Chapter Text
Despite the brave front he puts up, In-ho can tell that the hallways of the building frighten Gi-hun. It isn’t just the beguiling twists and turns, nor the marching that occasionally echoes down the serpentine corridors, thunderous and rhythmic as an anthem. It’s also the likeness that all this has to the games.
Once, In-ho may have also been troubled by the similarities—the circuitous route, the grim, guarded doors—but it’s been a very long time since he let anything so—so human settle in his gut and sink there.
Even so, he almost pities Gi-hun, pities him for the fear visible in the set of his shoulders and in the prey-like efforts of his to conceal his distinct limp. He’s a vision of a damned man, or perhaps the world-holder Atlas in those myths Jun-ho summarized to In-ho many years ago.
The guards by each and every door don’t much seem to mind the stragglers marching through, and if they notice Gi-hun’s visible injury, they don’t show it. It’s almost trivially easy to pick their way through the winding first floor, searching for the way out In-ho had memorized the route to on the way in.
But In-ho should’ve known that saving something as precious is his current cargo would never be so simple.
When they turn the corner, the first thing he sees is glinting gold.
He hears Gi-hun inhale sharply behind him, and In-ho halts. The mask of the man before them tilts up, horns shimmering like a halo, distinctly expectant as it gazes at In-ho. In-ho clenches his fists.
If you think I’m going to bow, he spits inwardly, you have another thing coming to you.
But Gi-hun gets there first. He steps forth, shielding In-ho partially from view with his shoulder, and—and dips his head.
In-ho looks on in shock. Deer, the VIP just beyond Gi-hun, tilts his head, as if fascinated by the scene he’s witnessing. They must make quite a show: an injured guard and a rebellious one. In-ho’s sure his anger exudes out of his skin, sure that Gi-hun’s respect hardly makes up for it. But In-ho no longer cares about stealth.
He shifts Gi-hun with a hand on his arm, careful with the spots Gi-hun himself is treating gingerly, and glares the VIP down through his mask.
He can hear the fucker’s smile when he opens his mouth, and asks, in English, “Quite a story here, huh?” He winks at In-ho. “No need to be so defensive; this fella’s all yours.” And then he claps a hand on Gi-hun’s shoulder.
In-ho sees Gi-hun’s flinch from a mile away. His jump is like the flutter of a moth, abrupt and quick but so very conspicuous. Deer only grins wider.
This fella’s all yours. Is there any situation in which sex isn’t the first assumption Deer makes? Does his life truly revolve around the most impulsive parts of him? Is he more animal than man, and, if so, would Gi-hun protest if In-ho were to wipe the floor with this hideous beast, this warped stain on the purity Gi-hun somehow still perceives in the world?
In-ho surges forward, intending to do to this VIP everything that In-ho had wanted to do for years and years, but feels, just as he nears, a restraining hand on his chest. The grip is weak but In-ho heeds it anyway, turning sharply to Gi-hun.
Perhaps he doesn’t truly understand the volume of this situation. In-ho casts his mind back and thinks: ah. He doesn’t speak English.
“He made fun of you,” In-ho informs Gi-hun, now ignoring the VIP completely.
In-ho can sense Gi-hun’s bewilderment through the damn mask. “In-ho,” he says softly, “he’s done worse than cruel words.”
In-ho slaps Gi-hun’s hand away from him and rushes Deer, who looks more affronted than fearful at In-ho’s clear aggression. Now, up against the wall with In-ho’s arm across his collarbones, Deer snaps in American English, “Hey, get the fuck away from me before I call your supervisors.”
In-ho only scoffs and unholsters the pistol he’d hidden in the guard uniform. “Gi-hun,” he calls over his shoulder, where Gi-hun’s standing suspiciously quietly near the opposite wall of the hallway, “would you like to take the first shot?”
Gi-hun’s hand lands on In-ho’s shoulder after a moment of silence, making him jump a fraction. “In-ho, stop.”
In-ho’s grip on his gun spasms in shock. “He hurt you,” he states flatly, like Gi-hun’s somehow forgotten.
Deer bucks against his grip, properly concerned now. “Hey! You work for me! Get your damn—”
But he doesn’t get to finish speaking before In-ho lands a punch square on his jaw, mirroring the one he knew had been landed on Gi-hun, going by the bruise underneath that mask. Deer sputters, and as he catches his breath around the fragments of his jaw, In-ho looks back at Gi-hun and snaps, “Come get your pound of flesh, Gi-hun. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
But Gi-hun doesn’t move an inch. Instead he looks Deer flat in the eye, shoulders tense and knuckles no doubt white under his gloves, and then turns away. “No,” he says. Like it’s easy, like refusing vengeance when it’s freely offered is anything less than—In-ho doesn’t know what it is. He’s never seen anyone do it before. His mind circles back to that word he used, earlier in the night: angelic.
Gi-hun walks a short way down the hall, gesturing impatiently at In-hi to follow, and that’s that.
In-ho wants to snarl. He wants to hurl things. This—this violence, it’s all he can offer Gi-hun. It’s all he’s good for. For Gi-hun to refuse it—there’s nothing that could make In-ho feel more worthless.
I thought you wanted this, he cries in his head, and then corrects himself. He wanted this, Hwang In-ho, widower, father of a dead child. Gi-hun, on the other hand, is too good for this.
Too good for him.
He tears the mask off, throwing it down like it’s not his only way out of this place. This time he really does bare his teeth. “If I ever see or hear from you again,” he threatens lowly in English, for Deer’s ears alone, “I will kill you. And I will take my fucking time.”
And he swipes his pistol across Deer’s face, dropping his unconscious body like Medusa’s decapitated head, like the most grotesque and monstrous thing in the world.
With that, he picks up his mask, harshly pulls it on, and stomps past Gi-hun.
But Gi-hun stops him. His head is angled just low enough to show that he’s looking In-ho in the eyes right now—or, at the very least, in the mask. And he says, “Thank you.”
In-ho pushes Gi-hun away, rougher this time. “You’re too forgiving,” he snaps, and then makes his way down the hallway, toward the exit.
Gi-hun scrambles to follow, holding the baby tucked in one arm. “You’re too vengeful,” he snipes at In-ho’s back.
In-ho whirls. “And which, of the two of us, have lost more? Has suffered more? Your worldview is your worst quality,” he lies, “it’s painting your fate ahead of you, so clear to me that I can’t imagine how you’re so damn blind to it.”
“I’m not blind,” Gi-hun argues back. “I’m not a fool, and I’m certainly not an innocent. You treat me like I’m fragile and then you treat me like—like I’m crazy, but you never treat me like I’m myself.”
“Half the time I’m not even sure you treat yourself right. On and on about guilt without anything to be guilty about.”
“We hold ourselves to separate standards, In-ho. To you that may be true, but to me, I have a great many things to be guilty about. Almost a thousand.”
“They were not your fault,” In-ho shouts. He doesn’t even have the wherewithal to be glad that the hallway they’re in is deserted. “Every single one of them died of their own accord.”
“Is that what you thought, when you won?”
“It’s what I made myself think.”
“Well, it’s not so easy for me. Their deaths—it’s like a weight on me, it’s like—like that whole island is slowly coming down on me, like I’m somehow meant to push it up and out of that damn place, but I can’t, In-ho, I can’t, because I’m only human.”
“So why not swim out from under?”
Gi-hun’s grim smile is an element of an atmosphere, a sensation in the air like the heaviness of clouds before a rainstorm. “I can’t. How can I explain this to you? You ask, why hold the world up? Why not let it collapse? Because there’s no other option, In-ho. There’s nothing else I could be doing. It’s this or nothing. It’s—it’s as sure as a chain, some unbreakable bond between me and it. I am stuck there, you must understand, and I will never leave the underbelly of that island.”
In-ho pulls him forward, toward the exit. They must get out of here. They must flee this place before Gi-hun’s words have time to settle.
“You’re right, I don’t understand. If it so pains you, let all else around you fail. And tell yourself there was nothing else you could have done.”
Gi-hun limps after him. “But how could you sleep,” he asks softly, “knowing that there was something?”
“Easy,” In-ho snaps, pushing him through a doorway, then another. “Let your haunting be done in your dreams, and your dreams alone.”
Gi-hun hesitates. They’re so close, just one turn, but In-ho knows the look in his eyes by the matching set of his shoulders, knows that there’s nothing short of tectonic plates that could move this man right now, so, obligingly, he waits.
“I don’t want them dead,” Gi-hun decrees. “None of them.”
In-ho wants to rage, wants to burn this place down and turn the corpses to mush under his fists. So he says so. “But I do.”
“Don’t,” Gi-hun says, and from anyone else it would be a demand, but from him, it’s—it’s almost a question. “Don’t do it. For me.”
In-ho can’t hold himself back. He takes Gi-hun by the arm, and Gi-hun, surprised, allows him to drag him down the hall, take a turn, until they find themselves slipping through the exit and into the night. And the first thing In-ho does, short of letting go of Gi-hun, is tear that damn mask off the other man’s face.
Now Gi-hun seems to understand. So he reaches up gingerly and unclasps In-ho’s mask, gently pulling it away from him as In-ho nearly vibrates with impatience.
“May I—?” he asks, just once. And at Gi-hun’s soft nod, he pushes forward.
The kiss is brief, fluttering. Gi-hun seems hesitant, and not just because of his injuries; In-ho’s sure there’s nothing more bewildering to such a righteous man than doing this with an enemy. But In-ho feels less and less like an enemy every day, further from the Front Man every moment he spends with Gi-hun, every time he holds his hand or cleans a wound or hands him Hyun-ju.
“Sorry,” In-Ho mutters when he pulls away, eyes down. Everything in him demands that he stay close, but there are still things he must do, such as bringing the baby and Gi-hun to safety. “Come on,” he says, grasping Gi-un’s wrist gently.
And, as he does, he feels soft fabric under his fingers. He pauses, looks down, and through the darkness of the night and the building’s shadow a white cloth is revealed to his searching eyes.
In-ho’s handkerchief.
He has to hide his smile as they retreat to the car he has parked outside, instead plotting revenge on the men who took Gi-hun, and at the same time assessing the injures he can see. They’re bad, he knows instantly, if Gi-hun’s visible dizziness isn’t a dead giveaway on its own.
In-ho grimaces when Gi-hun stumbles getting into the car, but he know enough about the other man’s pride to stay well away.
Once they’re settled and driving, In-ho’s hands tight on the wheel as the building full of filthy VIPs vanishes behind them, he can’t help but lick his lips, searching again for a taste of Gi-hun and hating himself for it.
The quiet is so absolute, both on the interior and exterior of the car, that In-ho actually startles when he hears a voice from beside him, in the passenger seat. It’s low, but In-ho doesn’t have to strain to hear it, so sleepy and silent is the rest of the world. “You don’t have to be,” Gi-hun is murmuring.
“Be what?” In-Ho asks softly, not quite meeting Gi-hun’s eye.
Gi-hun hesitates. “Sorry,” he adds, after an infinitely long moment. “You don’t have to be sorry, In-ho.”
For the rest of the ride back to the tower, they’re mute as strangers in the same train compartment, awkward and fumbling. But In-ho wouldn’t change what he’d done for a chance to have never entered those games—not in any universe.