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Because Lalo has married a terrible, terrible person, he is threatened first with grievous bodily harm and then with confiscation of all his fire-starting equipment if he tries to carry his beloved across the threshold of his house.
"But it's tradition," he complains, and Ignacio Varga-Salamanca favours him with his skull's smile, the one that seems to warp the light around them and throws the hollows of his wide cheeks into shadow.
"I am not letting you tote me around like a sack of rice," he says, as Lalo's car slows to cruising speed before an imposing set of wrought iron gates. At the close is the Salamanca coat of arms, and their credo beneath: Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc.
"You could carry me," Lalo says hopefully, and Ignacio laughs.
It's a lovely sound, like a sword being drawn, a dagger unsheathing, and for a second the ominous silence blanketing the mansion seems to waver. The fog lifts, then settles.
"No," he says fondly.
Lalo sighs, cranking down the window and perching his elbow atop it, and the catch of the gate almost seems to nip at his paisley sleeve, like an affectionate pet.
Ignacio stares at it curiously, but doesn't comment, and Lalo's stomach gives a nervous little flip.
Not many visit Salamanca mansion, and those that do don't often leave.
He reaches across the centre console and squeezes Ignacio's hand, and his own is gratifyingly squeezed back.
He throws the car to a stop in front of the house, and his husband doesn't bother waiting for him to come around the side of the car to open his door. Chivalry truly is dead, and Ignacio Varga has killed it. He's got both feet planted on the gravelled driveway, peering up at the hulking silhouette of Lalo's childhood home. His hand half-shields his face, so that Lalo can't even gauge his reaction to the spindly turrets, the recently touched-up façade, the windows that gape like eyes.
When Lalo first met his husband, he had been living in one of those hideous, frightfully modern houses, the kind that was all hard angles and tall white walls, bristling with glass and chrome. That doesn't seem like him, he had thought at first. That house contained no warmth, no soul, and Ignacio seemed all the colder and fiercer in it, but now he wonders if he's gotten it all wrong. Maybe Ignacio likes it that way. Prefers it, even.
Ignacio makes for the trunk, and the movement jolts Lalo from his thoughts. He takes a moment to admire his saunter, his prowling walk. He's wearing a loose sweater today—Lalo had told him to dress warmly—and he tugs the sleeves down his lithe forearms as he goes.
"Ah, I'll send someone to get our things," Lalo says.
His husband raises an eyebrow. "You hired help? I never thought you the sort of person to allow outsiders into your home."
"What could give you that impression?" Lalo asks, grinning, and then he quickly back-pedals. "Not that you're an outsider."
Ignacio draws close. "Being so quick to trust will land you in hot water one day," he says with deadly softness, and it makes Lalo's heart skip a beat.
"Will it?" he asks, a little breathless.
Ignacio brushes his knuckles against Lalo's jaw, like the tenderest sucker punch.
"Don't worry," he murmurs, lowering his gaze. "I'd kill for you."
"And I would die for you," Lalo insists, distracted again by the impossible length of his lashes, a shadowy lace against his cheekbones.
Ignacio smirks. "Either way, what bliss."
Before Lalo can lean in and demand a kiss, Ignacio has stepped away and begun making his way up the front steps, towards the yawning maw of an entrance.
The entryway opens up to a grand foyer, crowned by an ornate chandelier. In a few minutes someone will come and light the tall candles, and then the whole place will be even more impressive. A staircase spirals up from the far end of the foyer, terminating at some point too high for the naked eye to see.
Even the air smells familiar, like ancient thing, long-forgotten things. Lalo takes a deep breath, and then another, till his chest overflows with the rushing, excited sensation of finally coming home.
He's also relieved to see that the wooden panelling on the walls gleam, and that someone has given the bear rug beneath their feet a good brush.
Ignacio places one hand on the railing, already prepared to confront the challenge of all those steps, when a scowling little man with trunk-like arms stalks past. Between his clenched fists is a tarnished silver tray bearing—he approaches, and Lalo cranes his neck—a row of tiny, wriggling things atop what looks like toasted brioche.
"Tuco!" he says jovially, although internally he groans. His cousin does not make the best first impressions. Often, there are no second ones. "Come meet my husband. Ignacio, this is my cousin, Tuco."
Tuco's hard, brutish expression does not falter, but he allows himself to be wrangled into a chokehold of an embrace before thrusting the dubious offering forward.
"Entrails?" he snarls. Lalo wants to strangle him.
His poor, unsuspecting husband gingerly pinches an appetizer between two fingers, a dripping, squishy thing topped with a dark, blood-like sauce. He peers at it, turning it this way and that, and then pops it into his mouth.
Lalo holds his breath, dread making his blood run cold.
"Mm," Ignacio says, licking his lips. "Thank you, Tuco."
Tuco continues glaring at him. Then, suddenly, the hard, flat angles of his face resolve into a terrifying grin, one that Ignacio returns, deceptively placid.
Then his cousin's hard, beady eyes flick from Ignacio to Lalo to the rug that they're standing on, and he mutters, "Tio says it's your turn to clean the bear. The assassins I've been feeding it give it indigestion."
With that dazzling parting comment, he stalks away. Lalo eyes the scrap of cloth caught between the bear's teeth, and is glad to be temporarily rid of him.
#
"Don't mind Tuco," he says, wrapping an arm around Ignacio's slender waist. "He's not the most pleasant person to be around, but he grows on you."
"I'm sure," Ignacio murmurs, and what the hell does that mean?
But Tuco is certifiably insane—by three psychologists, no less—and Lalo's favourite cousin. And he seems to have taken to Ignacio—but then again, who wouldn't? He gives his husband a fond squeeze, before turning his attention to the family's history.
The Salamanca ancestral home has been in the family for four centuries, he proudly declares, as he points out areas where each successive generation made changes to the architecture and interior design.
His husband trails his fingers along the wall, adorned with portraits of Salamancas past. It's uncanny, the way the portraits' stares seem to trail after them, some strange and unsettling knowledge reflected in their immortal gazes, but Lalo's long since gotten used to it. A proud woman with a mouth like a wound holds aloft a candle that seems to flicker in an impossible breeze.
Ignacio steps closer to the portrait, and the proud woman looks suddenly less proud and more curious. Her candle gutters and goes out, and without missing a beat Ignacio cups a palm over it, his eyes shadowed and conscientious, until the oil image of the candle flares to life again.
He steps back from the painting, and they continue along their way.
#
They round a corner, and suddenly they are no longer alone.
Between one breath and the next, a pair of twins has materialised at the end of the long, dim corridor, side by side, so still they could be statues.
Or ghosts.
They're sporting matching striped shirts and shorn scalps, and possessing of such a hard look that Tuco's ferocity is put to shame. One has a garrotte wrapped around one arm; the other is double-fisting a set of dual swords. Interesting choices. An assortment of cuts and bruises decorates both their bodies, some still bleeding freely.
At least they aren't wearing their awful skull shoes.
"Marco, Leonel!" Lalo calls, striding over as though they aren't looming menacingly. Annoyance flickers across their faces at the interruption. "Cousins, meet my husband, Ignacio."
Ignacio steps forward. His eyes are a deep, unfathomable colour. Bewitching.
"Good to see you," he says, cloaking himself in such deadly ease that Lalo's cousins exchange a glance. When they turn back to him, their lips curl.
Lalo steps in before this can escalate. "We left some things in the trunk. Bring them up before you go back to trying to kill each other, will you?"
Marco levels an unwavering stare at him. Leonel's is threaded through with distaste. Their scowls are identical. Lalo's smile never wavers.
With a crack, they disappear.
Beside him, Ignacio stretches. "That could've gone worse, I think," he says, prowling towards the spot where the twins vanished. "How many of you live in this house?"
Lalo forces a grin. "Three generations!" he replies cheerfully. "Above ground."
"I can't wait to meet them all," he says, dry as desiccated bone.
#
Just then, there's a loud bang, followed by a pained shriek, from beneath them.
"What's that?" Ignacio says, his gaze sharpening.
"The dungeon." Lalo cocks his head.
"A dungeon?" Ignacio purrs, his eyes going lidded, and Lalo barely has time to process that before there's another explosion, this one shaking the house to its foundations.
No scream this time.
"It's Joaquin," he breathes, rolling on the balls of his feet. "He's playing with explosives again. I'm going to go see what he's testing."
Ignacio blinks slowly at him, like a large jungle cat at an antelope with a limp.
"My love, he could be grievously injured," Lalo pleads, and he can't keep the thrill from his voice. Like a child at a fair.
His husband's mouth curves. "Go, then," he murmurs. He waves a hand. "But if you miss my first dinner here, you will be grievously injured."
"Don't tease, Nachito." Lalo darts forward and presses a triumphant, claiming kiss to the side of his mouth before dashing away.
#
It isn't cowardly, Lalo reasons to himself as he takes a turn too quickly. It's a tactical retreat, that's all.
He had originally intended to show Ignacio the family vault, the bottomless pit, the greenhouse full of carnivorous plants. He had wanted to bring him around the cemetery, had hoped to spar with him in the room with its walls veritably teeming with guns and crossbows and all sorts of blades of different lengths.
What does a man like Ignacio need in a house anyway? Certainly he doesn't care for anything warm or familiar, and Lalo realises with a sinking feeling that this isn't even a question he had ever contemplated. He'd been so caught up in the anxiety and excitement of showing Ignacio his house, he had failed to consider what Ignacio might need to live here.
A study, perhaps. For him to plot devious plots, to contemplate darkness and diabolical schemes. Does Ignacio read? Does he prefer paper or parchment, ink or blood?
And what about an exercise room? A man like his husband must surely need outlet for his energy, demonic or otherwise. There should be spare rooms near the towers that they can utilise.
And Ignacio's always eaten whatever dish Lalo placed before him, but does he cook? Lalo can't for the life of him recall what the kitchen in Ignacio's old house looked like—but he can probably assume it was just as sparse and utilitarian as the rest of the place. He would need his own cupboard, his own ingredients. Lalo imagines asking Abuelita to move some of her pickled herbs and cringes at the row that will certainly ensue.
The initial flush of joy at being home has been replaced by terror. Now that would normally a good thing, but today Lalo isn't so sure. He's seen enough of the world to know that his family is uncommon. Atypical. Abnormal.
Joaquin is sadly unharmed, and they spend a good hour exploding things in the basement until Lalo's smiles come easily again, and he begins to regret leaving Ignacio alone.
"You keep turning towards the door," his nephew complains, but it's with a smile.
Lalo laughs ruefully. "I haven't been a very good host, have I?"
Joaquin gives him a shrewd look. "'Host' would imply you have guests. Is your husband a guest, uncle?"
"You're a brat," Lalo accuses, shoving him towards the home-made electric chair.
But no matter how far to the right he turns the dial, he can't shake the niggling anxiety that he is the one who has made a poor impression.
#
He skids past the landing on the way to the kitchen, just in time to see Ignacio saunter down the stairs, moving with such eerie grace that Lalo has to check to make sure both his feet are on the ground.
He's changed out of his sweater and into a fine cotton shirt with ivory buttons done halfway up his chest, and in a red so dark it's nearly black. The loose, billowy fabric exposes the impossible jut of his collarbone, the tendons sloping up his jugular. His legs are clad in leather trousers the colour of an oil slick, and in the dim light his face looks almost predatory.
"How's the bedroom?" he asks, a little hoarse.
"I found it easily enough." His Nachito shrugs, a louche gesture made graceful. Lalo wants terribly to bite him, to mark up that corded throat. "I just had to follow the smell of gasoline."
Lalo beams. "Did you like it?"
"The rug with vines that ensnare your feet is a very nice touch," his husband allows. "And so is the torture wheel."
The wild, devoted thing in his chest grows teeth and claws, demanding, insistent. He laughs, and only sounds slightly unhinged.
"I'm glad!" He slips his hand around Ignacio's narrow waist, tugging him towards the kitchen.
#
Tuco is in the kitchen, cooking for their abuelita. Lalo nudges him to the side, kisses Abuelita on her cheek to distract her from how he'd moved her cauldron off the fire, and starts opening cupboards and pulling ingredients from the shelves. In his head, a recipe is assembling itself.
Ignacio watches on with quiet bemusement.
"Sit!" Lalo orders him, and begins dicing tomatoes. Tuco hands him the big knife, serrated edge first, and Lalo tuts at him playfully, then vindictively puts him to work grinding six different spices.
"Will Hector be joining us?" Abuelita asks, a little fretfully. Under the table, she fingers a bottle with a fading skull-and-crossbones label.
"I don't know, Abuelita," Tuco says, his voice going soft and placating around the edges. He stands. "I'll go and knock on his door, okay?"
"No need," comes a harsh, throaty voice. It slices through the kitchen atmosphere like a rusty saw. "I'm here."
"Tio Hector," Lalo greets, grinning, his words couched in that perfect balance of mischief and respect.
His tio graces him with the barest sliver of a smile, arrogant and slit-eyed.
"You're back, I see," he growls.
"Yes," Lalo chuckles. "And the world is all the worse for it."
Approval glimmers in dark, rheumy eyes.
Lalo returns his attention to his beloved, neglected, cast-iron skillet, until the air is redolent with the smell of frying garlic. The sound of the blender renders all conversation impossible, but he imagines his tio is sizing up the newcomer in their midst.
It makes Lalo jittery in a way that has nothing to do with all the sharp objects around them.
Besides, knives never were Tio's preferred weapon of choice.
The minute the baking dish goes into the oven, Lalo starts for his alcohol cabinet. The lock has been scorched, scratched up, hammered, crushed, and there are clear signs of an attempt at dissolving it in acid. Still, it has held, and it is with no small amount of pride that Lalo unfastens it, shooting a smug grin Tuco's way.
And then he's too busy rummaging for his best cognac to pay attention to his cousin. He imagines Ignacio's amused smile, the dry way he would say, Getting us drunk is not going to automatically make us like each other, Lalo.
Still, it's worth a shot, Lalo thinks as he places a highball glass before Tio Hector, and then another one before his husband.
Tio Hector eyes that second glass, and the way Ignacio reaches out to accept it, their fingers overlapping and trailing each other's, like smoke. The way Lalo checks to make sure Ignacio is satisfied before taking his first sip, the way their movements mirror each other's, the way he keeps turning to him like a planet in orbit.
"Who married into whose family, huh?" Tio Hector asks, his voice shrouded in that quiet, snarling threat, and Lalo catches the way Ignacio turns his face to the side, the way his expression shutters, the minute flutter of his lashes.
His stomach sinks faster than a man struggling in quicksand.
#
"Come, sorrow. We welcome thee. Let us join in grief, rejoice in despair, and honour the fortunate dead."
They say their blessings and then tuck in, with quiet murmurs and growls of appreciation. Dinner progresses almost without incident, except for when Tio Hector starts glaring at Ignacio's dining etiquette and snaps at him to play with his food.
Ignacio stabs his chicken heart, still pulsing weakly, spears it and devours it. He doesn't say another word.
So Lalo is gratified when the meal finally ends, and he rises to his feet. The dishes can wait—or Abuelita will do them, if she feels up to it. He wants to kidnap his husband from this table and not interact with anyone else for the next few hours, or weeks.
"You carry on," Tio Hector says, snapping his fingers at the laden sink. "You, boy,"—he points at Ignacio—"Follow me."
"Tio," Lalo tries, but before Tio Hector can glare him into submission, his husband tips his head delicately first to one side, then the other.
No.
One eyebrow ticks upwards in a significant fashion, and then both of them sweep out of the kitchen.
#
Lalo has never done the dishes so quickly in his life, and then quickly regrets it when he finds he no longer has anything to distract himself with.
He forces himself to wait another ten minutes. He separate Abuelita's spellbooks from her cookbooks, tidies the rack of potions and spices, switches the cognac out for tequila and pours himself two finger's worth. And then, on second thought, he fills another two glasses.
He places all three on a tray and heads for the drawing room, already plastering on his most unhinged grin.
Smoke curls out from beneath the door. It swings opens before he can get to it, and the acrid smell of Tio Hector's cigars makes his eyes water.
"I brought drinks," he says, and Tio Hector takes a glass in each hand, already turning away.
Lalo walks into the drawing room, and finds it empty save the two of them. A chill wind gusts in from an open window.
"Where's...?"
"Your boy? He's left."
"Left?" Lalo echoes, his heart quickening.
Tio Hector grunts, downing one glass and nursing the other. He sits down heavily in his armchair and exhales a noise that can only be described as self-satisfied.
"What do you mean, left?" Lalo demands, forgetting himself. His nails dig into the lacquered wood of the tray. From the highest tower come the sounds of desolate, unearthly howling. Tuco's starting early tonight. Something—or someone—screams.
His uncle shoots him a balefully unimpressed look. The sound of expensive crystal shattering underscores Lalo's exit.
#
Lalo doesn't bother going to the bedroom to see if Ignacio has truly departed. If he wanted to go, he'd go. He wouldn't stop to pack; he wouldn't even hesitate. The thought makes Lalo feel sick.
He takes the stairs three at a time, and clears the last flight in a single leap. He blazes through the front door in a flash.
It's a dark and depressing night—Lalo's favourite, usually, but today he can barely appreciate being surrounded by death.
There are only two ways out of Salamanca Manor: in a car or in a body bag. Only a fool would attempt to walk, and he wouldn't make it past the poison bog.
So Lalo heads first for the garage, taking in every single sports car and luxury vehicle—it's all accounted for, even the family hearse.
Lalo is wrong—there is a third way, but even the forces of darkness take time to vanish someone. All the blood rituals and chanting in forbidden tongues is surprisingly time-consuming, and demons tend to like to haggle.
He begins to run. If he's able to overtake Ignacio, he may be able to talk sense into him, beg him to stay. Promise that Tio would never corner him like that again.
Lalo hasn't fully fleshed out that one yet.
There's the sound of tapping on glass, and he whirls around. But it's only Marco and Leonel, materialising in the one of the arched windows, backlit by candlelight.
One of them points—Lalo cannot tell which one—and he follows the direction of the finger towards the family graveyard.
And there he is, a mere shadow flitting from tombstone to tombstone.
Lalo turns to thank the twins, but the window is already empty.
"Ignacio," he breathes, his heart beginning to pound. "Ignacio!"
The shadow turns, revealing its skull's face. Mist clings to his feet like snakes.
He blinks, slow, and dread winds around Lalo's throat and strangles him.
"My darling," he asks, stepping forward helplessly, like a tethered beast, a fish with a hook in its mouth. "Are you unhappy?"
"Terribly," Ignacio says softly. He ghosts his fingers across a marble headstone.
Lalo swallows. One foot presses down into the soft, spongy dirt.
Then he hesitates. "Are you about to raise the dead again?" he asks, eyeing the ground warily, watching for movement beneath the topsoil. Suddenly, he feels terribly aware of his exposed ankles. Some of these graves are extremely shallow.
"No," Ignacio says, too innocent to be genuine.
But the distance between them is no longer tolerable, and Lalo considers that having Ignacio in his arms may be worth the potential cardiac arrest, and so it is on hasty feet that he crosses the cemetery.
He sweeps his husband into his embrace. Ignacio goes willingly enough, until they are pressed flush, shoulder to knee. The moonlight makes his husband appear exceptionally dangerous, like a gothic hero.
He drinks in the sight of him, up close at last. "I suppose we don't have to stay here," he concedes, but with no small amount of regret.
In truth, Lalo thinks it wouldn't be that unbearable an idea to find some glorious, sunny hacienda where it's always summer, where Ignacio could install himself, all golden and godly. They could spend their days by a shimmering poolside, Ignacio baring his sleek, tanned lines like a lion sunning itself. And at night the sky would be a blanket of stars, pinpricks of light, and they would sit beneath that vast inky expanse and drink the most expensive cognac. It's what his husband deserves.
They sway as gently as weeping willows in an unseen wind.
But then he would never get to see the way the firelight makes something haunted of his Ignacio's features, the way the fog coils around him, the way he slips in and out of the many shadows of his house like they are already old friends. He would never have his Nachito in loose cashmere jumpers and sinfully tight pants, hip-checking him on the way on the kitchen...
"Let's not," Ignacio agrees, and Lalo's smile is wobbly at best. Pathetic.
"As nice as your family mausoleum is, I think perhaps it's time we moved to the bedroom."
"I—what?"
Broad hands slide up the back of Lalo's shirt, sly, proprietary. Ignacio noses into his cheek, and it tickles where he's inhaling. "I have waited all day to be alone with you."
He smells like smoke and whiskey, and it burns in Lalo's throat. Lalo can only mouth his reply.
His husband continues, carelessly, "And tomorrow you'll show me the rest of the grounds? The swamp and the belfry and the dungeons of our house?"
"Our?" Lalo finally blurts out.
"Yes," Ignacio says, very patiently, like he's talking to an imbecile. "Unless you meant for this to be a stop along the way? In which case, I'm going to miss having an abyss in the backyard."
And suddenly Lalo feels very foolish.
It's as if a great, winged thing has leapt off his chest, dizzying him in a flurry of feathers. He clutches Ignacio close, and Ignacio lets him, as simple and honest in his desire as he has ever been. It makes Lalo feel hot all over, flushed and light-headed, like he's opened a vein, and Ignacio—Nachito—the most terrible thing in his life—
He smiles, gentle, loving, with crippling fondness.
And Lalo feels his grin spread across his face, like spilled ink, like blood blooming beneath gauze. What man or monster could be so impossibly lucky? Heat spreads from every place they're touching, as warm as arterial spray. His teeth flash, and Ignacio, momentarily caught off guard, is coerced into a dip. Lalo insinuates his face into the hollow of his throat, still laughing softly, then ravenously, and he kisses up that lovely, elegant column—and bites down, exactly where he wanted to earlier. Ignacio huffs a laugh that's half a hiss, delicious and sweet, melts against him like cream, and permits Lalo to carry him back to the house and across the threshold, at his own peril.