Work Text:
It couldn’t be helped, Namgyu has always been bound to end up alone.
Whether it was his abusive family, his unhealthy romances, or his erratic friends, or rather, drug addict associates, he was always left behind in the end.
So now that Choi Subong is dead, the 124th player couldn’t be angrier. How dare he, his equal, die on him, while he was still here, suffering the absence of the only person in years who had seen him?
Not perceived, not tolerated, seen. Yes, this moron couldn’t have said Namgyu’s name correctly to save his own life, but he was a lovable person, still.
You see, Namgyu knows him and Subong were similar. Subong lived for the praise, Namgyu died for it.
So why couldn’t Thanos love Namgyu the way Namgyu loved Thanos? Two people, cut from the same cloth, one of them willing to believe they were still lovable, willing to care for the other as he would like to be cared for himself.
“That asshole, Thanos.” Namgyu reassures himself. “That fucking asshole always treated me like a fucking idiot.”
He got treated like the fucking idiot he was, though. Whoever falls in love with his reflection? Knowing first hand that self-sabotage was already imprinted on his soul?
Namgyu doesn’t want to feel this, because the more he hated Thanos for abandoning him, the more he hated himself for abandoning the last apices of sanity.
He takes two pills, the first and last resource to drown these tears blooming in his eyes. He won’t cry for Thanos. Thanos wouldn’t have cried for Namgyu.
But not even with two pills can Namgyu make these thoughts fall silent.
Trying to compose himself, Namgyu looks at the people running back and forth in the centre of the room. From Thanos’ bed he can see they are mostly Xs. They want to attack the guards and leave the place, apparently.
But, in this moment, Namgyu doesn’t want to leave this place. He wants to leave his mind. He takes one more pill before willing himself flat on his stomach and closing his eyes.
He doesn’t trust Morpheus will embrace him easily, he only comes when Namgyu’s heart is beating lazily, and his exhausted body cannot move anymore. Right now, Namgyu’s heart is on his throat and his mind and body in the past.
But he needs to be entwined with someone, so he lets Sleep cling to him. Namgyu doesn’t let go of it even if he is hearing bangs and shots and screams and cries.
Namgyu wakes up, not from the conflict outside but from the conflict inside him.
He feels a shadow of sickness hover over him. He opens his eyes, it’s dark, he can smell blood and sweat and can hear muffled cries and the last breathes from injured players beyond repair.
He feels ill. Emotionally, physically.
“Are you okay?” someone says. Someone with a raspy voice and an almost condescending tone. Someone who sounds so much like Subong.
Subong.
Namgyu gets up, never mind his unwellness. It is dark, but he can feel the weight of another body in the bed. He cannot see much, but if he looks closely, he can see a figure wearing a jacket with white numbers on it. 230.
“Thanos?”
But the figure isn’t there anymore. He can’t feel its weight either.
He gets up, almost tripping over Subong’s blanket.
He looks around but he only sees black. The piggy bank barely lights up this corner of the bunker.
Namgyu rushes to the centre, and trips over a dead body. It is not Thanos, so he doesn’t flinch.
In the centre of the room, his head moves faster than his mind, scanning it, looking for a person with a ridiculous purple mane.
No one here has purple hair.
Namgyu approaches to the guarded door.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“No bathroom after lights out.” Answers back a masked figure.
“Please, I really need to go. My friend is there.”
It took a minute more to convince the guard. Being a promoter becomes useful when you don’t accept a no for an answer.
Namgyu runs to the bathroom. It is empty. It still smells of blood. The tile is sticky crimson.
“Thanos. Subong, are you there?”
He asks, opening the doors of every stall. His moves become more frantic. He’s here, I’m sure.
“Namgyu?” his voice answers.
But from where?
Namgyu looks at his reflection in the mirror. The image he sees is not him, but Subong. Like the two faces of a coin.
“Hyung. Thank God.” Namgyu has never been a believer, no god had ever interceded in his bad luck in life, no reason to believe in yet another man who would abandon him. “Thank God, hyung.”
The image of Thanos is blurry, but it is him. His purple hair, his fuckboy smirk, his green suit with his cattle number, 230. His neck is not hurt, it is as good as before, no blood in his figure.
“Subong, you’re going to save me, right?” Namgyu asks, heart full of hope and eyes full of tears.
But Subong just smirks.
“I called you before, in my heart, and you’re coming to get me?” Namgyu doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not, but he knows some things.
He knows what he said sounds corny.
He knows he’s crying.
He knows he’s begging.
He knows his hopes will die out soon.
“Namgyu, why did you call me?” Subong expects no answer, he knows. “I’m dead. I can’t save you.”
Namgyu feels an unmatched cold inside. Realisation.
“You didn’t answer my call.”
“Right.” Thanos says, as if saying, I’m so proud of your capacities, even if you’re higher than the sky.
“It was only in my heart.”
“Yeah.” The reflection becomes more nitid.
“And then, I took too many pills.”
The reflection is not Thanos. It is the Subong Namgyu had created in his mind. His own fictional, idealised daydream prince.
“It’s too late.” Affirms the shadow of Thanos’ voice. “What’s done is done.”
“No…” however, Namgyu doesn’t want to give up yet.
“There’s nothing I can do, Namgyu. I’m not real.”
And just like that, Namgyu’s fear is upheld; the real Thanos would have never call him by his actual name. He is not real.
“None of this is.” Finishes Thanos.
But Namgyu finds comfort in this dystopia, this is his Subong, and the rest can’t have it. But the warmth of the moment thaws.
Doubt floods his being.
“What do I do now?”
Keep playing the games. Win the money. Go home and thrive.
Or,
Keep playing the games. Win the money. Go home and kill himself.
“Namgyu.” His Subong cuts short his train of thought. “It doesn’t matter.”
Namgyu breathes out a sigh of relieve. Namgyu looks down but smiles.
“Well, if it doesn’t matter, can I stay with you at least, just for a while?”
He’s looking down, because he doesn’t want to look at the mirror and see his tousled self and realise, no, confirm, that this was all in his head.
“Okay.” The syllable melts on Subong’s tongue as a colourful molly pill.
Namgyu sits down on the floor, knees to his chest, and a lazy smile dancing on his lips.
He closes his eyes and pictures Choi Subong sitting opposite to him.
“How was your day?” Namgyu asks.
“Good.” Answers No One.
“Yeah?”
And on his drugged head, Namgyu hears:
“Yeah.”