(no subject)
Juárez is, Alexander's decided, beautiful. He's spent his days mingling with the locals and his nights pretending to do paperwork. It's easy for him to get to know people - genuine interest and his disarming smile allows him to be welcomed just about anywhere. All it takes is a little patience. By day three they were playing soccer with the kids and he was chatting about missionaries with their mothers. It's a cover he's used before, but not now. Now, he's part bored vacationer part struggling journalist on a terrible-pay job scouting a potential Discovery Channel special. He thinks that the buildings are related to that.
They buy it. Of course they do. He's not at the stage where he'll start thinking about the truth. Maybe somewhere else he'd be thinking about that eventuality, that day when the cartel decides to come check them out (and they will, inevitably). He's thinking about the man on the other end of the text messages he's been sending.
He's not prayed like he has over the past few days in his entire life. Dionysus and Father Zeus and Athena for his mind and Aphrodite for his heart. He has nothing to offer in this place where such behavior would mark him as a madman, so he sends his own hair and blood to the gods, begging desperately for guidance and for success and for some kind of peace for his torment. In the end, on hands and knees with his throat raw from suppressing his own sobs and his eyes red, he's decided that this is what he must do. Hephaestion has always been his rock - his center. Alexander has put so much on him and taken so much from him. Now, he will be that for him. For Henry. He will prevail, he will do this for the only person he's ever loved, for the other half of himself. He is strong enough.
(Whether he's patient enough...)
He knows as he walks into the bar that he doesn't look a fucking thing like the CEO of a major global conglomeration. Boots and fatigue pants and a battered canvas green jacket slung over a white tank top, sunglasses, baseball cap. The way he walks - speaking of power and influence and casual, seductive control over it all when he's in a suit - is knowledgeable and somewhat dangerous. The rancheros leave him alone.
The way he blends in is either impressive or unsettling.
They buy it. Of course they do. He's not at the stage where he'll start thinking about the truth. Maybe somewhere else he'd be thinking about that eventuality, that day when the cartel decides to come check them out (and they will, inevitably). He's thinking about the man on the other end of the text messages he's been sending.
He's not prayed like he has over the past few days in his entire life. Dionysus and Father Zeus and Athena for his mind and Aphrodite for his heart. He has nothing to offer in this place where such behavior would mark him as a madman, so he sends his own hair and blood to the gods, begging desperately for guidance and for success and for some kind of peace for his torment. In the end, on hands and knees with his throat raw from suppressing his own sobs and his eyes red, he's decided that this is what he must do. Hephaestion has always been his rock - his center. Alexander has put so much on him and taken so much from him. Now, he will be that for him. For Henry. He will prevail, he will do this for the only person he's ever loved, for the other half of himself. He is strong enough.
(Whether he's patient enough...)
He knows as he walks into the bar that he doesn't look a fucking thing like the CEO of a major global conglomeration. Boots and fatigue pants and a battered canvas green jacket slung over a white tank top, sunglasses, baseball cap. The way he walks - speaking of power and influence and casual, seductive control over it all when he's in a suit - is knowledgeable and somewhat dangerous. The rancheros leave him alone.
The way he blends in is either impressive or unsettling.