far, worried – worried, how embarrassing – that Nacho will take it as an opportunity to push him away. They sit there, their breaths mingling warmly, Nacho's tinted with the scent of Modelo; Lalo's still quite sober, but everything seems slower, deeper, more intense as though he's drunk on something else entirely. It's intoxicating.
"What?" Nacho whispers, half an inch away from him. "Are you done?"
It flares hot in Lalo's brain, his face, his chest, and he shifts on top of Nacho, straddles him, kisses him until it burns so blatantly between them that Lalo can't hold himself back from making a firm, satisfied sound into Nacho's mouth. "Yes," Lalo grinds out as they break, kisses along Nacho's neck, and laughs softly in his throat as Nacho shifts his hips up against Lalo to press his hardening cock into his thigh.
"Perfect," Lalo pronounces against Nacho's skin, and takes the moment to brush his teeth against the line of his neck just before he just barely bites in. Nacho gasps, surprised, but his grip into Lalo's hips tightens, and Lalo hums happily as he gets back to kissing Nacho senseless.
It's a sensuous blur until Nacho turns his head away after what could be twenty minutes or an hour, leaving Lalo blatantly delirious an inch away. "If this is it, that's fine," Nacho says, in his deadpan sort of way. "But I can just go home."
Ah, a gauntlet. Lalo shoves him down against the couch, pins him, presses his cock firmly against Nacho's thigh. Nacho's trying to remain expressionless, but Lalo can see how turned on he is without having to so much as squint. "You want to get fucked?" Lalo whispers. "Is that what you want?"
Nacho looks up at him, something clearly ticking away in his head, then he finally speaks. "I want you to ask me." Lalo stares at him, confused, then Nacho goes on deliberately. "'Nacho, please let me fuck you.'" He tilts his head. "It's only polite."
Lalo laughs, astonished, and rewards that with a kiss, less heated than fond this time. "Nacho," he echoes, a lilt to his tone, "please let me fuck you."
"Okay." Maybe Lalo's just hopeful, maybe he's deluding himself, but Nacho looks just as caught up as he is, just as fucking crazy with whatever's flowing between them. Nacho shifts to stand once Lalo releases him, and Lalo takes his hand to guide him to his bedroom.
Nacho falls apart with ragged groans as Lalo sucks his cock, laughs softly at his teasing, then breaks in the most appealing way as Lalo starts to prep him, test him, see what he can take. Lalo's cock is sizable, so it sometimes takes a minute. Nacho doesn't look at all worried, though, and seems to be getting more aggressively turned on the further Lalo goes, making the most delicious fucking sounds that make Lalo painfully hard.
"You're gorgeous," Lalo whispers to Nacho, unbearably sincere.
"Yeah?" Nacho murmurs, half a groan, and squirms up into the pressure of Lalo's fingers. "Show me."
Lalo fucking ignites. It's fucking volcanic, fucking nuclear. Lalo's mind is full of nothing but him, and it's perfect.
"Yes," Lalo whispers, decisively, and shifts to finally, mercifully, fuck Nacho the way he's dreamed for a week or more.
It would be nice if Nacho could claim that letting Lalo Salamanca fuck him was part of some plan to get in tight with him, to earn his trust or whatever, but he can't. Nacho is an idiot who sometimes falls into bed with the worst kinds of people, he has a history of this, but this, here and now, is the worst thing he's ever done. A fucking Salamanca.
It's so good.
When Nacho fucks guys, he's kind of a size queen, and Lalo is huge. He also knows how to use it, which isn't a given, and Nacho's having a hard time focusing on beating himself up over allowing this to happen because he's so turned on he feels like he could fucking die. Lalo fucks him firmly and skates his fingertips up Nacho's back in a contrast that draws a shiver through him; he touches Nacho's cheek, then grips into his throat and yanks back to choke him with just enough pressure.
Nacho's head goes light after a second, and all he can feel is Lalo's cock pounding inside of him. It's hot as fuck, and he aches to come, getting so close already. Lalo releases him, and tuts behind him as he can't hold back a moan. "Not yet, Nachito," he chides. "I'm making you wait."
Fuck. Nacho knows he should mouth off, but he loves this kind of shit and he always has. Lalo fucks him in one hard stroke, further than before, and Nacho moans again, grips into the bed, making Lalo laugh. "I'm gonna come if you keep doing that," he warns Lalo, breathless.
"No," Lalo says, "you won't." He grips his fingers harshly into Nacho's shoulder and exerts more pressure on him, and Nacho nearly buckles from the combination of the force and Lalo still fucking him without slowing even a second. "You like to be played with, don't you, Ignacio? Mm." His hand goes to the back of Nacho's neck, and firmly shoves him down against the bed, fucking him down into the mattress. Nacho is so close to coming that he could lose his shit, and it's going to be so hard that he sees God, the Virgin Mary, and Selena. "Oh," Lalo murmurs, and there are ten thousand layers to it that they both can hear.
Nacho feels pleasure breaking through him in rivulets, his sanity slipping away with each one, until finally Lalo wraps his hand around Nacho's cock and starts to jerk him off. It doesn't take long after that; Nacho comes so hard he's incoherent for a few seconds too long with a shudder strung through him. Lalo goes at him for a while longer, with Nacho so overstimulated under him that it hurts and feels incredible simultaneously, leaving him panting through it. Finally, Lalo comes inside of him – inside of him, fuck, there was no condom, was there – and draws Nacho up against the line of his body slowly, still inside of him. He turns Nacho's head and kisses him a few times from that position, and Nacho feels himself trembling, completely, stupidly overwhelmed.
"Yes," Lalo murmurs into Nacho's face, then releases him, slips back, and goes to lie down on the bed. Nacho silently goes to lie down next to him, unsure, and Lalo runs his fingers over Nacho's head, down his neck, to his shoulder. "So?" he asks, cheerfully ironic. "Verdict?"
"Shut up," Nacho says, and Lalo laughs, utterly delighted.
They fuck one more time that night, Nacho on his back, Lalo kissing him as he fucks him until his brain melts into nonsense. They fall asleep there, exhausted, Nacho tucked just slightly into Lalo's shoulder.
This is how it begins.
The vision unfolds like a map in Lalo's head as Lalo hovers on the edge of consciousness, too wide and detailed and important to be taken in at a glance.
He knows he's not dreaming. The events he sees slowly smooth out before his eyes are too real, too vivid, too full of real heartbeats and rage and pulsing revenge. He sees Gustavo fucking Fring with hidden plans behind that stony face of his. He sees himself fall into a pit of rage in his head, shoot a man in cold blood, the fucking chileno damning him to weeks in prison because he lost his temper, his mind. He sees the lawyer, smart but cowardly like a fucking starving coyote, play games with his life. He knows as well as he knows the Lord's Prayer through all of it that he can trust Nacho until he fights for his life in the compound, then the grief pulses through him at the same time as the desire for vengeance.
After that, it's a question of unraveling all of Fring's horseshit until the humiliation of dying by his hand.
He almost won.
Lalo realizes as he dies on the floor of Fring's little project – this is why he can see this, here, now, as he lives and breathes a hair of consciousness away. He can still win. Now he knows. Now he understands it all.
His eyes open as the sensation of death still tingles under his skin.
Nacho watches his life fall apart completely with both horror and surrender harsh in his throat. When he blows his own brains out in fierce despair and the final spit into the face of fate, his eyes open, and he knows deep in his heart, firm in his chest, that it was all true. He's never had a dream that felt like every second was carved into his fucking soul.
Lalo shifts towards him in the bed, and strokes his cheek to bring Nacho's gaze to him. Their eyes meet, and Nacho is struck with bone-deep terror as he recognizes something impossible in Lalo's expression.
"I saw something, Nachito," Lalo whispers. "Do you want to hear about it?"
Nacho needs to get a grip. It was a dream. He's just paranoid, his brain unspooling worst case scenarios. There's no such thing as prophetic visions. There's no proof, no reason to believe that anything like that could possibly happen. There's no way Lalo needs to ever know that he could ever do a goddamn fucking inch of what he did in that dream.
It was a dream.
"Whatever you want," Nacho answers, but he feels a trembling, sweat break through him anyway. Fuck. He's showing weakness and they both know it.
"Do you believe in fate?" Lalo's fingers curl against his cheek, his gaze fascinated. "Tell me."
Nacho's heartbeat stammers as he can't bring himself to look away from Lalo for even a second. "Yes," he says honestly. "Providence." Lalo scoffs at him, but Nacho holds his own. "Why?" he presses.
"I saw you betray me," Lalo says, so soft it's barely audible. Nacho sees it in his eyes, the same memory of sharing a drink at the compound, the urge they'd both had to slip back into the building and fall into the delirium of every fuck. Nacho sits in blatant terror as Lalo toys with him, tests him. "Was it a dream, Ignacio? Or are you with me?"
Nacho has no idea what the hell to say to that. "You're paranoid," he pronounces. "You know I work for the cartel."
"For the cartel," Lalo echoes. "But not for me." Nacho freezes up, but Lalo leans in and kisses him a few times, lingering. "You saw it too," he whispers. "Didn't you?"
Nacho remembers the sensation of the bullet entering the side of his head, and it scares the shit out of him even more than this moment. Something like grief tries to strike him like a punch, and he lets his eyes close. "This is ridiculous," he says, his voice low, almost breaking. "There's no such thing as – whatever."
"I saw us." Lalo's voice is different now, and Nacho doesn't dare open his eyes. "I thought I could trust you, Nachito. I want to trust you. But it has to be real. I trust my heart, and I know what I felt."
Nacho pulls himself together, opens his eyes, and looks Lalo in the face again. He can still feel those long weeks with Lalo, paranoid and wrecked in terror for his father, but comfortable flush against Lalo's body as they kissed and stayed close even after a fierce fuck – listening to Lalo talk about whatever ideas he can't get out of his head, about Fring but also about politics or recipes or philosophy. He can see it reflected back to him in the look in Lalo's eyes, and the realization rips through him.
This is real. This was real. The bullet that tore through his brain is real, the excruciating pain of saying goodbye to his father for the last time. It's fucking real.
"Yeah." Nacho keeps his tone as even as he can get it. "I'm fucked, Lalo. I don't have a choice."
Lalo runs his thumb along Nacho's cheek. "Tell me," he urges softly.
Grief wells up in Nacho's stomach, up his throat, cold as running water on a summer day. "They're gonna kill my dad," he confesses. "I don't have a choice."
Something just barely tightens in Lalo's gaze, and Nacho stares at him, bereft. "I see," Lalo says, and his voice is sharp and precise like a surgeon's scalpel as he says the next word. "Who?"
Nacho can't do this, but maybe there's a chance to salvage all of this. Maybe this is his chance to get the gun away from his father's head once and for all. Lalo wants him. Lalo wants to trust him. Maybe with Lalo's word, the Salamancas won't just use him, they'll want him, they'll care about him enough to spare his father.
Maybe. Maybe Nacho will have an ally for once. Maybe the depth of feeling, the well of fascination between them that they both felt means that Lalo could give him half a breath of mercy.
Nacho thinks about the sensation of the gun to his head, the decision to pull the trigger, and exhales. "Fring," he whispers, and Lalo's expression goes to the usual deranged place. Nacho feels less regret than he expected to, and he leans into Lalo's touch. "My dad," he whispers. "Leave my dad out of it, forever, and I'll tell you anything you want to know."
Lalo's expression changes fractionally, then he strokes Nacho's cheek again and presses an intense kiss full of need to his mouth. "Tell me," he presses, ten emotions tangled in his voice. "I need to know."
"Okay," Nacho says, and his voice trembles. His cheek is warm where Lalo still touches him. "Yeah. Okay." He holds Lalo's gaze, and makes a careful, worried promise inside of his head before he starts to speak, only just loudly enough to be heard.