Archive of Our Own

Lalo sure is a talker.

Nacho doesn’t know why he’s surprised. It’s not like that’s out of line with the Lalo he’s come to know. It’s just that, well, he kind of figured Lalo would be too pissed to be much of a blabbermouth by the time he caught up with him.

He hasn’t shut up the entire time they’ve been together, though. From the moment he dragged Nacho kicking and screaming out of the motel, all the way through the muggy drive through the countryside, up til now, inside of some remote shack covered in dried blood and lined with shelves of all the types of things the Salamancas used to get it there in the first place.

Most of it’s not Nacho’s blood, at least. And the stains that are from him are easily identifiable as brand new. Fresh and bright, he watches his blood glisten on the floor between his bare feet.

“...And then I figured, nah, that prick got off easy compared to what I’m gonna do to you,” Lalo is saying, the end of some story Nacho’s conscious mind was only half-present for. “Hah, hell. My fourteenth birthday will look like an actual party next to the party we throw in here, Ignacio!”

“Your… wha…?” Nacho spits. Part of one of his back teeth comes out with it. “What does that even mean?”

Lalo blinks at him where he hangs from the rafters. The thick shackles around Nacho’s wrists have already been keeping him up for so long that the skin there is red and raw, but he’s got just enough give on the chains that he’s neither standing on his own nor dangling entirely off the ground. He’s stuck in some in-between state, toes dragging across the floor, occasionally trying to put weight on the balls of his feet to keep it off of his arms — but with the state his legs are in, that doesn’t bring much relief.

“I never told you about my fourteenth birthday?” Lalo asks, brow creased like he’s surprised it never came up.

“Um… No?”

“Oh, shit, no wonder you’re confused,” Lalo says, mopping Nacho’s blood off his knuckles. He rests against a workbench he’s been placing his used tools on top of; Nacho spies pliers, a scalpel, two hammers. “See, okay, for my fourteenth birthday, I reeeally wanted a new record on vinyl, right? For— Dios, what was it again? Ha! It’s funny. All that trouble, and I can’t even remember who…”

His voice trails off as he runs a blood-streaked hand through his hair. Nacho is… confused, but he can’t say he isn’t a little relieved for this temporary reprieve from torture. As Lalo mutters to himself — “Was it Queen? ABBA?” — Nacho tries to take stock of his injuries.

There’s his broken face, of course, with his now half-cracked tooth. Lalo takes occasional breaks from more sophisticated torture to just use him like a punching bag, which is what he’d been doing during his last tangent. But then there are other things: all the nails missing from his left hand, blood streaking down his wrist and arm from where he’s hanging up. His mangled legs, one kneecap partially sticking through the skin, ensuring that even if Lalo were to let him down, he wouldn’t be able to run off. And there’s the “art” Lalo had painstakingly carved into him, what might look like something from a scarification artist, except Nacho knows he won’t be alive long enough for it to scar. Lalo’s damn-near surgically removed the skin from certain places on his chest in thin strips, spelling out the word “LIAR.” The font is startlingly fancy. He’s probably done that sort of thing before.

The wound still burns with the sting of the handfuls of salt Lalo had rubbed into it right after.

“—David Bowie! That was it,” Lalo says with a snap of his fingers. “I wanted a signed David Bowie album on vinyl. It was Diamond Dogs. Have you heard that one?”

“...No…” Nacho mutters, watching him carefully as Lalo walks across the tiny shack.

“Yeah, so, I wanted the Bowie album for my birthday,” he continues. He lifts a large hunting knife and twirls it around in his idle hands as he speaks. “And my parents kind of — ‘Yeah, yeah, okay Lalo, okay,’ you know, the type of thing you say to a kid when you’re hoping he’ll just forget about whatever he’s asking you. I mean, makes sense, right? That was music for fags. But I didn’t forget, Nachito, I didn’t forget.”

Nacho has no idea where the hell this could be going. He spits up another mouthful of blood and says, “Mhm.”

“So when I didn’t get it, oh, I went nuclear,” Lalo laughs, the blade catching the light of the single bulb in the room that dangles above Nacho. “Shouting, ripping decorations down, y’know, flipping things over, I mean— Haven’t you ever been disappointed on a birthday?”

“...I really wanted an Atari as a kid,” Nacho says, hoping Lalo won’t ask him how he reacted when he didn’t get one (moderate disappointment and a few tears, followed by a warm hug from his apologetic parents).

“Yeah! So, obviously, I tore the place up,” Lalo says, like that’s just something everyone does. Little hurricane Eduardo. Nacho wonders what it must have been like to witness. “And that’s when tio — not tio Hector; tio Diego, Tuco’s father — grabbed me by the neck and threw me through a window! Haha.”

“Through a—” Nacho grimaces as he tries once more to put weight on the leg that isn’t as fucked up as the one with the visible kneecap. “What floor were you on?”

“Oh, just the first floor,” Lalo says with a dismissive wave. “But the window was closed, so I spent the rest of the day pulling shards of glass outta my ass. Well, and my face. And my— I actually still have a scar here.”

Using the hand holding the blade, he tugs up a sleeve and turns until Nacho can see the faint scar cutting across his upper arm near his shoulder.

“Can you see it?” he asks. “Right there?”

“Uh.” Nacho swallows some blood. “Yeah. Yeah, I can see it.”

“Thirty years and it’s still there,” Lalo chuckles, letting his sleeve go and shaking his head. “That one went in deepest, so it makes sense. Man, it was a big piece! Like this long!”

He holds up his hands and mimes the size of the glass shard, which turns out to be almost as long as the knife he’s still clutching.

Has he forgotten he’s supposed to be using that knife…?

“You, uh.” Nacho licks his split-open lips. “You don’t talk about your other uncles much. Tuco never did, either.”

Lalo shrugs. “Not much to talk about. Tio Hector outlived the rest of his siblings. Tio Diego actually—” Nacho feels uneasy at how satisfied Lalo’s smirk looks. Doesn’t like the way he giggles. “—he died the year after that. Knife fight down in Uruapan. And that’s when tia Fernanda moved in with tio Hector, you know, have him help out with the brat.”

“...Tuco never talked about his mother, either.”

“Well, he wouldn’t,” Lalo says. “She didn’t last long after that. Killed herself, what was it, two years later? Three? No, yeah— Yeah, it was three, ‘cuz I’d just been in college for a couple months when I had to come back down for the funeral.”

Of course she killed herself, Nacho thinks. She lived with Hector and Tuco.

Maybe that’s uncharitable toward Tuco. He’d only been a little kid at the time, after all. No matter how much of a terror he must have been, Nacho’s sure that pales in comparison to living with Hector Salamanca as a recently-widowed cartel wife.

“Tuco, uh— He never said she— I mean—”

“Never told you she—” Lalo mimes hanging himself. “—eh? Ha, yeah. He’s the one who found her, so I figure he thought about it enough that night to last him a lifetime.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Tuco had to be, what, in kindergarten at most? And then to be left with Hector alone… No wonder he can’t go a day without snorting something.

Not that it excuses fuckall.

“Hey! What’s that look for?” Lalo asks. It’s amazing how cheery he still sounds. “It’s probably better that way, don’t worry. I heard Mama and Papa talking about how tio Hector was fucking her, anyway, and how she wanted out with Tuco because she couldn’t take it anymore, blah blah. So if she didn’t put on a rope necklace, you two probably never would’ve met!”

The implication of that settles over the pair of them like a fog.

Lalo glances down at the knife in his hand and seems to remember what he was doing.

As he approaches, Nacho struggles on instinct. He grabs the chain holding him up in shaking hands, not keen to figure out what Lalo intends to do with such a large blade.

“Wh-what about the twins’ parents?” he asks as a Hail Mary. “Or yours? Couldn’t they take—?”

“The twi…? No, tio Javier didn’t meet tia Isabela until after tia Fernanda offed herself.” Lalo tosses and catches the knife, playing with it like it’s a toy. “He didn’t want any brats just yet. And that’s when Mama was sick, so Papa couldn’t do it, either.”

“Your—” Nacho squirms as the edge of the knife inches toward his face. “Your mother was sick…?”

“Oh, yeah. Cancer,” Lalo says, resting the blade just under Nacho’s eye. “You ever know anybody with cancer, Nachito?”

“M-my— Uh— Mine,” Nacho says quickly, screwing his eyes shut. God, if Lalo gouges out one of them, please just let him do it fast.

“Yours?”

“M-my mother. Mama. She—” Nacho sucks in a quick breath through his teeth. “B-breast cancer.”

“Mierda. Really?” Lalo asks.

Nacho feels the knife leave his face, and chances cracking his eyes open once it’s gone. He sees Lalo there, too close, brow furrowed, frowning for what has to be the first time in his cheery life. God, Nacho wouldn’t be surprised if he was cackling the entire time he was pulling shards of glass out of his own body.

“Y… Yeah,” Nacho says. He’s not sure how long this will work, but he’s going to keep talking anyway. “We found out when I was— when I was thirteen.”

“She last long?”

Nacho shakes his head. “She was gone before my sixteenth.”

“Sounds like mine!” Lalo says, and, oh, there’s the smile again. “Mama had brain cancer. Pretty aggressive by the time we caught it, but they say it was there for a long time.”

The knife is down by his side. Nacho tries not to look at it.

“...I’m sorry,” he says, because what the fuck else do you say in a situation like this one?

“Eh.” Lalo gestures dismissively with the knife. “Still probably for the best. Brain cancer, ay, not fun. She was like a totally different person by the end.”

Nacho winces. He doesn’t like to think about this sort of thing. What would his mother say if she could see him now? It had been shortly after her passing that he’d started acting out; smoking, drinking, hanging with the wrong crowd.

Tuco’s crowd.

“What was she like before…?” he asks tentatively.

“Oh, she was great,” Lalo says with a grin. “She and Papa both. They made me the man I am today!”

That says a lot about them, Nacho’s resentful mind drones.

“Papa actually taught me a lot about—”

Lalo stops mid-sentence. His attention wanders back to the knife in his hand, and he chuckles softly. Something’s… different about his demeanor, but Nacho can’t place how.

“...Hey. This is cliche, right?” Lalo asks.

“Huh— Wh-wha—”

“This.” Lalo holds up the knife, turning it over in his hand. “And not subtle. I mean, I really think anyone who goes up against a Salamanca deserves to be hurt much worse than this. I can be more creative, can’t I, Papa?”

Oh, lord, now he’s talking to a dead man. Nacho struggles to find some way to keep Lalo occupied without making it abundantly obvious what he’s doing.

“Y-your dad,” he says as Lalo puts the hunting knife down and picks a drill bit up. “He’s the one who taught you to— to do this? To torture people?”

“No,” Lalo says. “That was tio Hector.”

Of course it was.

“But tio Diego taught you not to listen to fag music.”

Lalo pauses with his back turned and a fire poker in his hand. “Huh?”

“The Bowie thing,” Nacho says, and he’s just letting his mouth run, because honestly, what’s the harm? Lalo still needs to torture some actual confessions out of him, so he needs him alive. If he can just stall, maybe Mike— Mike’s got to be looking for him, right? Or at least looking for Lalo? “Did you ever ask for more of his music after that party?”

“I… No, I guess not,” Lalo says. “I just listened once I got to America.”

“For college, right?” Nacho asks. “You mentioned it once. A-Austin?”

“Ignacio,” Lalo says, and Nacho can hear the smile in his voice even before he turns around to confirm it. “Are you trying to distract me?”

“Just curious,” Nacho says, letting himself spin this thread wherever it’ll go. “I mean— I’m gonna die today, right?”

Lalo smacks the fire poker into his opposite hand, beaming. “Right! Sometime soon, anyway. Could be early tomorrow, depends how long you hang on for.”

Nacho shudders at the thought. “I just figure I should get to know the guy who’s gonna kill me. What makes a Salamanca a Salamanca?”

“I used to think I knew,” Lalo says. “But you threw a wrench into that for me, didn’t you, Nachito?”

“‘Halfway to being a Salamanca,’” Nacho repeats, the memory of their talk by the fireside a few days ago still burning bright in his brain. “Listening to Bowie at fourteen. Then you went to college in America.”

Lalo raises a brow, looking genuinely confused. “Yeah? And?”

“And you’re a fag, aren’t you, Lalo?”

Lalo says nothing.

Nacho figures he ought to explain.

“I’m sure you went there because the schools in America were just better at the time,” he says. “Right? Not because you’d have four years to… experiment.”

Lalo is silent for a moment. Then he chuckles, shaking his head, looking off to the side.

“Ignacio Varga, you are a riot—”

“You’re in your forties,” Nacho says. “Not married. No girlfriends. No kids. All the time we spent together, I never once saw you try to get with a woman.”

“What’s your poi—”

“Does Hector know?”

Lalo blinks slowly at him.

Nacho asks, “When did he find out?”

The point of the fire poker scrapes against the floor as Lalo drops his arms. Chuckling, he scoffs, “Este chico.”

“No, I’m serious,” Nacho says. “He has to know, right? I mean…”

The look he gives Lalo says “you look and act like a giant faggot” better than words ever could.

“...You know how he found out?” Lalo asks. He starts to cross the distance between them, the poker dragging over the wooden floor as he goes.

Nacho gulps.

“He found me kissing another boy,” Lalo says when they’re nose-to-nose. “In the field way behind the school. I was late coming home. Told my driver I was gonna take a walk before dinner, so he left me there. But… I took too long.”

Lalo reaches up with his empty hand to glide his fingers under Nacho’s jaw.

His voice gets softer.

“Because I liked kissing him… I liked it a lot.” Something wistful injects itself into his words, something Nacho’s never heard from him before. “We were sixteen… It wasn’t my first kiss, but kissing him was the first time I ever liked it.”

He can feel Lalo’s hot breath against his mouth. Smells vaguely of chocolate and cinnamon.

“We were making out,” Lalo says. “Getting handsy. We’d already been sucking each other off for a few weeks by then. Kinda wondered if I’d actually get laid that day, but…”

Lalo chuckles. His fingers tighten on Nacho’s chin.

“...then I could taste his blood in my mouth. I didn’t even hear the gunshot ‘til a second or two later. Some sort of delayed— I dunno. Anyway, tio Hector was there with his pistol, and, mierda, he knew how to use it!”

There’s a distinct edge to Lalo’s next bout of laughter. It’s louder, faker, worse at hiding what he seems to want to hide.

“...Hector killed him,” Nacho says more than asks.

“Yup! I mean, what choice did he have?” Lalo says. “The faggot was corrupting a Salamanca heir. You don’t just let that shit go with a warning.”

“And… what did he let you go with…?”

Lalo shrugs. “About a hundred-twenty stitches, a couple casts, and a bitch of a concussion. That’s actually why I got this!”

He lifts his arm.

Nacho’s brow furrows. “Your tattoo…?”

“Mhm!” Lalo lets go of Nacho’s chin to touch a spot on his own arm. “The ink’s covering it, mostly, but for a long time, there was a real nasty set of scars around here. Man, the bones were sticking out everywhere, they almost had to amputate—”

He’s smiling again, laughing, holding up the fire poker like he’s forgotten it’s there, just so he can show Nacho the faint indications of scarring beneath his ink.

“Hector did all that?” Nacho murmurs, brow creased. He doesn’t feel bad for Lalo.

He doesn’t.

“Yeah, well, that was the arm I had all shoved down another boy’s pants, so he kinda had to break it,” Lalo says with a shrug. “Pistol whipped me. Damn near neutered me with how hard he stepped right on my balls, man, you have no idea—! Hey.”

He cocks his head like a confused puppy. A puppy that murders people.

“What’s that look for? I mean, how’d your old man deal with it when he found out about you?”

Nacho opens and closes his mouth a few times before words will come out.

“About— What?”

“Oh, come on, Ignacio, you act like fags can’t sniff each other out,” Lalo scoffs, rolling his eyes.

Nacho’s face heats up red hot. “I’m not—!”

“Hey, I’m not saying you’re like me,” Lalo says, swinging the arm with the poker idly. It leaves little scratch marks against the warped boards making up the floor. “I know you like pussy. But you like guys, too, right? I mean, you and Ocho Loco ever…?”

This is not the direction Nacho wanted this to go. He’d almost rather be getting tortured some more.

“No, we— No! And I’m not— And even if I were— My dad’s not like that,” Nacho finally manages to say, prickly and defensive. “He’d never do that shit.”

“You sure?” Lalo asks. “Because I’m pretty sure any dad would.”

“Not mine. He’d die before he hit me.”

The look on Lalo’s face is one caught between indignation, confusion, and something Nacho can’t name. “Well, that’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?” Nacho asks. “Not beating the shit out of your family? Out of kids?”

“Sixteen’s old enough to know better,” Lalo says, and ooh, who’s the defensive one now? “That’s not—”

“Sixteen’s a child,” Nacho insists. “Fourteen’s even worse. How young were you when your family first hit you, Lalo? Because I know your birthday wasn’t the first time.”

“Okay, Dr. Phil,” Lalo huffs, lifting the fire poker. “Let’s save the psychotherapy for after I—”

“Do you even remember?” Nacho asks. “Or is it just something that’s always happened? Did your papa do it, too? Or did he just let his brothers smack his kid around?”

“Ignacio, you’d better—”

“Hector taught you how to torture people,” Nacho says, voice unwavering despite how fast and frantic his heart hammers in his throat. “Did your father teach you what it felt like to be tortured?”

“Mi papa era un santo!” Lalo shouts, and with one swift and powerful motion, he stabs the fire poker into Nacho’s arm.

Nacho screams as it pierces his flesh and strikes up against bone. Okay, so he pushed it too far. Lesson learned. Not like he was ever gonna get out of this without more pain, anyway.

When Lalo yanks it out, blood spurts onto his face. He glowers as it drips down his cheek, eyes dark and hard.

“What my father did,” he says, “he did for my own good. That goes for all the Salamancas. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean—”

“I’m not trying— to insult your father,” Nacho says, breathless, voice tight with pain. Talking this much in the first place already has his whole jaw feeling swollen with that chipped tooth plaguing him; for all he knows, his refusal to shut up is only gonna make his death more painful.

But at least he’d have some control over it that way.

“You’re succeeding,” Lalo huffs.

“I just—” Nacho sucks in a slow, steady breath. “I just. If I’m gonna die.”

“You are.”

“If I’m gonna die.” Nacho shuts his eyes again, forehead creased with determination. “I don’t wanna go out the way I lived.”

“And how did you live, Ignacio?” Lalo asks.

Nacho breathes in.

He breathes out.

“Biting my tongue around all of you,” he says. “Never telling a Salamanca the truth. Because you know what, Lalo? You could all use a harsh fucking dose of reality.”

“Oh, really?” Lalo asks, and Nacho can tell his carefully-crafted laissez-faire persona is crumbling by the minute. “And what’s the reality?”

“...The reality is that you didn’t deserve all that,” Nacho mutters. “None of you did.”

When Lalo doesn’t immediately answer, Nacho opens his eyes to look at him. He meets Lalo’s gaze and sees, at first… nothing. No light, no mirth, no tension, no fear, no sadness, no glee, nothing at all.

And then Lalo cracks a smile.

“Kids today,” he says. “Muy indulgente. Back in my day—”

“No!” Nacho snaps. “This isn’t about generational fucking— Shit! Hitting kids is wrong! Throwing them through windows is wrong! Killing people for kissing is wrong! And you know what, Lalo? I feel fucking sorry for you that you never got a chance to know that!”

Does he? Shit. He thinks he actually does. That’s a shock to Nacho’s system that he didn’t need.

“You’re sorry?” Lalo asks, quirking a brow. “For me? Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nacho scoffs. “Wish I wasn’t, but I am.”

Lalo laughs. He laughs and he laughs and he laughs.

“Y-you know the funniest part of all this?” he asks through all the cackling. “You don’t even— know the half of it!”

“I’m sure I don’t,” Nacho says, frowning as Lalo continues to laugh, raspy and humorless, like he’s doing it just to piss him off. “Why don’t you enlighten me? I’m gonna die anyway. Not like I’ll tell anyone.”

“I should just pull your eyes out,” Lalo says with a sleazy grin. “That sounds like more fun.”

“No, c’mon,” Nacho taunts. “I don’t know the half of it? Make me regret asking. What have you got to lose?”

“You wanna know?” Lalo asks. “You really wanna know?”

“No,” Nacho says. “I don’t. Which is why I figure you’ll have a good time telling me all about it.”

Lalo looks away, chuckles a little more, and tosses the fire poker off to the side.

“Este tipo está loco,” he mutters, sounding almost fond. “Okay. Sure. But no takesies-backsies, Dr. Varga. You listen to what I have to say.”

Much to Nacho’s surprise, Lalo walks over to drag a chair just in front of him. He sits down, crosses his legs, and leans back.

“So where do I start, doctor?” he asks.

“Uh…” Nacho can’t believe this is actually working. Hot blood drips down his body, fresh from the arm wound and congealed from the rest. Lalo makes no move to stop any of the bleeding, but it’s manageable enough for now. “...I mean, wherever. It’s your life.”

“Well, help me narrow it down,” Lalo says. “We could talk about the early days, how Papa would lose poker games and put his cigars out on me. How Mama would shake me when I wouldn’t stop crying. She was a young mom, you know? So I don’t blame her. Or…”

Lalo taps his chin and hums. Nacho lets him keep going.

“...Or we could move a few years into the future. Ooh, we could play a game! Nachito, what do you think of this: let’s play Which Uncle Fucked Lalo First?”

Nacho’s stomach drops. He’d kind of had this feeling, but having it basically confirmed doesn’t make him feel very good.

“What, not into guessing games?” Lalo asks when he sees Nacho’s face fall. “Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it. Why else would I turn out to be such a faggot, right?”

“L-Lalo, I—”

“Shh.” Lalo waves him off, one arm folded behind his head. He looks far more relaxed than anyone in this situation should. “Anyway, it was tio Javier. Before the twins were even a twinkle in his eye. That started… when I was eleven? I think? No, maybe a little earlier. Nice Freudian excuse for you.”

“There’s no excuse for what you are,” Nacho says. Despite all the blood in his mouth, it feels dry. “What you do.”

“Really? No excuse?” Lalo asks. His fingers dance up his thigh. “Not even ‘tio fucked my tight little ten-year-old a—’”

“Stop it!” Nacho shouts, screwing his eyes shut, which does nothing to banish the images that are assaulting his mind. “Stop! Okay, I get it, fuck!”

“Now, Ignacio, I thought this was my session,” Lalo says. Sounds like he’s pouting, but Nacho refuses to look at him. “I’m paying for the hour, so I get to spend it how I want!”

“Paying…?”

“Paying you with another hour to live,” Lalo says. “Get with the program. Anyway, I’m being dramatic. He never fucked me, he only ever fingered me…”

Nacho feels sick to his stomach. This was a mistake. The fire poker probably would have been less painful.

“Don’t puke yet, Nachito, I have way more to tell you!” Lalo’s usual peppy grin is clearly audible in the way that he speaks. “Besides, all that stuff hardly ever happened. Tio Javier was always traveling, so he didn’t actually touch me that much. Got me interested, though. Like I said, I was sixteen before I actually kissed another boy and liked it, but I touched a few of my classmates sometimes. The younger ones especially. They—”

“Lalo, Jesus Christ, please.”

“Ignacio, I’m fucking with you!” Lalo says, as if Nacho’s actually supposed to believe that. “Can’t you take a joke?”

“I guess raping children is the kind of thing Salamancas would find funny,” Nacho mutters sourly.

“Now who’s being dramatic?” Lalo asks. “Rape. Seriously? It wasn’t like that.”

“I’m not sure you know what the word ‘rape’ means,” Nacho says.

“Do you?” Lalo asks. Calm. Collected. Curious.

Nacho flinches and glances over at Lalo, still just sitting there with a smile on his face. “Are you asking me if I know from experience?”

Lalo shrugs. “Either way!”

Truth be told, Nacho’s not entirely sure. It’s not the kind of thing he likes thinking about. He never had any creepy uncles or handsy step-dads or whatever, but… Well, he’d be lying if he said that he’s only ever had sex when he really wanted it.

Especially recently, it’s become something he’s done just to pass the time, to get his mind off of his life for a few minutes. But he can’t bring himself to consider sitting there passively while his girls ride him to be “rape.” Doesn’t feel right claiming it. Doesn’t even feel right to claim it that one time Maria Rodriguez, senior when he was a junior, gave him all that booze, and he woke up naked and confused in her bed the next day.

She’d laughed, teased him about things he couldn’t remember, then told her friends, who told the whole school. Nacho kind of credits it with his popularity in high school, so he can’t be that mad, can he?

Can he?

“Ooh,” Lalo says, catching the look on his face, the way he hesitates. “Nachito has some skeletons in his closet, too! Cuéntame, cuéntame!”

“Don’t get excited,” Nacho says. “I never went through anything as fucked up as you.”

“So that means I win?” Lalo asks, black eyes shining like he’s a kid waiting to get a new bike he won fair and square.

“You won the twisted fuck award, congratulations,” Nacho grumbles.

“If you were in my position,” Lalo says, “what do you think you would’ve done?”

It’s a tough question, and they both know it. Can Nacho really say he’d have turned out any differently than Lalo if he was raised as a Salamanca? Neck-deep in the cartel’s bullshit from day one, spoiled to make up for all the abuse, taught Torture 101 the same way Nacho’s father taught him how to use a sewing machine?

He has to believe he wouldn’t. Because if he thinks otherwise, that means that turning out like Lalo is an inevitability, and then how is he supposed to hate him? How is he supposed to blame him? Nature has to be stronger than nurture, because if it isn’t, Lalo is just as much a victim of the cartel as he is.

He looks into Lalo’s eyes. They’re so, so dark, and not in the “has dark eyes” sort of way. This goes deeper than color. If Lalo’s eyes were bright blue, Nacho thinks, they’d still look just as dead.

“...I wouldn’t be like you,” he finally whispers.

Lalo cocks his head. “You think so?”

Nacho swallows a mouthful of blood. “I know so.”

“So I’m just fucked up, is what you’re saying,” Lalo hums, drumming his fingertips on his knee.

Nacho doesn’t say anything. He lets his eyes do the talking, slowly taking stock of his own injuries before settling back on Lalo.

“And you wouldn’t do the same thing to me if I let you go right now? I mean—” Lalo grimaces at his exposed kneecap. “—if you could hurt me how I hurt you.”

“Lalo, I don’t know how to tell you this, but normal people don’t want to torture other people.”

“No matter what they did to you?”

“No matter what they did.”

“Bullshit,” Lalo says, but he’s still bright and sunshiny. “I can see it in your eyes, Ignacio. You’ve thought about killing me tons of times, haven’t you?”

Nacho flushes, baring bloodstained teeth. “Killing you. Not— Not all this shit. You deserve a bullet between the eyes, Lalo, and that’s it.”

“Like I’m some animal?” Lalo asks. “Ha, wow! I deserve that?”

“You do.” Nacho spits more blood out of his mouth; feels so endless, tastes so bitter. “It’d put you out of your misery.”

“But I’m not miserable.” Lalo’s smirk is cold, cruel, and dangerous, just like he is. “I’m having fun.”

“Were you having fun when your uncle raped you?”

“Ignaciooo,” Lalo groans, tossing his head back. “We’ve been over this. ‘Rape’ is an exaggeration. You wanna know what rape is, I—”

He stops short. Nacho can tell he fucked up, said more than he wanted to.

A perfect place to press, he thinks.

“What?” he asks. “What counts as real rape, Lalo? Cuéntame.”

Lalo’s chuckle is… breathless. A little shaky. “Nothing you’d wanna hear about.”

“I know,” Nacho says. “Tell me anyway.”

“I’d say ‘your funeral,’ but we both know that’s coming up for real,” Lalo jokes. It falls about as flat as the rest of his jokes do around Nacho. “...Sure. Okay. Lemme tell you about when I graduated from college…”

He settles back into his seat. As he speaks, he stares just past Nacho’s body, dark eyes focused on some far-off spot on the wall behind him — or, more likely, not registering anything that’s in front of him at all, locked in a memory.

“...I went to Albuquerque for a while. That’s where tio Hector and the kids were all staying by then. Papa was still running the business down south. I was supposed to go join him, but I had to say hi to my cute cousins, you know?”

Nacho says nothing.

Lalo smiles. “Tuco was around ten by then. The twins were a few months old. Tia Isabela died in childbirth, and tio Javier wasn’t dealing with it all that well, so tio Hector had the boys instead. He never wanted to raise more kids after his son, y’know, so I knew he needed a couple extra hands.”

Huh. Nacho didn’t know Hector had a kid of his own. That’s a can of worms he’s not even going to try to poke at right now.

“You went over to help,” he says, just to prompt Lalo to talk some more.

“Yeah. The responsible nephew, right? Had to try to be, after partying my little faggot heart out for four years!” Lalo laughs, laughs like he wants Nacho to laugh with him.

Nacho doesn’t.

“Anyway.” Lalo’s laughter tapers off sharply. “I was supposed to stay for a few months while Papa got things all ready down south. Man, Tuco was a handful back then, haha! I’m surprised he didn’t drown one or both of the twins by the time I got there! He used to do that, y’know, when he got bored of his pets. Just filled up his hamster tank once to see how long it could swim before it gave up.”

That doesn’t surprise Nacho, but it does disgust him. So Tuco had already been plenty terrible by the time they met, and yet, he still wound up charmed by him. Charmed enough that he happily joined the goddamn cartel.

What does that say about Nacho, then?

Lalo is chuckling and shaking his head. “Ah, that kid. But yeah, I said I’d help. And it went great for the first chunk of it! The twins were adorable back then, dios mio, you’d have died. Tuco and I were bonding for the first time — I used to try to push him off of things when we were younger, or lock him out, set him on fire— You know, things kids do when they’re jealous.”

“Yeah,” Nacho says. “Things kids do.”

“I’m sensing some sarcasm,” Lalo says. “But that’s just because you’re an only child. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have the spotlight taken off of you.”

“And we can’t have that,” Nacho grumbles under his breath.

“Hush. Where was I?” Lalo’s nose wrinkles for a second. “Oh, yeah! So, like I was saying… It was nice. For a while. Being back together with my family always cheers me up.”

Nacho wishes he could say being around a bunch of Salamancas gave him the same warm, fuzzy feelings.

“I just…” Lalo’s face changes. His smile seems to carry with it a twinge of… Is that guilt that Nacho senses? “...messed up, is all.”

Lalo seems uncharacteristically reluctant to continue. Nacho prompts, “...How?”

“I kinda got… used to the scene in Austin,” Lalo says. “The gay scene, that is. Missed it. Tried to find out where the fags in good ol’ ABQ were back then. And I found them.”

Nacho thinks he can see where this is going. At least on this leg of their journey down memory lane.

“Hector found you out, didn’t he?” he asks.

Lalo chuckles with no humor behind it. “Hector found me out. I was sloppy; someone told him. He had me followed. Had them take pictures. Still pisses me off that I never realized someone was tailing me.”

Nacho would be willing to wager Lalo never made that mistake again. His paranoia gets clearer and clearer with every story he tells.

“He confronted me. Did it in front of Tuco. Had—” Lalo scrubs a hand over his mouth. “—had the pictures. Showed ‘em to Tuco. Told him how bad and wrong it was. Exposed me for being a faggot slut.”

Sounds like he’s parroting the words that were no doubt shouted at him back then. He’s still looking behind Nacho, eyes wide and unblinking.

“Said…” He laughs. It’s a small, broken sound. “Said to me, ‘This what you like to do to other boys? Huh?’” He mimics Hector’s cadence and accent as if he’s trying to be funny. “‘You like sticking your worthless fag cock inside— people—’”

Whatever memory he’s reliving, it seems to physically gut-punch him. He very nearly doubles in on himself, but seems to have enough presence of mind left over to keep that from happening.

“...Lalo,” Nacho whispers. “Please tell me— Please don’t say what I’m thinking.”

“Heh, depends.” The way Lalo looks past him when he grins is more than a little unsettling. “Are you thinking he made me fuck my ten-year-old cousin?”

Nacho has to take a moment to stare at the ground and suck in a few deep breaths. He feels burning hot and ice cold all at once. Hector Salamanca is a cancer, and he thinks that, considering how his mother died, he’s allowed to say that. A poison to everyone and everything around him. Nacho couldn’t be gladder he put him in that fucking chair.

“And this is the man you look up to,” he murmurs, not looking at Lalo. “You kiss him on the cheek. You say you love him. You love him. S-Salamancas—”

“Salamancas what?” Lalo snaps, so aggressively it makes Nacho jump. “Vargas, are they better? Perfect little life. Then why on earth did you come to my family, barking at our heels like a dog?”

Shit. Oh, shit, there’s Lalo’s temper. He never saw it much himself. Lalo seems to wait until he’s alone to have outbursts. But he still has them. He’s still a Salamanca.

He’s still terrifying.

Nacho shrinks back, because the words hurt exactly as much as they should. Why did he fawn over the Salamancas, envy them, emulate them?

“I—”

“I’ll tell you why.” Lalo stands, stretches, starts to walk over nice and slow. “Because deep down, Ignacio? You know you want what we have. Money. Power. Influence. We’re somebodies. You? You’re nothing without us, and you know it.”

“No,” Nacho says, baring his teeth. “I did it because I was an idiot. Because I didn’t realize—”

“Didn’t realize?” Lalo says, standing in front of him now, eyes blown wide, voice a sarcastic taunt. “Didn’t realize? You didn’t know the Mexican cartel got up to shit like this?”

Nacho bites his lip.

He did. Of course he knew. You don’t have to be very world-wise or a MENSA member to figure it out.

Truth is, he traded his life the way a fairy tale character trades their soul for a promise. The kind of promise you realize has teeth and claws, the kind that you can’t take back.

Lalo laughs cruelly. “Ha. Yeah. Face it, Nachito, you’re just like us. The only difference is, you don’t have our blood — wait. Even that’s a lie, isn’t it?” He stares at the coagulating blood all over Nacho’s body. “Marco gave you some of his. And you were ungrateful enough to waste it.”

He’s wasted more than just blood. He’s wasted his father’s affection. His hopes and dreams. His entire life.

And now it’s gonna end, unceremoniously and brutally, in some psychopath’s torture shack.

How fitting.

“If it’s any consolation,” Lalo says, “I wouldn’t wanna live my life working at an upholstery shop either. Yeah, I know a little about you, Ignacio, don’t give me that look. I do my research. Your papi’s easy to find.”

As Nacho’s expression slowly morphs into horror, Lalo laughs again.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him. Might leave him your body as a present, but as long as you tell me what I need to know, he’ll be fine. Speaking of which!”

Oh, fuck.

Think fast. Think fast, Nacho tells himself as Lalo begins to look around for a weapon again.

“I didn’t think we were done talking,” he says.

“You didn’t? I did.”

“Dr. Phil, right?” Nacho asks. “Let’s lay it all on the table. Finish the story about you and Tuco.”

“What’s there to tell?” Lalo asks, shrugging as he examines a bone saw. “I raped him. Hector made me do it. I could have killed him, but I didn’t. I let myself be a pathetic little victim, and Tuco paid the price.”

“Does he hate you for it?”

“Dunno. Do you think he does?”

Tuco never talked about Lalo. Vague remarks about his cousins, yeah, but Nacho doesn’t think he ever heard Lalo’s name before he showed up at El Mich.

His hesitation makes Lalo’s shoulders slump.

“Yeah? That’s too bad.”

“I—” Nacho licks his swollen lips and gulps. “No, he just never—”

“What? Never acknowledged I existed? I don’t blame him,” Lalo says, a wrench in his hands now. “His faggot cousin who fucked him ‘til he bled. The family disappointment pretending to be everyone’s favorite.”

Shit. That’s more emotional honesty than Nacho ever thought he’d get from Lalo. He’s not sure how to handle it.

But the alternative is to take that wrench to the jaw, so he kind of has to think fast.

“People like you,” he says. “I’m not bullshitting to kiss your ass. Everyone fucking adores you, I’ve seen it myself.”

“You don’t,” Lalo mutters, putting the wrench down.

“So? You hardly know me,” Nacho says. “Do you actually give a shit what I think about you?”

“How many?” Lalo asks. “How many more like you? Apparently, I can’t tell when people are just sucking up to me. And now a bunch of people I actually cared about are gone.”

It’s still hard to believe that Lalo could truly care about anyone but himself, or his family at best. Did he really care about the ones at his compound? Or did he only care about what they could do for him?

“...Lalo,” he tries, as Lalo grips the edge of a table and slumps over it. “I didn’t want to open that gate. I didn’t want them to die.”

“No,” Lalo says. “Just me.”

And it’s bullshit, it’s absolute fucking nonsense that he’s entertaining this pity party. Lalo doesn’t deserve to throw himself one like that. He’s not a perpetual victim; at some point, his decisions started being his and his alone.

Nacho tells himself he’s only saying all this because he doesn’t want to die yet. Doesn’t want the pain he’s sure Lalo will foist upon him the second he’s no longer distracted.

“...You want answers? Fine,” he says. “But you already know that I didn’t do it because it was my idea.”

“Yeah,” Lalo says, “I know. It was the pollero. But you helped him.”

Okay.

This is it.

Moment of truth.

“Lalo,” Nacho starts, careful and cautious. “I’m gonna tell you something. I’m gonna tell you because you’re gonna swear to me you’re not gonna hurt my father for it, and you’re gonna mean it. Because you’re gonna kill me here, now, tonight for saying this, and it’s not gonna hurt me if you kill my dad once I’m already dead.”

He hopes all that is true.

Lalo looks up at him. He’s not smiling.

“...What are you gonna say that would make me wanna hurt your dad.”

His voice is flat, without inflection. He’s tired. Nacho can see that plain as day.

“Swear, Lalo.”

Lalo stares. For a while, Nacho thinks he’s shit out of luck.

Then Lalo says, “Fine. I swear. I won’t hurt your papi. Now tell me.”

Nacho is silent for a moment that stretches out too far.

“...I hurt your uncle,” he says.

Lalo says nothing. He stares, unblinking, Salamanca Lie Detector face.

Nacho sucks in a shaky breath. “I switched his meds out for sugar pills. He had his stroke because of me. Fring found out. That’s why I worked for him.”

Lalo is silent for a long, long time. Nacho wonders what’s going through his head. Is he still so far gone that this information is making him angry? Protective? Upset for his poor, disabled uncle?

Or did Nacho do him a favor?

“Why,” he eventually asks, “did you do that, Ignacio?”

“He was gonna hurt my dad,” Nacho starts, his voice tight as he tries to push down his worry, his terror, his tears. “He wanted to use his shop as a front. Papa disrespected him. I knew it was just a matter of time.”

And Lalo should understand that, shouldn’t he? La familia es todo. That’s his fucked up family’s whole motto.

“So Fring was blackmailing you? That’s why you decided to let assassins into my home?”

“Lalo, I had no choice,” Nacho pleads, brow furrowed. “My father is a good man. He’s better than both of us. He doesn’t deserve to die.”

“Neither did Ciro. Or Yolanda. Or—”

“They didn’t!” Nacho damn near shouts. “And I tried! I tried to save them! I tried to tell them not to hurt anyone else, only you, I—! …Only you.”

He hangs his head in shame. He doesn’t even know why he’s feeling shame. Objectively, the world would be better off if Lalo Salamanca was dead.

Somehow, he thinks even Lalo agrees.

“...I need to hurt you for that,” Lalo says, and his voice is uncharacteristically small. “I need to kill you, Ignacio.”

“I know,” Nacho says, heart racing no matter how calm he tries to appear. “I know.”

Lalo’s hands tighten on the edge of the table so much his knuckles go white. Nacho can see the tension in his shoulders, in the bulging veins on his exposed forearms.

“...I cared about you,” Lalo finally whispers, so soft Nacho almost doesn’t hear it. “I really— really cared.”

“I’m sorry,” Nacho says, even though he’s not sure he is.

“Don’t lie to me. Stop lying to me,” Lalo says through gritted teeth. His eyes are screwed shut, and his face is red. “Fuck’s sake, Ignacio, just stop! I don’t need anyone else in my life to lie!”

“I am sorry,” Nacho repeats, and he feels a little more certain now. “I’m sorry you got hurt as a kid. I’m sorry you were raped. I’m sorry Hector made you do that to Tuco. I’m sorry you felt like hurting other people was the only thing you could do. I’m sorry you’re a Salamanca, I— I’m sorry.”

Lalo throws a hand up over his eyes.

“I hate you,” he says.

“So kill me,” Nacho replies. “Let’s just get it over with, okay? Let’s do it now.”

With any luck, he can convince Lalo to make it quick. Get him angry enough to use a bullet or stab him in the heart or something else that isn’t skinning him alive.

What Lalo says shocks him.

“I don’t want to!” His voice is loud enough that the cabin nearly shakes. “I don’t want to kill you. I know I should want to, but I— I c-can’t—”

Tears.

There are tears shining on Lalo’s lashes.

Nacho never thought he’d see the day. They look so genuine.

He jumps as Lalo’s fist crashes down into the table and rattles all the evil-looking implements there.

“Every problem, every time! Kill it, maim it, burn it! Tio— ‘You’re a Salamanca. Act like one.’ A-acting like a Salamanca— He killed his wife. You know? My tia. Choked her to death. They didn’t cover the bruises at her funeral. So everyone would see. So I would see. So I would know.”

Nacho doesn’t speak. Doesn’t know what to say. Is there anything to say in a situation like this?

“That’s how you treat them. The people you love, just like the people you hate,” Lalo says. “Tia Fernanda was a Salamanca, too. Hector raped her. Tuco and I — it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Papa…”

“What.” Nacho swallows the lump in his throat. “What happened to your dad?”

“...We got back to Mexico,” Lalo says. “After all that. Papa— He did the best he could. He did. But Mama— It was still fresh. You know? Still raw. Her being gone— He didn’t perform. He botched a deal.”

Lalo sniffs harshly. He scrubs at his eyes.

“That. That’s when.”

“When…?”

“When tio taught me how to torture someone to death.”

The silence could drive a man mad.

Not just silence. A complete absence of any sound, ambient or otherwise. The kind of oppressive silence you’d only ever experience in a sensory deprivation room…

…or alone with Lalo Salamanca, apparently.

“Do you ever think,” Lalo whispers after a million years of silence, “about putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger?”

“A lot lately,” Nacho says.

“Do you think I should do it?” Lalo asks. “Kill you, then myself? Or maybe I’ll let you kill me. Then you can decide what to do next. Fair’s fair, right?”

“Lalo,” Nacho says. “None of this is fair.”

More silence.

Then Lalo walks over to the wall where the chain is attached, unhooks it, and slowly starts lowering Nacho on the pulley.

It hurts. God, fuck, it hurts, and he can hardly manage to keep his mangled leg from snapping all the way off on his way to the ground. It sticks out straight, unable to bend, so he has to just lie there uselessly by the time he’s all the way on the floor.

Without speaking, Lalo pulls a key out of his pocket and unlocks Nacho’s cuffs.

Nacho slowly starts to try to lower his aching arms. “Wh—”

Lalo kisses him.

Nacho’s hands come to rest on Lalo’s shoulders, the left one still alight with the pain from his missing nails. Lalo’s kiss is deep, desperate, and quick. He pulls back before Nacho has time to completely grasp what’s happening, and he feels hot breaths against his lips.

“...Had to do that,” Lalo explains. “At least once.”

“L-Lalo—”

He stands. “I’ll call someone. He’ll fix you up as much as he can. You’re on your own finding a way across the border. Buena suerte.”

Lalo’s… letting him go? He’s letting him go. Nacho looks up at him with wide eyes, completely stunned that his frantic plan to delay his death… worked?

“Wh-where are you going? Hey—!”

“One more,” Lalo says, gathering up his things in a small travel bag. “One more time. I can do it. One more murder, what’s the difference?”

“...Fring,” Nacho says, and Lalo nods.

“If nothing else,” Lalo says, “because he took you away from me.”

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he looks down at Nacho.

“When we both die,” he says, “I hope we can meet again somewhere where we can actually have fun together. I think that’d be nice.”

Nacho reaches for his legs, his feet, as Lalo begins to walk away.

“Lalo, no— No, don’t— Lalo, don’t leave me here, Lalo—!”

The door slams shut.

As Nacho lies there surrounded by tools that could easily end his suffering, he can’t help but feel like Lalo just took one more life than he realized he did.