Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Stairs.

Stairs. Thanos counts them like rosary beads, except each step is a sin, not a prayer. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. The rail tastes like blood. No, his hand tastes like blood. Did Namgyu kiss him? He kissed Thanos . He remembers lips, pressure, a noise like a snapped wire. Then he said his name. Not Thanos’s name. A name.  

It’s all very you had to be there.

But he was. He was there. Wasn’t he?

Maybe he dreamed it. Maybe he dreamed Namgyu. Maybe he’s a leftover. Like when you quit smoking and the ghost cigarettes still hang in the corners of your vision, little nicotine poltergeists.

The stairs stretch. Thanos doesn’t walk them, he drifts down them slowly, the way syrup falls. One-two-three. His ankle rolls and he giggles. Who designed gravity? Some pervert. Every bruise on his body feels like a story he forgot to write down. Like receipts for crimes he can’t remember committing.

Namgyu kissed him.

He kissed Namgyu.

Thanos thinks he’s supposed to care.

He thinks he’s supposed to feel something about that.

Well, he does. He feels that ache from below. That fiery feeling, where everything is too hot and you can’t breathe right, but that’s friction. Feeling. Body. He’s not sure what his mind is feeling. 

Well, his teeth feel loose. Like they know something he doesn’t. But that’s another body feeling. Maybe they’re trying to leave before the screaming starts again. It’s coming. He can feel it ticking in his bones. Like a car engine left running in a closed garage.

The walls breathe. The light buzzes. Or Thanos buzzes. Doesn’t matter. He is buzzing. He is electric. He is full of the wrong kind of light.

What does it mean when someone kisses you?

Thanos’s eyes drift to the cross necklace that dangles from his neck. The hinge is loose. His footsteps pause for a moment, and the sudden stop makes his legs aware of how much they ache.

He inspects the cross. It wobbles between his fingers, glinting in the low, flickering light. Maybe it’s just habit. Maybe it’s a joke he forgot the punchline to. He turns the cross over in his palm. There’s a smear of dried blood on it, his or Namgyu’s, he doesn’t know. He presses his thumb over it, like he could wipe the stain away if he just tried hard enough.

But the smear stays. Of course it does.

His hand curls around the necklace, tight.

Then the stairs end. He didn’t notice when they did. He’s in a hallway now, or maybe a corridor. It all blurs together. Pipes snake along the ceiling like veins, dripping condensation that smells like rust and rot. Somewhere, machinery groans, a low, persistent sound like someone sobbing through their teeth.

What did Thanos want?

Namgyu’s still up there. Maybe. Watching. Bleeding too. Thanos hopes he’s bleeding. It’s not fair if it’s just Thanos. His body feels like a crime scene that keeps confessing. Over and over. Red fingertips on the railing. DNA graffiti.  

He thinks he’s meant to be killing people right now or something. He thinks he’s meant to have a gun. But something keeps him walking away. A way from the noise. Away from the stress. He thinks that’s what the body is doing. Ah, body. There you go again. Staging a coup, yelling, “Stop! Oh, you monster, you depraved monster!” The voice says, intoning dramatically like a parody of itself. Like it’s screaming, “Oh, just–

Stop .

There it goes again. Making tears swell in the eyes, making his throat close up, making his body hot, making the walls breathe like lungs, like they’re alive, like they know what he did. Not what he remembers doing. What he did. There’s a difference. Memory’s a mercy. The body, though. The body’s a witness. It stores everything. Bruises. Heat. Shivers. Names.

He runs a hand over his face. Feels the crusted salt of dried sweat, or tears, or blood, or all three. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same now. Salt is salt.

He wants to lie down.

He wants to be very still.

His hand opens and closes around the cross. Something to do with his hands when there’s nothing to hold them. Like it’ll hold him back. Like a brake. Or a weapon. It’s neither. It’s just cold. Metal. Useless. Maybe it always was.

He presses the cross to his lips. Just once. Habit. Joke. Blasphemy.

Then he drops it. Lets it swing.

There’s a door ahead. He doesn’t remember choosing to walk toward it. Maybe it chose him. Maybe it’s the kind of door that wants something. He understands that. He’s full of wants he doesn’t have names for. One he doesn’t recognize, but his heart does. It kicks. It taps against his ribs like it’s trying to tap Morse code. Maybe “STAY.” Maybe “KILL.” Maybe “KISS HIM AGAIN.”

Thanos stares at it. The metal pulses. Or maybe that’s just his heartbeat in his eyes.

He presses his forehead to the door.

Cold.

Real.

His lips still feel weird. Like memory. Like shame. Like something . He doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know anything.

He tips his head. Just so. Cheek feathering the door like a sleepy pigeon. Eyes fall shut, lids shivering.

Footsteps.

Behind.

Not running. Just walking.

Thanos doesn’t turn around right away. He doesn’t need to. The steps are like a fingerprint. He knows them better than he knows his own voice. Knows the subtle hitch in Namgyu’s left stride, the heel-first stomp, the way his heel always hits a half-second before his toe like he’s never quite learned how to walk softly. Like he’s daring the world to hear him coming.

Thanos stares at the pipes above. The condensation has slowed, forming a fat droplet at the tip of a valve. It hangs there, suspended in defiance of gravity.

The steps halted, but not too near. Just far enough for Thanos to entertain the notion that he had a choice in the matter.

He waits. He counts heartbeats instead of stairs. They’re irregular now. His body’s doing that thing again, treating stress like a blood sport.

“Thanossss,” Namgyu hisses, voice slithering “Feel your lips. They hum, don’t they?”

Thanos puckers his lips, like he’s tasting rain. Doesn’t speak. Yet.

“Thanos, feel them. Feel ‘em fizz?”

A tilt of the head. Birdlike. Curious. He tightens his mouth as if that could stop sensation. They do fizz.

“Thanossss!” Namgyu’s voice splinters, a shriek that doesn’t belong to him. “Stop being a pussy, will you?”

Thanos’s body jerks, turning, his feet skittering on the ground as though responding to a command. "I am not what I eat, boy!" Words spilling before thought can catch them, almost jarring in their unexpectedness.

Namgyu giggles. It snags something inside Thanos, tugs it crooked. And he turns.

Namgyu is—  

Well. He’s here.

And he’s wrecked. Face puffy, one eye swollen halfway shut, blood smeared in a crescent under his nose. There’s a gash on his cheek that looks like it was drawn with glass. His hair's soaked and clumped, dark with sweat and red, and his shirt's torn open like it tried to escape his chest.

But he’s standing. Shoulders square. Just like Thanos imagined he’d look.

“Your face ,” Thanos said, a gasp-laugh like he was seeing something hilarious but deeply tragic. “ You got… bits of me still stuck to you. Isn’t that just— ghhhh. Symbiosis? Romance? Biology is a horror show. That’s romantic, right? Or parasitic. Depends on the taxonomy. You look fuckin’ nasty.”

Namgyu smirks. Or maybe he just bleeds differently on that side of his mouth. The pipes above give a hiss. The valve finally lets go. That droplet hits the floor with a sound louder than it should be. 

“Did you mean to kiss me?” Thanos asks, not moving. His voice is the echo of someone else’s memory. “Or was that just… misfired violence?”

Namgyu shrugs, slow, shoulders rolling. “Didn’t think. Just bit the idea and swallowed. You cry about it yet?”

“ No .” Thanos spat, face scrunching up. A small silence, and he drew the alphabet into the concrete with the nose of his shoe. “What... about you?”

Namgyu leans his skull back against the wall. Eyes hooded . “No, no rivers. Still half erect though, that counts?”

Thanos pulls a face, shifting on his feet like he’s trying to dodge something invisible. He begins to rock, just slightly, humming some tune that doesn’t belong—something like the distant echo of a forgotten game. Was it Dragon Quest? Who knows? Something strange. Something that never quite made sense.

“I thought you’d gut me,” he clicks. "Then you gayed me."

“Already did,” he said. “You just aren't finished dying.”

“Oohh-hoh,” Thanos claps once. The sound is too loud. Off. “That’s your style. Kill first, forget the forms. Bureaucratic necromancy.”

Silence bites down.

Namgyu peeks through a slit of eyelid. “Did you try to gut me?”

“Well, I’m trying to spare you.”

Namgyu lets out a breath that seems to rattle his ribs. “That’s progress.”

Thanos started rocking. Back and forth. Then side to side. Then a full-body wriggle, like something crawling under his skin had turned over. He whistled a few tuneless notes—then stopped and muttered, “No, no, no. Not that one. That one’s cursed.” His s head darts, ear turned to something unseen. One hand flutters up, hushes air that isn’t speaking. “You catch that?”

He turned. Addressed a rusted bolt on the wall behind him. “Not your line, sweetheart. Stay dead.”

Namgyu tilts his head, mirroring. Too far. Neck pops audibly. “You tweaking or is this foreplay?”

Thanos’s shoulders jerk, a feathered twitch. Then he hacks out a laugh. “Duh. Licked the wrong god once. Now he’s nesting in my lungs.”  His hands moved suddenly, fast and fluid, like dancing. One moment they were at his sides, the next, his arms flared wide like a stage magician waiting for applause. “So, came to finish the cut?” he sing-songs. “Or peel open something new?”

 Namgyu stepped down one more stair, and another, until he was level with Thanos. For a moment, they just stood there, inches apart, blood-slick and twitching. Thanos tilted his head, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the dried blood across his cheek. His eyes flicked to Namgyu’s hand on the shiv, then back up to his face.

Then, Namgyu grins: “You taste like vomit .”

Thanos blinked. For a moment, something flickered, embarrassment, maybe. Or something so alien to his usual demeanour it could only be called sincerity. 

Then he laughs. “That’s my brand, baby. I’ll add that to my Tinder bio.”

“You’d totally get banned from Tinder.”

“I was. Repeatedly. Kept catfishing myself.”

“Add it to your gravestone then.”

“Gravestones are for people who stay dead.”

Silence falls, heavy, like a body hitting the floor.

Thanos’s throat jumps, a nervous tic. “So,” he says, voice dropping to a conspiratorial hum, “we’re staying. You tongue my throat, that means... well, that means union, innit?"

Not a question. A dare.

Namgyu’s head jerked in a disjointed nod, like a puppet being tested for broken strings. “Mmmyeah… Suure. Why not.”

Thanos shifted against the wall like his bones didn’t quite fit inside his skin. His breath dragged in with a whistle, all uneven teeth and wet velvet. “Soooo… massacre? Kill everybody? Or mutual detonation? We could…. y’know.” One eyebrow twitched up like it had a seizure and left the other behind. “I shoot your face, you carve my heart? Real romantic.”

Namgyu’s lip twitched. “You still got a bullet with my name on it?”

Thanos patted his side, frowned at the absence of a weapon. “Half a slug, maybe. Might have to chew it first.”

He grinned then—a wet, cracked thing that curled too hard at one corner. But his eyes were still. Quiet. Distant. Namgyu’s fingers twitched again. He didn’t raise the shiv. Didn’t sheath it either. Something under his skin wanted to push. Or pull. Or shake Thanos until his bones made music.

But he didn’t move.

Then he spoke, voice hoarse.

“Um, I’m still leaving .”

Thanos’s smile vanished, but his body didn’t tense. He just stared like he hadn’t heard it, like the words needed to loop again before they made sense.

Namgyu opened his mouth, hesitated, then scratched the back of his neck with a shaky hand. His eyes flicked toward the hallway beyond Thanos, dim and yawning. Then back to the man in front of him.

“Like, I thought you'd get that by now. We've had this convo' twenty times. You can stay,” he said. Paused. Then again, quieter, meaner. “Or don’t.”

He coughed. Faked a smirk that melted off his face before it reached his cheeks. “I’m gone, man. You wanna tag along, that’s your disease.” He inhaled through his teeth, then tried again. “I’m tired of… dragging. Explaining. Translating.”

He clenched his jaw, hard. Something buckled in his stance, not fully a collapse, but a tilt. A splinter. “I just…” His voice cracked, an ugly little sound. “Fuck, I just wanna go somewhere that doesn’t reek of you. You know?"

The last word stuck in his throat. He swallowed, almost gagged. Bit it back.

“I just wanna go home,” he breathed.

But it didn’t sound like hope. It sounded like relapse. A tiny, broken sob hitched in his throat, dry and sharp like something splintering in his ribs. He stared at Thanos, jaw tight, shoulders drawn like he was expecting a blow.

Thanos didn’t blink.

He just stood there, head slightly tilted, like he was watching a bird die in slow motion. Something fragile and flailing, with bones too thin to carry its own weight. 

“Home,” Thanos repeated, his voice light, almost playful.  He tilted his head, his good eye glinting in the flickering light, the ruined one hidden in shadow. “ Oh. What’s that? A soft little lie? Some cozy little fantasy where you’re not bleeding out on a staircase with a guy who’d rather shoot you than fuck you? A room full of unburnt pictures and no regrets? You think you still got a key to that place?” He laughed, dry and hollow, like a cough from a coffin. “That door doesn’t exist. You know that, right? After us?”

Namgyu didn’t flinch. But something clicked in his jaw. A corner of his face tensed, just once. His hand twitched low.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t spin this again. I’ve heard the ending.”

A silence swallowed them, thick as oil.

"But you kissed me." Thanos said.

"Yeah, big woop, I--"

“I thought the kiss meant we’d die together,” Thanos said. Quietly. Not dramatic, not anger. Just—genuinely confused. Like a child asking why the sun went away. “Like...you know. In stories. Or movies. You kiss, and that means it’s the end. Together. Curtain call.”  

Namgyu’s left eye twitched--bruised, swollen. He blinked once, slowly. A faint exhale escaped his nose. His lips parted, then pressed into a flat, disbelieving line. His gaze didn’t move.

“You what?”

“I just thought... maybe. Maybe we could kill each other. Go out with a bang. Like fireworks. You shoot me, I stab you, we bleed out on the floor like a pair of rats.”

Namgyu stared at him. Then his hands raised slowly to tap his temple. "Are you tapped in the head? I don’t… want to die.”

“I don’t want to live,” Thanos replied. Same tone. Same voice. Like a matched set.  

Silence pressed between them. Not empty. Too full. Like a lung held too long under water. Then Thanos snapped back to upbeat, his voice bouncing like bad radio. “We don’t gotta aim. Just count to three, pull, and pop!" He mimicked a gunshot. "A duet. No mess. No waiting. Just… boom.”

Namgyu stepped back. Barely.

Thanos followed him with his gaze, not his feet. “I can’t go back,” he said. “Not with what’s on my hands. Not with what we did. MG, Se-mi.  Not after X’s and O’s. We killed them together. So we’re done worrying. They won’t kill us, we can go out on our own terms. All the rest. We’re the end credits, Namgu this is it. Don’t you get it? We’re not running . We’re circling the drain!"

Namgyu’s breath wheezed in, too fast, too sharp. He looked away. “There’s no symmetry,” he said. “No deal.”

Thanos clicked his tongue. “There’s always symmetry. You and me. The last mess. We tidy each other up. Been doing it all game.  Maybe there’ll be a few others left standing after this little revolution ,” he gestured upwards, back to where the sound of traded fire could still be heard. “But I picked off a few. Maybe gramps will win. Who knows. Maybe someone survives this party. But not us. We're... leftovers. Side characters. Comic relief."

Namgyu turned slightly, like the noise above was suddenly unbearable. He braced a hand against the wall.

He rubbed both palms up his face, over his hair.

Thanos smiled wider. That strange light flickering again behind his eyes.  

“Leave and go where? Hm? You think there’s a world that wants me back? A world that forgives this?” He gestured vaguely to himself, the hallway. “You think I’m gonna file my taxes and volunteer at a soup kitchen and pretend I’m not a monster? We’re in debt. We’re fucked. MG Coin ruined our lives, and now he doesn’t have one. We’re like ghosts, innit? Unfinished business and that. Well, now the business is finished, and we can move on.”

Namgyu let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, wasn’t quite a sob. Just pressure releasing somewhere between his lungs. “You think dying fixes it?” he asked, voice hoarse. “You think bleeding out in a hallway with your ex–whatever, your...your battle buddy— you think that’s closure?”

Thanos blinked slowly. “It’s not not closure.”

Namgyu looked at the ceiling. His hands clenched. His throat pulsed. “I didn’t kiss you because I wanted to die.”

A twitch of the forehead. Confusion. “Then why’d you do it?”

Namgyu didn’t answer. His jaw shifted. Mouth opened. Closed. Again. His eyes darted—floor, wall, a blood smear by his foot. When he finally spoke, it was low.

“You’re going to make me confess to you,” he said.

That made Thanos pause. The room paused with him. Even the buzzing light seemed to still.

Then: “This ain’t no church, yo." He held the cross aloft, wiggling it pointedly, then he deadpanned, as if his body forgot what it was doing. "You want a confessional go find your local priest.”

Namgyu didn’t laugh. Didn’t even blink. He looked at the tiny cross dangling between Thanos’s fingers like it meant something, like it could save either of them from what they were.

Then he looked at Thanos.

Really looked at him.

That ruined eye. That stupid grin like he hadn’t just offered them both up to the dark. The little twitch of his fingers, still miming gunfire like it was a lullaby.

Namgyu’s throat bobbed.

His voice came out raw. Honest. Too much.

“Because I’m like, gay for you.”

It landed in the space between them like a dropped knife. Not thrown. Just let go.

Thanos's ears rang in the silence that followed. 

He wasn’t joking. Not trying to twist it into irony or armor. Not covering it with rage or shame or a joke about his timing. He meant it. All of it. In the way people only do when they’ve already accepted the worst answer.

Thanos’s mouth parted. For once, he didn’t have a line ready. He just stared.

Namgyu shrugged one shoulder, slow. A defense mechanism. “Yeah. Surprise, bitch.”

Still nothing.

Namgyu’s face twisted, the barest flinch of something ugly.

Thanos finally blinked.

The buzzing stopped.

Like someone yanked the plug out of the socket, like a television flicking off mid-scene. The hallway fell silent, soft and deadly. Even the pipes above seemed to hold their breath.

“You’re what now?” he asked, voice pitched somewhere between a laugh and an aftershock. His head cocked slightly to the left, like he was trying to physically angle the words into sense.

Namgyu didn’t look at him. Didn’t move. “God, don’t make me say it again. I've kissed you twice, you haven't figured it out by now?"

“You’re gay for me,” Thanos repeated, slow and flat, like he was trying out a foreign phrase on his tongue. 

Namgyu didn’t respond. His jaw twitched. His eyes stayed everywhere but on Thanos. A faint pink flush had spread across his cheeks and extended down to his neck.

“I thought I was, like… the part of your life where you get a tragic tattoo and pretend it never happened.” Thanos tilted his head back and barked a single, humorless laugh. “Rah, 'gay for me'. That’s wild. You’ve got brain damage.”

Namgyu didn’t speak. His mouth tightened further—an anatomical impossibility.

“I mean,” Thanos continued, hand waving vaguely in the air, “you could’ve fallen for anyone. Se-mi– Jesus, you really are a homo. Oh my god, you’re gay ." He laughed, incredulous. "How long?”

Namgyu hesitated. He didn’t pretend not to know the question. “Long enough.”

“Before the kiss?”

Namgyu nodded.

Thanos ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus. You’ve been gay in advance . Oh, gay for me, huh?” he said, voice pitching high, then low, then high again, words tumbling over each other like they were racing to escape. “Like, what’s that even mean ? Gay .” 

Thanos spun on his heel, carving tight, frantic circles into the cold tile beneath his boots. One hand tangled through his filthy, matted hair like he could claw out a thought that refused to settle. “You know, back in the day , that word meant happy ,” he barked, a grin spreading across his face, teeth on full display. “Like—skipping-through-a-daisy-field, whistling-fucking-showtunes, Disney-movie happy!”

He let out a laugh that echoed off the tile.

“Now? ‘Gay’? ‘Tweaking’? You’re just chucking words like live grenades without even pulling the pins! What the fuck does any of it mean anymore?” His voice rose with each syllable, pacing quickening. His boots scuffed and squeaked across blood-slick tile as he gestured wildly, like he could untangle his own thoughts if he moved fast enough. “Back in the nineties , ‘gay’ was just vibes, man. Just straight-up good vibes. None of this—” He flailed his arms between them. “Whatever this is!”

“Can you please shut the fuck up about the nineties?” Namgyu snapped. He peeled himself off the wall like it took effort, like gravity was stronger now that Thanos had opened his mouth. His fists were tight, trembling at his sides, jaw clenched hard enough to splinter teeth. “You’re losing it.”

He mocked Thanos’s earlier frenzy with a sardonic wave, fingers clawing at his own hair. “Gay, gay, gay— woaaah ! Shocking plot twist! God, you’re such a fucking freak. What, you want a standing ovation?” He spat the words with venom. “I’m leaving. Enjoy your one-man play, Shakespeare.” He turned, as if to storm off, muttering, “Jesus Christ.”

And just like that, Thanos stopped moving. Froze in place like someone had hit pause on him mid-frame. Mouth open, expression caught in the static of something that had wanted to be said, but didn’t make it out.

Then, a stutter. A breath.

“Losing it?” he repeated, voice raw. “ Bro, I lost it upstairs— ” He jabbed a finger into his temple with a wet smack , blood smearing across his forehead. “Back when we were counting fucking bodies . This? This is just the afterparty.” His hands danced in the air—snapping, pointing, twirling. “You’re into me, I’m tweaking, we’re both bleeding—plot twist! What’s next? We run off together? Adopt a rescue dog? Start a punk band in this godforsaken hellhole?”

He laughed, high and hollow, and then his expression hardened again like something in him finally caught up to the room.

“Okay,” he said, quieter now. “Okay, yeah. I’m spiraling. I’m talking to myself. Bleeding, hallucinating, tweaking in real-time. Copy that. Loud and clear. The side effects of meth. I’m like– like a before and after poster.”

Namgyu didn’t smile. His mouth twisted into something colder, crueler. He stepped forward with intention, closing the gap.

“Yeah,” he said, tone flat as steel. “You’re tweaking. You’re a fucking joke.”

Thanos blinked, a twitch behind his eye like something shorted out.

Namgyu kept going, louder now, crueler. “You’re a cartoon! All noise, no weight. Just punchlines and panic. You wanna die so bad? Fine. Do it. Eat a bullet. Crawl into the grave next to your dead little ex--"

Thanos’s eyes widened.

Then he lunged .

Grabbed Namgyu by the collar and slammed him back against the wall.

“ How the fuck do you know about Lucio? ”

His eyes were wide, bulging, lips parted in shock or fury or both. Namgyu froze. Breath caught. For one long second, the only sounds were blood rushing in their ears, the distant hum of overhead lights, a scream echoing from far away. Gunfire, maybe. Or just memory.

Then Namgyu’s lips parted. And Thanos saw it, something flicker behind his eyes. Understanding.

“You talk in your sleep,” Namgyu said slowly, as if he were piecing something together.

Thanos didn’t let go. “ Bullshit. ”

“You do,” Namgyu insisted, voice low, careful, like he was walking barefoot across broken glass. “You say his name. Sometimes.”

Thanos blinked. His grip didn’t loosen, but the color had drained from his knuckles. Namgyu’s voice sharpened. “I didn’t know who he was. I guessed. Not until now. But I think I'm getting the picture."

Thanos stepped back like he’d been physically struck. His hands dropped to his sides. The heat between them went out like a dying ember. He touched the chain around his neck, flinching like it burned.

Namgyu didn’t reply at first. Then: “Yeah.”

Thanos nodded slowly, like he was pretending that made sense. He held the cross aloft,  “This was his. The guy at the camp. Like– my dad. Sent me to a camp, like a summer camp.”

His voice was flat now, matter-of-fact. “Some conversion bullshit. We were both messed up. He loved country music, benzodiazepines, and… I don’t know. Me, I guess. We were supposed to get out together. He OD’d two days before release date.”

Namgyu stared at him, expression unreadable. For a beat, he didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Then—

His eyes went wide.

He jolted a step backward, jabbing a finger at Thanos like it might draw blood on contact.

“ Wait a fucking second. ” His voice cracked down the middle, high with disbelief. “You— you were gay with that guy! ”

Thanos blinked, startled, lips parting—

“You hypocrite! ” Namgyu yelled, the word ripping out of him like shrapnel. “You’ve been dragging me through the fucking dirt for weeks—mocking me, melting down over a kiss—and you were already halfway to Hallmark-movie territory with some tragic camp twink?!”

Thanos opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“ Jesus! ” Namgyu threw his hands in the air, pacing in a tight, furious circle. “I thought you were just homophobic! I thought maybe you hated me. Or yourself. But this—this whole time? You’ve been acting like I invented gayness just to piss you off, meanwhile you’re carrying a dead guy’s necklace around like a widow in a war drama! ”

Thanos flinched. “It’s not—”

“No. No. ” Namgyu cut him off, jabbing that finger again. “You do not get to play moral arbiter when you were sucking face behind the chapel at re-education camp! ”

“That’s not what happened!” Thanos snapped, color rushing to his cheeks. “You don’t get it—”

“I do get it!” Namgyu shouted, eyes shining with something hot and furious. “You were in love. You’re still in love. That guy died , and you’re still carrying him around like a ghost in your fucking ribs, and you wanna tell me I’m the unstable one? You wanna tell me I’m pathetic for falling for you?!”

He was breathing hard now, chest heaving.

Thanos cleared his throat, eyes darting. “I didn’t say you were pathetic… I said you were gay for me–”

“Yeah and you said it like it was a fucking diagnosis!”

“That was different !” Thanos shouted, pointing at the cross like it could vouch for him. “Lucio was—he was blonde! It wasn’t about–”

“Oh, he was blonde ?” Namgyu barked a disbelieving laugh. “Oh, well fuck me sideways, why didn’t you say so sooner? Blonde? That makes it totally normal! Just two bros in matching trauma shorts falling in love under fluorescent lights. No homo—unless they’re blonde , right?”

He stepped in, voice shaking now, not with fear, but fury. “ Jesus , man. You’ve been spiral-judging me like I invented pride month, and now you’re telling me it’s fine because your dead boyfriend was… what? Corn-fed and golden-haired? Is that supposed to make this less insane?”

Thanos shifted uncomfortably, jaw working. “You’re twisting it.”

“I better be!” Namgyu snapped, practically vibrating now. “Because if I’m not, then this is so much worse! Do you have any idea what it’s been like, walking on eggshells around you while you froth at the mouth every time I so much as look at you for too long?”

Thanos didn’t respond. Just looked at him, something flickering behind his eyes again. Discomfort, maybe. Or exhaustion. Maybe both.

Namgyu shook his head, bitter laughter bubbling up. “And I bought it. I bought all of it. The noise, the bullshit. I thought, ‘okay, he’s scared. He’s repressed. He needs space.’ But what you really needed was someone to play scapegoat while you clutched your little necklace and told yourself your kind of gay was the tragic, noble kind.”

“It wasn’t about–”  Thanos waved his hands around, face scrunched up before kicking a leg out, as if to kick the next word out of existence. “-- feelings ! It was heat, pressure, being locked in a goddamn bunker with a broken person and becoming the same kind of broken! It-–”

“--Sounds fuckin’ familiar,” Namgyu yelled. “Except you’re not locked up now. So what’s this? What are we?" He jabbed a finger toward Thanos’s chest. “This vibe? This mess? You gonna call it survival too? You’ve been dancing around it for days , man. Acting like I’m the only one with feelings here, like you’re just the victim of some gay ambush in the middle of your apocalypse meltdown. Newsflash: if I’m a homo, you’re right there with me!”

“Shut up,” Thanos hissed. “You don’t know shit about me.”

Namgyu stepped forward again. “I know you flinched when I said I liked you. I know you kissed me like it meant something. And I know you kept that damn cross because you couldn’t let go of a man who died–”

Thanos groaned over the words—an awful, choked sound—and clapped both hands over his ears like Namgyu’s words were acid being poured into them.

“--All that bullshit about hating fags, all that panic about my little harmless gay jokes, were you being hom–”

“No, I swear to God, you’re the one who made this weird!” Thanos yelled, words overlapping with Namgyu's, both of them spiraling faster, volume rising, tone racing. “We was fine until you started trying to make me… feel something! You think I’m a fucking hypocrite, but you— you —pushed me into this! With your stupid hair and your ugly ass eyes and your– your skinny .”

His words warbled into an accusing hiss.

Namgyu nodded slowly, eyes wide, lips parted in an ‘o’.

“ Oooohhh , my ‘skinny?’ My skinny , he says!” He gestured wide,  arms thrown out. “The audacity to be slender!”  

Thanos scowled. “Okay. I didn’t mean it like that.”  

“Oh, no no no, please, let’s follow this fascinating thread,” Namgyu said, pacing in a circle like a courtroom lawyer about to shred a witness. “What exactly did you mean? What else about me turned your deeply heterosexual world upside down? What exactly tipped the scales from hate crime to heart eyes?” Go ahead. I’ll wait. Enlighten me, Socrates.” 

Thanos looked wildly around the room, as if an escape hatch might materialize out of drywall. “I meant—I meant you’re… distracting!"

Namgyu gasped, mock-horrified. “Distracting?! Oh my God. Do you want to borrow a fan? A fainting couch? Should I get you a cigarette and some jazz music, maybe dim the lights? Your rebuttal to being gay is that I’m annoying!”

“Don’t be a dick,” Thanos growled.  

“You kissed me back!” Namgyu shrieked. “Don’t you be a dick!”  

“I panicked!”  

“You used tongue!”  

A beat.  

Silence fell like a curtain, awkward and heavy and loud.  

Thanos cleared his throat. “It was… a tactical decision.”  

Namgyu blinked, then tilted his head slowly, like he was trying to detect the scent of bullshit on a light breeze. “A tactical tongue?”  

Thanos looked away. “It was a confusing moment. You just came at me. Like, forcefully as shit." He frowned. “I thought you were going to die. And kill me. I was confused!”  

“Ohhh, so you’re one of those . ‘Oh no, the boy I bully might perish—better fuck the gay out of him real quick.’”  

A long pause followed.  

Then, quietly, miserably:  

“…Was it a good kiss?”  

Namgyu stared at him.  

Thanos didn’t look back. He was studying a scorch mark on the wall like it held ancient wisdom.  

“…I mean, like,” Thanos added, voice barely above a whisper, “technique-wise.”  

Namgyu let out a noise like he’d just stepped on a thumbtack made of pure disbelief. “Oh my God.”  

“What?” Thanos muttered.  

“Oh my GOD ,” Namgyu screamed into the ceiling.  

Somewhere upstairs, someone screamed. Neither of them flinched.  They both fell silent. Then both opened their mouths again. Then both groaned and turned away at the same time, hands dragging down their faces, as if trying to wipe the other person from their memory through sheer friction.

Thanos finally dropped to the ground with a graceless thud, slumping against the wall. “I’m gonna throw up,” he muttered.

“Please don’t,” Namgyu said, crouching beside him. Bruised, blood-slick, and visibly seething. “I can’t handle vomit. I’ll just start crying.”

Thanos waved him over. “Come here,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Come—”

He repeated the motion, this time smacking his fingers into his palm in a dramatic beckon. Then he opened both arms wide and did it again. “Come on. Hug it out. Like bros.”

Namgyu exhaled sharply through his nose, then grudgingly scooted over until he was beside Thanos. Not close—just near enough. Thanos slung an arm over his shoulder like a broken canopy, pulling him into the loosest, most reluctant half-hug in recorded history.

There was no affection in it. Just contact. Just proximity. A brittle truce.

“Now,” Thanos began, voice suddenly calm, like a parody of some washed-up sitcom dad trying to deliver a life lesson through the fog of a hangover. “Here’s the thing about feelings—”

“Oh my God,” Namgyu whimpered again, somewhere between a sob.

“—they’re like spiders,” Thanos continued, ignoring him. “You think they’re gone, but really, they’re just hiding in the air vents. Waiting. Watching. Multiplying.”

Namgyu squinted sideways at him, lip curled in disgust.

“And… like, it’s just like… fuckin’ entropy , man. Like it’s just some madness and badness. Like, his name is bell-z, and he really sell-z, baby bottle makin’ lean, now the kids are screamin’, now bell-z is creamin’--”

“What the fuck— ” Namgyu said, each word slowly enunciated  “—are you saying to me right now?”  

Thanos paused. His mouth was slightly open, like the rest of the sentence had fallen out. He blinked. “I don’t know. I blacked out around ‘feelings are spiders’ and woke up halfway through an accidental SoundCloud confession.”  

Namgyu just stared, blinking slowly. “Were you rapping? Did you freestyle your inner turmoil?”  

 “I panicked again.”  

“You panicked into a mixtape.”  

“It was anxiety… tics.”

“That wasn’t a tic, bro. That was a track list. You opened your mind like GarageBand and hit ‘export.’”

Thanos groaned, thumping the back of his head against the wall. “I don’t know how to talk about this stuff. It’s not like there’s a manual.”

“Oh, please. There are entire Tumblrs dedicated to this exact crisis,” Namgyu said, waving a hand. “Step one: realize your feelings. Step two: catastrophize. Step three: make it weird for everyone. You're already at step four, mumble an apology while looking like an abandoned Saint Bernard.*”

“I’m not apologizing,” Thanos said stiffly.

“You literally just tried to hug me like a dad returning from war and called my feelings spiders.”

“I was being metaphorical.”

“You said they were in the vents.”

“Well, some of them are,” Thanos muttered, glancing at the ceiling like he half-expected an emotion to scuttle across it on eight legs. “And I’m giving you wisdom, so shut up and let me wisdom-ise you.”

“You also compared being gay to termites.”

“I didn’t say gay, you said gay, you’re gay—”

“You kissed me, ” Namgyu said, trying and failing not to smile.

“And you kissed back, so what does that make you? Gay squared?” Thanos giggled. His mouth twitched. A hint of something. It curdled too fast to tell. He pulled his arm back and let it fall against his thigh with a damp slap, blinking too long, like he was rebooting. He stared at it, and became aware of the dull, aching throb coursing through his arm. He also became aware of the red coating this said arm.

“I don’t remember what his last words were.” He blinked again, slower. “That’s supposed to be a thing, right? Someone dies, and you remember the last thing they said to you. Like it matters. Like it was profound. But I think he just asked me to stop singing along to the fucking Billy Idol.”

He laughed, then coughed, the sound brittle as glass under boots.

"Doo, doo, doo-- With a rebel yeeeelllll--" Thanos moved his head with it, like he was mocking a roar. "--she cried more, more, more,” he sang, voice cracking halfway through, then he groaned. "I fucking love that song. I wish I snuck an IPod in here instead of drugs. I've got that whole album saved."

He pressed his hand over the spot on his arm where the blood had started to crust, sticky against his skin. “I kept pretending we were in love because the alternative was admitting I stayed in that bunker because I was scared to be alone with myself.” His hands twitched. Again. Again. One after the other. “Isn’t that a bitch? Love by process of elimination.” He laughed again, and it wasn’t laughter. It was a dry retching noise in the shape of a joke.

Namgyu turned, slowly. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t speak. Not out of kindness. Just instinct. Like he was watching someone mid-seizure and didn’t know whether to step in or let it pass.

Thanos kept going. “He used to say I was full of fire. I think he meant it like a compliment. But I burned him out. Just like I burn everything out. I overheat. I melt the frame. I kiss and it’s a chemical spill.” He looked down at his hands like they were drenched in something he couldn’t scrub off. He turned his head, and suddenly he wasn’t looking at Namgyu. He was looking through him. Or maybe into him. Or maybe—past him. And when he spoke again, his voice had changed.

"Anyone close to me just dies, and it's weird. Not in a poetic way. But death loves me, you know? It's the only thing that does. That little lady got shot right through the head." He mocked a gunshot. "Pew, pew. You know at the beginning of the game, there was this pretty girl. Hot as fire, cold as ice. She didn't make it past the first game, and I never learnt her name."

His voice was flat, but the corners of his mouth twitched like a glitching animation, somewhere between smirking and scowling. “She didn’t make it past the first game, and I never learned her name. Just remember the gunshot. Short. Sharp. Like a bird hitting glass.”

Namgyu’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe loud. Like one wrong sound might shatter the whole moment.

“I think I’ve run out of things to care about,” Thanos said, softly now. “Like my brain’s trying to mourn but there’s no clean space left. All the shelves are full. All the files are corrupted. Grief’s just bouncing around in there like a pinball with nowhere to land.”

Namgyu blinked.

Once. Slowly. Like his body needed a moment to remember how.

“That,” he said finally, voice soft and sharp all at once, “was when we first met.”

Thanos tilted his head slightly, eyes squinting in confusion. Namgyu didn’t look at him. He was staring across the room, at a scorch mark nearly identical to the one Thanos had been fixated on minutes ago. But his eyes didn’t see the wall. They saw then.

“When you pushed into my line,” Namgyu said, voice flat. “Shoved like ten men forward without warning. Like, for no reason. They fell like dominoes. Used them like a shield, then watched them drop. One—two—three. Just like that. You didn’t even blink.”

Thanos opened his mouth, but Namgyu cut him off with a look. Just a flick of his gaze, and it shut him right up.

“That was your intro,” Namgyu said, bitterly. “Blood. A trail of it. You rolled into our trench like a storm with a terrible dye job, and I remember thinking, this asshole's gonna get me killed.”

Thanos exhaled a sharp breath, almost a laugh. “And you almost did kill me.”

Namgyu turned back to him. “You almost killed me first.”

“You tackled me,” Thanos said.

“You pushed me!"

“You-- Gay!

Thanos sighed.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was the kind of sound someone makes when they realize they’ve been holding their breath for too long, and letting it go doesn’t help.

His head fell back against the wall with a soft thunk. He didn’t look at Namgyu.

“I don’t know what I want from you anymore.”

Namgyu didn’t respond, but his head jolted to Thanos slightly. Thanos liked to imagine he could see Namgyu’s ears pricking up, like a rabbit does when it startles.

Thanos turned. "This whole… thing. It’s weird. You’re weird. And we’re gonna die soon anyways. So what’s the point, you know?”

It came out flat. 

“I thought I did,” he added, quieter now. “Like, I had this whole narrative in my head. You’re the annoying one. The loud one. The guy who clung to my coattails and stole my drugs. And I’m—” He trailed off, waving a vague hand in the air like it could finish the sentence for him. It didn’t. “—whatever the hell I am. I thought if I could keep you in this little box labeled 'leech', it’d be easier.”

Namgyu said nothing. Just watched him with a strange stillness. Like something in him was frozen mid-step.

“But then you went and got all real,” Thanos mumbled. “And stupid. And brave. And you looked at me like I wasn’t the worst thing in the room. Like I could be… something else. And now every time you look at me, I don’t know if I want to punch you or grab your face or run away and shoot you in the head. And then there's the kiss..."

He swallowed, eyes darting to Namgyu once, then back at the wall. Peeling paint. Condensation. All the same. His lips parted as if to say something, but then it got stuck in his throat— So it just came out: 

“It was... pretty hot.”

Namgyu blinked. Once. Twice. Slow. As if someone had suddenly turned gravity up and blinking now required calculation. The tension had changed temperature. Less explosive now, more low simmer. Less wildfire, more stovetop gas left running, quiet, invisible, waiting for a spark.

Namgyu finally looked at him, but only sideways. Only barely. “You want to do it again?”

Thanos made a face that wasn’t quite a smirk and wasn’t quite a wince. “What, shoot you in the head?”

Namgyu didn’t laugh, didn’t blink. He just watched. Then: he leaned in.

No warning. No questions. Just motion. He shifted closer with the calm of someone who already knew the outcome. Who’d rehearsed this in his head, maybe not today, maybe not consciously, but often enough that his body remembered the choreography even if his mouth never said the lines.

A gravitational fact. Like math. Like inevitability. He leaned in and Thanos forgot what time it was. Or maybe he never knew. Maybe time had always been a hoax.  Like falling toward Thanos’s mouth was the most natural thing in the world.  

And Thanos did what a corpse does when lightning hits the heart. He jolted. He flinched. He breathed, finally, like he'd forgotten how until now. 

Namgyu’s hand snatched his chin, the movement was too fast, the kind that left the body stunned before the mind could catch up, then yanked.

There was the first press of lips. Dry, cracked. The second, firmer. Wetter. And then a third that lingered with the kind of pressure you’d use to seal a wound. He forgot where his hands were. One was at Namgyu’s jaw, his thumb trembling, stupid. The other had found his hip, and then his shirt, and then underneath it.

Namgyu didn’t stop him. He pushed into it. Thanos tried to keep up, to follow Namgyu’s rhythm, but there wasn’t one. His hands moved. Neck. Collarbone. Shirt. They kept moving.

But he couldn't tell if he was moving or if the room was. The floor was gone. The air had hands and it was crawling down his spine like centipedes made of memory.

Thanos opened his eyes mid-kiss and the walls were breathing. Not metaphor. Not prose. Breathing. Sucking in and out like lungs made of mildew and concrete. There was a voice humming under his skin, not Namgyu's, not his own. Something from deeper. Something in the foundation. It said–

But Namgyu leaned in harder , as if sensing the shift. One hand gripping Thanos’s shirt, pulling, anchoring. Mouth demanding. Tongue insistent.  He tried to slow it down. Tried to pull back, tried to say something clever, something safe, but Namgyu didn’t let him. He caught Thanos by the chin and dragged him back into the kiss, like: no. Here. Now. With me.

He should’ve pulled back. He should’ve said stop . But Namgyu was relentless in that way that wasn’t pushy, just certain. He kissed like it was the only language he knew, and Thanos had spent his whole life pretending his tongue was tied. 

Now it wasn't. Now it was doing things, slipping past teeth, curling into Namgyu’s mouth, itching to go lower.

Don’t know where his hands are. No, they’re on him. They’re on him. Namgyu made a noise—half sigh, half growl—and the vibration of it through Thanos’s teeth nearly undid him. He tried to slow it down, kiss softer, smaller, like rationing oxygen. Namgyu wasn’t interested in oxygen. He chased it, deepened it, sucked it straight from Thanos’s lungs.

Styrofoam in a furnace. You melt. You release toxins. You don’t hold shape.

Thanos bit down. Not hard. 

Namgyu didn’t pull away. He made another sound.  Then he pulled back just barely. Just enough to say, “You always talk this much when you’re kissing someone?”

Voice breathy and low. Thanos stuttered, but then Namgyu kissed him again. No patience this time. No gaps between contact. There was too much tongue. There was never enough. Their teeth clicked once—Thanos’s fault—and he muttered something like sorry against Namgyu’s mouth, but it came out as a grunt, half-swallowed.

Thanos’s brain did something. A strobe effect. A wolf chewing its own leg off. That Billy Idol lyric stuck in his head like a splinter. The way Lucio’s mouth tasted sweeter. A house burning with all the lights still on.

He opened his eyes mid-kiss. Saw Namgyu’s lashes fluttering, dark as oil slicks.

Namgyu slid to the ground, not breaking the kiss, almost guiding Thanos atop of him. Their bodies shift, a slow collapse. Namgyu’s back hits the floor, and Thanos follows, knees bracketing Namgyu’s hips, hands still lost somewhere between fabric and skin. The kiss doesn’t falter, it deepens. Thanos made a noise. Just a tiny one. Barely a whimper. 

"The noises you make," Namgyu murmured into his mouth. "Drive me insane."

Namgyu’s hands are everywhere now. One slides up Thanos’s back, fingers digging into bones, pulling him closer until their chests press tight, hearts knocking against each other through bone. The other hand tangles in Thanos’s hair, yanking him back whenever he drifts. Thanos tries to keep his weight off, to hover, to not crush, but Namgyu arches up, hips rolling, and Thanos’s breath catches, sharp, like swallowing glass.

The walls are still breathing. Thanos feels it in his ribs, a pulse that isn’t his own. That voice hums louder now, not words, just a current, electric and ancient, coiling in the marrow of the room. It’s not Namgyu’s voice. It’s not the kiss. It’s something that lives in the cracks of the concrete, in the damp rot of the foundation, and it’s watching.

Namgyu doesn’t seem to hear it. Or if he does, he doesn’t care. His mouth moves to Thanos’s jaw, then his throat, teeth grazing just enough to make Thanos hiss. “Stop thinking,” Namgyu murmurs against his skin, voice low, rough, like he’s scraped it raw. “You’re loud even when you’re quiet.”

Thanos wants to laugh, wants to say something sharp, but all that comes out is a shudder. His hands find Namgyu’s shoulders, gripping hard, anchoring himself as Namgyu’s tongue traces the edge of his collarbone. Namgyu’s shirt is half-off now, bunched up around his chest, and Thanos’s fingers drag across the exposed skin, tracing scars he didn’t know were there. Namgyu doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. He just watches Thanos through half-lidded eyes, lips parted, breath uneven. 

Thanos leans down, kisses Namgyu again, slower this time. A purposeful boundary. But Namgyu doesn’t let it stay slow. He surges up, flips them with a strength Thanos didn’t expect, and suddenly Thanos is the one on his back, staring up at Namgyu’s face, shadowed and sharp in the dim light. The floor is cold, hard, but Namgyu’s weight is heavier, warmer, pinning him in place.

The voice in the foundation hums again, louder, and for a moment, Thanos swears he sees something move in the corner of the room. Not a shadow. Not a trick of the light. Something with too many edges, too many teeth. But Namgyu makes a sound, a groan, and Thanos freezes, breath catching between them.

“Let me,” Namgyu ordered, barely a mumble, the word’s vibration humming between them. His hand drifts down Thanos’s back, and slowly, he begins to buck up.

Thanos’s breath stutters, stomach flipping like his body doesn’t know what to do with this progression. He pulled back enough to half laugh, as if laughing at the absurdity of the situation, “Namgyu–” He mumbled, but was cut off. “Slow dow–” He was pulled forward again. Skin on skin. Insistent. “Nam gyu . Plea–”

“Please what?” Namgyu breathed out, hands trailing down Thanos’s stomach, the sensitive area flattening. Thanos blinked rapidly, and a sudden, involuntary laugh escaped him.  He tried to speak, but another laugh came out, grin splitting his cheeks.

The laughter broke the rhythm, a sound that ricocheted off the breathing walls. It wasn’t joy, wasn’t humor—it was a circuit overloading. His hands pushed against Namgyu’s chest, not hard, but enough to create a sliver of space. His breath came in gasps, each one tangled with another chuckle he couldn’t control.

Namgyu froze, his hands stilling on Thanos’s hips, his eyes narrowing. “What’s so funny?” he asked, like he was trying to cut through the haze. His grip loosened, but he didn’t pull away entirely.

Thanos shook his head, trying to swallow the laughter, but it kept spilling out, raw and unsteady. “It’s not—” He gasped, pressing a hand to his mouth, as if he could shove the sound back in. “It’s not you. It’s—” His eyes flicked to the corner of the room, where the thing with too many edges had flickered moments ago. “I–”

But he wasn’t given the opportunity to finish. With a frustrated growl, Namgyu yanked him forward again, lips clashing again, teeth clacking, laughter humming between them. 

“Want me to make you feel good?” Namgyu asks, and Thanos nods, a jerky movement accompanied by a faint whimper. “Without even a few tricks first?” Thanos could hear the smile in his voice. “What would you do if I made you perform? Sit? Roll over? Play dead?”

A flicker of blonde hair in the corner of his vision. “Which one would you have me do first?” Thanos giggled. Namgyu finally caught the humour, giggling back into his mouth, but it wasn’t kind.

Then the rhythm began. Slow. Namgyu’s hand crawled up Thanos’s back, pushing his hip down, against. Thanos’s movements stuttered, but didn’t stop, and Namgyu repeated: “Let me.” But it was a less patient. More of an order, like finally yanking the collar.

A pit of shame curled in Thanos’s stomach, and his throat suddenly felt tight.

Namgyu began to rut up once more. Smooth, wave like motions. Thanos gasped, half a noise, swallowed by a mouth, moving into it without even thinking. As if as a reward as if for obedience, for silence, Namgyu’s hand slid lower, fingers dragging down the length of Thanos’s stomach, a motion so steady it felt rehearsed. Practiced. Like he’d done it a hundred times in a hundred other rooms that breathed.

Thanos arched, unthinking, meeting each roll with one of his own. The voice in the concrete kept humming, rising now like a chorus just below audible. Almost a song, but with no melody. Just feeling. Raw and red and stretching.

“There you go,” he whispered, barely audible, his breath hot against Thanos’s ear. “There’s the part of you that doesn’t lie.”

Thanos swallowed, felt the tightness in his throat shift, not disappear, just...rearrange. He gripped Namgyu’s sides harder, thumbs pressing into bone like he needed to hold on to something solid before the floor decided to vanish again.

“So this is how I get you to shut up,” Namgyu said, voice ragged. “If I’d have known, I’d have done it days ago.”

Thanos blinked, saw the movement again—too fast, too wrong—in the room’s periphery, but it didn’t stop him. His voice scraped out, thick with something like desperation: “I—” He faltered. “I want—”

And that’s when it happened.

More yelling. A clatter down the hall, distant, but loud enough to make both of them flinch like feral animals caught in a spotlight.

Thanos pulled back, lips wet, blinking like he’d just surfaced from underwater. Namgyu’s hands stayed on him for half a second longer before he let go, slow, reluctant, eyes still burning with whatever was left of that kiss.

Then—

Thanos blinked once. Twice. His chest heaved.

And then he yelled, too loud, too sudden:

“--you to get the fuck off me!” Voice cracking, and then he’s scrambling backwards, feet against concrete. His chest rose and fall rapidly. “Fuckin– Christ!” He skidded to his feet, tripping over himself, arms windmilling against air. Breathe like a man that had just crawled out of the grave.

Namgyu blinked, then recoiled, face screwing up like Thanos had just hurled a raw fish at him. “What the fuck does that mean?!”

“You’re leaving, why are we—doing gay shit—what was that ? Why were you gaying me from the bottom?” Thanos pointed wildly. “You climbed on me! That was a move ! That was a dominant posture ! That’s some alpha-bottom mindfuckery , bro!”

Namgyu’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again, as if trying to reboot into a language where this made sense. “You— you fucking laughed in my mouth l-like that freaky fucking Joker guy!”

“I was panicking!”

“You consented!”

“Yeah, and you dominated me in response! That wasn’t a kiss, that was, you came in like Pacino in heat! You ever seen a mirror?! I just got gayed into submission! That was a power play. That was psychological warfare. You out-gayed me. ”

Namgyu took a deep breath, clapped once, and said: “ What the fuck is wrong with you?! ”

“I don’t–”

“Do you want a trophy?” Namgyu snapped. “You want me to write you a note that says ‘most repressed’ so you can pin it to your trauma wall next to your fucking Billy Idol regrets?! ” He pointed an accusatory finger at Thanos’s tented boxers, then at his own. “We both have fucking ‘ ambition’ , so can we please , I beg of you, keep doing whatever that was?”

Then he froze.

Because he heard it too.

More gunshots. Closer this time. Screaming. Someone crying so hard it sounded like they were choking. Heavy boots slamming against the stairwell two floors up, coming fast.

Thanos’s mouth stayed open, mid-rant. His hand still pointed. But the words were gone. Eaten by the noise. Eclipsed by the world.

Another shot. Closer still.

Namgyu’s eyes flicked to the corridor behind Thanos, toward the exit. And for the first time in the last ten minutes, Thanos turned his head.

The hallway beneath it stretched long and empty, littered with shell casings and the silence of a moment that hadn’t quite exploded yet.

He stared.

Another yell. Another shot. Closer now. The lights overhead flickered hard enough to buzz. A shadow darted across the far end of the hallway. Not close yet, but coming.

Thanos turned back to Namgyu.

No words. No snark. Just a look.

Namgyu didn’t move. He stood frozen, bruised and furious and still half-hard. But his jaw clenched. His fists balled.

The gunshots weren’t pausing.

“A man can’t even get off anymore.” Thanos mumbled.

And–

He started walking.

His boots slapped against the concrete.

Namgyu’s breath caught in his throat. For a second he just stood there, blinking. Then—

He walked too.

Behind them, the corridor shook with the echo of another scream.

The walking turned into a jog.

The jog turned into a sprint.  

Run. Just run. Don’t look back. Don’t look at Namgyu. If Thanos looks at him, he’ll remember the heat in his stomach. The ache in his groin. What he really said, not what the walls echoed back at Thanos. Not what the biohazard signs whispered. Not what the corpses told him with their stuttering wings.

Left foot, right foot. Keep going. His lungs are burning but it’s good—it means he’s still here. It means he’s still real. That he’s making the right decision. That this isn’t wrong. That he shouldn’t turn back around. You can’t run in dreams. You can’t feel your goddamn organs disassembling one stitch at a time in a dream.

The blood from his arm drips.

Maybe Namgyu’s not even here. Thanos should look at him—just a glance—to be sure he’s really still beside him. But if he looks, and Namgyu’s not there—

No.

No no no no.

He’s still here. Thanos hears the slap of his footfalls sync with his. It’s funny. They’ve been running forever, since that bathroom, since that cross, since that mirror that didn’t show him. Thanos thinks he left something back there. His hands are still in the sink, washing blood that wasn’t there. His hands still tangled in Namgyu’s shirt.

Keep running.

Namgyu’s laughing now. That manic laugh. 

Is he running with him? Thanos can't tell anymore. They finish each other’s sentences, but now Thanos starts speaking and Namgyu’s already at the end, whispering the punchline in a language Thanos never learned.

Don’t slow down.

His heart’s doing Morse code in his chest. S.O.S. Maybe he should scream. Just the sound of breath, too loud in their ears, and footsteps slamming the floor, echoing through the corridor like warning shots. 

“Do you— do you ever shut the fuck up? ” Namgyu huffed between breaths, half-laughing, half-choking.

Thanos blinked, stuttered. “I–” He barked out something like a laugh, sharp and cracked. “I didn’t know I was speaking! Why? You falling in love with the sound of my pain, Romeo?”

“More like your asthmatic wheeze,” Namgyu shot back. “You sound like a dying accordion when you moan!”

“I’m bleeding! ” Thanos yelled, leaping over a fallen beam, boots screeching on the concrete. “My soul’s trying to leave me one drop at a time and you’re doing stand-up?!”

“Shut up and zigzag, you lurching fuck!” Namgyu hissed, grabbing his arm and yanking him left, just as another shot rang out, close enough to whistle . “You ever read a book? You don’t run in a straight line!”

“I’m emotionally constipated and statistically unlucky! No, I don’t read books!”

“I kissed you , you dramatic soap opera villain ! You started this. You opened the door to gay regret in a war zone!”

Then—Thanos barked, between gasps, “We just had a moment and now we’re running for our lives—again—because of course we are!”

Namgyu was ahead by a step. He didn’t look back, just shouted over his shoulder, “You’re the one who screamed post-kiss like a goddamn televangelist discovering porn.”

“You mounted me!”

“You consented !”

“I didn’t know it’d be the gay boss fight finale! Dry humping and murder!” Thanos cackled, yelling through the air, then flinging his arms out. “I feel like Flynn Ryder! W-What’s that thing he says? ‘Horse’!”

“Oh I intend to be the horse!”

“What?”

Namgyu howled as he turned a corner, barely missing a rusted pipe jutting from the wall. “ I SAID , I intend to be the horse, bitch!”

“What the hell does that mean?!” Thanos wheezed, nearly tripping on his own feet as he followed, blood now painting a slick path behind them. “Are you trying to intimidate me sexually or logistically ?!”

Namgyu glanced back once, eyes wild, teeth bared in something that looked like a grin and a grimace fighting for control. “Yuh-huh!”

“ Unacceptable answer! ”

The hallway bent again, left, this time. A single flickering emergency light blinked above the next corner like it was trying to signal them in Morse. Thanos almost expected it to spell out RUN, BITCH, RUN .

Another shot. Closer.

Namgyu slammed shoulder-first through the next door, dragging Thanos behind him. It screeched open and slammed against the wall like a warning bell. Inside, metal stairs. Down. They took them two at a time. Sometimes three. Thanos’s ankle rolled once—Namgyu caught him mid-fall, hauled him upright like luggage, didn’t break stride.

“We’re going down?” Thanos gasped.

“You wanna go up ?!” Namgyu shouted. “To the screaming and the death?!”

“Don’t yell at me like I’m the cruise director on the Titanic! I’m bleeding! A-And erect!”

“You’re always bleeding! And I’m erec t too!”

“That’s ambition , Namgyu!”

“That’s a personality defect! ”

Another gunshot, this one cracking the metal above their heads. Sparks. Screams. They reached the bottom of the hall, an emergency door with a glowing green exit sign above it. Namgyu threw his weight into the bar. It didn’t budge.

“Don’t you dare tell me this is locked,” Thanos breathed. Namgyu stared at the door like it had insulted his mother. Then he headbutted it.

“Jesus—!?”

The door shuddered. He pulled back, groaned, then said through clenched teeth, “It’s rusted. Or jammed. Or hates us. ”

Thanos stepped forward, clutching his arm. “Step aside. Let me try—”

A gunshot whizzed by his ear.

Namgyu grabbed the wall to swing around the corner, nearly skidding out. Thanos followed, muttering curses and something about how this was all proof the universe was homophobic and dramatic. 

They hit another junction, two directions. Namgyu paused, just long enough to yell “Left!” and they darted again. The lights above them buzzed like angry hornets. Every shadow looked like a threat. Thanos stumbled on the turn, catching himself on the wall with his bad arm, and hissed through his teeth. He clutched it instinctively, breath catching, the adrenaline burning through his veins starting to turn acidic.

Thanos hesitated.

Just for a second.

His boot hit the floor with one last pounding step, and then he slowed. Not stopped, not quite, but the momentum faltered. Namgyu didn’t notice at first. He kept going, turned another corner, breath ragged, body running on pain and sheer adrenaline.

But when the space beside him stayed empty, he skidded to a halt, breath punching out of him.

“Thanos?” he called.

Silence.

Namgyu spun around.

Thanos stood five paces back in the corridor, arms limp at his sides, chest heaving. He looked cracked. That was the word for it. Like a porcelain mask finally hairlined at the edges. Panic flickered in his good eye. Real panic. Not the manic kind he weaponized like a joke. Not sarcasm. Not irony. 

“You’re really going?” he asked. “You’re just gonna go?”

Namgyu blinked, stunned. “We’re literally— in the process —of going. I am running for my life. You were just next to me . Why are you standing there?”

Thanos didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at his hands like they’d betrayed him, like they weren’t part of him anymore. His fingers twitched, then curled into fists, then opened again.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” he said. “I don’t—I don’t know how to go. I don’t know how to be after this.”

Namgyu took one slow step back toward him, then another. His brows drew together.

“Do you think I do?”

Thanos’s jaw worked. “I just—if we leave, that’s it. No final scene. No exit wound. No... fucking curtain call. Just running. Just surviving. Like that’s enough.”

His voice cracked on the word enough .

“I don't know how to just survive , Namgyu. That was never part of the plan. I don't have a life after this. This was the whole thing.” He kept talking. Panic creeping in now. “You’re faster, you’re younger, you’re—hotter, don’t get smug—but don’t leave me . You can’t leave me. I—I know I’m fucked in the head and I say weird shit when I’m scared and also maybe when I’m not scared, but don’t walk away. I need—I can’t—”

Namgyu was in front of him now. He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked. Looked hard enough to make Thanos flinch. Then, quick and sharp and not nearly as forceful as the first time, Namgyu grabbed his face and kissed him.

It was fast. Brutal. Almost dismissive.

Then Namgyu pulled back, breathing against Thanos’s mouth.

“Calm down,” he said. “Calm down .”

Thanos blinked at him. Mouth parted. Hands half-lifted like he didn’t know what to do with them anymore.

Namgyu’s voice dropped, low and fierce:  

“ We do. We have a life after this. You can and you will . If you still want to die after we’re done? I’ll kill you myself. I’ll hand you the gun. Hell, I’ll even kiss you goodbye if that’s your kink. But we can’t win this. Not like this. Your arm’s fucked. You’re half in shock. And I need you to get out.”

A pause. A tremor passed through both of them, neither sure if it was fear, or the building, or the blood still pounding in their ears.

Thanos stared at him, lips parted. Eyes wide.

Namgyu stepped closer, forehead nearly touching Thanos’s now.

“We. Can’t. Win. This. We can’t. Look at your arm. You’re bleeding like a faucet. We need you out. Alive. Even if it’s just barely. Even if you don’t want it.”

Thanos looked down, like he’d forgotten the wound was there. Blood soaked his sleeve, dark and sticky.

“I don’t know how to be alive,” he whispered.

“You think I do? Then learn . With me. Or shut up and die. But stop wasting time in this fucking hallway.”

Another yell behind them. Much closer. A gunshot snapped off concrete, somewhere too near.

Namgyu pulled Thanos forward by the collar.

“Move.”

Thanos stumbled after him. They rounded another corner.

The corridor twisted tighter, narrowing, darker now. More pipes overhead, the scent of rot curling out of the walls. The air felt wet, like they were running inside a lung. Lights flickered above, then failed entirely. They were running blind, breath scraping their throats raw.

And then—

A door. Rusted, half-open, marked with a painted biohazard sign long smeared into a vague threat. Namgyu shouldered it open. It groaned like something waking up. Inside was a cold room. Metal counters. A long drain in the floor. The stink hit them like a fist, coppery and sweet, thick and gag-worthy. One of the overhead lights still worked, flickering weakly over a body on the table.

It was missing its stomach.

The ribcage had been opened with something crude, and the organs laid out beside it like someone had started cataloguing them and lost interest halfway through.

Namgyu’s eyes widened, lips pulling into a half grin as he stumbled back. “Woah-ho-ho!” He cackled, brows high to his forehead, sharing a little look with Thanos. “Like that episode of Rick and Morty with the spagh etti– This the organ room Se-mi was talking about?”

Thanos pursed his lips, head rotating smoothly around the room, and when he realised his neck couldn’t do a three sixty, he flipped his body where his feet had been, in one fluid pivot. “Oh-ho. Oh my feathered friends. No, no, no,” he sang under his breath. “This is not the organ room Se-mi was talking about. This is her room. The one she whispered about before you–” He mocked a gunfire. “-- popped her in the head.. Ohh. Ohhh. You can taste the misdiagnosed schizophrenia in the air.”

Namgyu poked the hollowed out cave that was once a stomach. It made a squelching noise when he prodded at it. “Jesus.”

“No,” Thanos whispered. “ But he was here. ”

Namgyu didn’t reply. He just glanced to the door at the far side of the room. Big. Reinforced. Chained from the inside. Barred. He cursed under his breath and jogged to it, fingers skating across rusted metal and the heavy mechanism. Yanked. Pushed. Nothing. Deadlock. The kind that had to be opened from the other side. He pressed his ear to it. Nothing. Not even breath. Just cold.

“Well,” he said, loud enough to carry. “That’s concerning."

Thanos tilted his head like an owl, neck twitching at a sharp angle. “Door won’t budge?”

“Nope.”

“So we’re trapped.”

Namgyu turned, lips curled into a grin. “No. We’re going back up.”

Thanos made a soft hmm noise. “Back through the staircase.”

Namgyu nodded. “Yes.”

“Where the players are.”

“Correct.”

“And the enforcers.”

“Yup.”

“And the one that pushed you into the line of fire?”

“She’s dead but yes.”

Thanos grinned. “Oh good. I get to die with an erection after all.”

Namgyu moved fast. One hand on Thanos’s chest, pushing him gently—then harder—back toward the hallway. “You’re not dying. Stop saying that.”

“You can’t stop me. I’m manifesting.” Thanos turned as he walked, hands spread, eyes wide. “The universe hears me. I am affirming my outcome. ”

“You’re affirming that I’ll knock you out with a pipe and drag you by your ass to safety if you keep up this freak shit.”

“Oh, Daddy. ”

“Son?”

Thanos’s mouth opened and closed, then he nodded. “Okay, I’m not not into that.”

Namgyu barked out a sharp laugh—ugly, dry, half-strangled. He shoved Thanos again, harder this time, knocking him off-balance so he stumbled back through the doorframe into the corridor’s stale, humming dark.

Namgyu leaned in close, breath ghosting Thanos’s cheek. His grin stuck around, but it twitched. He looked down, then up, then looked conflicted.

"I really want..." He sighed. Then groaned. Pained. "If we weren't running for our lives I'd suck your dick."

That familiar heat twitched in his stomach again. Thanos made a high, humming sound in the back of his throat. Involuntary, like a genuine anxiety tic. He blinked rapidly. "Good... to know."

Namgyu clapped a hand on Thanos’s shoulder. Quick. Awkward. “Motivation."

Thanos’s mouth twitched, corners jerking up too wide, too sudden. His eyes glittered, sharp and unfocused all at once. “Oh break me, break me, break me my spawn—” he sang in a cartoon lilt, teeth clacking together on the last syllable like he wanted to bite it right out of the air.

Namgyu grabbed Thanos by the collar again, dragged him nose to nose. His other hand flicked up, one finger tapping sharp against Thanos’s temple.

“You want to die?” Namgyu asked, voice soft like a lullaby that didn’t belong in any nursery. “Get in line. But not here. Not now. Not until you’ve tasted how ugly living is first.”

Thanos’s laugh cracked out of him, half-scream, half-giggle—too loud for the narrow hall. He pressed a palm to Namgyu’s chest, pushed, patted twice like they were in on some secret joke only the rats and the corpses understood.

Then—he went pliant. Sudden. As if every joint loosened at once. His head lolled to the side, hair brushing Namgyu’s cheek. He hummed under his breath. Tuneless. Off-key.

“Lead the way, prophet of doom,” he murmured, eyes blown wide and unblinking. “Daddy says run. So the boy runs.”

Namgyu’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. He let go of Thanos’s collar, turned on his heel, and took off down the corridor again, back the way they’d come. Thanos followed instantly, no hesitation, steps skittering sideways like a spider that didn’t quite know how to walk straight.

Behind them, the biohazard door creaked back into place. Somewhere inside, something dripped, soft, steady. Almost like breathing. They ran, bodies half-merged with shadow, footsteps pounding.

Far above, the echo of gunfire cracked again—closer now.

Namgyu didn’t look back. His grin carved deeper into his face. Beside him, Thanos started to hum again, soft, tuneless, words bubbling out between breaths like static on a dying radio:

“Horse, horse, horse, oh holy horse, take me to the slaughter—”

They burst into the stairwell.

It was exactly as they’d left it—almost. The air smelled worse now, if that was possible. The metallic sting of blood had thickened, layered with the wet stink of death. Every landing told a story in red: limbs akimbo, mouths open in silent screams, eyes either torn out or staring blankly at the flickering ceiling lights. 

And there were bodies.

Every landing.

Crumped like broken dolls. Some slumped over railings, others strewn across the floor like they'd been dropped mid-run. Blood painted the walls in arcs. Bright red, brown-black, sticky and fresh and everything in between. A rainbow of carnage. 

Namgyu paused on the first landing. His eyes danced over the bodies.

“I love stairs,” Namgyu said with soft reverence.

Thanos kicked a finger off the step. “I once made love on a staircase. It ended with a femur fracture and two counts of public indecency. Not mine.”

Namgyu leapt the first two steps, boots thudding against the cracked tile, and motioned for Thanos without looking back. “Guns,” he said. Just that. Like the word was a whole sentence. Thanos peeled off toward the nearest corpse. The submachine gun still hung from their shoulder. He yanked it free, checked the mag, and passed the second he scavenged to Namgyu, who’d already stooped over another dead body like he was looting candy off a pinata.

“Do I get to name her?” Namgyu asked, staring down at a woman with half her face gone, the remaining half frozen in some ugly surprise.

“You can name it whatever you want,” Thanos said, eyes scanning upward. The next floor up echoed with footsteps.

Enforcers.

“Ten o'clock,” he muttered.

“Wait,” Namgyu squinted. “That’s a direction, not a—”

Gunfire tore down the stairwell.

They dropped low in tandem, instincts sharp, already returning fire. Muzzle flares split the dark, red and white sparks lighting their faces in grotesque flashes. Namgyu moved like water—bent, flowed, snapped off a shot that hit something soft and wet. A scream choked out above them.

Thanos fired wild, teeth bared, the kickback nearly knocking him off-balance. “This is just like laser tag,” he said. “If laser tag ended in permanent spinal trauma and God’s disapproval!”

Namgyu ducked behind a pillar, eyes gleaming. “I know right! Like this one time I was at this underground arcade in Busan, right?” He shouted over the barrage. “And this kid–this literal fetus with a Nerf gun modded to hell–starts trash-talking me in English , calling me ‘grandpa’ and ‘washed’—”

“-- the audacity!”

“-- right ? So I challenged him to a 1v1, obviously, and when I lost, I pulled the fire alarm and kicked the shit out of him!”

Gunfire shredded the stairwell rail beside him, splinters and sparks flying. They surged upward—one floor, two—boots slipping on blood, on glass, on a detached hand someone had left like a calling card. An enforcer leapt from a landing above, shouting something guttural and raw, weapon raised.

Namgyu shot him mid-air. Twice.

The body crumpled down the center of the stairwell, hitting metal and bone and railings with a series of crunches that felt personal.

“Two more up top!” Thanos yelled, wheezing. “They’ve got vests!”

“Then shoot their fucking teeth in!” Namgyu barked back.

The firefight escalated. Bullets sparking off concrete, screams swallowed by the echo chamber of the stairwell. Thanos was bleeding again—somewhere—but he didn’t seem to notice. His laughter climbed higher the worse it got, like a kettle reaching its final whistle. Namgyu vaulted the next step, threw a shoulder into a door halfway open, and kicked it hard enough to slam shut behind them. The enforcers would be on them in seconds. They couldn’t stay.

They moved again. Another flight. Another corpse. This one still warm. Namgyu didn’t hesitate—he grabbed the spare clip off their vest and slid it into his pocket.

“Stairs,” Namgyu muttered, voice sing-song, “are the spine of the universe. Did you know that? Up, down, round and round, like DNA, like fate, like a bad trip at a carnival.” He spun his gun in one hand, a clumsy twirl that nearly sent it clattering down the steps. “Oops.”

 Thanos, breath coming in wet gulps, dragged himself up behind, gun held out like it was whispering secrets to his palm. Cheeks flushed, hair matted, blood drying along his jaw. He turned to Namgyu, eyes lit up like the devil had gifted him insight.

“Do you think if we stack enough corpses, we could reach heaven?” he asked.

Namgyu barked out a breathless laugh. “Only if we start with ours.”

“Ohhh. Sexy. Biblical. I like it.” 

Namgyu fired two clean shots through the crack in the next door. Someone screamed. Metal clattered. He let his head loll back, teeth bared. “I’m focused. I’ve never been more focused. My third eye is gaping.”

Thanos didn’t respond. He was already climbing again, steps two at a time now. His foot skidded in something wet and he didn’t flinch. Namgyu followed, slipping once and catching himself on the rail with a snarl that sounded more wolf than human.

Another enforcer appeared two floors up. Lean, fast. Namgyu saw the shape, the motion—flicked his gun up, squeezed. Missed. The enforcer dropped to one knee and fired. The bullet screamed past, clipped Thanos’s shoulder.

Thanos didn’t even flinch. He just giggled. “Tag! I’m it!”

Namgyu dropped to one knee, took a breath, and aimed again. Bang. Bang. Two shots. The enforcer’s body flopped backward, head lolling loose from a neck that was no longer a neck.

“I wanna paint with that,” Namgyu whispered, voice awed.

Thanos turned, wide-eyed. “You need to elaborate.”

“I need paint,” Namgyu said, skipping the last two steps. He landed next to a corpse and yanked a bootknife from its leg with a flourish. “You think this guy’s name was Darren? He looks like a Darren. All American and shit.”

“Stop naming the bodies.”

“I’m giving them closure.”

“You’re giving me a hard on.”

A sudden explosion rattled the stairwell above. Not close—but not far either. A shockwave rolled down the concrete like thunder down a pipe. Dust rained. A warning. The building was tired, angry.

“Don’t collapse on us yet,” Namgyu muttered, slapping a hand against the wall like it might listen.

Thanos kissed the wall. “Please collapse after we ascend. Be considerate.” They moved again, up another floor, lungs burning. The scent up here was worse, riper. Flies buzzed, fat and drunk on violence. A corpse twitched as they passed, still reacting to death like it didn’t get the memo.

Namgyu didn’t slow. “You ready for this?”

“Define ‘ready’ in terms of emotional maturity or kinetic bloodlust?”

“Both.”

“Yes.”

They rounded another landing. Two enforcers, waiting, guns up, vests glinting.

Thanos grinned. “It’s meeee!”

Namgyu didn’t speak. He just threw a flashbang from his pocket.

It exploded. Light and thunder. Screams. Confusion. Namgyu rushed in, ducked under a shot, kicked one enforcer square in the knee—heard the pop—and emptied his gun into the other’s chest. Thanos followed, spinning like a ballerina from hell, blade in one hand, gun in the other, slashing wild across one face and shooting the other in the armpit like he was finding hidden weak points for sport.

Blood hit the walls again. Fresh now. Still hot.

They were breathing hard, side by side, guns empty.

Namgyu looked at him, panting. “How many floors left?”

Thanos tilted his head, squinting upward. “About five. Maybe four and a half if we jump really hard.”

Namgyu groaned.

Thanos reached over and patted his shoulder. “Think of the cardio.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I never help. I participate.”

Namgyu reloaded, flicked the safety off, and stepped over the twitching corpses like they were fallen leaves in autumn.

Thanos came behind him, humming again, soft and discordant.

“…horse, horse, horse, take me to the butcher, kiss me on the neck while I lie on the stretcher…”

“...whore, whore, whore, take me to the ledger, kick me in the dick while I move across the pitcher…” Namgyu finished for him.

Thanos froze, turned slowly. Namgyu blinked.

“You tryna’ steal my tunes, son?” Thanos asked slowly, hand to his chest like he’d been betrayed in an opera.

Namgyu shrugged. “I improved them. Your rhymes were running on fumes.”

“You were rhyming ledger with pitcher , fam. Come on.” Thanos scoffed, indignant. “You wouldn’t know rhythm if it bit your ass to a beat.”

“I know enough to know your bars got scoliosis. They’re bent , bro.”

“I spit bars under duress, I got rhythm and regret. Can’t stop me from rhyming, got perfect timing.”  Thanos stepped back, arms wide, like a street prophet about to baptize the world. “Bars from the basement, trauma in my placement. Flow so raw, make Freud need a replacement.”

Namgyu held up a hand. “You sound like a SoundCloud account that never made it past puberty.”

“I’m innovating ,” Thanos shot back. “I rap in denial. I'm a lyrical pharaoh in emotional exile.”

“You’re a musical mistake.”

“I’m a one-man mixtape. A psychological escape. I got trauma on vinyl and guilt on cassette.”

Namgyu raised an eyebrow. “You rhymed cassette with… guilt?”

“Slant rhyme, bitch!”

Before Namgyu could retort—before Thanos could drop another tragedy-laced bar—there was a new noise. More footsteps. Not frantic. Not running. Methodical. Measured. Three shadows stretched long across the stairwell above them. Three enforcers. Silent. Coordinated.

Namgyu barely had time to mutter, “Triple threat,” before the shooting started. Muzzle flashes lit the upper landing in bursts—white, red, white again—like camera flashes at a funeral. Bullets raked the steps. Concrete chipped. Rebar groaned.

Namgyu and Thanos dove sideways, back against the wall. A round sparked off Namgyu’s shoulder plate. He grunted, eyes wild, gun swinging up. He fired, tight, controlled, three bursts. One enforcer staggered, hit in the thigh, but didn’t drop.

Thanos took the other side, firing upward, screaming something that sounded like “ART SCHOOL REJECTION LETTER”

Namgyu surged forward, rolled behind a half-toppled railing, popped up and shot the staggered enforcer again. This time the round found neck. Blood geysered. A brief, sharp gurgle. Then silence from him.

“Two left!” he barked.

They were firing again. Last clip. Last rounds. One hit. Two. He caught the last enforcer low in the gut, but not enough to stop the retaliatory burst.

Thanos dropped, rolled. Gun jammed. He slammed it on the ground, cleared it, fired once more—

Click.

Dry.

He stood. Slowly. Face blank. Just breathing.

Namgyu stood too. His own gun now just dead weight. Blood smeared one side of his temple. No clue when that happened.

The last enforcer gurgled, tried to raise his weapon. Namgyu walked over, wrenched it out of his grip with the calmness of someone turning off a bedside alarm. He didn’t even use it. Just kicked him once in the face, hard. Skull cracked. The sound was final.

Then: stillness.

Smoke.

Drip.

Click.

Nothing left to shoot.

Namgyu let his empty weapon stay at his side, not tossing them just yet. Thanos did the same. Neither spoke as they started up again. Feet dragging. Blood squelching beneath boots. Something had changed. The adrenaline had curdled. The high was gone.

Four more floors.

They didn’t speak for the first two. Then—somewhere above them—a sound. Soft. Not the scream of violence. Not the rasp of pain. Sobbing. Thin. Human. Fragile in a way nothing in this place had been.

Both froze.

Thanos turned his head slowly. “You hear that?” he whispered.

Namgyu jutted his lower lip out. “Aw, sounds like someone's being a bitch.” He giggled, then looked up, the sterile light catching his profile. His voice raised, ricocheting off the walls. “Hey, whoever’s crying up there–suck it the fuck up! You’re ruining our moment!”

The sobbing hiccuped, sharp and panicked, echoing like it had nowhere else to go.

Thanos cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting up the stairwell like he was announcing prom king results. “You want a tissue, princess? Or should I come up there and cry with you in harmony—real soprano shit!”

Namgyu added, “Maybe if you cry loud enough, your dead friends will come back and help!” He laughed, high and off-kitler, and elbowed Thanos in the ribs. “Bet they miss your little whine.”

“Oh! Maybe it's a musical performance,” Thanos cooed, hands fluttering at his chest. “You think we should clap? Or boo? Or both?”

“I vote we boo. Real dramatic. Theater kid trauma style.” Namgyu sucked in a huge breath and shouted: “BOOOOO. GET OFF THE STAAGEE!”

Thanos broke down laughing, bent double, nearly toppling over a corpse-strewn step. “Nah, fam, nah, stop–”

“Dude,” Namgyu wheezed between giggles. “They’re definitely up there regretting every decision they ever made.” He paused to catch his breath, leaning against the rail, smearing blood he didn’t notice across the metal. Then, quieter: “You think it’s one of the red suits? Or a player?”

Thanos’s grin twisted. “Doesn’t matter. Anyone still crying now? They're just background noise. Like sad elevator music.”

“Or indie acoustic covers of Taylor Swift sung by guys named Caleb.”

Thanos winced. “Ugh. Emotional impotence with a guitar. My kryptonite.”

They giggled again, short, breathless. Two wolves too tired to hunt but still baring teeth for fun.

Then silence rolled in. Like even the building was waiting for them to finish.

The gun’s empty. Thanos knows that. He checked it twice, three times, maybe—after the last shot rang out like a full stop in a sentence he didn’t understand. It’s lighter now, this chunk of metal in his hand, but not just because the bullets are gone. It’s something else. Thanos. He feels lighter.  

Giddy. Almost.

The hallway smells like iron and gunpowder, and the walls drip with the ghosts of the last month. Maybe year. Hard to tell. Time's been stuttering like a broken clock since they walked in. Bodies on the floor, some still twitching, some staring, eyes wide and dumbfounded. Like they didn’t expect it to end this way. But it always ends this way.

He steps over a sprawled arm, slick with blood. His boots don’t even make a sound. It's like he's floating, like gravity forgot him for a second. And Namgyu's still beside him. Calm as a Sunday morning. Gun slung loose, like it’s part of him. Like it grew there. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have to. Just walks. And Thanos follows, same as always.

There’s something beautiful about the way he moves—like the chaos doesn’t stick to him. Thanos doesn't think it ever has. Namgyu just shrugs it off, keeps going, and suddenly everything around him feels clean, even if it’s painted in blood.

Thanos doesn't feel scared. He should. But all he feels is this weird, buzzing calm. Like he's supposed to be here, like this is the part in the dream where everything slows down and you know, deep in your bones, that you made it through something. Something big. Maybe not alive. But through it.

The gun clicks empty again when Thanos squeezes it without thinking. Muscle memory. He laughs a little—quiet, breathless. It sounds wrong, but it feels right. He looks at Namgyu and he smirks, like he heard it too, and they keep walking.  

Life feels good.  

Yeah.  

Life feels really, really good.

Then Namgyu's voice broke the silence: 

“…So,” he said, voice suddenly calm, like they’d just finished grocery shopping. “What are you gonna do when we get out of here?”

Thanos blinked, caught off-guard. “What?”

“You heard me.” Namgyu shrugged, stepping over another limb. “After all this. Blood. Trauma. Skyscraper of corpses. What’s your first move?”

Thanos didn’t answer right away. He licked his lips. His voice came low. “Eat. Like, a real meal. Hot. Messy. No protein bars or questionable rat meat.” He pursed his lips, then turned on his heel, arms outstretched.  “Go back to London , maybe!”

Namgyu blinked. Something shifted behind his eyes. His mouth opened like he had something smart to say—then shut again. Then opened. Then—

“…can I come?”

Thanos stopped mid-dramatic twirl. Turned his head like an owl spotting something worth dissecting.

Namgyu cleared his throat. “I mean. Just to visit. Not like, like permanently. Or weirdly. Not in a clingy way. Just, you know. If you’re there. And I’m not dead. And you’re not dead. And London’s not exploded or—whatever London does. I’ve never been. Do they still have the giant clock?”

Thanos blinked slowly. “Do you think Big Ben is inflatable or something?”

“I don’t know, man,” Namgyu muttered, suddenly defensive. “British things confuse me. You have black pudding that’s not pudding, beans for breakfast, and a monarchy that just keeps respawning."

 "Thanos stared at him for a long moment. Then snorted. “It’s a city, not cult.”

“You say that like it isn’t both.”

They walked again. Slowly. Quietly. One more floor passed beneath their boots. Then Thanos said, “You can come.”

Namgyu glanced sideways.

“To London,” Thanos added. “You can come visit. We’ll find a pub that won’t throw us out immediately, and I’ll introduce you to chips that are fries, crisps that are chips, and people who call elevators ‘lifts’ like they’re trying to confuse time travelers.”

Namgyu made a small noise. Not quite a laugh. Not quite not.

“…Cool,” he said. Then after a beat: “Do I need a visa?”

Thanos paused mid-step. The suddenness of it made Namgyu jerk to a halt too, one foot still hovering like he might just hop past him out of spite.

Then—without warning—Thanos threw an arm around Namgyu’s shoulders and yanked him into a side-hug. Not soft. Not gentle. But solid. Anchored. Like he’d just decided the man next to him was gravity. Namgyu tensed. Eyes narrowed. “What the fuck are you—”

“We’re gonna live,” Thanos said. Voice quiet. Sure.

Namgyu stared at him. “...Okay?”

“No,” Thanos said. “Listen. We're gonna live. We’re gonna get out of this hellhole, right? Out of Korea. No more dead hallways. No more body piles. No more existential rap battles mid-gunfight. Just... gone.”

Namgyu’s mouth opened. No words. Thanos bulldozed on.

“We hit the port. We lay low. Fake names. Bad wigs if we have to.” He pulled Namgyu in tighter, their blood-slick jackets squeaking against each other. “Then we hop a train. Rob some trust fund baby for their wallet, buy two tickets under the name Mr. and Mr. Fuck-You-Pay-Me. First class. Window seat. We ride into the goddamn horizon.”

Namgyu squinted. “Trains don’t cross oceans.”

“We’ll steal a boat after,” Thanos said, deadpan. “Or a plane. Or a really ambitious dolphin. The point is—we’re leaving . You and me. No more debt collectors. No more people in red tracksuits trying to turn us into interpretive art. Just, peace. You can grow a beard. I’ll get a tattoo that makes everyone uncomfortable. And an eyepatch, and I’ll call myself Captain Hook. We’ll start a band. ‘Gunpowder and Grin.’ Or ‘Please Stop Screaming.’ Still workshopping it.”

Namgyu blinked. Twice.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Nope.” Thanos smiled like a broken headlight. “But I’m lucid enough to know I want out. With you. Preferably before my intestines give up entirely. And I’m lucid enough to know that you’re the one who… like, made me realise that. I’m too fucking annoying to die. And you're too stubborn to let me.”

Namgyu didn’t respond right away. He let Thanos keep the arm slung over his shoulder. Let it stay there for a beat too long. Maybe two.

Then—suddenly, stupidly—Namgyu’s face scrunched up.

Like something broke. Or slipped. Or just gave in.

His mouth twisted like it didn’t know whether to laugh or scream, and his eyes went glassy, fast . Like a dam cracked, then shattered all at once.

“…Shit,” he muttered, voice thick, hoarse. “Don’t… don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Thanos asked, too innocently, already pulling him into a full hug now. “Be emotionally available? Speak in boat metaphors? Paint you a dream of a British life filled with questionable pastries and low standards?”

Namgyu let out a hiccup of a laugh—sharp, wet, embarrassed.

Then he shoved his face into Thanos’s neck and hugged him back. Hard. A sob crawled up from Namgyu’s throat like it had claws, and before he could choke it down, it was out. Loud. Guttural.

Thanos didn’t flinch. He just tightened the grip. Started patting Namgyu’s back like a sitcom dad who didn’t know how kids worked.

“There, there. Cry it out, champ. You’re still my number one slugger.”

Namgyu choked out a sob-laugh hybrid. His whole body shook. He clung tighter.

“That’s right,” Thanos cooed. “Let it out. Big boys sob too. Vin Diesel cried once and they made Fast Five. It’s cinematic tradition.”

“You’re such—” Namgyu started, but couldn’t finish. His face was red. His nose was running. His breath hitched. "A dickhead."

“Shhh. Don’t talk. Just weep softly into my shoulder like a Disney prince with backstory trauma. Shhh —” Thanos whispered dramatically, petting the back of his head like a Disney dad. “Don’t speak. Just feel. Just absorb my nurturing masculine energy.”

Namgyu made a horrible noise. Somewhere between grief and disbelief. Then he laughed again, full-bodied, shoulders shaking, eyes screwed shut as tears streamed freely now. “ Stop it.”

“Oh, son,” Thanos intoned. “Let me teach you how to throw a baseball and repress your emotions.”

“I swear to god —” Namgyu choked on a breath, then coughed, half-laughing, half-dying. “I swear to god–”

Thanos just kept patting his back. “I’m proud of you, sport. We never say ‘I love you’ in this family but it’s implied. ”

Namgyu lost it again—full-body shaking with laughter and silent sobs, pressed to Thanos like the last warm thing in a freezing world. His knees buckled slightly with the laughter. Or the crying. Or both. Thanos couldn’t tell anymore.

“You smell like gunpowder,” he mumbled into Thanos’s collar.

They stood there. Amid the blood. Amid the rot. Amid the ghosts that still hadn’t gotten the memo. Like people who had already died and didn’t know what to do with the leftover humanity still stuck to their ribs.

After a long pause, Namgyu finally pulled back just enough to wipe his face with the back of his sleeve. It left a blood streak across his cheek. “You’re not recording this, right?”

“No,” Thanos said seriously. “But I am committing it to memory so I can mock you later when you try to act tough in front of people.”

Namgyu elbowed him in the ribs. “We’re not robbing a train.”

“Fine. A bank, then. Or a really upscale bakery. I want options.”

“I want a bath.”

“I want a reason to keep wanting things.”

That one hit quiet. It hung for a second. Namgyu didn’t push it away. He let it settle.

Then he said, “We’ll get out. We’ll go. You can show me this... damp haunted island you call home.”

“London,” Thanos corrected, grinning.

“Right. That.” Namgyu straightened, shook the blood off his arms like he was shedding a skin. “But we’re still not calling it ‘Gunpowder and Grin.’ That sounds like an Etsy shop run by people who vape.”

“You take that back, bitch. That name has pathos .”

“You have herpes.”

“Allegedly!”

Namgyu leaned against the wall, hands on his knees, gun dangling from one wrist like a forgotten accessory. He grinned—real, wide, teeth and all—something full and unguarded that didn’t belong on his face. His cheeks were flushed, eyes lit up in a way that wasn’t madness, just alive.

Thanos’s grin went too wide, stupid and bright, like someone had cracked open a sunbeam and let it leak out of his face. Namgyu opened his mouth to say something else—

Thanos stepped in.

Quick. Certain. Like pulling a trigger.

Then his free hand caught Namgyu’s collar, tugged just enough to close the space between them, and his mouth found Namgyu’s mid-laugh—right at the corner, breathless and warm. It wasn’t graceful. Their teeth bumped. The angle was weird. One of them was still bleeding. 

And Namgyu froze for half a second, a sound catching in his throat.

Then he melted forward, like his spine had remembered a language he hadn’t spoken in years. His fingers curled into Thanos’s vest, holding on, not pulling, just being there, just staying. His mouth tilted to meet the kiss full-on.

For a moment, the stairwell didn’t smell like blood. The air wasn’t thick with rot. The walls didn’t whisper. Time thinned out. The war above paused to breathe.

Then—simultaneously—they recoiled, shuddered like they’d just licked a subway pole, and gagged .

“You used tongue, you slut!” Namgyu barked, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist like he was scrubbing off radioactive goo. “Slut dragon! Sluuuut dragon!"

"Stop quoting Rick and Morty!" Thanos clutched his chest, mock-wounded. “My passion is an affront to your heteronormative sensibilities? Rude.” He gagged back, louder, more theatrical, sticking out his tongue like a kid who’d licked a battery. “Oh no, the homosexuality ! It’s contagious! Quick, punch a wall to reassert your masculinity!”

“Oh, oh how the tables turn! How the tables turn–”

“I was shocked and possibly hallucinating from blood loss!”

“Oh sure, blame the hemoglobin! Classic deflection!”

They bickered the whole way up the next flight of stairs, voices ping-ponging off the walls.

“Next time warn me so I can clench!”

“You were so into it.”

“You're delusional. I’ve kissed mirrors with more passion.”

“I am a mirror. A mirror of your repressed feelings. You’re welcome.”

Namgyu mock-dry-heaved.

Thanos’s brows furrowed, and his hand flew to his chest. “No– don’t gag. Is it such a crime? Is it such a– a travesty? Don’t lie to me, you’re gonna journal about this later.”

“I’m not journaling shit, bitch.”

“ ‘Dear diary, today I kissed an unstable man in a stairwell of corpses and now I think I understand poetry.’ ”

They made it halfway up the next landing—laughing too loud, grinning too wide, swatting fake-gay at each other like twelve-year-olds pretending to hate the playground crush—when the sound returned.

The laughter died. Instantly.

Sobbing. Real this time. Not fragile. Not delicate. But marrow deep. It echoed down the stairwell like someone was trying to hold their guts in with one hand and their grief in with the other. Wet, dragging sobs. 

The kind that made silence feel hostile.

Thanos stopped so fast he nearly tripped. Namgyu turned toward the sound. Didn’t speak. The sobbing grew louder. Closer. Punctuated by ragged breaths, frantic hiccups. Then—

Bang .

One gunshot.

Alone. Sharp. Followed by silence.

No footsteps. No screams. Just silence so absolute it sounded like the air was holding its breath. Namgyu’s hand found the rail. They exchanged a look. They climbed the last half-flight slower now. Deliberate. Eyes wide. Guns out of ammo but still held like threats. The smell changed again, smoke and iron and something old, like a wound that never healed.

They reached the landing. There, just past the door, in the flickering light of a corridor painted with hell—

Gi-hun.

Standing.

Alone.

Panting.

Blood-drenched.

His shirt clung to him like wet skin, streaked dark with gore. His face was blank. His eyes were wild, unfocused, like they were still watching something that hadn’t ended yet. He didn’t speak, but his mouth was open, like he’d forgotten how to breathe after he’d remembered how to scream.

Thanos took a step forward, gun raising slowly, and the floor creaked.

Gi-hun’s head snapped to them so quickly it was a wonder it didn’t snap.  His eyes locked on Namgyu. Then Thanos. Then the wall. Then back to nothing at all. His mouth moved—once, twice—no sound. Just a dry click. A wet exhale. He looked like he hadn’t blinked in years, like the act itself had been surgically removed.

Namgyu took a slow step forward. Hands slightly raised. Voice low. Careful. Not gentle. Namgyu wasn’t built for gentle, but measured , like stepping through legos in the dark.

“…Old guy I forgot the name of?”

"It's Gi-hun." Thanos whispered.

Gi-hun blinked. Once. Then again, slower. His shoulders twitched like they were remembering how to carry a body.

“They’re gone,” he croaked.

Thanos tilted his head. “Define ‘they’ in terms of people we care about versus meatbags in uniform.”

Gi-hun didn’t answer. Just stared past them. Through them. To somewhere none of them had ever been.

Then he looked down, at a slumped body. Thanos followed his gaze. 

“I told them to get ammo,” Gi-hun said blankly. “I need ammo.” His breath hitched. “ Ammo. I need– Ammo. Ammo. Do you have ammo?” He took a shaky breath and wiped at his mouth with the back of a red-slicked sleeve. The blood smeared across his cheek. “I need ammo.”

Thanos took another step forward. “...Nah, man, you need a xanax or ‘suttin. You alright?”

Gi-hun didn’t answer. His hand twitched at his side. Not toward a weapon. Just twitching. Like it couldn’t agree with the rest of his body anymore.

“001?” Namgyu pressed.

Nothing.

Thanos moved first. Just one step. Slow. Controlled. But enough to make the overhead light stutter, to throw Gi-hun’s shadow against the wall in a jagged smear like a crime scene before the tape. He crouched low beside the body Gi-hun had been staring at—its spine twisted like someone had tried to wring it out. Thanos didn’t touch it. Didn’t need to. The face, or what was left of it, told him everything.

“…Shit,” Thanos breathed. His voice lost its tilt, its tease, its glittering edge. Flat now. “It’s that fat fucker.” He clicked his fingers in the air, like trying to beckon a distant memory forward. “What was it—Big Mac?”

Gi-hun lunged.

Thanos’s breath choked in his throat, the older man moved too fast, too feral,  too precise. He slammed Thanos against the wall with a crack, one arm across the throat, the other fist already cocked.  

“It’s Jung-bae,” Gi-hun hissed, voice guttural and raw. “Jung-bae.” 

Thanos struggled to speak, more out of instinct than fear. “Alright, alright—touchy—”  

Namgyu was already stepping forward, full of purpose, arms half raised. But the slap was immediate. Fast. Loud. The kind of slap that made bones question their loyalty.  Namgyu reeled, staggering into the doorframe with a grunt. 

Gi-hun didn’t even look at him. His eyes never left Thanos. Blood trickled down his temple from somewhere, but he didn’t seem to notice.  

“You say their names right,” he said, quieter now. The kind of quiet that only came after things broke. “You say every one of their names. Or I’ll carve them into your chest myself.”  

Thanos, to his credit, nodded. Slowly. "Yeah. Okay. Jung-bae . Got it.” He coughed. “Shit, man. Thought I was the unstable one.”  

Gi-hun stepped back like the pressure holding him upright had vanished. He sagged against the wall beside the corpse, hand trembling again, mouth twitching like it wanted to form words but forgot the alphabet.  

Thanos rubbed his throat, grimacing. “Where’s 001?”  

Gi-hun didn’t answer at first. He stared at the opposite wall, breathing like he was underwater.  

Then he said,, “The organ room?” 

“The organ room was locked,” Thanos said, rubbing his neck bitterly. “Barred from the other side. Like it wanted to stay shut. Like something smart was in there. Not friendly. Not fond of visitors.”

Gi-hun nodded, slow and mechanical.  He looked at them again—really looked this time. Saw the blood on Namgyu’s shirt. The makeshift bandage on Thanos’s arm. The twitch in both of their shoulders like they expected the world to explode every six seconds.

“We can’t get out.” He said.

He stepped toward them. Slow. Limping.

“The only way out was through that room. Se-mi knew. MG Coin knew. 001… knew.” He swallowed. “We… That was our only other way out. Everyone is gone. Everyone except 001, who–”

“...who was with you,” Namgyu said, low.

“Who never came out.” Gi-hun’s voice cracked around the words like they were barbed. “Since you left, boy. Since you went down there. He said he’d hold the line.” He laughed once, sharp and without joy. “Guess the line broke.”

Namgyu exhaled shakily from his nose. He didn’t blink. He shook his head, face entirely blank.

Gi-hun kept walking toward them, uneven and bloody, like gravity was drunk and trying to drag him sideways. “I searched every floor. I went back. I stepped over them all. They’re all gone.” His head lolled, as if gravity were drunk and trying to pull it sideways, to pull his vision to the dead body of his friend.

His face crumpled. A sob escaped.

His voice choked again. “I thought maybe someone got out. Maybe 001 got out–”

Namgyu stared. There was something furious in his expression. “You’re saying everyone is dead. The entire team. The players. The guard hostages.” He pointed to the floor, not at the body but at the air above it, like the idea of what had just happened still lingered there. “You’re saying the only exit was through a room full of mystery meat. A room that’s locked.”

A small nod.

“We can get through the lock.”

“Enforcers. Too many. They’ll shoot us on site.”

“But they need a winner don’t they? A-And you’re saying 001—the spooky old guy who keeps vanishing like he’s allergic to plot resolution—is missing.” 

Another nod.

Namgyu inhaled sharply. “So where is he now?”

Gi-hun’s lips parted. Then closed. Then parted again. “I don’t know.”

Namgyu nodded, eyes wide. “O-Okay, okay, less players, less mouths, less gun fire, that’s good. That means– Okay, that’s good. That’s–”

Like a tuning fork.

In his ears.

Thanos blinked, slow. Felt it more than heard it—this high, clean note that wasn’t a sound, not exactly. It rang sharp and sudden, reverberating from somewhere behind his eyes, slicing clean through the static in his brain. He staggered a half step back, one palm smacking flat against the concrete wall for balance.

He didn’t breathe. Couldn’t. His jaw slackened. Eyes unfocused. The light above them flickered once. Twice. Held.

His hand came up slowly, fingers splayed against the wall like it might steady the world. Cold concrete. Flakes of dried blood under his palm. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Just… tilted his head.

He could hear his own heartbeat.

That wasn’t right.

Thanos wasn’t the still type. But he was still. Frozen in that moment like a deer in a slow-motion car crash. The ringing didn’t stop. If anything, it sharpened. Focused. Like it wanted to cut a path straight through his memories.

He didn’t breathe.

He didn’t want to breathe.

Because he knew.

He didn’t know how. Couldn’t say why. But some part of him, something old and reptilian and deeply, intimately aware curled inward, whispering a truth that bypassed logic and language entirely.

It’s done.

Not the mission. Not the fight. Not even the bloodbath.

Something bigger.

Something wider .

Something that had been holding everything up—like a broken table leg on a rigged game board—had finally snapped. And now it was all going to fall. Slowly at first. Then all at once.

He blinked, just once. The world didn’t come back. The pitch was still there, still coiled in his brain like a parasite humming its last lullaby.

His mouth opened. No words came.

He turned his head slightly, eyes dragging across the corridor like they were afraid to see what was there now. Namgyu was still talking, hands moving, trying to build a plan out of matchsticks and delusion. Gi-hun stood nearby, shoulders slumped, eyes empty.

And still—Thanos didn’t move.

Because that wall. That goddamn wall.

His eyes locked onto a crack in the concrete. Jagged. Harmless. Probably always been there. But it looked different now. Looked like a fracture. A seam. Like if you touched it the whole thing would peel open and show you the gears inside the world, and all of them would be rusted, bleeding, wrong.

He pressed his hand harder against it.

I can’t.

That thought didn’t feel like his, but it came anyway.

I can’t do this again.

Another breath. Shallow. Careful. The taste of blood on the air. Not his. Maybe his. Didn’t matter.

His body swayed forward just slightly—like gravity had finally convinced him.

Namgyu’s voice filtered back in. Muffled. Distant.

“...Thanos?”

Like underwater.  He was staring into the wall like it might blink first. The tuning fork kept singing. High and clear and endless.

Thanos didn’t hear them. He heard the footsteps, though.

A single footfall. Then another. And another.  

And then dozens . From below. From above. From the halls behind them. Like someone testing how close they could get before you’d scream.  

Gi-hun didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. Just whispered, like the words had claws on their way out: “They’re coming.”

Namgyu froze mid-step, eyes snapping from Thanos to Gi-hun to the stairwell behind them.

“What do you mean they ? Who’s ‘they’? You said the enforcers were up top—”

From the stairs below, something scraped. Metal on concrete. 

Namgyu raised his weapon slowly, like the movement might convince time to slow down with it. He cocked his head toward Thanos without looking. “Snap out of it. I need you .”

But Thanos didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t breathe.

Not until—

“ Click-click-boom, ” Thanos whispered.

Namgyu didn’t move. His gaze locked on Thanos, and Thanos met it. The stairwell seemed to shrink, the walls pressing in, the hum of distant gunfire fading to a dull pulse. The world was just them now—two sets of eyes, two guns, two hearts still beating.

For now.

Namgyu shook his head. His brow twitched down, his face scrunched. “You’re not thinking it.”

“I’m thinking,” Thanos said slowly, but he didn’t move from the wall. “lots of things, fam. Like how I’d look with your skull as a hat. Stylish, yeah?” He took a step back, casual, but his hand drifted toward the knife at his belt. His fingers brushed the handle, lingering like a lover’s touch.

Namgyu’s eyes narrowed.

Gi-hun took a step back. Then another. “Don’t”

“Don’t what?” Thanos’s voice was all sing-song again, but it carried a new edge, a wire pulled taut. “Don’t consider the math? One minus two equals ouch .” He chuckled, but it was hollow, like air escaping a punctured lung. “You heard the man. One walks. You wanna flip a coin? Rock, paper, scissors? Or we just…”

He mimed a gun with his fingers, pointing it at Namgyu’s chest.

“Pow.”