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Gustavo Fring hated Lalo Salamanca long before he ever met him.
This could be attributed, of course, to the family name that entered a room before he did. The Salamancas were many things, but subtle was not one of them, and it hadn’t escaped his notice that Héctor had yet another nephew dutifully trailing after him besides the volatile addict and those awful, ominous twins. He’d caught snippets of conversations over the years, most often when Eladio’s sycophants had drunk just enough to forget he was supposed to be their organization’s requisite pariah. In their unguarded laughter, they carelessly painted an outline of Eduardo– The sharpest of the bunch. Either the pride of his family, or a bit too much for even them to handle, got sent away to study in the States either way. Was frequently being sent to all manner of locations, in fact. Missed most often at parties, which were supposedly duller for his absence. Vicious. Violent. Nonchalant with human life.
Handsome, too. Somehow that always seemed to come up.
His reputation as a bit of a playboy would often rear its head, though the details of those rumors always seemed far too elusive and fluid to blindly accept at their face. The only piece of gossip he ever considered particularly illuminating was whispered by someone’s particularly brazen lieutenant– that everyone knew why Lalo really kept this month’s pretty young man around, even if they wouldn’t dare say so in front of Don Héctor. (He’d done little more than raise his eyebrows in mock surprise at that, he knows better than to give them anything.)
None of this did the impossible task of dulling his disdain for the mere concept of him. It was all too easy to picture the sort of arrogant, out-of-touch rich boy who did the things they said he did. Surely it’d be a net positive to the world when Gus inevitably crossed his name off his list.
His opinion did not meaningfully change when he finally showed his face in Albuquerque, beyond making his grievances far more specific.
For one, Lalo Salamanca was annoying. Intimidation was par for the course with these people, and yet, he had never seen any of them take anywhere near this much delight in making a total nuisance of himself. He wore an uncanny cheeriness wherever he went, and flip-flopped between being threateningly sharp and disarmingly carefree with such ease that even their limited interactions were disorienting. Gus was a shapeshifter by trade– he couldn’t abide anyone who couldn’t simply pick a mask and commit to it. Being uncertain in his own ability to read him made him uneasy.
(And, not that it mattered, but he had to admit that he really was rather handsome. It was infuriating.)
At least he could outsource the bulk of that part to Varga. He knew it was about as futile and as cruel as throwing a rabbit in with a wolf and asking it to tame its natural predator, but such were the moves he had available at present. Besides, Varga wasn’t truly unarmed, so long as he knew how to wield those big doe eyes of his properly. Spelling it out for him felt a touch brutish, but Varga was too clever for his own good– He had reason to be certain that if everything aligned just right, he’d have a much clearer picture of his adversary in no time at all.
If only careful planning could do something about the way Lalo was taking it upon himself to circle him like a shark. Showing up at his legitimate places of business, following his men, sniffing for weakness at every juncture of his operation. Did the man not have anything better to do?
There was an elegance to the way one should navigate a cold war. He wouldn’t antagonize him directly. He wouldn’t do anything to tip his hand. He would have the barest expectations for his opponents foresight as a matter of respect.
So he doesn’t panic when the man he has stationed on his street informs him, quick as he can manage, that there’s an unexpected person approaching his home this evening. Someone who happened to pull up in a classic car going about 15mph over the residential speed limit. He weighs his concern against his abilities and trusts the latter.
His vague apprehension still freezes over into frigid dread the second he opens the door, followed quickly by a bitter, resigned of course.
“Hey there!”
And there, on his doorstep, casual as could be, stands an innocently chipper Lalo Salamanca, pricey-looking bottle in hand.
The audacity of this man was staggering.
“To what do I owe the pleasure,” Gus starts, falling back on tight-lipped pleasantries as his favored first line of defense.
“Oh, I was just in the neighborhood,” he says. “And I thought, hey, why not! It couldn’t hurt to be a little friendlier with my new trusted business partner, yeah?”
You lie like someone who’s never had to worry about his bluff being called, he thinks. But, instead, he grits his teeth and says,
“Why don’t you come inside, then?”
Lalo’s eyes widen, like he hadn’t actually expected Gus to play along with him, before he obliges. They’re hardly subtle about sizing each other up, as Lalo’s arm brushes up against his as he passes by.
Firstly, there’s no subtlety to the message Lalo is projecting plainly onto him– I know where you live. It strikes him as almost juvenile to go to these lengths to impress something so obvious. He’s a figure in the public eye, after all. He’s always taken for granted that locating him is hardly a difficult task, and planned around it accordingly.
Secondly, he’s certainly not excited to offer hospitality under duress, but he’s even less willing to gamble on what trouble Lalo could make for him in plain view of the street. It hardly took a week of being north of the border before he’d acquired a body count relevant to New Mexico’s jurisdiction. That didn’t suggest discretion he could rely on.
“Nice place,” Lalo says as he saunters in. “Very homey.”
Gus opens his mouth to offer up a plastic thank you in return, but Lalo just keeps talking.
“You know, we always get all these guys, the kind who’ve got more money than they know what to do with, so they end up with the gaudiest houses you’ve ever seen.”
“I’m familiar with the type.”
“It starts getting old after a while! Nothing wrong with keeping it a little, eh,” he starts, snapping his fingers as if that would summon the word he’s looking for. “Modest.”
“I’m glad to hear you agree,” Gus forces out, having to remind himself that he doesn’t care if this man finds his home underwhelming. “It’s best not to stand out, after all.”
“Hm,” Lalo hums thoughtfully, “Yeah, I guess it is the guys who can't reign it in always getting shot first!”
A few sharp comments arise in his mind all at once at that, none of which he allows to escape. There’s the obvious you’re one to talk, and there’s the even more risky jab at his family’s habitual opulence. He nips any judgments of Eladio’s hacienda in the bud before that train of thought can take hold.
But his silence doesn’t seem to trouble Lalo, who doesn’t hesitate to stroll deeper into his home like he has every right to be there. Gus takes it upon himself then to cut him off, directing them towards the kitchen rather than allow him to wander aimlessly. Better to sequester him off where he feels the greatest semblance of control.
“You still haven’t told me why you came here,” he says, carefully keeping his voice level.
“I did tell you!” Lalo replies cheerfully, looking up from the marble countertop that he’d taken an interest in. “I wanted to try being friendly. Here.”
He thrusts the glass bottle that had been swinging loosely down by his side a moment before into Gus’ hands. He squints at the unfamiliar branding adorning the amber liquid.
“The nice girl at the liquor store swore up and down that this was the finest they had to offer,” he says as he takes the liberty of throwing open one of Gus’ cabinets. “Though she probably just wanted to push their most expensive bottle off on me, right? She had a nice body, I bet she’s used to customers bending over their little crushes on her.”
He spins on his heel, with a pilfered glass in each of his hands. “Hey, only one way to find out for sure!”
Gus realizes, with no small amount of frustration, that he’s been finally rendered utterly dumbstruck. His mind races trying to pin down what the ploy is, what Lalo could possibly be hoping to achieve here, as he watches him walk across the room to set the glasses down on the dining table.
The odds that he intends to kill him are nearly none, he thinks. Surely he’s at least shrewd enough to know that he’d never get away with it, not after marching directly into the heart of his web. Of course, this went both ways. Lalo could also rest easy knowing that he’d surely overthink himself out of committing any rash acts of violence against him. Salamancas were self-serving. One wouldn’t let himself go down over him.
Besides, he appears to be unarmed, save for an ostentatious gift of alcohol.
As if reading his mind, Lalo returns to retrieve the liquor from him, languidly sliding it free from Gus’ grip. In the same fluid motion, he pops off the decanter’s ornate stopper, and makes a show of breathing in the scent of cognac.
“Ooh, very promising,” he says. “I’m sure you won’t mind me helping myself to the first taste, eh? You’re a skeptical one.”
“The thought hadn’t occurred to me,” Gus lies, to be polite.
Lalo chuckles fondly like he told him a joke, and pours them each two fingers, neat.
“I’m told it would be criminal to water this down,” he says, in lieu of commenting on the presumptuousness of the gesture. He holds two identical glasses out in front of him, and simply adds, “go on.”
Gus takes the one in his right hand, for no reason other than a determination to get Lalo’s attention off of him as quickly as possible. Even so, he grins widely at Gus’ choice, and swiftly raises the glass that remains.
“Salud!”
“Salud.”
He watches Lalo take an enthusiastic swig of his drink and replies with a more restrained sip. It burns going down, but not unpleasantly. He finds it rich and heady in a way that suits the tall, dark, unwanted presence leaning against his dining room table like he owns the place.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he notes that there’d have been a certain elegance to being poisoned with such an indulgence. Poetic.
“Not bad,” Lalo concedes, before sliding around the edge of the table to plop down in one of the chairs. He settles into it easily, legs falling open as he relaxes back against it. Gus watches the tattoo on his forearm shift as a hand comes up to smooth his hair back into place.
A moment passes before he realizes he hasn’t moved. A second one passes before he manages to snap his brain back into action with the realization that he’d been staring.
He determinedly keeps his face a frozen mask, writes the heat catching in his throat off on the liquor, and carefully takes the chair opposite him.
Lalo just takes another sip of his drink, making no attempt to veil how openly he savors the experience. Gus follows his lead more closely this time, but betrays little in the process.
His brain is still racing to find rational footing in this encounter– tentatively settling on the working theory that Lalo intends to coax useful information out of him after plying him with drink. A fittingly brazen approach, if a bit crude in its simplicity. Certainly more daring than anything he’d ever attempt. He could understand the appeal.
“I hope things have been running as smoothly on your end, as they have on mine,” Gus says, solely to break the silence on his terms.
“Hm? Yeah, it’s great,” Lalo says, paying more attention to the glass he’s absentmindedly swirling in circles.
“I’m glad we were able to stabilize the situation before it became a detriment to business.”
Lalo glances up at him, then, with an expression that could best be described as mildly amused. For all his nonchalance, Gus thinks he’s beginning to understand how it feels to be on the receiving end of his own scrutiny.
“Alright, loosen up, I didn’t come to talk business,” Lalo says, leaning forward to prop up his chin against his palm. On someone else, he might’ve identified the pose as flirtatious. On Lalo, however, it mostly seemed smug. “It’s like you’re not even listening to me! I’m trying to build a real rapport with you.”
“…Right,” Gus says, and occupies himself with another sip of his drink while he waits for Lalo to elaborate. Far be it from him to hand over whatever it is he’s fishing for without making him work for it.
“So. What do you do besides all this.”
“It doesn’t leave a great deal of time for much else,” he says, carefully neutral.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have a life outside of work!” Lalo gasps, in surprise openly fake enough to be insulting. “Gustavo, what’s the point of living like this if you can’t reap the rewards.”
The overfamiliar use of his first name makes his stomach flip, even as he plasters a smile on his face in response.
“We were just discussing the merits of restraint, weren’t we?”
“Come on, you take it too far,” he laughs. It doesn’t escape his notice that Lalo clearly already knew this before he even told him, but he merely files that away with the rest of his hypotheses about this evening, until he’s sure of what to do with it.
“You know what I think?” Lalo continues, voice dropping conspiratorially into a low rumble. “I look at someone as controlled as you and I think, ‘What’s this guy’s angle,’ you know? I can’t help it! It’s the mystery of it, what could someone like that want?”
He briefly imagines how Lalo might look as a corpse. Still good-looking, probably.
It’s then that he quickly amends his earlier theory– Lalo’s not interested in unraveling the details of his plans, he wants to unravel him. Something far more dangerous in the long run.
“I am satisfied with the life I’ve built,” he says.
“Really,” Lalo says.
“I started with far less than you did. Perhaps it is merely that experience gap causing your misunderstanding.”
“If all you longed for was a comfortable American suburb, there were probably easier ways to get it. Could’ve just stuck to restaurants,” he smoothly replies. “Hell, with your brain? I bet it could’ve been anything.”
“I find this rewarding,” Gus states, firmly enough to hopefully put an end to this train of questioning before he corners him into a real answer. “And what about you? Did you not have any ambitions beyond the family business?”
“Sure, I thought about it,” he responds easily. “That’s what university is for, trying stuff out. Those were pretty fun times, back then.”
“And?”
“Eh, they needed me,” Lalo says, casually waving a hand. “It wasn’t something I was gonna agonize over, hell, it was barely even a choice.”
“So it was out of duty,” Gus muses. “How mature of you.”
The anecdote is vague, almost certainly to match his own answers, but he quietly adds filial piety overrides the rest of his attitude to his mental picture of his opponent. Lalo smirks in a way that makes him wonder what he was able to glean from his own non-answer.
It was a bit exciting to think of it that way, actually. He’d constructed his life in such a way that he gambled as rarely as possible, eliminating uncertainty and chance from his dealings wherever he could manage. He preferred games of strategy to games of chance and bluffing. Anything less would be irresponsible of him.
And yet, despite his better judgment, he couldn’t deny the little thrill that Lalo’s game of chicken was leaving him with.
“I’m having fun with it, at least,” Lalo grins. “Unlike you.”
“I find it more than exciting enough.”
“Exciting isn’t fun,” he groans. “We’re always one bad move from death, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth it.”
Gus downs the rest of his drink instead of responding.
“Even you’ve got to have a vice, man,” Lalo continues, leaning in over the table. “We’re all friends here, there’s no need to be shy.”
“Then yours?” He replies simply, shifting forward in his seat to match, even while his clasped hands sweat against his thighs. “If we’re being forthright.”
“Come on, that’s no fun, it’s not a secret at all,” he says. “Look at me! Do I look like I’d deny myself anything?”
No, you really don’t, Gus thinks, but then turns the impulse over in his mind– the satisfaction of confirming every exaggerated tale about the hedonistic Salamanca prince, writing him off accordingly– and it feels like a trap. Anything to lower his defenses. Lalo’s dark eyes glint oddly in the low light when he innocently tilts his head to the side, waiting for a response.
“I wouldn’t want to be impolite.”
He throws his head back and laughs at that, like Gus told him another joke, and his teeth look sharper than before. The image of how easily they’d sink into flesh flashes by unbidden.
“I hear you refuse to try your own product,” he says, not elaborating on the thought process that brought him to the comment.
“It’s a policy of mine,” Gus says. “I find the sensation of dulled faculties to be… uncomfortable.”
“You let me get this in you, though,” he replies, gesturing with the bottle as he moves to refill his glass. “Is it really the only thing?”
“I,” Gus starts, feeling his mouth go dry at his phrasing when he tries to form a dignified response. It’s the alcohol. Jesus. Get a grip. “I don’t partake in other substances, no.”
“Probably for the best,” Lalo says lightly. “Really bad for you. But still, all this money and no drugs, no fancy cars, no big house or expensive clothes…” A mischievous smile creeps across his face before he adds, “surely it’s not women, is it?”
“No,” he says, as flatly as he’s ever managed in his decades of practice.
“No, of course not,” Lalo says, and he wants to blame his mounting paranoia for noting that his smile has gone from mischievous to outright knowing . He’s grown numb to the subject, he’s had to, but that never makes it any less irritating to deal with. Internally, he wills Lalo to finally give up and abandon this line of interrogation already, right as he opens his mouth to add, “Going the other way, though, so much more complicated.”
Of course he couldn’t resist.
“I’m sure you don’t need me explaining it to you,” Lalo adds. “You get it.”
“Explain what?” He says, seeing his last chance to play coy and grabbing it.
“Oh for God’s sake, I mean getting men into your bed. Obviously,” he shoots back, exasperated. “Hey, relax! Your, ah, persuasion, it’s not exactly a secret, if you didn’t know.”
“You’ll have to forgive me for not jumping to discuss this with you,” especially considering who you likely heard that little piece of information from in the first place, he thinks bitterly. “By now it must be obvious that I consider myself a private person.”
“So even Gustavo Fring’s not made of stone,” Lalo replies, seemingly to himself, ignoring the answer he received to his invasive statements. He grins loosely, and returns to his position resting his chin otop clasped fingers, making no attempt to hide the way his eyes are flitting over every detail Gus is surely offering him.
A third addendum to his hypothesis: Lalo wants, more than anything, to find out what makes him squirm. There’s a practical use for this, of course– it’s immensely prudent to know what might potentially unsettle your adversary in conflict at any scale. But, he thinks darkly, it’s just as likely that his goal stops at the sick satisfaction he’s getting from his discomfort in the moment.
(The image of a cat playfully batting around a future meal comes to mind.)
“Has this been… relevant to your time here in Albuquerque?” Gus asks carefully. “There are fewer prying eyes up here, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“Hm? I thought we were talking about you.”
“Your secret is worse kept than mine,” he replies, feeling bolder than a moment before. “If you didn’t know.”
“And here I thought you didn’t get out much,” Lalo says, openly amused. “Those vultures, always running their mouths… But hey, what are any of them going to do about it? Nothing, that’s what.”
He punctuates this with a finger pointed flippantly in his direction, brushing briefly against his chest as he does. It’s the first physical contact they’ve had that night, and it may as well have bruised for how intense the fleeting sensation feels. Lalo hovers there, right on the edge of his personal space, with the same breezy self-assuredness he just spoke to, giving no indication that he intends to move. Either unaware or uncaring of the way Gus can feel his teeth grinding together, presumably. Or of the ugly curl of resentment Gus can feel unfurling in his gut at the reminder of the impunity Lalo was born into, despite his best efforts to quash it.
“Albuquerque has been…” Lalo starts, taking his sweet time with it, “more of the same.”
“Would I be wrong to assume that ‘the same’ is, ultimately, still acceptable?”
“You make it sound so dry, no, that’s not the point, it’s,” he says. “The same is the same! It’s easy. ”
Gus smiles politely, even as he privately thinks, not for the first time, that the two of them may as well be from entirely different worlds for how differently they navigate this one.
“I’ve seen it all before,” Lalo sighs. “There’s always a pretty face ready to get in good with the family.”
“You do project a certain image,” he replies, thoughts flashing back to Varga, and his own confidence that Lalo wouldn’t be able to resist taking advantage. There was a strange quality to his comment, one that Gus wasn’t confident in placing, that reminded him to check in on that particular project once he was done here.
“So you’ve noticed,” he says, so thoughtfully that for a minute, Gus fears that he may as well have said all of that out loud, for how plainly he’s been seen through. But no, that can’t be right, surely Lalo wouldn’t bother play-acting at camaraderie if he knew. Varga’s life would be over no more than a minute after his deception was, and they would know about it. So then, the alternative–
“Did you think you could use that?”
Gus feels his earlier train of thought screech to a halt, abruptly interrupted with the unwanted image of a far less impersonal version of events.
“...Pardon?”
“I’m just fucking with you,” Lalo snorts, though he remains as close to him as their seating allows. “You’re too uptight for that.”
“I was under the impression we were past playing games with each other,” he replies impassively. “Now that old hostilities have subsided.”
“Of course,” Lalo says, smooth as honey. “It’s a pointless thing to consider, now that we’re getting on so well.” He drops his hand onto the table, a hair’s breadth from Gus’ own. “And what would be the point of doing it with someone you actually like?”
His eyes dart down to where their hands are almost– not quite– meeting, and he can all but feel the electric current itching to flow through the contact. An odd detail to dwell on in this moment, maybe, but it’s all he can do to ground himself before voicing a thought that his brain recoils from accepting.
“...Eduardo.”
“Lalo.”
“Lalo,” he says, as slow and deliberate as if he were navigating a minefield, even with his first shield of formality denied. “Did you come here to proposition me?”
“It wasn’t my intention when I rang the doorbell, if that’s what you mean,” he replies, and it’s the first words out of his mouth that leave Gus wholly unsure of his sincerity. “But is it truly so unthinkable?”
Of course it is, he wants to say. You and I both know our business together is going to end with one of us dead. I’ll never trust you, and you’ll never trust me, and we’d already taken our charade to the contrary far too far the moment you showed up here. But instead, he raises an eyebrow, and says,
“You’re dissatisfied with ‘easy,’ is that it?”
Lalo’s perpetual smile finally drops, replaced with a much more openly interested look. Got him.
“You want a conquest that excites you,” he adds, letting just a drop of his vitriol slip into his low tone, and noting the way Lalo’s breath hitches at the bite of it. “And you think I can provide.”
It was either precisely the wrong or the right thing to say, because all at once Lalo is rising from his seat to slink around to Gus’ side of the table, half-sitting on the edge of it where he can loom over him. He moves with a predator’s ease and fluidity, no hesitation or clumsiness to the way he moves from one position to another.
“Did I underestimate you?” Lalo asks, strangely earnest in his inflection.
“Perhaps you overestimated your own charm.” Neutral, but sharp. Inching ever closer towards the dangerous territory of honesty.
“I do sometimes forget that they can’t work on everyone,” he says, eyes crinkling with amusement. “But you?”
The air in the room feels too thin, either the sudden escalation or the sheer audaciousness leaving him dizzy. But Lalo isn’t giving him the benefit of time to strategize with the precision he’s used to– he’s barely even allowing him to choose his words as carefully as he’d like. Stripped of his weapon of choice, and left to answer a question he hadn’t prepared for in the slightest. Indecision was an option, but one that felt like a concession. Rejection, too, was certainly an option, but what would that tell him?
Lalo keeps looking down at him, choosing now to finally shut up, daring him to reply. He’s close enough now that the scent of his cologne is all but rolling off of him. He didn’t notice it when he walked through his door, was it always so strong? The musk of it is distracting, drawing his attention back to the taught, muscular lines of the body encircling him.
Intellectualizing, compartmentalizing, looking at the problem as distantly as possible, all just to stifle the more uncomfortably visceral impulses that might skew his calculation. That wasn’t the point.
He’s not sure what part is winning out when he stands, meeting Lalo’s gaze at his level, and simply states, “I’m not in the habit of mixing business and pleasure.”
“You wouldn’t anymore, would you,” Lalo murmurs, silky and transparently challenging. “Best to only learn that lesson once, right?”
The slow erosion of his self control buckles under the pressure, and he watches as his own hand darts out to fist itself in the fabric of Lalo’s shirt, catching himself before it can do more than grip at it dangerously. He swallows down the white-hot fury before he can speak, but he knows he’s already shown his hand.
“Whoa there,” Lalo says. “Didn’t mean to strike a nerve.”
“Yes you did,” he replies, not loosening his grip, even as he schools his voice to behave.
He can feel his façade slipping, loosening, and realizes with horror that it’s a very pleasant sensation. His anger felt good. Voicing it would likely feel better.
There’s the distinct sensation of a trap beginning to close around his ankle.
“That was a touch cold, even for me,” Lalo says, with all the sincerity of a born salesman. He places a hand atop Gus’, not squeezing, but firmly anchoring them both to the spot all the same. “But you don’t have to keep denying yourself these things, my friend.”
I do, and this is exactly why, he thinks. Because you’re little more than a pack of jackals chasing base desires and instant gratification, and you’ll always turn on the weakest link, and I will never, ever, allow that person to be me again, and–
“And you could stand to deny yourself an impulse or two from time to time.”
“Does it have to be this one?”
“I can’t imagine your family would approve,” Gus says coldly. Despite himself, the idea fills him with a sick satisfaction the moment it’s uttered, giddy with the thought that he could sit on this memory until the day his vision has come to pass. It’s almost embarrassingly petty, really. Clashes a bit with the typical picture of divine retribution.
“Well,” Lalo laughs, “What I do in my free time hardly concerns them, don’t you think?”
“Your usual tastes are bad enough,” he murmurs. “But me?”
“Oh, come on, I’m just helping our valued partner unwind a bit,” Lalo says, lightly running a finger over his hand. “It’s good for business!”
Gus finally steps back, finding little resistance as he sharply tears his hand away. Lalo doesn’t move, hardly changes his expression as he allows Gus to put distance between them.
He could put a stop to this right here, he’s sure of it. He should put a stop to this. It would be unprofessional. It would be reckless. It would be needlessly risky, it would be far too indulgent, it would be stupid. Worst of all, it would be giving Lalo what he wants, without a complete knowledge of why he wants it.
And yet.
All the same could be said about Lalo’s shameless decision to seduce his enemy, when you really got down to it.
“If you really intend to be so forward,” he starts, straightening out his blazer in an attempt to retain decorum, even as the words threaten to catch in his throat.
The vulnerability he’s proposing goes both ways.
“...I may as well accept your offer.”
Lalo doesn’t erupt into peels of self-satisfied laughter, or jump him right then and there, or do any of the things he half-expected him to do the moment Gus conceded to his proposal. There’s no instantaneous sense of defeat, no delighted reveal that he’s fallen hook, line, and sinker for bait tailored to someone as repressed and lonesome as him. Instead, he simply leans back against the table, expression dark and inscrutable, and nods for him to approach.
Which he does, with stiff posture and hands squarely at his sides.
Lalo still doesn’t speak as he slides a hand along either side of his torso, pushing his jacket out of the way as he feels the thin cotton between him and the rapidly warming skin beneath his palms. Not a very subtle way of checking him for weapons, he thinks, even as he silently grows more flustered than he’d like at the first taste of being manhandled.
One of his hands reaches up to pluck his glasses off his face, placing them down on the table in a way that makes Gus fight back a wince. The other finds its way up to the back of his neck, encircling it in a single, large, possessive grip as a thumb rubs circles behind his ear. He can’t tell if Lalo intends it to be soothing or domineering, but it’s not long before he lets out a low wolf whistle that he savors far too much to be insincere
“Now we’re talkin’,” he finally says.
Gus doesn’t move quite yet, allowing Lalo to relish the satisfaction he’s already found a little longer, while his thoughts drift to the bigger picture.
There’s nothing new to this, in the grand scheme of things, when it’s never truly been his game he’s been allowed to play. From the instant all of their fates were sealed with a hot splatter of blood against his cheek, he’s been playing by their rules. Eladio’s games. Salamanca games. No matter how the deck is stacked, or the rules are rigged, he’ll best them at all of them.
He’s different, after all. Better, too.
“So, am I worthy of stepping foot in the rest of your house?” Lalo asks, snapping him back to attention. “Or are we going to–”
“No,” he says, quick to cut off any ideas that might leave his clothes and living space a wreck. He still had his dignity.
He brusquely untangles them, pausing only to adjust his blazer, for the second time that evening, before turning to lead them out of the room with little fanfare. There was hardly any need to make a big deal of it, not when they both knew what was about to happen.
Voicing it would make it real, something he was in no hurry to do.
Still, for all he steeled his resolve, passing the threshold into his bedroom feels like a violation. Even though he’s certain he could still call this off if he wanted to. Even though he has no intention of doing just that. Even though, to his dismay, he has to admit that he wants this– it feels a bit too intimate.
Truth be told, he had half-expected Lalo to just shove him down onto his hardwood floor back there. That’s about what both of them deserve, even if he’d rather avoid it.
Distantly, he tries to recall if he’s ever allowed himself to invite a man into this particular room, since settling down in Albuquerque. It makes his stomach lurch to realize that Lalo fucking Salamanca could so nonchalantly swipe that honor from him, an uneasiness settling somewhere between the juvenile butterflies of sneaking a boy into his adolescent bedroom several lifetimes ago and the claustrophobic desire to crawl out of his skin.
If Lalo senses his apprehension, it doesn’t make much of a difference. The glint of his toothy grin is the only warning he gets before he finds himself crowded up against the wall, wrists pinned right beside the door they’d barely just stepped through. His mouth goes right for his jugular, pressing kisses right where he’d need to bite to make him bleed out, all before Gus can remember to blindly feel for the light switch to their left. Lalo carelessly knocks it on with his elbow.
It’s been a while , he rationalizes simply as he feels himself already going slack under the insistent press of Lalo’s body, head lolling to the side to chase the pleasant sensation of lips on his neck with little input from the more logical parts of his brain. Just as quickly, there’s a thigh nudging his legs apart, and one of his wrists has been released so that a hand can grasp at his hip instead. Just in time, too, as his now-free hand jumps to his own mouth to stifle a sound– not a moan, Lalo did not already have him moaning –
“Wow,” Lalo breathes, sounding genuinely amazed. “Already–”
“It’s not,” he cuts in quickly, before his brain catches up to the rest of him. “It’s involuntary.”
“So fast,” he replies, presumably ignoring Gus’ earlier objection. “Who would’ve thought all it’d take was a little–”
“I assure you, it’s not you,” Gus argues for argument’s sake, not willing to consider how much of it is a lie.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t gotten any since…“
“Since what,” Gus snaps back. A rhetorical question, of course. There’s only one meaningful Before and Since for him, and Lalo is clearly well aware of it.
Well aware, and tactless enough to have brought it up a second time. There was no answer here that would feel like a victory, caught between divulging unnecessary details of his sex life to a rival (mortifying) and allowing him a glimpse of the one raw weak point he couldn’t burn out (unthinkable). So he deflects.
“Hm,” Lalo hums, breathing hot air against the hollow of his throat. He takes a moment, seemingly turning that non-answer over in his mind between nips at his neck, and says,
“Well, good thing I’ve heard true love is supposed to be forgiving, eh?”
Light, flippant, not meeting his eyes. It sets off every self-preservation instinct his stubbornly still-human body has, all at once reminding him who he is, who Lalo is, that he’s about to be in bed with one of the monsters who–
He clamps down on that feeling before it can spiral.
“You wouldn’t know much about that, I assume,” Gus says, in a low monotone so tight and brittle that it’d surely snap under the barest of stress.
Which is probably why, when Lalo lifts a mildly amused face up at him, Gus takes it in his hands and kisses it fiercely before this exchange can continue. Easier to swallow down the unsettled guilt threatening to unsteady him when it tastes faintly of expensive cognac. The rough scratch of his mustache against his skin is a welcome substitute for the persistent itch in the back of his mind, and when he bites down on Lalo’s lip, he can briefly imagine the flavor of blood in his mouth.
A low whine escapes Lalo’s throat as he’s pulled in, only to pull away just as fast. Nearly gracefully enough to hide his desperation, he grips insistently at Gus’ waist and spins them around, unbothered by the bookshelf they nearly careen into on their wide arc towards the bed. In the split second before being shoved back onto the mattress, he registers the look on Lalo’s face as unsteady in its naked excitement, like adrenaline has overtaken his own more intellectually-based higher brain functions.
Gus would count it as a win that he finally feels in greater control of his faculties than Lalo looks, but the moment is quickly replaced by the sensation of Lalo climbing over him, grabbing him, kissing like he wants to devour him whole–
It’s an insidious sort of seduction, inviting him to forget who he is, and who he’s with, and why he’s doing this, and simply feel . It’d be so much easier, if he could allow himself to be pulled in by the tide without worrying that he’d be dashed against the rocks if he let his guard down for even a moment. Lalo’s grip on his arms is crushing, pinning him in place, and his thoughts flit between the panic he’d ordinarily feel at a Salamanca’s mercy and the hot rush of blood pumping in his ears.
Lalo haphazardly pushes his jacket down, past his shoulders, pooling at his elbows all while they barely pause for breath. It doesn’t make it past his wrists before Lalo is roughly fumbling with his shirt buttons too, exposing a wider expanse of skin to nip and suck at with a keen hunger.
The drag of fabric across his chest brings him back to his body, dispelling the surreality of what they’re doing enough for him to sit up sharply, slamming the breaks on his guest’s full throttle assault.
“Wait,” he says sternly, one hand gingerly pressing against Lalo’s chest, holding him at bay. And to his credit, he does, remaining glued to the spot as Gus slips off the bed, if only because he was shocked into it by his tone.
He unbuttons his shirt slowly, methodically, before removing it without much sensuality at all. He folds it with just as little care for performance, setting it down simply atop a dresser beside his bed.
When he glances back, Lalo has a hand fisted in the sheets next to him. He resists the unbecoming urge to smirk.
“What, you’re stopping there?”
“That depends,” Gus says, “On if you can be trusted to do the rest to my standards.”
“To your standards of housekeeping or self control?” Lalo replies, an entertained grin cracking across his face.
“I take it that’s a no, then.”
“Oh, absolutely,” he laughs, and leans back on his elbows to watch him even more brazenly as he sighs and removes his pants as well. Like a reclining emperor receiving the most dispassionate strip show his prestige can offer him. He takes his time folding them, too, with careful precision, making a point not to acknowledge his audience until he’s done with his task.
There’s a muted shuffling behind him, which turns out to be Lalo following his lead in the broadest of senses as he squirms out of his (frankly, much too tight) jeans and kicks them half across the room, never taking his eyes off him all the while. He doesn’t have a quip ready for the intensity of Lalo’s gaze on his exposed form, not confident enough in his unpracticed flirtation to be sure he wouldn’t show his hand by doing so. He quirks an eyebrow instead, silently urging Lalo to break the silence first.
“You’re kind of a freak, man,” he laughs, and Gus gets the odd sense that this might be the closest approximation of a genuine compliment he’s ever going to get out of him. He frowns involuntarily, even as his gaze flits over the full expanse of toned skin on display in front of him. A frown which deepens as Lalo smugly preens at the attention, lounging openly, limbs loose and–
Good god, he’s hard already. At the sight of his neurotic attention to clothing care? Fascinating.
“You done?” Lalo asks. Whether he means with his clothes or with his open staring, he doesn’t say. Gus suspects it doesn’t really matter, beyond wanting every obstacle to his impatience out of the way.
He doesn’t hurry back.
The difference between proximity and intimacy, he thinks as he crawls back into overeager arms, is a tricky thing. He’s perfected clinical detachment into an art, sorted emotions into their proper places based on their use or detriment to him. But, as reticent as he is to admit it, he can only truly control himself. Other people can be predicted, accounted for, but ultimately remain variables to navigate around. Letting anyone too close, no matter his own command over his actions, how well he can curb that weakness from taking hold, was still a liability. It all becomes too messy. Tainted.
Besides, his affections were functionally a death sentence.
His mind floats to and from his body, taking in physical sensations in snapshots, working them into this private monologue. His mouth on the meat of Lalo’s shoulder. Lalo’s dull nails raking trails along his back. Taking Lalo in hand, and focusing only on the hot pulse of blood beneath his touch and the unsteady inhale-exhale in his ear.
He thinks about the weapon he’s sharpened himself into, so expansive in its effectiveness that bodies will surely continue to pile up around him until the day he’s finally in the ground. Another unfortunate necessity, another price to be paid, another thing he’s made his stony peace with. Be careful, don’t touch, you’ll cut yourself open–
Lalo is slinking down the length of his torso, demanding his attention with a trail of kisses and rough hands digging into the flesh at his hip bones.
He thinks that if he’s condemning Lalo Salamanca with this, then that wouldn’t be so bad.
“Oh,” Lalo says, face pressed right up against the crook of one of his thighs. “Finally got you smiling.”
He responds with a firm hand sliding his hairstyle out of place, pushing his self-satisfied face out of view, rather than an admission. It’s terribly perverse, in a way that excites and repulses him all at once, for these particular thoughts and sensations to align. He bites down on the flesh of his forefinger, averts his gaze from the obscene up-and-down of Lalo’s head, anything to stifle his body’s reaction while his head swims with images so clear that they may as well be prophetic. Somewhere, he manages to form the opinion that Lalo is good at this, far beyond the relief of keeping his mouth too occupied to speak. It’s almost a shame that his talent will be wiped from the Earth sooner rather than later. Almost. Not enough to kill the mood.
Perhaps it should be noted that he doesn’t consider himself a sadist in any traditional sense. Violence is a tool. Intimidation is a tool. His job requires their use, simple as that.
But something about the vulgar pop of Lalo pulling off of him, something in his blown, wild eyes or the confident quirk of his rubbed-raw lips, makes Gus desperately hope that he’ll be there to see the moment life bleeds out of him.
This is probably why he merely nods when Lalo says something that presumably amounts to a declaration of his intent to fuck him senseless. He hardly processed the details before hearing his own voice direct him towards the adjacent bathroom, to a cabinet containing the sort of supplies you’d expect from someone who prides himself on being prepared for everything.
He digs nails into his own thigh to ground himself again while he watches Lalo disappear from his sight. The sudden silence is deafening, the sudden absence of touch leaves him with a restlessness just beneath his skin. Inertia is a powerful force, so he can’t allow himself to stop just yet, not before they’re done here. Maybe he lost sight of his goal, enjoyed himself more than he’d like, but that wasn’t a defeat. Not yet.
His eyes are trained on Lalo the moment he saunters back into the room, steeling himself all over again to be unflinching in his assessment. If Lalo notes the change, or finds it off-putting, he doesn’t say, as he wastes no time making good on his promise. Allowing himself to be maneuvered back against the pillows, Gus makes his appraisal in between the insistent intrusion of Lalo’s fingers.
His observations were as follows:
1. Lalo has noticeably fewer scars than I do, though they seem fresher on average. One in particular, an angry, jagged line curling beneath his left ribs, is still sensitive to the touch. None of this can inherently be taken as indicating less combat experience. It’s just as accurate to say that less people have managed to injure him over the years.
2. Despite allowing him to handle me as he wishes for the bulk of this encounter, he hasn’t given any indication that he considers this at odds with my background. Either he is unaware of what training I’ve undergone, considers it far enough in the past to be irrelevant, or is simply confident in his own physical superiority.
“Shit–” he bites out, as Lalo finds just the right way to twist his first two fingers to get a reaction out of him.
“There we go,” he coos, smiling cheekily as Gus’ hand flails out to grab at him when he works him harder.
3a. Lalo’s forearms are dense with muscle. Deceptively so, considering the peculiar litheness he seems to carry himself with. He comes off more graceful than bulky, and yet I can hardly get a hand around the circumference of one of them. I can extrapolate, then, that the rest of him is just as
3b. From this, I can extrapolate that in a close quarters contest of physical strength against Lalo Salamanca, the odds of emerging victorious are slim to none. Avoid this scenario at all costs.
Lalo pulls his hand away after a time, and pauses, as if in thought. He doesn’t have a comment this time, but instead surprises him by reaching for a pillow about to fall off the bed, and unceremoniously placing it under Gus’ hips. There’s no tenderness to the action, no greater play at the sort of affection it might’ve suggested from someone else. Gus grimaces through it, even as he allows it to happen, expecting Lalo to explain himself.
But, it’s just as likely that Lalo was waiting for a question that never came, because the moment passes just as quickly, unspoken, when he opts to line himself up and get on with it instead.
“Good,” Lalo groans, the moment he’s buried himself up to the hilt. “Very good.”
His tone is sickly sweet, not anything like what he’s used with him before. Gus hates it instantly, hates how patronizing it is, hates knowing that it’s the sound of a conquest fulfilled.
Well, assumed to be fulfilled. He was plenty familiar with the satisfaction of a Salamanca coercing him to kneel. He knew it wouldn’t last, knew it was all performance, but that didn’t make him loathe it any less.
“Yes,” Lalo sighs again, uninterested in any of that. He lets himself babble freely with each thrust, even as soft, barely-there sounds are all that escape from the man beneath him. A wanton litany of things he surely doesn’t mean, like you’re perfect, you were made for this, you were made for me, Christ, why didn’t we do this sooner, fuck, you take me so well–
Gus lets his eyes flutter shut, just for a moment, just to remove himself from the equation. He focuses solely on the physical sensation of being full, rocking back and forth with ease. It could’ve been nice, in another lifetime, but reality remains persistent. Lalo’s leveraging grip on his thighs their only real contact as he sits back on his heels and uses his body to chase satisfaction, even as his words pretend this is anything other than transactional.
Maybe he ought to try it.
“Like that,” he moans, a touch more openly than he’d prefer. Like clockwork, Lalo responds with a renewed vigor, and the hot wash of embarrassment is suddenly indistinguishable from arousal. “Perfect.”
4. This is not a man immune to having his ego stroked, however, this alone does not constitute a viable weak spot. He doesn’t appear to have any illusions about the fact that praise is rarely directed his way without an ulterior motive, but the act of paying your dues is itself enough to do it for him. He is royalty of sorts, after all. He’s accustomed to people bending a knee.
He lets Lalo move him again, pushed up and backwards until he’s flush against the headboard– all but sitting in Lalo’s lap while an arm on either side of him traps him in place. It’s far more overwhelming, far more personal, this total contact, and it makes it hard to think. His skin feels aflame at every point of connection before Lalo even enters him again.
The insipid imitation of dirty talk starts again, too. This time mere inches from his ear.
“You’re doing beautifully.”
He manages a noncommittal groan.
“God, I can’t believe you’d deny yourself–”
Another.
“Always so serious, it’s a waste–”
And another.
“Fuck, I wish I could have you, why do you have to–”
Wait.
“Is it really worth it, when we could be so much more–”
Gus twists his head, reaches to kiss him before he can say any more.
“No way he fucked you like I can.”
Well. Third strike.
It’s a blink of the eye before his hands are at Lalo’s throat, jumping from their previous perch on his chest with dangerous precision. It’s shockingly easy, all things considered, to leverage this position to loom over Lalo, even with his smaller frame.
“So you are still in there,” he says, awfully casually for someone a moment from being choked out. “I was worried I lost you”
“You,” Gus starts, severe as he’s ever been, before faltering, suddenly aware of how thin the ice has become.
Lalo doesn’t interrupt him, just lets his tongue dart out to wet his lips. His thighs are shaking faintly with strain beneath him, as Gus continues to pin him still. He can feel him throbbing against his skin, and the sudden shift in dynamic is intoxicating. Shame it’s so intertwined with nauseating rage.
“You,” he repeats sternly. “Have forgotten yourself.”
“So did you,” Lalo breathes out, pupils blown wide. He places his hands on top of Gus’ grip, but makes no effort to remove them. “For a minute there.”
He gives his neck a tentative squeeze. Nothing serious, nothing in the realm of actual threat, certainly nothing as permanently damaging as he’d like. Just to see what he sees.
He counts it a credit to his work tonight that he’s entirely unsurprised when Lalo responds with a bit off moan and a half-hearted attempt to move his hips again. He counts it a failure that he himself is not entirely unaffected by this response.
“Is this what you wanted so badly?” Gus says, low in his throat, as he grinds down at a pace that Lalo hopefully finds agonizing. “You couldn’t just take what I offered. You had to be greedy.”
Lalo looks more pleased than he’s ever seen him before burying his face in Gus’ shoulder, wrapping his arms around his waist. This time, he puts his full strength behind getting them moving again, plainly desperate as he tilts them back, accepting this less domineering position with enthusiasm.
“I should’ve known,” Gus gasps out, even as Lalo continues to thrust up from beneath him. “That someone so unabashed, so boorish, so depraved–”
5. He responds well to praise. He responds well to venom. The most logical conclusion to be drawn here is that the words themselves do not matter. He’s looking for a reaction.
Lalo comes fairly quickly after that, as expected. Gus doesn’t loosen his grip on him until he’s satisfied, a few minutes later, though.
Then, of course, he realizes what he’s done.
He wastes no time in rolling off the bed, even while Lalo lies there dazed and boneless. He walks right to the bathroom, turns on the shower as hot as he’s learned he can tolerate, and steps in. He doesn’t dally, not knowing he’s left Lalo unsupervised in his bedroom, just washes himself off as efficiently as he can, like a tangible grime has covered every inch of his skin and is threatening to stain it. So efficiently, in fact, that the mirror hasn’t even fogged up by the time he steps back out and dons the robe he rarely removes from its hook behind the door.
His reflection offers little in the way of making sense of this lapse in rationality, but at least it doesn’t judge him for it, either. He pauses before it all the same, staring into dark eyes that he instructed to give away nothing a long time ago.
He reaches into a drawer and retrieves a spare pair of glasses before returning to the bedroom.
If Lalo managed to undermine him in some subtle way while he was gone, he doesn’t look like it. In the time it took Gus to put himself back together, he seems to have at least achieved the task of disposing of the condom in the small wastebasket, though he continues to lounge nude like he has every right to be there.
Gus retrieves the jeans that, based on their their placement, narrowly avoided knocking a lamp over, straightens them out harshly, and tosses them towards his guest without a word. He catches them effortlessly.
“Is that all?” Lalo asks innocently.
“That is all.”
“Aw,” he says, finally moving to pick up the briefs strewn by his feet. “We were finally getting somewhere.”
“That was more than enough.”
Lalo clicks his tongue as he shimmies back into his pants in a not particularly dignified manner. “Well, can’t help getting older!”
He opts not to point out that Lalo is only two years younger than he is, and silently hands over his shirt as well. He tries not to clench his jaw when their fingers brush over the gaudy fabric.
Lalo slips the last part of his outfit on and makes for the exit. Gus trails close behind.
“We should do this again sometime!”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”
“Hm, that’s too bad,” Lalo hums, unbothered. He turns his head back to face him and grins. “I just feel like I really get you now!”
Gus is silently grateful that his attention was already elsewhere when he falters, briefly, for just a step, at the flippant statement.
“Oh, right, you can keep the rest of that, by the way,” Lalo adds, gesturing to the long-forgotten decanter still sitting mostly full on his kitchen table as they pass it by. “Consider it a gift for your generous hospitality.”
“You’re too kind,” he grits out.
He watches as Lalo walks up to where his shoes have been waiting inoffensively by the door (bright, tacky blue loafers… He can’t believe he didn’t take note of them earlier.) and slips them on. An unsettling chill slips down his spine, watching the subtle flex of his back muscles and absently remembering how it felt to claw at them. He wishes he could’ve at least broken the skin.
“Have a good night, Gustavo,” he says brightly. Gus closes the door behind him without a reply.
The cognac gets placed in a cabinet out of sight, and he makes peace with the idea of one more lost battle to his name before the war is over.