主要是想記錄一下Lacho相關的同人文片段，順便等WCN的續集出來（今年能出來嗎🥺）

首先，當然是以WCN打頭陣啦～
What Comes Next - Chapter 1 - apollos - Better Call ...

Chapter 1: Prologue

"What about me?" Lalo asks, and Nacho hears it there: a genuine hurt beyond cartel politics and money and drugs and blood. Beyond their business and their business interests and to themselves.

Deep inside, in that place inside Lalo Nacho knows is capable of love, and more than that, of fear and hurt, Nacho has stuck his fingers in, poked and stretched until it fit him, and came back bloody.

-

Now Lalo closes his eyes, and this might be the first time Nacho has ever seen Lalo with his eyes shut. His eyelids are wrinkled, lapping into his smile lines, short eyelashes with a slight lift, and with his heaving chest and his wild hair he looks so old and tired that something in Nacho's stomach flips and all he wants to say is,

don't leave me with this image of you, don't let me die with this on the back of my eyes, this is not you, this is not me, this is not us.

Chapter 2: Seven Months Ago

Nacho is so tired. Walls have fallen, and he does not have the strength to rebuild them. Kings die just as men do, and only God above them all lives, and Nacho knows which way those golden scales will tip, and so: When they were on the track, it was then that Lalo burned himself into Nacho.

Chapter 3: Six Months Ago

Nacho smiles to himself, knowing what Lalo is talking about. Mexican hot chocolate. His mom would make that for him in the winters, something that required little skill in the kitchen but filled a kid up, made them warm.

He experiences a moment of singularity, picturing Lalo as a child—precocious, surely, the type of child to curse a wild string and laugh bubbles when you tried to wash his mouth out with soap—and himself as a child—quiet and well-mannered, good at blaming the other kid when they both did something wrong—side-by-side.

He sees them with hot chocolate in their small hands, drinking in sync, bright child-smiles on their round faces. You're going to have something in common with everybody you meet, he tells himself, and then he crumples that image and tosses it away.

-

Lalo shakes his head and sets the menu down. He slings his around the back of the booth once more and looks at Nacho, who remains as he is, holding his hands together on the table.

Lalo never loses his smile, whether on his face or in his eyes, like he had when Nacho had squirmed and offered to arrange the killing of Domingo, an old friend with whom he had shared hot chocolate as a child. No; here, Lalo seems almost a different man, a cultured, sharp-dressed older man with money and connections and a welcoming smile.

And here Nacho sits, across from him in this fancy, romantic restaurant, dressed in his best clothes, about to eat expensive sushi and drink expensive sake with Lalo Salamanca, while Domingo sits in a jail cell in orange and cuffs and nobody for company but whatever crooks were they tossed him with alongside.

Whatever Nacho feels, it seems, is always wrong. Here, he wills himself to find the exhilaration of the track or the ease of the dinner at Lalo's house and force himself to relax, to look less intimidating and intimidated, while before, in those instances, he wanted this uneasiness.

It has nothing to do with the man in front of him; it has everything to do with the man in front of him.

-

Nice fish. Take me out to an expensive, interesting dinner, tell me about your childhood, interrogate me about my girlfriends, and then turn around and say, nice fish. His short laugh causes Lalo to giggle in agreeance, as if there is something to laugh about together.

Nacho thinks about inside jokes, the way they form, and feels a kick in his gut, because he knows that he and Lalo, together, are building a little collection of shared moments and experiences and things that exist just between the two of them. As if these things are bricks, they are building something, together.

Removed from the backdrop of blood money and cramped kitchens, out here in the real world, laughing about fish, Lalo looks normal. Looks legitimate. Looks handsome.

Something perches at the top of Nacho's throat. It itches. Nacho can't tell what it is: a sob, a scream, a laugh, a cough. He swallows it down.

-

The beauty of the long-term plan, of watching your work build into something. Lalo keeps thinking about Ignacio's lips against his fingers, and then the way he had grabbed his wrist at the very end.

Lalo had not even intended to feed him like that, had not even considered he might not know how to use the chopsticks, but where Lalo knows to be patient, Lalo also knows how to seize an opportunity when it reveals itself. And how nicely did it appear—as nicely as the reds and yellows and greens of the rainbow roll, shining under the light.

Lalo plays it over and over again, the strength apparent in Ignacio's fingers even with the loose hold, the plush softness of his lips, as he touches his own face on the drive home.

Ignacio, across from him in that booth, in his fitted shirt with the light catching the chain, the earring, and his white teeth when he opened his mouth for him, relaxing into the atmosphere that Lalo provided for him, coaxed him into.

He may not say much, but he has his own manner of communicating, and what he told Lalo tonight is that the interest is there. All that is left for Lalo to do is nurture it until it ripens.

-

Ridiculous, stupid, insane, Nacho had sat in that restaurant booth and let Lalo feed him, had let himself feed back into Lalo, while Domingo sat in jail, while Nacho trailed behind him a line of screaming Salamanca ghosts, while Fring held his father's life in his gloved hands.

He worked himself into anger and then sat on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands, and calmed himself back down. It was not a waste of time, a moment of weakness, he told himself, but an opportune way to endear Lalo. He was certain he had endeared Lalo.

Nacho did not spend time meeting men in bars and fucking them within the span of half an hour without learning what it means when a man looks at another man like that.

The idea of seducing Lalo on purpose sickens him.

The idea that it—not a seduction, but something else Nacho cannot, will not, put a name to—is happening anyway panics him.

Chapter 4: Five Months Ago

He should have felt panicked upon coming home. He should have felt like he just fought for his life and barely escaped. He should have freaked out, screamed, threw things, broke them, done something, but as usual, whatever Nacho feels is wrong for the moment.

He instead ignores the girls as he walks past them, asking him why he's home so early, and goes to shower. He feels more sore than after the most strenuous of exercise; he feels more sore than he has any right to be. Psychosomatic, maybe. Probably.

He feels sore, but he also feels calm. Drained and calmed. The feeling you want after a good fuck, clear-headed and emptied, reset, neutral, and he feels all of this because he rolled around on a dirty garage's dirty floor with Lalo Salamanca.

-

He could have walked it back the previous few days. He could have himself said something. He could have ended it, accepted the consequences. Lalo could have made him, anyway, but he if that were the case, he'd have done it from the start.

Besides, unlike a lot of men he knows, Nacho thinks Lalo wouldn't want somebody he'd have to force to his bed. Lalo wants the fun of the chase. Lalo wants to be wanted.

Nacho rubs at his face. Alone in his car, he lets himself scream. The scream breaks into a laugh, then a tearless sob, then quiets down. Whatever little animal lives inside him and asks for more walks a few steps, then decides that wasn't enough.

-

Nacho staves off his part of the conversation, adding some yeahs or reallys when appropriate, and stares at the ceiling. Such a plain ceiling. White plaster. The tequila dances inside him, and though three shots barely means shit to him, he feels a little weak around the knees.

Around Lalo, like this, one thing pushes him off-balance and he spends the rest of the night trying and failing to recover—he came a little close in the garage, maybe—so why not lean into it? Why not let Lalo take him wherever Lalo wants to go? Maybe the only way out is through, after all.