Work Text:
The streetlight is catching in a way it never has before.
Nam-gyu thinks so, at least, staring at the plastic card in his hand. Turns it both frontways and side, studies the faint ridge of numbers on it. Stares, for a long while, at the edge of it, and feels the leftover bite of it against his gums from where he’d found it lodged between his slack teeth.
It means something, probably. Means something just like the head of shock-purple hair at his side does.
Damp air hangs thickly around the two of them — Nam-gyu and Thanos. Thanos and Nam-gyu. Muses on it, because isn’t that just something?
Thanos beside him, wearing a shirt in a shade so like him that Nam-gyu could laugh. Thanos, and the chain, bracelet, rings, et cetera, glinting off the streetlight to match his own card. Thanos and his shoes, and that painfully predictable image that he makes like this.
Thanos, who had been up on the bridge overlooking the Han River below, right before this. Nam-gyu has been before. Read the neat, legible letters left on the railing and felt a sick little thing stir to life right beneath one of his ribs — feels it now, even.
He swallows. Completely empty space in his throat and he does, anyway, when he tucks the card away. Hopes to tamp down the thought of whatever it is so bad that he offers a swift motion to complete it, hitting the pack of cigarettes he draws out of his pocket to his shaking cupped palm.
Simple, familiar. Movement like this a routine he can run without thinking — fluid when he picks one out and fluid when he dips back in that pocket for a lighter.
His fingers are trembling. Violently enough that he fumbles, seconds wasted on scuffing the pad of his thumb against the ridges to produce, at best, a spark. He sets his jaw. Tries again, and again, again, again —
“Give me that,” Thanos huffs, and doesn’t wait for an answer. Just nicks it out of his hands like he’s not shaking as bad as Nam-gyu is. He can tell even from here.
Nam-gyu considers it, the whole wide thing, for one brief, aimless moment. Just fucking wonders , how and why and— isn’t given much time to with the warmth of a flame suddenly held up close to the cigarette pinched between his lips, complete with the soft orange glow.
He doesn’t comment on it. How Thanos could barely get it better than he himself had.
Holds out the box to him, though — waved off quick with a flicked hand and the sight of a candy-colored vape. “Nah, that shits’ gross, man.”
“I can see the stains that thing has on the mouth.” Nam-gyu scoffs.
And it’s true; speckles of yellow-red-brown that Thanos closes his lips around with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. Slouching into it, even, the way he sits his elbows on his knees and starts up this jittery tapping pace with his heel.
Nam-gyu lets it. Fills the silence with indulgent drags and takes it — them — as proof of one thing or another that he could not provide himself. On some rusted-over bus stop bench in an area he doesn’t know with these shitty, flickering streetlights and the burn of rope he can still feel digging uncomfortably into the bone of his wrist, but—
He’s alive. For all it’s worth.
The card in his pocket burns.
Nam-gyu feels it in his lungs, and tells himself that he’ll figure it out.
___
There’s a crack in one of Nam-gyu’s bathroom tiles.
Right up by the mirror, splintered outwards like one of those stars — a supernova, some shit like that. When it lights up real bright and then dies, and Thanos thinks that’s probably pretty fitting.
Or maybe it’s just a cracked bathroom tile. And maybe , he’s just been sitting alone in this apartment with just the shuttering lights and himself as entertainment, for way too long. Has been up and down every spare square inch the place has to offer, and then some. The piled-up dishes and trash and laundry and the sheets that Nam-gyu balled up to wash days ago and the bare mattress he’s been sleeping on since. And Thanos—
Finds himself doing fucking nothing, really. Dragging his feet and weighing heavy, kicking around and waiting. Always that, the constant he just bakes in. Every bit of the few — nearly a week — days it’s been.
Not that he should be complaining so much. It’s Nam-gyu’s cracked bathroom tiles, anyway. Nam-gyu’s trash and Nam-gyu’s things and Nam-gyu’s clothes and mattress and walls. Makes him sick if he thinks about it too long, makes him —
The door clicks. Sounds pretty loud in the silence, broken up by scuffing footsteps and the sound of something soft hitting the floor.
Thanos doesn’t move from his spot on the tile. Shifts only when the hinges squeak, kicking a leg up and taking a hit of his vape that he’s pretty sure was some sort of candy-sweet flavor when he first got the thing that he can’t even begin to taste over the thick sting in the back of his throat telling him needs to replace it sometime soon.
“Had a good time?” he breaks the silence — recoils on the rasp of his own voice.
Nam-gyu doesn’t reply right away. Leaves the door open and stands right across from him before sinking to the ground — the web, Thanos notices, sits right behind his head. Standing, at least, it had.
“Didn’t get anywhere,” Nam-gyu starts, all blunt and something defeated about him. “Wouldn’t even fucking hear me out.”
There’s a quiet kind of laugh sitting right behind the words. A bitterness ringing so loud it’d be impossible to miss.
It’s damning, too, Thanos guesses. Stings — and somewhere in some flickered moment tucked up in there, he wonders what it’s like to care. To really give an honest, earnest fuck about where the trajectory of your own life has spun out to land.
He wonders. If Nam-gyu does. About the bridge, too, and his scuffed shoes sitting in Nam-gyu’s entryway, and whatever lingering whispers of the last person he’d ever fucking spoken to out here could seep into his waking thoughts.
Try not to be home too late, Su-bong. I worry about you, you know? Always out and off lately, gone for days with no word — I just want you to come home , okay, baby?
Pieced together and patchwork and ringing something fucking vile. He wonders , and figures Nam-gyu is probably doing the same, the way he’s sitting silent.
He doesn’t ask.
___
“Yo, Nam-su.”
“Nam-gyu,” he corrects absently, sounding more offhanded than anything. Low in tone and partially mumbled, a reflex he’s adopted that finds its way to fruition even when his focus is busy trained on the dishes he’s working beneath his hands.
The water is cold, and the soap is hardly doing its job — not that he has the luxury of using much of, if really any of it at once. Really wants to make it last considering the beyond aggravating amount he has to make it last though.
Whole sink and then some; days, weeks-old grime and residue crusted on— fucking sucks. The work of it, the reminder , that the sight of his own fingers caked in suds and the way his sleeves are rolled for it makes him think of the grease in his untucked hair and the thick smoke that clings to his clothes that he can never quite wash out fully.
It’s this heaviness that settles around him. Ever-present, has been since the minute he found himself bound on that rain-slick street. Hasn’t figured out how to kick it.
“Yeah, Nam-gyu,” Thanos starts, corrected. “You ever think about killing yourself?”
He— blinks. Flat and quick, reactive, hands gone still. Doesn’t get it, doesn’t sink in all the way. “Huh?”
“Do you ever think about killing yourself?” his enunciation, this time, is practically fucking admirable. Real crisp on each syllable, curling properly around them. Devotes the effort to every one of the sounds he makes, that falls from his lips to string-up into the simple thing: does he?
Nam-gyu shifts in place. “...What are you— what? Why are you asking?”
Thanos starts up a rhythm on the countertop: tapping and drumming, hitting the pads of his fingertips against it while he re-settles his weight into the chair. Punctuates with a click against the back of his teeth and a sudden stillness that he breaks, simply, by waving flippantly. “Just wonderin’.”
There’s a pause. A quick swell in the air .
“I think I’m gonna.” Thanos bobs his head along to it. Nodding.
“You’re gonna—”
“Kill myself. Just— gonna finish what I started.”
It’s sick , probably.
Nauseating, the carefree way he says it — easy spitting out the words like he doesn’t get what they mean. Like death is some faraway notion, and he’s talking about wrapping up some fucking chores or going out with a friend and not—
Nam-gyu swallows. Finds the noise made of running water is beginning to grow unbearably loud, and folds his fingers beneath it. “Do you…” a laugh barks, pitchy and scratched, out of his throat. “What are you gonna do with the money? That didn’t—”
“The money,” Thanos scoffs; quick, bitter, tastes of sour. “That shit was a fucking joke, you know?”
Has to. Neither of them have done anything with it.
His head jerks to a stop, eyes sparkling on it. Glittering in the corners and sheening in a film-covered promise lit up his pupil. “It’s all or nothing. That’s how Thanos rolls.”
…He doesn’t— it sits, all wrong and sticky and sickly, the mangled English he can hardly pick out settling on top and really, it is just so, so fitting. Damningly so, picking through the memories of Choi Su-bong and 1.19 billion.
Of course, he thinks, and swallows thick around nothing. Of course.
The water is running lukewarm around his hands. That, too, feels fitting.
//
A tiny sliver of light pokes through the curtains — it does every night. The same righthand side that casts right over Nam-gyu’s eyes if he’s laying right.
It just catches on hair tonight. Lights up still-wet strands tucked behind his ears to compliment the faint smell of soap he can pick up from where his head is tucked into Thanos’ skin. It’s warm, overwhelmingly so, all body and cloth and tangled limbs.
Weeks all folding into one another; found… something. This thing too fragile to speak or to name, something special that tastes like warm sheets and hot kisses and close. Unduly, uncharacteristically — tastes like salt on the skin, like sweat or something more. Something like that.
It’s— a step. Something like that. An acknowledgement, that they, that this was more than dingy nights spent under flashy club lights or the easy way they’d met one another in candy-colored hell and the call of two. Something else. Different.
Again, special.
Bare skin. A hoodie that isn’t his own that felt nearly more intimate than anything else — Nam-gyu tries to find words good enough to speak. Feels them on his tongue: live and quiet and chock-full of this ugly admission.
“Thanos,” he murmurs, tests it out — finds it as bitter and thick-rooted to the back of his throat as he’d thought of them. Not the name, no, never that, but the following, “Can I…”
Feels. Shaped wrong, lumped in his throat and drawing this sting up with it that Nam-gyu does his best to blink away. Pulls back just enough so that Thanos doesn’t feel it, hopes that what he says offers something good enough to focus on instead. “Can I come with you?”
Simple, aching — comes out in this whisper. Choked.
Admission. Again — because Nam-gyu is some thing composed of these small and awful parts, and jagged edges that never quite fit. Fluid searching, and it’s for the same things, always. Rough, loud and stinging and aching and giving. A constant, somewhere.
It’s suffocating , the desire he finds nestled up in his hearts’ space, and that too, is just so very like him. He could be sick around it.
It’d make it, he thinks. The things he catches on and feels unrelenting could be worth it , on the image of still and cool bodies so long as it was him and Thanos, side-by-side. Two pairs of shoes left by the rails, double the stains in the grout of the tile. Doubles and twice and two — it could be something.
He could settle for it. Take what he’s given if only he can be selfish in this way — he’s had practice for this. Settles, just like he does back into Thanos’ hold, and waits.
Finds he’s pretty good at that, too.
___
Everything starts making sense when Thanos decides on it.
Like this buzz in his ears finally rang out — the world just… turns smoother once he’s set. Can finally rev up and go, that same clear-headed feeling that he’d gotten ahold of right before the games. Of purpose, that he’d just decided on something. Anything. Aimless nights and early mornings spent up alone and questioning behind him, left to act like he’s a goddamn teenager again. Like he’s just figured out that the future — the aimless, abstract thing — only matters as much as he lets it.
And, really, when you’ve got the date you want in your own memoriam picked out and planned perfect, what does?
He feels giddy on it — not much of anything matters, that’s what.
In the before — since he should probably cut out and take note of… that, the place and the games and the everything-else — his answer probably would’ve been something simpler. Fucking bitches and drinking top shelf and blowing every spare cent he had to blow. Living that real luxury — got it fucking figured out nice and well, too. Down to a science, playing it up.
There’s something different about this time. Something different about everything, more like, and it’s all—
All comes back to Nam-gyu. Nam-gyu, and his cracked bathroom tiles, and the job he couldn’t get hired back on for at Pentagon — Nam-gyu, and his pretty eyes and the hair he fusses over and the way Thanos’ clothes fit him and Nam-gyu, and—
Yeah. Nam-gyu.
Nam-gyu, and that first time Thanos had fucked him, and the way he’d asked somewhere in the after if he could come with him. And it had taken a second and then another for it to settle, but then it had and it…
Nam-gyu, and he’s laying at his side again. For whatever that means, something or another about acceptance or… something similar. It’s in there, one way. He’s there, is the thing. Thanos had said and Nam-gyu had followed and nodded and they both drifted off to the feel of skin-on-skin and he had spent his night wondering if Nam-gyu really thought he couldn’t feel the tears drying on his bare arm.
But— whatever, right? There’s some kind of sorted-out something in there. Means… means.
He’ll take it. Doesn’t have all that much time left to sweat over it, anyway.
___
There’s some abstract thing that begs to hurry, Nam-gyu is finding, when his days are well and truly numbered, in a way that matters more than loose thoughts and absent wanting. Usually finds the same, beggar part easy anyway, but thinks it’s ringing all…
It’s ringing, for sure. Hollow in the middle of his ear, but there’s a sound he can find to the whole thing. A quick way about it — them , cascades into something all-consuming, all- quick. It suits them, he thinks. A descent all fast and rough in some places, just like them.
Like Nam-gyu, absolutely. But the most damning thing about it is just that — in some ways, it isn’t. In some ways, he searches and he pushes, and finds himself met. Damning.
Damning is the way he gets a taste of something he knows won’t last, damning is the way it feels easy. Damning is the way that nothing has ever felt quite like this does, and damning is the way that nothing ever will. He knows that even without the promise of an end lingering on his lips every time he leans in.
Beyond that — something hopeful. Reverent, enough to blossom in there, he’s sure of. Something that uproots a little more every time him and Thanos are close enough to touch, that when they have to pull away and those hands linger, he feels—
Insatiable, probably. He’s always been like that. Wants all that he can have of Thanos and more, in any way that he can dig his claws in to hold. It’s probably where this part of it has come from, the heat and the spark of it, arms wrapped around Nam-gyu’s back and keeping the both of them flush chest-to-chest — can’t move from where he’d crawled up in Thanos’ lap if he tried.
An expression, maybe. This can’t get close enough that he feels, really feels when he can nose at the side of Thanos’ neck and breathe in a pulse. A heart-to-heart, or as close of one they can have this way.
There’s an assortment of light bruises laved along the side and-then-some of Thanos’ neck, another expression. To go with the red of his own lips bitten so and the spit glossing over — of course, something uncharacteristic and yet very about the way it’d all dialed in.
Confessions , all in the way Nam-gyu had his head buried in Thanos’ shoulder breathing heavy, in how Thanos had curled around and cradled him close. The same sort of thing they keep sharing in moments that wouldn’t call for it, really — here and now is a pretty good example.
“You gonna get off of me?” Thanos mumbles lazily, pressed into his hair.
“You gonna let me?”
Hands come up to match it; card through strands — softer, cleaner. Fingertips that tuck them gently behind his ears, and it almost feels like a reward. Like this part of him was worth scrounging back together, like himself could be, once he’d gotten over the initial… all of it.
Thanos’ eyes flicker downwards, a motion he only catches through his peripherals. “Got things to do now, you know.”
He says it like Nam-gyu knows exactly what he means, which — he supposes he does, yeah. There aren’t too many ways to misinterpret want to cut your name in?
A shitty joke, probably. But Nam-gyu wasn’t laughing — just sat up on his lap waiting for the go-ahead to fetch the blade or maybe an order to sit and stay while Thanos does.
However he can have him. On, in, a part of him. He pushes up off of Thanos wordlessly, fingers splayed and spread out sitting on his chest. Perfectly placed on top of the pumping bundle of tendons and valves strung-up below. Hammering, maybe, or just squeezing.
One of his legs dangles off the side of the couch and his other is folded beneath his weight, tingling with pins and needles. That pause that hangs in the air — something heady when his eyes land on Thanos’ and hold.
Nam-gyu wonders if it’d be too much to lean down for a kiss.
…Settles quick on that selfish act — takes. Quick and chaste and warm, but it means something to him.
It’s only fair, he figures.
___
There’s a stinging that’s blooming neatly right below his collarbone. Several sort-of aches spreading perfectly in the space above, too — all these marks.
Proof. Settles right next to the looming feel of the dates drawing near — night of the eve , and he’s squirming in bed trying to fall asleep like he’s, again, a goddamn kid.
Pops and hitches in his chest thinking of it — schoolgirl love notes, the name branded onto him. Nam-gyu’s, all precise and slow-cut sitting right beneath the bone. The lingering burn in his fingertips of drawing out Choi Su-bong right above Nam-gyu’s.
Bone, that is. Slanted over his hip twice under the insistence of both. And that—
Isn’t that something? The same thing he holds to his chest now, probably — literally. Nam-gyu’s hair is tickling the underside of his jaw from where he’s half-buried in it, hands slid up his hoodie to spread out on his ribs. Cold-skinned, with this rise-and-fall to them. Inhale and exhale , drawing a steady rhythm to the way they just… fit together.
All easy, all— perfect. Perfect. Never really had that before. Never had this before.
The easy I don’t mind it — like it’s nothing, when Thanos was bitching something or another about feeling gross. Some fragile moment he thinks he fractures with it until Nam-gyu is soothing no problem. Always is.
It kicks up some sort of stirring in his chest. An itch right in his ribs that he couldn’t reach to scratch if he tried, this unnamed crawling that he just presses down like anything else.
Smothers quickly with a kiss he places gently right on the crown of Nam-gyu’s head like that’s the charm that’ll make this time work. Tucks his head to his nape and feels his own neck twinge with the bruising— lots of it. Uniquely so.
He wonders what’s so special about now. If what it is really what he thinks.
…Doubts it — on some weird fucking idea of permanence.
Wonders, anyway. Selfish like that.
___
It’s cloudy.
That’s the first thing Nam-gyu notices — day long began, head spinning on the right there of it. The knowing that sits on the back of his teeth and beneath his tongue, that picks apart and cradles even just that morning and the lazy press of Thanos’ body against his own. Practice, to the way they’d both come undone, and to the feel of this kind of impassioned kiss and the warm fingers between his legs, Nam-gyu had wondered how Thanos was missing the nausea that was weaving its sickly trace all inside of him.
All day he had been, really. Memorable, or at least Nam-gyu wanted to make it so — favorite spots and walking up-and-down whatever metaphorical memory lanes they wished, pointing out whatever was worth the words. A date, he remembers thinking of it. Tasted something in the back of his throat then, too.
A circle made by just themselves and their walking distance and the trains they hopped on to round it out. Left them a walk back home where they were, sitting out on the curb with cheap, greasy takeout in their laps, but it’s alright. What Nam-gyu had insisted on, anyway.
It’s a certain kind of indulgence — a modeling of every other night with something sweeter in-between. Sun painting the sky in thick swaths of orange hue, the blue-gray cut-across dimming as the minutes go on.
That’s another indulgence: Nam-gyu had asked for it himself. The simple request to stay out just a bit later, like maybe the time of it all would mingle just-so with the swift-emptying soju bottles at their sides and—
Do what? he muses. Wonders, foggily. An ache blooming in his cheeks from the laughter shared; a buzz in his shoulders from where Thanos insistently knocks against it, an active point of contact like their thighs side-by-side the same that makes him…
Mull, maybe. Ruminate on something that really just doesn’t matter. Thanos cuts through it all the same, anyway, speaking sudden and with this note to him: “You ever think about…”
Trails. Something in there, how he opens this particular conversation — a host of things, all big and small and squirming. “About…?”
“Nah, nevermind.” Punctuated with a swig — nearly his final — that spills partially down his chin. Thanos wipes it clumsily with the back of his hand. “‘S pointless.”
Nam-gyu is the one who knocks their shoulders, this time. “Hey,” clicking his tongue and perhaps it’s that antsy, desiring thing that wants to hear. Wants to hear it all — wants everything, always. The flashing of bare arms and fresh scabs and even those picked-at when Thanos moves, courtesy of the jacket pooled around his waist — Nam-gyu wants that, too. “This is the last chance I’m ever gonna get to hear it. Come on.”
“ Last chance. C’mon, baby, we’ve still got all night.”
It’s a redirect, and a shitty one, at that. They both know this — this is the reason why Thanos sucks on his teeth in the next beat, why he drops his bottle beside him and isn’t mindful of the too-loud impact, tapping the outside of it restlessly. The reason why he starts, quieter this time, “You ever… you know, think about where you’d be if you didn’t— like if all the debt and shit never happened?”
…It’s heavy. In this easy-to-break way, the undertone in his voice and this distantly close vulnerable thing he drops right in Nam-gyu’s lap. He cradles this simple thing as he thinks: where would he be?
“Probably dead in a ditch somewhere,” he answers. Plain and honest.
The debt. Because that investment had its returns, if only for a minute. A choice he made — something double-edged, the way his money was running thin before. Saved him from some avenues and forced him into others. Thanos gives him this kind of look — muddied in the eyes. Nam-gyu isn’t quite sure what it says.
He tilts the bottle in his hand back and forth, studying the glass and the liquid inside like the buzz in his bones isn’t telling enough of it. “I’ve done a lot of stupid things, man. It’s like… like that going wrong was all my bad luck used up, you know? Probably would’ve just killed me if it— if it didn’t blow up like that.”
A trade , he thinks, is what this could stack up to amount to. This back-and-forth that lapses in the sudden silence that Nam-gyu seeks — aches — to fill. Looks over for it, even, watches Thanos’ face under the fading sun and the way about his grown-out hair. Thinks of the bag sitting at their feet of purple dye and something twinges on the idea of the loss.
It’s bleached hair, plain as that — means something, anyway, how the slowness of the sunrise had long melted away and Thanos listened to his insisting on it, still.
“What about you?” Nam-gyu blurts.
Thanos doesn’t respond immediately.
Eyes trained skyward as the question sinks in or perhaps he honestly deliberates on it; either way, it comes out jagged. “...Calling my mom so she could help me cook dinner. Like, from my own apartment and shit. That’s where I would be.”
…It sits. Thick in the air and on his, their, skin. A weight. The little wisps of himself that string it up — how Thanos never mentioned a before, exactly, how he never spoke of a lease or even friends to let know that he wasn’t going to be living on their couches anymore. No car to fetch, no… anything, really. Had fallen into place all-too-naturally, like—
Like there wasn’t anything else.
It makes sense, Nam-gyu thinks. Licks at his incisors. “You wanna go see her? Before?”
“Don’t wanna bother. Not now.” Thanos punctuates it by finishing off his bottle. Nam-gyu follows.
He doesn’t push it. But selfishly, he thinks about it — thinks about everything he’s running out of time to know and feels sick on every bit. Doesn’t say. Thinks of it; feels it.
Always does.
//
It remains as they go through the motions of cutting Su-bong out of frame.
That weight ; it lingers on Nam-gyu’s tongue and through the buzz beneath his fingers as he cleans up the underside of Thanos’ hair — long overdue, really. Probably something he shouldn’t be doing in the state he’s in, swaying a little as he tilts Thanos’ head gently from either side, but he can’t find it in himself to care about that much.
He steals his own moments in there, too, dipping through and carding along the bleached strands. It’s pretty, Nam-gyu thinks, so stubbornly simple in it. Su-bong is pretty, every cracked piece that he sometimes allows to poke through.
Thanos that begs to bury, though — this is something he understands. Has, from the time spent beneath humming fluorescents in the sickly-washed pastel bathroom colors and the bitingly cold water he’d used to fix himself up with. Nam-gyu will help pack the dirt, if that’s what he wants.
…It doesn’t keep him from talking. Loose-lipped under the warmth pumping through his valves and following the quiet snap of the last glove pulled onto his hand, Nam-gyu leans down without thinking of it. Leaves a kiss on Thanos’ cheek and mumbles into the skin, “You’re beautiful.”
He pulls away. Hears, after a moment passes, this soft little, “What?”
“I said you’re beautiful,” The words taste syrupy passing over his tongue, soothed by how it feels to press another chaste thing into the crown of his head. Spilling out thick but sweet enough to repeat, “So handsome.”
It eases that weight. In the seconds it takes to look up and meet Thanos’ eyes in the mirror, it does — settles right back where it had been when it happens. Wide and brown and gorgeous like the rest of him, just… looking. Stunned, maybe.
It’d make him laugh to think of it: Thanos, wordless at a single compliment. Not about Su-bong, though — and that, too, makes him think. When the last time anyone ever got close enough to see Su-bong, nevermind love him.
…Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? I love you, slotting into place just like the rest of them. Perfect and waiting.
Thanos, and every part that makes him up and that he hides — Nam-gyu loves him, damned to it.
He doesn’t say that, either. Wonders if Thanos can feel it.
___
“Are you ready?”
It’s probably silly thing to ask before you kill yourself — Thanos can see the sentiment behind it well enough. Well-intentioned is the slight shake in Nam-gyu’s voice, legs tangled and hooked over his own. Their positioning in the tub is a mess , just asking for pins and needles, but—
Well. It doesn’t matter. It won’t matter.
The glint of the razor is sweet. Stings in the arc when he holds it out between their cramped bodies; Thanos and Nam-gyu and just the one between them, no need for more than. Them and resolve and the sound of him kissing his own teeth.
Is he ready?
…Doesn’t even matter, when Nam-gyu answers for him. Wraps his cold fingers around Thanos’ wrists more than carefully, tugging him to the swath of skin exposed by his rolled-up sleeves. Leaves him there — hardly dipped-in skin made by the metal that doesn’t bite to bleed just yet.
There’s something sure in it. Thanos swallows anyway. “You—”
“I want you to.” Nam-gyu says. Cut and dry. Leaves no room for argument and so Thanos doesn’t. Readies insistently shaking hands, instead, and in turn leaves no room for fanfare as he starts them off:
Fast, hard, rough. Tears so quick it leaves something jagged in the edges, and the blood wells up like it, too. Thanos hisses with it, “ Shit.”
The English is crude and halfhearted. Nam-gyu shudders — nods with it at the same time. Urges him on. He tries to be more careful with the next and intentional about it throughout.
They’re making to die here, after all. Asked once and promised on it after, once again sometime as the sun was creeping over the horizon and made to paint their last day. Meant to.
It’d been cloudy. Didn’t even matter, though, not when it was Nam-gyu.
He punctuates that with another slit. Straight across — care in it, so it’s enough for it to spill out fast , to pulse and to draw up this sharp jerk and even sharper hiss. There’s something so—
The sound it makes of wet hitting the tub and Nam-gyu between — pretty-eyed, catty-toned Nam-gyu — really hits. And for a moment, brief and insistent and hard to hold, Thanos thinks he couldn’t have asked for anything better.
A few passes over leaves the smattering of spots on the side of the porcelain, the razor well-bloodied quick. Smudged all up the flat of it on the lines cut in. Deep and…
There’s a difference to it, Thanos thinks. In the way it feels here and the way it felt there — chilled night air and the brush of the river beneath on his skin, the moon looking down at him and the water looking up. Welcome arms up and down — down, mostly down. Cold, he remembers, more than anything else. Alone in the company of his bare arms and scuffed shoes.
…Knock-offs. Always have been, still are. Not that he’d realized that when he first bought the damn things — figured it was a sick steal, had spun his chances and struck the 777.
Running fucking theme, it seems. Failing every step of the way when it counts, from the show and the scam and down to his shoes. Makes something sick bubble up in his chest — makes it feel right to be here. Soon to bleed out everything that's wrong and leave the only thing that’d ever be right about him behind — his stiff-cold corpse and glassy eyes and the festering thing that’d be impossible to soothe or to fix or to better . The perfect son he always was and only ever could’ve been, hollowing out all his veins until it matches the rest of him. It's fitting, really. Was always going to be, however he did it. Destined to.
…There’s something more in it, maybe. The way Nam-gyu is beside him — across from him, actually. All measured breathing and a steady presence.
There’s room for Nam-gyu in the too-big thing that makes up Su-bong. Spurred on why he even said yes in the first place.
Same thing that has him pausing — a feeling, licking at him, rising, urging it — over the vertical. The one that really means something. Echoes, tongue dipped to feel his gums, “Are you ready, Nam-su?”
“ Gyu. Nam- gyu.” It’s the sinker, nearly. Can’t help but to seek out that scrunched up face he makes — the last time he’ll get to, probably. “And yes. You can… I’m— yeah, I’m okay. Yeah.”
There’s a slur to it. Barely would be able to tell if they weren’t how they were. Blood on Thanos’ sweats, when he flickers down to see, puddling between them, shining and thick and clotted. Something to be a part of. In a way that’ll really fucking matter.
The setting up and the following through . Nam-gyu who makes it all possible, hangs the stars and the sky and the moon and the sun. Nam-gyu, who—
Thinks Thanos is beautiful.
Who makes this pained little noise on the follow through. Has Thanos reeling on it, actually, more than even just his thoughts, stuttering in the motion. Clips the edge of the wound, probably, not that he can see the damn thing. Fills up and spills over with all that there is all-too — too? — fast. Stirs up that small human thing that lives to ache cold in his gut that he—
Smothers. Firmly. Has no time for, no room. Him and Nam-gyu all that fits perfect. Everything else—
Worthy of the drain and nothing else. The rings of stains that he hopes are too hard to scrub, that he hopes whoever finds their bodies in the days-weeks-months looks at and sees —
“Let me.”
Even more slurred than the last. Fumbling and breathing out on the syllables, really — but it’s Nam-gyu’s trembling fingers waiting to be passed the blade and insistent on that giving and that taking that's so befitting of them that it makes his teeth ache.
He gives it. Pretends the shake in his hands isn’t really there.
The first cut he makes stings on something especially shallow — weak hands. Damage irreparable, surely, a choice made and one Nam-gyu seems determined to execute. Nam-gyu, and it makes his head spin.
Giddy, maybe. Crush about how he feels on it or maybe whatever's behind it, a bright popping under his skin even as its parting under the repeated passes over it. Fucking hurts but it’s this and it’s Nam-gyu, so the shaking hands that he steadies with his own—
He doesn’t even care about it. God, how could he? Side-by-side in the here and the now, chose to be, wanted to be — and that’s the thing, really. How much of Nam-gyu wants .
Wants all of Thanos , is really it. Seems to. Whatever he gives and doesn’t press for more no matter how starved he seems on it, this special sort of taste like Thanos has never had before. Even in that hell of tracksuits and washed-out pastels passing pills and tasting metal in their throats together, it’d been— it’d felt —
Like everything. All at once, that perfect stoke he needed coming off of the bridge and that stupid fucking crypto , and even then it’d been so one of a kind that Thanos wouldn’t have…
Traded it for anything.
And all at once, it’s this sick little thing that settles over him.
A nauseating churn that seeps through to the feel of his own blood tracking slick down his skin, crawls into the cracks of wounds and bites that cold. Always that fucking cold, right when he gets close, right when he—
All at once , Thanos doesn’t, Thanos can’t—
He doesn’t— want this. And all at once it’s sinking in, that scared thing, that child that gets too scared when things get too cold— but he’s not a child, and there’s no one to run to, and it’s just him bleeding in the tub with—
Nam-gyu.
Because it’s always been that. It always would be that. That the person who makes him brave enough, that the one who makes him fit right is so fucking damned at his hand.
The razor clatters with a sharp sound at the edge of the tub.
At the edge because if there’s one thing he could try to do right is maybe keep them— keep him from— would do—
It was meant to be permanent. That was always the plan, the thing that makes him sick as the words start pouring forth, “ Fuck, I— Nam-gyu, Nam-gyu, I don’t—”
Nam-gyu blinks at him slow. He might just fucking lose it.
Arms sticky and stained and smudged up and down, surely getting all over their clothes as he tugs him closer, swiped right through the mess between. It’s a mess. He’s a mess — as that cold spreads and something thicker, darker and deeper and new roots into place, spins and pings and thinks—
There’s a lot that Su-bong has fucked up over the years. Ruined and warped under all that is himself. Never before—
Never has it felt quite like this. He fumbles on it, too clumsy, lethally clumsy trying to both scrabble out of the tub to reach the face-down phone in here with them. Trying to grasp onto it, spin an idea from it. Convince himself that if he does this and that, and maybe if he tries hard enough that he could—
Fix this.
“Nam-gyu,” he babbles, the hundredth time the name has spilt off his lips. “Nam-gyu, Nam-gyu, I didn’t— I don’t—”
He doesn’t even know where to start. His arms burn— and the world is hazing at its edges all too, far too quick. “I didn’t— realize, I didn’t know, I’m gonna— hold on, please? I’m gonna fix this, I swear, I promise I will, everything’s gonna be okay, you’re—”
You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay. It repeats. Turns over a thousand times in the seconds it takes and then some. He wonders how much — if — Nam-gyu can hear it. He says so anyway. Says it again and again like maybe with some goddamn will he could make it come true.
Struggles on the dial with slick fingers and prays there’s something willing to forgive him. Anything.
It rings — ticks, too fucking long . Bates and stings the whole way, his own trembling fingers crawling up to prod at Nam-gyu’s neck. Cold skin, and it’s never felt so hysterical before. Finally—
It clicks.
“Hello—”
Thanos can’t manage the words fast enough. Slurred on what tastes like one bitter prayer. But he does.
Pray. Until his chest feels white with the effort and his gums are buzzing. Useless on the rest of it.
It’s all he can do to hope.
___
How does death feel?
…Not bad enough to not be dramatic about, Nam-gyu supposes. Not actually there, just—
Hovering. Sort-of-kind-of. Trying to be — all sweet-cold close to it, biting wounds and the fuzziness that sets into the corner of his vision and the focus he tries to keep on the task he’s only assigned himself but—
Nam-gyu’s always been bad at that. The following through.
Finds himself sinking into it before he’s aware — and there’s something so warm about it. All that he finds in it and can taste, the sweet to be found — and Nam-gyu’s good at that, in turn, finding where there is none — of being and being there and Thanos’ hand and the tub that was too-cramped. The cracked tile on the wall that sat and demanded its due attention in the corner of his vision — memories that shift, perhaps better sorted through when he wasn’t…
Right. Feeling that sweet and then the some, because it really is, isn’t it? That Thanos would have him in his arms like this, or at least he thinks so. Could pick out this warmth anywhere, he feels.
It almost makes him laugh. Probably would’ve if the hysterical, icy feel of something raw enough to make him shake wasn’t so…
There. Maybe he’s mourning it. Maybe— but it’s so like him to switch up the plans like that. Thanos. Gotten all geared up over…
Something. Nothing. All of it all at once. Is, even now.
It’s all hazy. But it’s warm just like Thanos on the physical of it — how he runs. Thanos, tucked him into his chest despite how he’s got to be bleeding everywhere, Thanos and disoriented sounds he can’t exactly make out but sound like him enough to think it, Thanos who has backtracked. That’s…
He wonders what did it. And for a brief second, somewhere in this limbo, there’s some bitter-scratched thing who wonders if it was just him. Got scared on it, chickened out, as he would’ve put it. A mingle of feelings — colors making some… murky brown, or something. That’s what spreads throughout his chest and shutters through his veins.
Escaping them, more like. He wonders if it’ll hurt.
Thanos, him — who’s to say?
Neither of them, really. That warm is catching up to him, now, smothers his senses so senseless — misnomer, meaningless. There’s a prayer he can taste on the inside of his lip, and he wonders how he could ever form it into words.
He doesn’t even know what they say. If it’d be anything at all.
And, as he really drifts into it, he wonders if they’d even matter.
___
His throat burns.
Always does, these days. The few that’ve passed, at least — just fucking sticks, and clings to every inch of skin he’s got lining the thing. Blooming nausea and lasting sick that tastes and stings, from his gut to his teeth.
Thanos is a fucking wreck these days. Only been so many — has it? — so maybe he’s dramatic, or whatever the fuck, and maybe he should be focusing on himself, like some of the nurses have so goddamn helpfully suggested— but, fuck, how should he?
How would he, even? He’s lost count of how many times he’s read the brochure artfully arced on the table in Nam-gyu’s hospital room.
Three of them, all neatly spread out. After an attempt is what the top row of text reads. A guide for taking care of your family member after treatment in the emergency department.
There’s some expectation in there. That they don’t know the only visitor that’ll ever be here is Thanos. And isn’t that just fucking something.
Words that burn themselves into the backs of his eyelids — what has changed since your suicidal feelings or actions began? — and the stupidly loud screech of the lights buzzing overhead and the too-bright white of the walls and the sheets and the pillows and the—
The staff is bland and the food is worse. Same drone on about psychiatric care and evaluations and the refusal to tell him a damn thing about Nam-gyu.
Thanos — Su-bong — wonders sometimes if maybe the name branded beneath his collarbone is what did it. If bold-lined Choi Su-bong lined up neatly on Nam-gyu’s hip had anything at all to do.
Doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter — not a single damn soul besides Thanos’ , rotten as it may be, is here. Maybe selfish to think that he’s the only one worth it , after—
After. The burning, the nauseous, the throb and spark in his own arms and the prickle of numbness and tugging bite of stitches all wrapped up into one mangled ache spreading up and down and seeping into his bones. Pings nerves along the way, for sure, and that one isn’t even wrong. Snags on the cartilage and past that cold thing that’s taken up permanent residence, that he wouldn’t know how to go about uprooting and that really, he doesn’t deserve to even try. Not when it’s Nam-gyu unmoving in that—
Not when it’s Nam-gyu. Unmoving but he—
Something seizes up, winding right in his hearts’ space. Hollow . But there’s— and he’s—
Up. There’s a twitch to it, a honeyed slowness reserved for soft-sweet mornings on sheets they’ve made warm with their own heat shared, unlike the sharp-scented sterile of the place but so, so like—
Nam-gyu. Nam-gyu, Nam-gyu, that’s Nam-gyu.
The wash, the seafoam, the burning bright good as Thanos shoves up and stumbles, can’t help himself about it. The sickening, all-consuming—
Relief. Crushing him from the inside out, starting there and spreading in a thick bloom. There, something whispers, quiet and smothered and helplessly cradled, there he is. Moving and blinking and fucking alive at all. Does him better than the mechanical drone of the heart monitor ever could, to see him, to touch.
Because he does. Is. Weak in the knees at his bedside with his fucking— flexing hands like he could grip onto the sheets if he even tried to. Breathing out Nam-gyu, Nam-gyu, Nam-gyu, under his breath like he’s fucking insane for it — maybe he is. A taste that kept him craving, once he could realize what it really was.
Is, he thinks, and he could fucking vomit on the notion, seriously. Relief. So full of it he’s going to be sick, truly. Just like every time he has been before, since, it wouldn’t even matter.
Only thing that could is Nam-gyu. Awake, alive, Nam-gyu.
And everything else can stay an afterthought, as far as he could ever care.
___
There’s a certain kind of quiet that they lapse into, once everything is all said as it is.
Pampered words offered up by doctors and nurses — these gentle suggestions that aren’t-so, and the pushback that isn’t welcome. The fucking questions. All that hassle that drives that something home, that Thanos would’ve never done it if he wasn’t—
Scared. Had to have been.
Said as much. Eyes trained on the wrap-tight bandages that they both sported, he’d murmured it like a secret. Like in the months they’d spent falling together after those games and the tub they’d shared in-between left any room for that.
Mingled blood and matching wounds — what’s a little fear in all of that?
Just enough for Nam-gyu, he thinks. All that he needs.
And all beyond that is…
It’ll come. Has to, eventually.
//
Days turn over — a week, and then one more, passes.
I’m sorry is a sentiment Nam-gyu is growing used to seeing.
From the minute they get home — trash littered on the countertops and cigarette smoke stale clinging to the walls, dishes piled up and clothes scattered — it’s tucked away in the little things.
Between acts and gestures and the not-so-small that it wasn’t Nam-gyu who had cleaned the bathroom, and spotted in the bare skin between red pinched and the cut-up faint-seen lines of stitches freshly removed. There , where it all comes through, dappled in his eyeline and streaking the horizon.
He doesn’t hear it and he doesn’t ask to — knows Thanos. This, he is sure in.
And he finds that he can feel it, that sentiment, more than ever, right now. Humming beneath his skin and the slow heat of Thanos, Thanos, Thanos. The warmth of his mouth so fragile that he could even be saying it aloud.
The night hangs thicker than usual, a soft sort of stasis that’d wrapped around then when wandering hands in the kitchen turned into insistent leading back to the bedroom, tugging and then soothing in a rhythm he’s more than familiar with.
Something that’d demanded it tonight. A step forward, surely, to be breaking out all their old routines. Tracing over familiar planes of bodies paired up with the slide of cool sheets against carefully revealed skin to match, the press and the weight and what there is to both give and to get.
Nam-gyu finds Thanos a particular sort of standout tonight, all of the gentle way about him as he urges him into his lap, fingers dipping beneath his hoodie and palms grazing his hips. More than that, though — how his hair sits and how the dye is more faint than it should be, it's how his polish is picked and his nails are bitten, how the under of his eyes are just slightly swollen.
That he’s here, anyway. I’m sorry, it says — and Nam-gyu hopes he can hear thank you when he slides his hands over his shoulders and cups the back of his head to kiss him again.
Fragile in it — he doesn’t pull away when it's over, a selfish indulgence all for himself. Trails his lips to the corner of Thanos' mouth and kisses there, too; along his jaw, below his ear. Anywhere he can fit them, anywhere that Thanos would let him. Why he would ever do this, that, what he had.
There’s a thrum in the air. Just enough sense left in him to pause when he reaches his collar, anyway. Skirting his fingertips at the hem and pulling away to look, wondering—
Thanos dips his head quickly— looks almost like he might've been waiting for it. The wordless, is this okay?
Always like that with them, the wordless. Nam-gyu finds himself settling into the touch of it all easier, quicker — knows it better, and knows that it’s something they share It’s typical.
Thanos shudders on it, anyway, on the cold graze of his knuckles against his skin. Another at the soft sound of his shirt — layered sleeve beneath it not forgotten — hitting the ground somewhere behind them both. Familiar motions all…
They taste. Nam-gyu chases it when he kisses right over the shiny pink banded lines of his own name, this time. Thank you.
It makes sense like this, to him, the easy way to fall into the soothing and the building, but it isn’t—
Thanos is tugging at him. Insistently drawing the moment to stillness, jaw shifting before it parts. “ Nam-gyu.”
Looks at him with this wide, searching kind of eyes. Nam-gyu murmurs, “You want to?”
“I want—” there’s a crack in it. Just enough to see it. “I want to give you—”
Fingers circled around his wrist, pulled up gently to kiss right beneath his palm. Mumbling thickly into the skin with his brow knitting close, “I want you. Want you to have it.”
His voice shakes on it. Squeezing Nam-gyu’s lungs breathless when it clicks into place.
“Yeah,” he breathes, then. Simply. “Yeah, okay.”
Thanos is trembling under him; shaking, when he reaches further up his back to pull him over, letting himself fall back onto the sheets. Fits perfectly beneath the scrap of moonlight cast neatly over his eyes.
Beautiful, Nam-gyu thinks, and it is not the first time.
There’s a stillness in the moment, in the frame, in the ache that blooms in his forearms in staticky quality almost immediately, in the pause where the planes of Thanos’ features are muttered in the light and this crescendo that swells into the background touting with it the promise that it’d all make sense by the end. That the heat shared between them and the sparks to kindle if they so reach out for it would whine into clarity.
Always has. This, though, tastes like something fragile. Uniquely unfurling gentle in his chest. Thank you , even though it’s not what Thanos is looking for. Not what he needs and he—
Wants to make this mean something. All of this, from where it had started and then stuttered — what it could be, maybe, if they tried. What it would mean to hope for that at all.
A preview, if nothing else. In his own kind of way — that Thanos could ask and that he could give, that they’re good on this. Something that soothes in his gums and on his hands and in the air with that sweltering thing in it; grown with every pass of touches that linger and all the quiet shuffling of clothes kicked out of the way. A rumpled mess it makes on the floor someplace behind them, he’s sure, but can’t exactly bring himself to care — his own bare arms on display, this time: tattoos and track marks and those wounds hidden away beneath the bandaging curled tight around the limbs, still.
Deeper, worse than. His to bear.
This, Nam-gyu deems fit to be removed, too. Feels right about it when his shaking hands pinch the edge and untuck the wrapping, unspooling it to expose his own skin and remaining stitching. The forming scars and the clean skin in-between — piles up the gauze on the bedside table and cradles Thanos just as bare as he should.
There’s this awful kind of intimacy stirred up in it, the unpracticed flexing of his own fingers tracing down on a body that isn’t his own, matched by the scattered twitches and inhales it draws up, just as new. Sickening in every way that makes his ribs ache like they’re empty, sickening in that needy way.
Thanos can probably hear his own heart hammering as it is, as close as they are. His own quiet sound that rips out at the trace of the pad of Nam-gyu’s slicked finger covers it up, simply. I’m sorry.
He wonders, then, if Thanos has ever done it quite like this. If it’s ever felt so…
Good is the word pinging in Nam-gyu’s head, hopelessly simple for the beating of the chill washed over his bare body giving way to the heat — doesn’t know where to start, how it feels to work Thanos open. To be the one to.
Every inhale is something he drinks down and every sound is something he wants more of, wrapping up in the building swelter of it. A taste of something he craves the minute he’s without — that scraping itch he finds inside to savor all that he can. Scratching in a way he tries to ease by smattering the thank you somewhere.
Kisses across Thanos’ chest and dots them up on his shoulders, too. Wants to — can, does. Finds Thanos’ lips in there again, somewhere, that heat mingling on the underside of their moving, this time. Licking into his mouth— selfish. To taste all that’s there like skin isn’t enough.
Insatiability is the sort of beast that hums in his veins. Purring and urging with a hungry jaw — maw aching, plainly grotesque — that feels an awful lot like Thanos might — does — have something to match. Answered just right as he always is when he dares to think so: hangs tugging him forward, insistent. Wanting.
Nam-gyu answers right back. Of course he does. “Feels okay?”
He gets a nod for that, quick and jerked — Thanos takes him well. Spread open on three fingers, as comfortable as Nam-gyu had tried in earnest to make it, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. A nice flushed washed over his cheeks, too. “Yeah— yeah, ‘s good.”
All there is to have, simple and straightforward. One more punched-out, honest moan at the curl of his fingers, and Nam-gyu figures it’s all alright. Wrapping a hand around himself — neglected and leaking — for the first time since this started, slicking himself enough to be good and drawing his body up in line properly with it.
Thanos’ hands reach behind his own head, scrabbling, tucking them away beneath the pillow. Arms visible; it’s admission enough. Breathing in when Nam-gyu finally — finally — starts to sink in, must know the way it’s immediately so much.
Hot, most of all. All heat and tight and perfect, and Nam-gyu can’t imagine a thing that’d ever feel so good. Doing his best to slide in carefully despite the way his head is spinning on it, air snatched from his chest to leave only a dull sting behind. Weighing heavy in his lungs until he bottoms out, released in one single exhale.
Nam-gyu stays there, breathing it in. Thinks he might just fall apart if he doesn’t — reeling on his lit up nerves and the way it hits in-between, skin-on-skin and pressure and Thanos. Thanos and his shifting hands, restlessly flexing and, finally, landing around his back.
Like a hug, nearly. Like—
I’m sorry.
Nam-gyu’s head drops into his shoulder. Leaves a kiss on the skin and hopes he can feel the thank you when he starts to move.
Slow, always that, and trying — trying — for something rhythmic. Finding nearly immediately that it’s almost impossible to not fall apart beneath, that barely anything has happened and he’s losing it. Noises bubbling up his chest, all whining moans and hums between, drives this need to— say something. Invite Thanos into it proper. “Tell— tell me how it feels?”
“Feels—” Coming out all quiet, something thick and choked-sounding in-between — but Thanos does. Not their lines, but they recite them, anyway. “It feels— good, good, feels good.”
Repetition, senselessly soaked in the same admission as the rest of this — means. Like everything does, heavy. Something he holds just the same, cradles for the after to come where it’ll fall.
Always would — this whole thing, really. Pieces to scatter and collect all the same, to be held just as gently as he does now, when the time comes for it.
Not now, though. Now is for this, the heat of it. So comfortably hot from the inside out, searing bright under the rocking of his hips, like maybe this way is how he rekindles his sun. Lets him know that it’s okay, that it’s more than, that he—
“—feels so good,” thoughtlessly slips. “ So good, you’re perfect. So pretty, so good for me—”
The word breaks on his own moan — matches him perfect when Thanos does, too. Punched out of him, nearly, this breathless thing made all up of honey. It might just be the best thing Nam-gyu’s ever heard.
His eyes flutter shut for a brief moment and breaks the moment he hears the soft sniffling. Has him looking for something, any—
It makes sense the minute he really sees . How the moonlight casts perfectly to light up the tears welling up on wide brown eyes, enough to spill down his cheeks when he blinks. Starts, and once it has he can’t seem to stop, tracking down his skin so suddenly and so quick.
“I’m sorry.” And it sounds so painfully quiet and wrecked, jagged in its edges. And it’s—
I’m sorry. Seen but never said, heard in a way that won’t touch the silence. I’m sorry. And it sounds—
“I’m sorry,” Thanos repeats — gives him an again. Breathless in the way the word curves and falls off of his lips, comes right along with a fresh wave of salt spilling down. “I’m sorry, I’m—”
It punctuates with his sob. Loud and raw about it, little shards that pierce just right. Bringing his hands down to wipe at his eyes, chest hitching in a way that looks painful — falling into it, and altogether the warmth and the ebb feels so together that Nam-gyu isn’t sure of what to do with himself.
He cradles as much as he can manage, trembling on the effort of holding himself up with one hand but wouldn’t dare not wipe the tears. Thumbing over skin, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you—”
“I was scared, Nam-gyu,” Thanos cracks, words hurried. “I was so— I was so fucking scared, thought I had fucking killed you, and you were— you were just there and you, you—”
Choking on it. Breaths coming too-quickly to keep up with — admission, but he wouldn’t ever let it sink in. Grabs for his hand, instead, shaking arm be damned.
“Breathe,” he says mindlessly. Squeezes the skin and feels this thing crawling around, this sort of sting in the backs of his own eyes that he can’t really place. “It’s okay. You’re okay, and I’m okay, see? I’m— it would’ve been okay even if I wasn’t, you — fuck — you know? Wouldn’t ever—”
“It wouldn’t have been, why would you— what the fuck would I have done, Nam-gyu? What— what would I— without you—”
“But it didn’t. You didn’t. ” Nam-gyu leans in enough to catch on it just right, that still-pooling heat even as they’re more than collapsing into each other. Words just as much for Thanos as they are for himself, spoken like he alone could make them true. Proves something in there, even, in that all-consuming rightness. A simple thing that settles over him quick but so deep he couldn’t possibly not— “—love you. I love you.”
And he does. God, he does. Loves every piece of him — finds himself swallowed by it, here.
“Love you so much,” he says, just to taste. Wobbling on his own tears. “You know?”
Thank you, he thinks. Thanos’ nod is barely one but he’d take it, always. So long as he knows, that he can feel it too. I love you.
All at once he’s feeling it, that— the coiled-up heat that makes him babble senselessly of all that shakes in his skins’ space. That it’s good, that he’s gorgeous, that he’s the best, and all that lies in-between as something desperate and hot-fast building between them grows. Moving in earnest, or at least trying his hand at it.
It’s sloppy. Hasn’t done it like this much— at all, really. But Thanos’ breath is catching on something that isn’t his sobs and the noise is taking up the space — the both of them, moaning, gasping, fell into it. Whimpering at the right moments and crying out with others, makes it—
Theirs. All theirs, specially theirs. Lighting up some tight thing in his chest breathing light into the bloomed glass edges already taking up space, feels special.
“Wouldn’t ever—” Thanos’ voice rings out, raw and wet and sudden. Special, again , specially reserved. “Nobody else— just for you, would only let you see this. No one— no one else, haven’t ever—”
Stuttering, breaking on it. It doesn’t matter. Not when it sounds such an awful lot like I love you too.
Nam-gyu burns with it, every bit: the ache in his arms that radiates and quivers and the hand he keeps laced up in Thanos’ own. Presses their bodies together and holds there, slotted together, all sweat and the way they fit perfect. Heart-over-heart.
Scar-over-scar, even. It surely stings, and if not then it aches, the fresh of them. Nerves or otherwise — Nam-gyu would go to follow him in that, too. Each careful incision that lines up perfectly, and it feels—
It matches. Perfect and made for it— to have and hold what no one else could.
He presses his own forehead to Thanos’, meeting his eyes framed by wet lashes sparkling on that light and something more — stricken, maybe, something the little something like awe in there. Sweet, and he wants to make it good. Choking on it, Thanos, Thanos, Thanos, as it builds all the way to the top.
Stutters on it. Knows, “Gonna— I’m gonna—” The breathless— “Where do you want it?”
Wordless — because it’s always, always that with them, Thanos’ legs tighten around him. Ankles hooked, holding, wants him—
Thanos’ hand squeezes his own with his own soft-slipped out, “ Nam-gyu, ” and he’s gone. The fall, warm and hot and sweet all at once, heady and pulsing and hitting every one of his nerves on the way. Strings them all up, seizes.
Leaves him sparking and twitching, so suddenly and all at once bending from pleasure to overwhelmed — rhythm, if you could call it, shuttering. Straining under the heady-syrupy thing coursing through him, but wants—
Would never not . Always, always, always would push through to see Thanos like this, to have him fall apart in that way to hold him through, to cradle and to grasp and to even just—
Hold his hand. If that’s what he wanted — and he does, seems to, the way he holds on.
“ Nam-gyu,” he groans. Rough. “Please, please, Nam-gyu— feels good, please—”
Always would. Whining on it, sure, pitched high in his throat half on the idea of what he’s fucking deeper into him with it, but Nam-gyu just wants to. Will, always. Breathless, “Want you to. Just like this, come on, just for me, fuck —”
Sees it. Feels it — feeling and seeing, the tighten and the quiver that has him moaning right alongside him, falling forward enough to hold him through it and not give a damn about the mess smearing sticky between. Take him all the way until he isn’t shaking so bad — until it’s just them and the heavy-soft breaths of two .
… Slow. In the glittered after coming down from it, that same patch of light streaked over Thanos’ face, still. Match each other in the shudder when Nam-gyu pulls out — some desire, perhaps, to ease the discomfort before it can settle in.
He collapses beside him, instead. Legs tangled and basking in it, the—
Shift. Of it. The I was scared and the it wouldn’t have mattered and the what would I have done?
Admissions. All it means and all that holds. All to—
“Stay for a minute. Just— stay a minute.”
—be picked apart later. When Thanos isn’t speaking to him in this tone with the trace of something still wet and cracked within. Hazy-mumbled and feels half like it just slipped out that way.
Nam-gyu does. Stay a minute. Curls up close to his side and leans into the humming warm of it. Finds that, too, fits in neatly with the wordless. The default and the shift, the bloomed thing in the air. Soft on it. Feels like—
Not every bit of what they have right, yet. But they are. Found footing, could be. Are.
Them. Matching scars through and through, breathing to show for it. And it feels , certain and ringing true, that they don’t need a damn thing else.
Just Thanos and Nam-gyu, right as it was.