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Thanos’ breath is too loud in the quiet of his apartment. He’s sticky with sweat, the type that leaves him cold and trembling instead of overheated, and there’s an empty coffee mug in front of him with a half-smoked, crumpled cigarette resting within the residue. He can hear his ceiling fan stutter and whir in the next room over, and while the sight of blood no longer troubles him, there’s something different about it this time.
Maybe the shade is a different hue, Thanos thinks to himself as knife slides against skin. There’s a bruise framed along the side of his left eye, a purplish tint paired against clammy skin, obtained from a bar fight a few nights prior; a crack in an already crumbling body.
He breathes in uneven bursts. Wind pounds against his windowsills—at least, Thanos thinks it does. It could very well be the sound of his own expanding, retracting, expanding-again lungs. He thinks his face might be wet, but he pays it no mind. Thanos has never been a crier.
Crying is a sign of weakness, therefore he’d never participate in it himself. Participate, his brain says, as if there’s a choice in the matter. Even if tears flow, they dissolve in due time, and in absence Thanos will take comfort in pretending they never existed at all.
Fingers twitch in revulsion and frightened relief. His teeth grit together as if biting against something invisible, his heart thumping loudly in his chest, pounding in his ears, though not enough to cause him pause. This is it—his final fall from grace.
…No, not final. There’s no finality in this, an act brought forth in the confines of his own apartment, alone and unwatched. There wasn’t even finality within the games, where he managed to avoid death so often, even in moments where he realistically shouldn’t have. Finality is a construct that means nothing to him.
The shade of blood, in all likelihood, is not a different hue. It’s the same darkened red that it always is, splattering against the tile of his kitchen floor. He’s usually not this messy. He usually doesn’t use a knife this sharp.
Just yesterday, he stood in this exact spot and split a beer with Nam-gyu. It’s been…god, how many months has it been again? Three? Three splatters of blood, three missed calls, three empty cans of alcohol; things always come in threes. Even his stupid number back in the games three months ago (notably, it might be closer to four), two-hundred and thirty. Three upon three upon three.
Nam-gyu might just be the one singular good thing to come out of that hell hole. He comes over every so often with colorful vapes, weed, and comically large bags of chips. They’ll sit on Thanos’ raggedy couch and watch shitty television while rain or wind pounds against windowpanes—it’s almost always stormy when Nam-gyu comes over.
Thanos knows that the impact of rain harshly splatting against glass reminds Nam-gyu of bloodied bullets entering fragile skulls, but makes a point to not bring it up. He could make fun of him for it, tease him relentlessly for needing his company even though it’s been so many months since their release. But he has no energy for it, and even if he did, he doesn’t think he’d really want to. Nam-gyu rubs Thanos’ back as he vomits into grimy club toilets, lends him (albeit, small amounts) of money when he’s egregiously behind on rent, helps him keep his arm steady when he shoots up. The syringe trembles. The vein pulses. Fingers press against skin.
The games may have ended, but Nam-gyu’s steady presence in his life hasn’t. In response to his silently offered favors, Thanos often gives Nam-gyu free-reign of his apartment, letting him take whatever meager food he wants from his kitchen every time he comes around, and placing pills on his tongue when he requests it. A mutual give and take.
Blood coagulates in crevices of kitchen tile that used to be white, but have faded to a dull cream color over time. The starkness of dark red against the murky floor seems unrealistic, unsettling, but Thanos has learned to familiarize himself with the sight.
A stray cat perches on a fence outside his kitchen window. Sun shines brightly against its pelt, and the animal pays no mind to Thanos at all, blissfully unaware of his turmoil.
It’s important, absolutely crucial, that he doesn’t give in to his own instinct to press deeper. No amount of cheap wine can take him out of it enough to chance an oncoming wound infection or outright amputation. His head swims as his neighbor blasts upbeat pop music, the noise muffled and warm, some new release from a trio of idols. Lucky, aren’t they, to be shining so brightly in the spotlight. Real, untethered stardom. Must be fucking nice, Thanos grumbles to himself. That used to be him, back when he actually meant something. Back when he was fully Thanos. Now, the purple dye is fading from his frayed hair. Now, people only ask to take pictures with him in the street to snicker at them afterward, like it’s all some sort of massive joke. Now, he’s neither Thanos nor Su-bong.
He’s the blood that gathers along the knife and pools against the floor tiles. He imagines a version of himself stuck within his body, hidden within arteries. Thanos or Su-bong? Which is it really?
The knife digs further, his breath labored and wet, like water residing within damaged lungs.
He reveals himself.
— — —
It’s been raining often these days.
Thanos doesn’t mind the rain. It doesn’t make him any more melancholy than he often already is, shockingly enough; he’s not one to lay down and stare aimlessly, mouth ajar as rain falls outside his apartment. Not like those dramatic characters you see in television dramas. Thanos thinks he ought to give it a try some time, maybe even voice his thoughts aloud to himself to capture the essence of an actor giving a monologue. Thanos considered acting when he was younger. Briefly. In the end, he’s always been more drawn to songwriting, to performing on a stage in front of adoring fans.
His manager—ex-manager, that is—never took any of it seriously. He was an older man with a consistently runny nose and a voice that gave Thanos the shivers, always ordering him around and telling him what he should and shouldn’t be doing. What stellar advice, Thanos thinks bitterly, considering where he’s ended up.
“If you want to get anywhere at all, you need to stop being Su-bong, and start being Thanos,” the man had sniffled, shoving a bottle of expensive hair dye into his arms. “Nobody wants Su-bong, kid. They want something new. They want to dissect you like a frog, and when they do, they want to see something they’ve never seen before.”
Thanos had made a flippant gesture with his hand, and asked if he could smoke a cig in the office. Naturally, this caused his manager to frown.
The first song he released made it abundantly clear that he was trying too hard. Fresh faced and in his early twenties, rapping lyrics that he poured extensive energy into—too much energy, it appears, because the song's reviews mostly consisted of hotshots claiming the song was too wordy. Not catchy enough, they said. Easily forgettable.
“It’s usually like this in the beginning,” his manager said, “see, it’s because you’re trying to make a song with purpose. You want to have meaning, isn’t that right?”
“Isn’t that the whole fucking point?” Thanos grumbled. “Why else would I be doing this shit?”
“That’s the thing you have to realize,” he coughed. “You don’t mean anything. You’re the same as a stray cat in the street or a bug on the road. Does seeing a cat walking around outside change your life fundamentally? Does it?”
“…Uh, no.”
“Right. Neither will the songs you put so much effort into.” He smiled widely with coffee-stained teeth, cicadas buzzing outside in the summer heat. “You’re volatile, obnoxious, and egotistical. Do you know how many people like you are in the industry? It’s unthinkable. You can try all you like to make something life-changing, but you’re just another somebody like everybody else is. You got that?”
“Fuck you, man.”
The man with his runny nose, plant filled office, and uncanny smile had been undeterred. “Everything has a price.”
Now, in his late thirties, Thanos can hardly sing a lyric without choking on his own words. He lives in a small apartment with a downstairs neighbor that often slams their broom against their ceiling when Thanos plays music too loud. His manager died last year, found slumped over his work desk with snot leaking down his chin, drool pouring out of his mouth. A messy affair. Uncouth. Thanos hadn’t reacted much to the news when it reached him, and when he remembers the man now, he doesn’t do so with fondness. The man was a walking representation of Thanos’ failure of a career, and his death serves as the final curtain being lowered.
Thanos glances in his bathroom mirror, stalling as he sees his own bitter resentment staring back at him. It’s surely not normal to feel such irritation at the thought of a dead man—but, then again, Thanos can technically be classified as a murderer now, even if the knowledge only resides within himself and the other frenzied participants of the games. Morals, sins, humanity; these concepts are meaningless to him. Something rotten has seeped into the crevices of his mind, changing him irreversibly. Or perhaps this was always him, the true him. Bloodied, raw, and weapon in hand.
The world has tilted out of focus. He prods absently at the cut across his palm, unflinching at the stinging pain. He feels the flesh pulse as he drags his nail across the scab. It’ll never heal right if he keeps messing with it, but it’s become a compulsory habit during the past few days. He dreams of little insects buzzing under his skin, biting at his nerves and tenderized wounds, and wakes to blood crusted fingernails.
In the mirror, his expression twitches unsteadily, doused in dim, yellowed light. He slouches forward, hands bracing the sink, the cut on his palm pressing directly against cold, white tile.
According to his mother, he looks like a thug. He bares his teeth, tilting his head, examining himself in differing angles. The type of man to be spotted in a darkened alleyway smoking a joint or taking a swig of booze. A little rough around the edges, that’s all. Doesn’t matter, though. Every human has a soft and fragile core.
According to his father, he looks pathetic. That’s the word he always landed on when he’d get drunk out of his mind, the stench of beer clinging to his breath, his clothes, his skin. “So pathetic, Su-bong,” spoken in slurred grumbles, half awake, half asleep. Never fully there. Thanos closes his mouth, purses his lips, and examines the curve of his cheekbones. His chin juts out ever-so-slightly.
According to Nam-gyu, he looks like the moon. A comment made while half-concussed, therefore Thanos ought to not take it to heart—it’d been right after they were thrown out of the games, tossed out together in a heap on cold cement ground in the middle of the night, with the rounded moon hanging high above them. For whatever reason, Nam-gyu’s binds had been tighter than Thanos’, rope digging tightly against pale wrists, bound behind his back. Nam-gyu, still woozy with whatever drug they’d been pumped with, had squirmed and whined like a fish caught in a net.
Once he’d worked his way out of his own binds, he stood looming over Nam-gyu for a few moments in utter astonishment. Here they were, out in the freezing nighttime air with nothing but loose pairs of boxers, each with their fair share of bruises and cuts from the brutality they’d had to witness. And Nam-gyu, the complete fucking moron, was uselessly writhing around. Thanos was astounded to think that this was the same man he’d partnered with in a life or death situation. Pathetic is the word that sprung to mind, a word Thanos is familiar with, a word that has been driven into his own skull many, many times before.
“What the fuck are you just standing there for?” Nam-gyu groaned eventually, his words mushing together awkwardly. Why the drug was taking so much longer to wear off for Nam-gyu, Thanos had no idea.
Thanos blinked down at him wordlessly. Nam-gyu squinted up at him in turn.
“Hyung?” He whined. Sweaty, tied-up, disheveled. “Hyung, come on…”
Something about it was somehow endearing. Thanos couldn’t articulate it then and still can’t articulate it now, but seeing Nam-gyu so out of sorts had only served to strengthen Thanos’ desire to keep him close. Why? The question continues to rattle unanswered. No matter how many times Thanos pulls himself apart, he can’t find an answer.
“The moon is full,” Nam-gyu had mumbled dazedly, eyes darting between Thanos and the moon that hung in the sky above him. “It looks like you.”
A nonsensical comment. Thanos paid it no mind, though the memory resurfaces as he regards his reflection.
Thanos pulls at his eyelids, examining the red lines in the murky mirror. There’s blood jammed under his nails, covered up with vibrant polish. He opens his mouth again, examines his teeth, the flesh within his mouth, his writhing tongue. Exhales, inhales. Flexes his fingers, imagines detaching them.
“I can’t believe,” his reflection says wordlessly, “that you ever thought there could be a version of you that’s actually happy.”
He sniffs absently, re-closes his mouth. Is it Thanos or Su-bong that stares back at him?
The light flickers, stutters, and goes out in a flash.
— — —
“Why do you keep coming over?”
Rain pounds loudly, little bullets against wood. Nam-gyu leans against Thanos’ kitchen counter, rainwater still clinging to the ends of his hair.
“I don’t know,” Nam-gyu says in English, a habit he’s picked up more often these days. Thanos sees bits of himself integrate into Nam-gyu, and uses it to convince himself of his own existence.
“I don’t have pills today,” Thanos grunts.
Teeth dig into the pink flesh of his bottom lip, dark eyes turning to look at him. Nam-gyu seems particularly tired this evening, fiddling with damp strands of hair. “I know. You already told me last time, remember?”
“Huh?”
“About the fight you had with your dealer,” Nam-gyu points to his left eye, referencing the bruise on Thanos’ face.
“Oh,” Thanos exhales, sucking his teeth. He squints outside his small, slightly cracked kitchen window, the smell of rainwater and fog working its way inside.
“There’s a new food joint that opened up nearby. It’s small and rundown, but the food looks alright,” Nam-gyu murmurs. “I thought maybe we could go grab a bite to eat, or something.”
It’s not uncommon for them to go grab food together, quick nighttime rendezvous made out of restless, pent-up agitation. They hardly ever talk much when they do this, walking into shops side by side, silent and contemplative. Eating large bowls of noodles in cramped shops, and grabbing sodas from vending machines on their way back home. It’s always oddly tranquil, spending quiet moments with Nam-gyu, one of the few moments in his life where he feels no need to perform.
Thanos is unaccustomed to tranquillity, and he certainly doesn’t deserve it after everything he’s done. Their outings have been growing more frequent, and each time they do so they somehow grow more touchy. Always leaning on each other, linking arms, sharing cutlery.
Nam-gyu tilts his head. “We don’t have to. I was just offering.”
Despite the late hour, Thanos starts going through the motions of making a cup of coffee. He only has vanilla flavoring on hand, because he knows it’s the type Nam-gyu favors. Thanos prefers mocha, but he’s not all that picky when it comes to caffeine.
“Not in the mood,” Thanos lies through his teeth. The thing about Nam-gyu is that Thanos likes him too much. It makes him feel like a dog rolling on his back and exposing his stomach in an act of desperate need for attention. Again, the word pathetic comes to mind.
Thanos isn’t some mangy mutt, and Nam-gyu ought to know by now that Thanos isn’t what many would classify as a “good” individual. He needs to cut this at the root before things spiral out of his control.
Until it spirals into Nam-gyu standing in his kitchen, dripping rainwater on the blood-stained tile ground. He could’ve at least made an effort to dry off more…Thanos supposes it’s just another testament of the fact that Nam-gyu has become too concrete of a person in his life. He’s grown so comfortable here that Thanos’ apartment may as well be his second home. If Thanos did tell him to dry off, Nam-gyu would likely take it as a joke, making a snarky comment about how his apartment is already a mess, and a little water might do it some good.
“Did you kill someone in here?” Nam-gyu asks blandly, pointing at the faded red splotch on the ground. Thanos had hardly made any effort at all to clean it up. What’s the point, when more blood will be sure to join it soon?
“Sure,” Thanos grabs a second mug. He doesn’t ask if Nam-gyu wants a cup—there’s no need. He already knows the answer, and knows exactly how to make it to suit Nam-gyu’s tastes.
“Sure?” Nam-gyu scoffs. There's a brief moment of silence, only interrupted by the sharp click of his coffee machine closing around a cheap pod. “Did you get hurt?”
It takes Thanos a moment to realize he’s begun to scratch insistently at the cut on his palm, therefore drawing direct attention to it. Not that it’s all that easy to miss in the first place, with the angry shade of red it’s turning. Nam-gyu sticks his tongue out the way he always does when he’s focusing on something, eyes glued to the poorly healing wound.
“It’s nothing.”
Nam-gyu doesn’t respond, but he gives Thanos a look that makes it clear he doesn’t believe him. The cut doesn’t look like nothing, and Nam-gyu will be sure to tuck this little scene into the back of his mind to ponder over later, instead of forgetting about it like every other person in Thanos’ life does.
“Forget it,” Thanos says, despite the fact that Nam-gyu hasn’t yet said another word about it. A fly buzzes aimlessly in the corner of the room, landing awkwardly on the handle of a kitchen knife. It rubs its hands together as if aware of how often Thanos places the edge of the knife along his wrist and fantasizes of slamming it downwards, severing flesh from bone. The coffee machine whirs loudly.
“On my way over here,” Nam-gyu says as watered down coffee begins to slosh into the mug. “A preacher stopped me and asked if I thought I was real. Funny, huh?”
Not really, Thanos thinks. He has no patience for preachers, salesmen, or anything of the sort.
“The guy was a total freak. He watched me grab, like, ten packets of spicy instant noodles and then walked up to me to spout psychological bullshit. And I could just see it on his face, you know?”
“See what?”
“That he thought I was some useless loser. Smoking indoors and living off of cheap, pre-made meals.” Nam-gyu scoffs. There’s a sense of sadness to his tone, a weakness to his smile. Thanos wonders if he can tell what’s about to come next; the severing of a root, the splitting open of a stomach to empty its contents, the breaking of a bone. Thanos wonders how many hours of his life he’s dedicated to Nam-gyu, to eating cheap meals with him, pressing pills into the meat of his palm, examining the curvature of his nose.
Last month, Thanos got sick and spent hours in a bathroom stall, vomiting into the toilet and curling into a ball on grimy tiled ground. Nam-gyu had stuck beside him despite the unflattering display, patting his shoulder and assuring him the symptoms would pass, his voice soothing and soft. Thanos wonders if Nam-gyu has ever soothed anyone else like that. It’s a difficult picture to imagine.
Thanos takes a gulp of the vanilla flavored coffee, the liquid stinging his throat. Nam-gyu stares expectantly, and Thanos relents with a sigh, handing over the mug with a grunt. Nam-gyu is sure to get more use out of it.
“I thought you didn’t like vanilla,” Nam-gyu muses, placing his lips against the dampened edge of the cup that Thanos had drunk from prior.
“I’m out of everything else,” Thanos says. “Except for those shitty leaf-water packets you left over here.”
“Tea packets,” Nam-gyu corrects, closing his eyes and taking another languid drink, like a cat slowly lapping up milk. He looks so profoundly comforted that it makes Thanos sick. In the beginning, they were supposed to stick around each other for pills. Now, Nam-gyu stands in his kitchen and sips on a cup of coffee as if Thanos’ apartment is an extension of his own home.
Is it Thanos or Su-bong that’s so afraid of abandonment? Likely both. He can’t tell which version of himself he clings to harder, and deems trying to figure it out worthless.
“What are you doing here?” Thanos asks again, watching Nam-gyu’s eyes slowly blink back open as he lowers his mug. One set of fingers clenched along the handle, the others tapping restlessly against the ceramic. Behind him, an ant meanders slowly along the countertop.
“I just told you.” Nam-gyu sets the mug down, narrowly missing the ant, the shadow of the object causing the bug to skitter in surprise.
“I mean in general,” Thanos says. “Why do you keep coming here?”
Nam-gyu tilts his head slightly, pursing his lips in brief consideration. Thanos is overtaken with a sudden want to seize him in his arms, to crush him and shake him and order him to tell the truth. The truth that it’s Nam-gyu who’s been planning the abandonment all this time, not Thanos. “Please switch our places,” he wants to beg, “just this once.”
Instead, Thanos rubs absently along the closing cut on his palm with his thumb, otherwise staying perfectly still and quiet, waiting impatiently for words to unravel.
Nam-gyu scuffs his shoe, his gaze stuck on Thanos’ marred hand. “Do I need a reason?”
Thanos supposes that, in all technicality, he doesn’t. “Does anything?”
Hackles begin to raise, expressions on the verge of souring. “Are you bothered by it, or something? That I come over?”
“I just think you’d have better luck with one of your high-up clients, that’s all.” Thanos shrugs stiffly. “More pills for you to—“
“I already said I’m not here for the fucking pills,” Nam-gyu curses, though he sounds more confused than angry. His jaw clenches, as if he’s chewing his own words. “What’s with you tonight?”
Earlier, before the light in his bathroom went out and plummeted him into darkness, Thanos got stuck watching old videos that showcased him in the beginning of his career. Fresh-faced and determined, assuming stardom would fall into his lap and skyrocket him into immediate riches and fame. In the video he’d pulled up, his hair hadn’t been dyed yet, still a murky shade of black, and he’d sang into a microphone with a carefree grin. He’d been so sure back then, that money, fame, and women is all he needed to live a satisfactory life. He’d looked into cameras and winked. He was made specifically for overdramatized falsity.
Thanos feels nothing but disdain when he looks back on it now. The version of himself back then had no idea of the horrors he’d end up experiencing; the bodies, the blood, the pills slinking down terrified throats. A mangled human body, roadkill rotting on the side of the road—in both killing games and day to day life, imagery of flesh stagnate in his mind.
Nam-gyu stares at him, unblinking and unmoving. Thanos is reminded of how the wind had felt against his skin when he stood on the edge of the bridge, preparing to jump.
“I don’t think you should come over anymore,” Thanos mumbles.
This is the wrong course of action, but wrong courses are all Thanos knows how to take. He’s grown too attached. Jealousy consumes him when Nam-gyu speaks with a client longer than with him, when he makes small talk with servers in small, run-down restaurants, when he speaks of past hookups. It devours, eats away at him like starvation destroying a shrinking stomach, festers like a secret in an overcrowded brain.
Thanos isn’t dumb. Far from it, despite what so many tend to think. He knows what this attachment to Nam-gyu entails. He knows the correct term for it. He knows, more than anything, that he’s incapable of sustaining it.
Crickets chirp distantly outside. A flock of birds erupt from a tree, rustling branches and leaves. Thanos stares at the handle of the kitchen knife and wishes that Nam-gyu would break into an act of rage and kill him with it, thrusting the hilt of the blade clear into his esophagus, letting the tip tear through meat and appear blood soaked on the other side.
Instead, Nam-gyu stares at him blankly. No acts of violence tonight—they’ve both seen enough violence already to last them for a lifetime.
His eyes lower to the cut on Thanos’ hand, and then to the faded splotch of red on the ground.
“Okay,” Nam-gyu says eventually, his hands clenching, loosening, and re-clenching again at his sides.
Okay. Okay. ‘Okay’, a frown, and clenched fists. That’s it?
Thanos isn’t sure what else he expected. For Nam-gyu to fall into his arms and beg for forgiveness, maybe—but forgiveness for what? Thanos’ brain swirls, strings of words appearing as smudged handwriting within his thoughts, his hand stinging and pulsing with heat. Nam-gyu’s hair, still drying from rainwater, begins to curl at the ends.
“Quit it,” Nam-gyu instructs as he passes, tapping chidingly on the back of his hand. “You’ll get an infection.”
Without another word, Nam-gyu walks past him. He slinks out of the apartment just as quietly as he arrived. Thanos thinks of all the hours they’ve spent here together over the past few months, seeking comfort in each other after seeing such morbidity. All the beers and takeout meals they consumed side by side, nighttime discussions, drunken confessions. “I don’t even like my own songs anymore,” Thanos had admitted one night, his tongue stained with liquor. “What a fucking joke, right? I used to be so much more than this, my boy. You’ll just have to trust me.”
Nam-gyu, equally as intoxicated, had twirled a chunk of his hair around his finger and stared at him with an air of surprise, his mouth slightly ajar. After taking a moment to digest Thanos’ slurred words, Nam-gyu elbowed him lightly in the ribs and smiled good naturedly, shaking his head in disbelief. “You can never be anything more than what you are, hyung.”
Wise words from a man who ended up scurrying off to vomit into his kitchen sink roughly five minutes after speaking them, but Thanos supposes he had a point, and that the words still hold true. Thanos can never be anything more than what he is…the glaring question still remains. Who exactly is he? Thanos, Su-bong, a mixture of the two, or nothing at all?
Nam-gyu leaves. Thanos can only assume that this is the last he’ll see of him, in any substantial way that matters. The door creaks open, and then clicks shut; the root is severed.
— — —
A cat chews on a piece of dirtied, discarded fish, huddled in the corner of a grimy alleyway.
Thanos leans against concrete walling, staring down at his still-marred palm. He thinks back to the tap of Nam-gyu’s fingers, the quiet “quit it.” Nam-gyu is right, of course—it’ll get infected if he keeps picking at it and making it bleed.
Not that it matters. Thanos’ conviction to keep living grows dimmer by the day; he keeps replaying snapshot memories from the games within his mind, all while remembering the unsavory layout of his life up until now. What has he managed to accomplish, really? He entered the music industry with a desire to make a mark on the world, to change something, somehow. To make his presence mean something, because without meaning, why bother sleeping, eating, anything at all?
When he was younger, music used to be one of the few things he held close to his heart, even if he pretended to be uncaring about it. He’d write lyrics with ease. Now, words refuse to come to him. His head is rendered as empty as his failing career.
He’s fragmenting. He must be, it’s the only feasible explanation he can come up with. Fragmenting into something other than Thanos, Su-bong, himself. It whispers in his ear, convincing him to withdraw.
He tries to convince himself that the people’s lives he took in the games weren’t real, that they surely must’ve been props in a play. But what’s real and what isn’t holds no true meaning. Whatever it was, and whatever it continues to be, will forever be imprinted in his mind and the minds of those who witnessed what he did.
Thanos supposes he’s gotten what he wished for. He’s made a mark on the world by taking away a multitude of things that can never be replaced.
“Oh, god,” he’ll often think as he gazes into a cup of coffee in the morning, “what have I done?”
Then he’ll continue drinking his coffee, and maybe pop a pill or two if he’s lucky enough to have any on hand. What else is there to do? What else is there ever to do?
Here he stands—Thanos, Su-bong, himself—watching a tiny stray cat feast on a slimy, rotten fish.
The glassy eye of the corpse gleams up at him mockingly as the cat's teeth dig into its body. Being hated by someone still counts as recognition, Thanos reminds himself dutifully, his breathing sounding too loud, too erratic, too thick.
Oh, god.
— — —
“What have you done?”
Following the death of Thanos’ original manager, the role was replaced with a woman even younger than Thanos himself. She often tells him, very bluntly, that she thinks working as his manager is more effort than its worth. She holds absolutely no faith in him, which is something Thanos is abundantly used to, and therefore unfazed by.
“What is this?” She rephrases the question, gesturing vaguely at the sheets of music he’s given her. She appears almost pained by what she’s reading.
“Song lyrics,” Thanos scoffs, fiddling with his vape as she looks at him incredulously. Not exactly the pinnacle of professionalism on his part, but when has he ever been?
“Su-bong,” she grimaces as she speaks his name, lip curling unfavorably. “…Listen. You’re aware that my job here is to make sure that you don’t bomb your career any more than you already have, right?”
Thanos takes a heavy inhale of his vape, exhaling smoke as his manager lets out a few sharp coughs, waving her hand in front of her face with a grunt of irritation. “Uh-huh.”
“Nobody wants anything like this,” she complains, tossing the papers on her desk. “The lyrics are plain, and the melody is simple. What were you thinking?”
“What do you suggest, then?” Thanos cuts her off with a sneer. “Isn’t it your job to make sure everything’s on the up and up? Doing a pretty shitty job, I’ve gotta say.”
She takes a sip of the iced beverage on her desk—some type of fancy iced lemonade, by the looks of it. “Ever since that disappearing act you pulled a few months ago, you’ve done nothing but waste my time.”
“You’re the one wasting my time by not doing your job,” Thanos scoffs. “What a fucking joke.”
The glass clinks back onto the desk, ice shifting uneasily within the cup. “You're right. It is a joke. It’s a joke that you’ve spent nearly your entire career singing about orgasms, drugs, and egotistical garbage, and then proceed to hand me this—” she taps her well-manicured nail against the paper. “—this poetic drivel, and expect me to believe it’s something your fanbase would enjoy.”
“Whatever.” Thanos throws his hands up in defeat. “Whatever.”
“What’d you have in mind when you wrote this?”
He doesn’t respond. Of course he doesn’t—the answer is, as most things are, Nam-gyu.
“Take a temporary leave of absence. An official one, this time,” she says, “and come back to me when you get your shit together.”
— — —
Thanos spots a poster for an upcoming action movie with an absolutely atrocious cover. His first thought is that he’s certain Nam-gyu will find this funny when he relays it to him. He’ll probably let out one of those high-pitched giggly laughs that he’s so self-conscious over, which will in turn make Thanos laugh, and then they’ll both end up chuckling over nothing.
His second thought is that this isn't a situation that will ever occur again.
It’s a lonely feeling, despite the fact that Thanos brought it upon himself. He supposes they had a good run, all things considered. Thanos isn’t the type of person to let people get close to him, especially not for extended periods of time. It’d been nice to pretend Nam-gyu was his for a bit. Irrevocably his.
Sometimes, when Thanos would place pills in Nam-gyu’s hand, he’d let his fingers linger against his skin. How humiliating, to seek contact from him so desperately. Thanos isn’t a desperate man. Neither is Su-bong, for that matter.
Why is it that he’s spent so many sleepless nights fantasizing about how a fistful of Nam-gyu’s hair would feel like in his hand, and about the faces he’d make if Thanos tugged, pulling his head back to reveal his pretty pale neck. He’s thought about Nam-gyu’s lips far too many times than he’d like to admit, which is naturally the main cause in his abrupt departure.
Watching Nam-gyu lick leftover sauce from his thumb during one of their evening trips to eat cheap dinner together was nearly akin to watching a hardcore porno. …Alright, well, maybe that’s pushing it a bit. He’s pent up, is what he’s getting at here.
The first time Thanos jerked off to the thought of him, orgasming to the fantasy of sucking marks into Nam-gyu’s neck and marking what’s rightfully his (what should be rightfully his), he’d spent the rest of his day in a state of numbed shock, baffled with his own brain for providing him such vivid imagery of his friend, his boy Nam-su.
Disorienting doesn’t even begin to describe it. He got wine drunk in an attempt to get out of his own head, which ironically enough only resulted in a second masturbation session, drunken and more sloppy than the first, this time getting off to the thought of Nam-gyu riding him into oblivion.
Perhaps getting wine drunk isn’t the solution to everything; it was, at the very least, another valuable lesson for Thanos to learn and continually ignore.
It’s probably normal for dudes to get off to the fantasy of fucking their guy-friends, Thanos halfheartedly tries to comfort himself. It’s probably normal to like a guy so much that you cut him out of your life completely.
Probably normal.
Thanos stares aimlessly at his ceiling, twirling the kitchen knife loosely in his hands. Poetic drivel. What a shameful, humiliating description.
The truth is, Thanos wishes Nam-gyu would’ve put up a bit of a fight. Asked why Thanos was cutting him off so abruptly, instead of standing there and taking the bullet. He could’ve at least tried to dodge. Nam-gyu, always so dependent on him, always clinging, had decided to let Thanos sever the root with grace.
Fingers tapping along knuckles. Quit it, you’ll get an infection. One last subdued show of care was how Nam-gyu decided to leave things.
Thanos presses the knife against the cut, but doesn’t slice downwards. He lets the knife rest along the now-closed wound, not drawing any blood or causing any pain. It’s raining again, the most brutal it’s been in weeks; thick, heavy drops of water instead of the common drizzle. He stares at the gleaming metal, so close to carving open his skin, tearing apart Thanos, Su-bong, himself.
He maneuvers the knife away from his hand. He wonders if it’s Thanos or Su-bong that wishes so desperately to die. With the way things are going, he assumes it must be both.
Before the games, Thanos had planned to hurl himself off of a bridge and plummet to his death. His vision had been blurred and unsteady when the salesman had approached him—he must’ve looked completely out-of-sorts. A perfect, bumbling victim.
These past few months, Thanos has thought to himself a multitude of times that everything would’ve been better off if he’d died then. He wouldn’t have had to go through bloodied, gore filled games, popping pills throughout it and stumbling out of it with extensive withdrawal symptoms and extreme mental agony.
What had Nam-gyu meant when he said Thanos looked like the moon? He should’ve asked back at the beginning, when the words were first spoken in the nighttime air while they were both nearly nude. Why, of all times, does Thanos decide to ponder it extensively now that he’s pushed Nam-gyu away?
He runs the pads of his fingers along the flat edge of the knife. He can never be anything more than what he is; how is he supposed to stomach such a thing?
The knife trembles in his grip. If he turns the blade slowly within his fragile skin, it’ll create an arc that resembles a crescent moon.
The doorknob rattles, followed by a harsh series of knocks. Thanos stills, waiting until another flurry of bangs ring out, muffled by the harsh sound of rainfall.
He leaves the knife haphazardly on the counter as he approaches his front door. Who could possibly be here in such awful weather? His old drug dealer, planning to give him another black eye? Thanos wouldn’t really mind another physical fight, as long as he gets his hands on some pills, weed, or powder after the fact. He prefers to drown himself in drugs rather than blood.
He’s only wearing an oversized t-shirt and pair of loose boxers, but can’t be bothered to care. Thanos opens the door, the hinges creaking loudly.
It’s Nam-gyu.
He’s soaking wet, trembling, and red faced, as if he ran instead of walked to get here. Heavy breaths come out as puffs of white in the cold nighttime air. His eyebrows are furrowed, nose crinkling as he sniffs and wipes water from the bridge of his nose.
Thanos stares at him blankly, tilting his head in slight confusion. Nam-gyu stares back, fog dusting along the road behind him.
“Can I come in?” Nam-gyu asks, raising his voice to be heard over the rain.
Thanos continues to stare. “What?”
Nam-gyu’s eyes harden, his tone turning sharp. Dark pupils focus solely on Thanos, Su-bong, the core of his being. “Just say yes or no.”
Thanos moves to shut the door. His arm moves without thinking, and his brain feels like it’s been scrambled, tossed upwards, and is now in the period where it hurtles back down in a frightened free fall. The flash of betrayal that crashes into Nam-gyu’s face is what causes him to freeze, retracing the movement like pressing rewind on a film, wrenching the door back open.
It’s too late; Nam-gyu begins to turn away with a shake of his head, muttering heated words under his breath. Thanos scrambles to grab onto Nam-gyu’s wrist, but it’s slippery and rain-slicked, and the limb is pulled from his grasp with fluidity.
“Quit it,” Nam-gyu grits out as Thanos grabs onto his wrist for a second time, grabbing onto both of his arms and all but tugging him into the apartment. “Hyung!”
Shoes squeak against wooden flooring. Nam-gyu stumbles ungracefully, wet skin sliding against palms like a fish out of water. “Can you hold fucking still?”
Nam-gyu doesn’t. Cold, stiff fingers begrudgingly grab at Thanos’ dry arms, knuckles, hands as he halfheartedly attempts to squirm out of Thanos’ grip. Black strands of hair stick to the sides of his cheek, water gathers along his lips. They’re closer than they ought to be as Thanos drags Nam-gyu into the entryway and shuts the door with the back of his foot.
“I changed my mind,” Nam-gyu insists, voice cracking in frustration, like sugar boiling in a pot. “Let go—“
“Don’t leave,” Thanos says. He pleads, is a better description. “Nam-su—“
“It’s gyu, you asshole.”
They reach a momentary standstill. One hand clutching Nam-gyu’s left elbow, the other wrapped around his right wrist. It almost feels like a type of embrace, with the way Nam-gyu sags in defeat, arms flopping uselessly.
“You’re the one who told me to leave in the first place,” Nam-gyu grumbles through gritted teeth once the sound of rainfall grows too stagnant. Sometimes, looking at Nam-gyu is like looking in a mirror; Thanos sees his own fear of abandonment in the eyes of another. It’s unsettlingly jarring.
“I changed my mind,” Thanos repeats Nam-gyu’s words back at him, the pads of his fingers pressing lightly against cold, clammy skin. He gnaws on the inside of his cheek as Nam-gyu squints at him, a droplet of water gathering at the bottom of his chin, falling and splashing against the ground.
“You don’t get to just ‘change your mind’ after cutting me off for no reason,” Nam-gyu scoffs, leaning his back against the closed door. “That was a real dick move, hyung.”
“You didn’t seem all that upset about it.” Thanos teeters forward slightly, leaning close enough to feel the puff of Nam-gyu’s indignant sigh against his cheek.
“What’d you expect? For me to break into tears and beg for your attention?” Nam-gyu sneers. “I’m not a pussy. I was trying to at least let things between us end on a semi-decent note, okay? That’s it.” Now that Thanos’ grip has loosened, he takes the chance to shake his arms free, sidestepping him with ease. “And, look where that got us. I don’t know why I even bothered.”
“What are you doing?” Thanos asks, watching as Nam-gyu strolls towards his kitchen with hands clenched at his sides.
“I’m grabbing a fucking beer.”
“Jesus christ.” Thanos pinches the bridge of his nose, stumbling after him once his moment of bafflement passes. “I’m all out of beer, genius.”
Nam-gyu has already wrenched open the fridge by the time Thanos catches up to him, and closes it with a groan of frustration. Thanos fights the urge to grab back onto his arms; he wants contact, friction, anything.
“Why’d you come over?” Thanos asks bluntly, frowning under Nam-gyu’s harsh gaze. “What? Am I not allowed to ask questions, or something?”
“I got stuck out in the rain. I was closer to your apartment than mine.” Nam-gyu shrugs, moving to lean against the counter. He’s getting water everywhere, but if he happens to be taking notice of it, he clearly doesn’t care. “And then you opened the door, nearly shut it instantly, and I realized it was stupid to come back. There. You win.”
“I win?”
“Isn’t this what you wanted? For me to come crawling back like a- like some wounded bird?”
“Wounded bird?”
“Quit repeating me.”
“I’m not,” Thanos denies petulantly, despite the nonsensicality of doing such a thing.
Nam-gyu heaves a long, heavy sigh. “I’m sure you’ve been too busy snagging phone numbers from bitches and getting in fights with dealers to actually stop and think about any of this, but—“
“Oh, fuck off,” Thanos interrupts. “I got in that fight because I was haggling for drugs to share with you.”
“Why, then? Why tell me to stop coming over?”
“Nam-su-“
“Gyu.” Nam-gyu throws his hands up in exasperation. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t even know my name.”
“Of course I know your fucking name,” Thanos gripes, rubbing his forehead in exasperation. “Nam-gyu, Nam-gyu, Nam-gyu-“
“Oh, now you remember, of all times-“
“God forbid I give you a nickname. Whatever, man.”
Another stretch of silence, the air thick with stagnant tension as both men look any and everywhere except for each other. At one point, both of their eyes land on the left-out knife in unison, but the moment is fleeting.
“I still don’t have any pills,” Thanos says eventually. “If that’s…what you’re-“
“Fuck you,” Nam-gyu spits. Thanos scrubs his face with his palms and wonders why wrong courses are all he knows how to take.
“I don’t know why, okay? I don’t know why I told you to leave.”
“You don’t know?” Nam-gyu laughs humorlessly. Thanos holds himself back from making a snide comment about repetition.
“I’m not…” Words stick within Thanos’ throat, itchy and uncomfortable. “I wasn’t used to it.”
Nam-gyu blinks slowly, and speaks even slower. “Used to what?”
God, Thanos sure wishes he had a beer right now. “To needing someone. Jesus. I don’t know.”
The subtle ringing of windchimes sound in the distance, mingling softly with the rainfall. Nam-gyu starts to reach out his hand only to immediately retract it. Thanos wonders if this is how Nam-gyu felt when he moved to close the door in front of his rain-soaked face.
“Just forget it.”
“Hyung-“
“And, for the record, I’ve been working. Doing my job. Not whoring myself out, or whatever other shit you seem to think.”
“Your management team just released a statement regarding your temporary leave of absence,” Nam-gyu huffs. “So, I think it’s safe to assume it’s not going too well.”
Thanos exhales in exasperation, sarcasm seeping from his lips. “I’m sure you rushed to the damn post right when you got the notification, huh? Fucking fanboy.”
Nam-gyu’s face flushes in aggravation, jaw clenching. “Fuck you,” he grits out in English, and it’s such a perfectly Thanos thing to do that he nearly laughs. Imitation is a form of flattery, even in arguments.
Thanos wants to hold him so badly that it aches and consumes him entirely. The feeling is enough to make him dizzy, almost physically sick. Like he said, he’s not used to this. That’s why he stopped it all to begin with.
Once again, Thanos picks absently at the slowly healing wound. He wishes desperately for the knife, and for the blood he knows would bubble from himself and latch along the edge so nicely. More than a wound, what he wants is for the tip of the knife to slice through his flesh, and more than life itself, he wants Nam-gyu to be the one to do it.
Nam-gyu, Nam-su, player one hundred twenty-four. Thanos has seen him blood soaked and crazed. Trembling from withdrawals. Smiling amicably at club goers. So many different versions of him, and yet the Nam-gyu in front of him is the same Nam-gyu that has ever been and ever will be.
“If you really needed me,” Nam-gyu grits out, his throat bobbing. “You wouldn’t have cut me off in the first place.”
“If I didn't need you,” Thanos says, “I would’ve let you stay.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Nam-gyu scoffs, shaking water from his hair with no concern for his surroundings whatsoever. They’re in a kitchen, for fucks sake.
“You don’t get it,” Thanos mumbles, his voice nearly a whisper.
“Then explain it.”
Thanos trains his eyes on the knife. “I already did.”
“Try harder.”
He imagines the knife in his throat, turning repeatedly, leaving a gaping hole within his windpipe. “What is this, a fucking confessional?”
“Would you rather me leave?” Nam-gyu frowns. Or, Thanos assumes he’s frowning. His eyes are still trained on the blade.
Thanos reaches out, his palm settling along the hilt of the knife. His fingers clasp around the wooden handle as he holds it, looking down at his own reflection gleaming back up at him from the steel. Thanos, Su-bong, himself.
“I dream of the games every night,” he admits, taking another step closer. “Nightmares, every single time I go to sleep. What kind of pussy shit is that, huh? Fucking ridiculous. You’re in them too, most of the time. Getting gutted, or shot, or killed in some other way. I didn’t used to be scared of dying, you know. Not at all. I wasn’t afraid when I almost threw myself off the bridge. It was all anticipation, that’s it. Not fear. Why would I be afraid? I’ve wanted to die for years.”
Thanos flips the knife around, the tip pointing towards his stomach. Still a distance away, of course. No point in being hasty. “Then, after going through those bullshit games, all of a sudden I’m nervous. I’m fucking nervous of dying, as if dying hasn’t been the main thing I’ve been aiming for since I was a goddamn teenager.”
“I don’t want you to die,” Nam-gyu says softly, his voice warbling. It’s the most raw he’s ever heard him, his back digging against the countertop as Thanos nears closer.
“That’s my point,” Thanos says wryly, his reflection spinning in the silver gleam. “I don’t want you to die, either. I like smoking with you, man. Draping myself over you on the couch and talking about bullshit. Going out at night and eating cheap dinners. It’s nice. Makes me feel like I’m not losing my mind.”
Thanos lifts his gaze from the knife to Nam-gyu’s face, only to see that his eyes are trained on the blade as well. Glossied, wide, and concerned. His nose crinkles slightly.
“I’m the Legend Thanos; I shouldn’t need anyone but myself. Just Su-bong. That’s it. That’s all it’s ever been.”
The distance between them dwindles. With his free hand, Thanos gathers one of Nam-gyu’s wrists in his palm, pressing his thumb against pale blue veins and feeling the hammering heartbeat that resides within it. He leads the hand to the knife, watching as limp fingers flutter against Thanos’ knuckles, refusing to take purchase.
“Do it,” Thanos hisses, barely audible over the windchimes and rain. They’re close enough to feel each other's breath on their lips, short puffs of air fanning against skin. Their noses nearly bump. If not for the knife being pressed lightly against Thanos’ stomach, perhaps it’d look like some form of a lovers embrace, one just beginning to start, freezing in place before arms wrap around each other and chins hook along the backs of shoulders. “Just pretend I’m someone from the games.”
“Do what? Kill you?” Nam-gyu admonishes. Their foreheads clunk together, noses brushing, breath mingling. They’ve never been this close before, as far as Thanos can remember. Which is an accomplishment in itself, considering how frequently they cling to each other. Nam-gyu’s mouth falls ajar and stays that way in perpetual, unending shock.
Thanos’ brain spins, thoughts and reasoning fading in and out of focus. Which part of himself yearns for such derangement, aches for the feeling of Nam-gyu killing him? Is it perverse to feel so thrilled by the idea? In the end, does he care if it is?
Nam-gyu’s fingers tighten around the handle. The edge presses against Thanos’ stomach, the slightest wisp of a feeling. “I want you to.”
“You want me to kill you?” Nam-gyu reiterates, his voice trembling. It’s easier to spot the faint freckles that span across his cheeks when they're close like this. The small divot on the side of his nose, the pink flush to his lips. “After everything we’ve done to survive?”
“I don’t care if it’s selfish,” Thanos says, moving to let his forehead thunk against Nam-gyu’s shoulder. “I don’t care—“
“You waited for me,” Nam-gyu murmurs, leaning his cheek against the crown of Thanos’ hair. Thanos’ hold on the knife loosens, while Nam-gyu’s fingers abruptly turn to a harsh grip. “When we were tied up and thrown out of that limo. You could’ve just left me, but you didn’t.”
“So what? It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. Hyung, if it weren’t for you, do you really think I’d still be alive right now? If you weren’t there during the games, I would’ve—“
“You would’ve been fine.”
“I would be dead,” Nam-gyu insists. “You said you don’t want me to die, right? I don’t want you to die either. I mean it. I don’t come over for pills or weed or whatever. I come over for you.”
“You shouldn’t,” Thanos grunts. “We shouldn’t…”
A stretch of silence as his words tamper off, remaining unfinished. From where Thanos’ forehead rests on Nam-gyu’s shoulder, he can hear the shallow inhale and exhale of his breathing.
“Why not?”
Thanos doesn’t want to be afraid of dying. He doesn’t want to feel like a rat stuck in a sticky trap, dying slowly and painfully. That being said, he doesn’t want it to be too quick either, like a frail rodent body snapping in half when stepping into a mousetrap.
Thanos doesn’t know what he wants, just like he doesn’t know who he is.
“Why not?” Nam-gyu asks again, more firmly. The words reverberate throughout him. Thanos lets go of the knife, leaving it fully in Nam-gyu’s possession.
“We can’t do this forever.”
“Why?” Nam-gyu repeats. The knife presses slightly closer. Thanos’ stomach seizes. “What’s stopping us from living off of shitty booze together for the rest of our lives?”
“Nam-su-“
“We can pick up a stupid retail job together. Get back on our feet during your leave of absence, you know? You could even move into my apartment, if it’s cheaper for you. We can figure something out.
“Nam-gyu, my boy…” Thanos sighs, pressing his face against the crook of Nam-gyu’s dampened neck.
“You should know by now that I won’t kill you," Nam-gyu says firmly. The knife tilts, but doesn’t plunge. “If I did, it’d be just like killing myself.”
Thanos can’t tell if the breathing he hears and feels is from himself or from Nam-gyu. Their bodies seem to meld, for this short moment in time. A moment filled with the scent of rain and the wet residue it leaves, spilled water instead of spilled blood. Thanos waits for the knife to dig into his stomach, waits for his guts to spill, waits for Nam-gyu to do what he ought to do and deliver Thanos into death with a soft, gentle hand. Soft, gentle; since when did Thanos start associating those things with a man as sharp and intense as Nam-gyu?
He waits, and waits, and waits. He swears he hears Nam-gyu mumble something that consists of three words and ends with a faint, choked sound of vulnerability, but Thanos must’ve imagined it, surely he must’ve misheard, misjudged due to the sound of rain.
Fingers loosen. The knife clatters against the floor, and with it so does Thanos’ desire for death. Nam-gyu wraps his arms around him, uncaring of Thanos’ many faults, and rests his cheek against his shoulder. Thanos squeezes hard enough to make Nam-gyu wheeze.
Nam-gyu brushes his fingers along the nape of Thanos’ hair, patiently waiting for his breathing to return to normal. Nam-gyu piercing the knife into his stomach would have served as proof of his existence, something Thanos so desperately craves; but maybe this can serve as proof in itself.
A hug fierce enough to ache, sincerity without humiliation, connection in its purest form.
— — —
When the sun rises, they have coffee. Thanos adds extra vanilla flavoring to their drinks as Nam-gyu smokes a cigarette indoors, leaning outside an open window every so often to blow smoke out into the air.
“Your eye is looking better,” Nam-gyu muses, rubbing his thumbs under Thanos’ eye before taking hold of the mug offered out to him. It’s a surprisingly sweet action, just like how Nam-gyu seems to be a surprisingly sweet individual. Only to Thanos, of course. And, he’s sure Nam-gyu would be aghast to hear such a thing.
The knife is still laid bare on the floor, left untouched on the ground where they left it last night. Neither one of them mention it. Neither one of them bother to give it a second glance.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s healing up nicely.” Thanos nods, taking a slow sip of his coffee. “I’m surprised my manager didn’t mention it, though. The eye or the hand.”
“Was she chugging an energy drink during your meeting again?”
“Lemonade.”
Nam-gyu laughs sharply, shaking his head chidingly. “Talk about unprofessional. When I worked at the club, I could only ever drink water when I was on the clock.”
“I always saw you drinking those fancy alcoholic drinks, though,” Thanos snorts. “Remember? The bright blue one?”
A bird caws outside as Nam-gyu leans his head out the window, puffing out a plume of smoke as he holds back a smile. “Yeah, but I wasn’t supposed to.”
“You weren’t supposed to eat while working either, were you?” Thanos snickers. “But, you were always snacking on some sort of bullshit.”
“Bullshit?”
“Like…an apple, or something.”
Nam-gyu chuckles. “What’s wrong with apples?”
“Who eats apples in a club?”
Nam-gyu laughs heartily, attempting to stifle the noise with the back of his hand. “Oh, come on! It was either that or the shitty food they served at the bar.”
“The shitty food that you helped prepare,” Thanos nudges him lightly, grinning as Nam-gyu continues to chortle. “Speaking of food, shouldn’t you be making me breakfast? I let you stay over for free, after all.”
“Such a cheapskate,” Nam-gyu jokes. “Do you say shit like this after one night stands? Hyung, you’ll never land a lady with an attitude like that.”
“I don’t want a lady,” Thanos admits bluntly. “Just you.”
Nam-gyu splutters on an inhale of smoke, letting out a string of pitiful coughs as Thanos gives him a few hefty pats on the back, snickering as Nam-gyu flounders.
“‘I don’t want a lady, just you,’” Nam-gyu repeats incredulously. “What are we, lovers?”
“Might as well be,” Thanos muses. Nam-gyu’s refusal to kill him followed by them curling up together in Thanos’ bed, falling asleep entangled in each other's arms, has left him wonderfully refreshed. “You said it yourself last night. Why not, right?”
Nam-gyu snubs his cigarette in the nearby ashtray, his face flushed red. “…Okay. I meant what I said last night, you know.”
“Which part?” Thanos asks coyly.
Nam-gyu glares at him weakly. “You know which part.”
The part that consisted of three words, he must mean. Thanos holds back a smile as he tilts his head in faux confusion.
“Hyung,” Nam-gyu all but whines. “Come on-“
“I know,” Thanos relents, setting his coffee down in order to step forward and wrap Nam-gyu in his arms, pressing their foreheads together. In comfort, this time, instead of fear.
It’s so easy to lean forward and kiss him. It feels like something they’ve been doing forever, despite the inherent newness of it all. It’s as natural as walking, breathing, thinking.
Nam-gyu tastes like vanilla, smoke, and rainwater against his lips. Thanos has never been more afraid to die; it’s the most meaningful feeling in the world.