Work Text:
Namgyu wades through the intoxicated crowd with a well practiced ease, which is to be expected considering how many sixth days he’s given this place. The place being Club Pentagon, it’s not the fanciest spoit in Seoul but the good thing is the people who decide to spend their nights here aren’t looking for fancy, no, they’re much more interested in getting shit faced and Club Pentagon will gladly and readily provide. Tonight is the kind of night that makes working in this shithole more than worth it. A Saturday night filled to the brim with intoxicated guests who have their inhibitions lowered enough to not hold on to the cash in their wallets so tight. Namgyu’s plastered on a smile for so long that his cheeks hurt from the effort. The pain was a minor setback because he had only one goal tonight and that was to rake in as much cash as he can get. With one of the pricier bottles of vodka in one hand and a couple of shot glasses in the other he currently has his eyes set on some VIPs upstairs, the VIP being some obnoxious vlogger he’s never heard of, but one thing about those types is that they’re eager to prove how legit they are and spend big. Easy money.
The blasting music fills his eardrums as he has his eyes set on the staircase that leads to the upstairs private lounges. He finally makes it through the massive crowd with the stairs just a few strides away when a pair of hands stop him in his tracks and a pale man drenched in sweat stands before him. This club is filled with sweaty people but something about the way it looks on the random man looks sickly, with pupils blown huge and his stance hunched over.
“Oh good you work here,” the random man says, his breath reeking of alcohol. The dude’s practically panting, but it doesn’t seem to be from the dancing. “Do you kn—” he begins to ask before vomit spews out of his mouth and onto Namgyu’s shirt before it then leaks down to his pants. “Know where the restroom is?” he finishes asking his breath now a godawful mix of vomit and alcohol. Namgyu pushes the drunk asshole off of him, making the piece of shit stumble back. “What the fuck man?!”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Namgyu shouts back because if anyone in this scenario should be asking that question it should be him. He then looks down onto his black uniform and sees it completely ruined by this loser’s puke.
The restroom, the location that started this whole fucking thing is exactly where Namgyu plans to go next. He’s also not planning on answering that fucker’s question either, that asshole can figure it out himself. He turns around and almost instantaneously he makes eye contact with his boss, who looks him over and lets out a deep exasperated sigh.
“Call it a night, kid,” his boss tells him, dismissing him for the day.
Namgyu opens his mouth to argue, not because he wants to work after being thrown up on, but because he really needs that money. However when he thinks about the time it would take to take the train home, shower, and take the train back, the peak hours would already be over. Fuck, he curses inside of his head, this being the last thing he needed tonight.
He looks down at the mess on his clothes and his shoulders fall in defeat.
“Room 2B,” Namgyu tells him where he was headed while handing over the drinks and shot glasses.
With every step he takes the more gross he feels. He makes his way outside into the alley and the cool evening air should feel like a relief, but instead it makes his skin feel more prickly and his sense of touch too aware of the dirt and grime he’s been submerged in tonight.
“Hey bro, you got a light?” Some random man asks in the alley.
When Namgyu looks over to the guy asking him for something, his face could be put in a dictionary under the word contempt. The guy takes in Namgyu’s current state and gets the hint to fuck off.
“You’re good, man,” the man says and Namgyu’s not fucking good actually, but he happy enough to be left alone.
The trip home goes by uneventfully aside from the fact that he feels so gross he wants to crawl outside of his own skin. The moment he gets home he throws his keys on his couch and heads straight to the shower. He sheds himself of his clothes and once he gets under the water, it’s cold and waits eagerly for it to warm up, and after several minutes pass he comes to accept that it’s not gonna happen. Who uses all the hot water at one in the goddamn morning. So instead of warm water and steam to ease his muscles and thoughts, he can’t help but think about how he really needed this shift tonight. How his rent was due last week, how he just spent an hour on the phone yesterday getting his water cut back on because he swears he's gonna pay it by the end of this week. Which sure maybe he barely has enough to pay for it, but he’d have to say goodbye to eating for the rest of the rest of the week.
Maybe he should pull out of that Dalmation Coin, The Amazing Myunggi did swear by it, but unforeseen hospital bills due to a situation a few months back has made his financial situation more complicated than expected. If only that shithole drug dealer didn’t forget to mention he mixed fentanyl in the shit he gave Namgyu he wouldn’t have ended up in that hospital and he wouldn’t be strapped for cash. He doesn’t know what to do, all he knows is that he needs money though. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness was onto absolutely nothing, like maybe it won’t make him happier, whatever the fuck that truly means, but it would make his life easier, have way less fucking stress.
Fifteen minutes pass under the water of his cold shower before he exits and he gets dressed for bed, more than ready to call it a night. He lays down in bed when his phone starts to vibrate and when he picks it up he’s more than ready to see his boss’ name reflected on the screen but instead he sees a name of man that’s been MIA for weeks. A name of a man who has left several of his texts on read and is now expecting him to answer the phone in the middle of the night. A man who is a colossal piece of shit. Yet despite all of that being true, he sits up straight and his heartbeat picks up speed just by reading it. A name that has him wanting to answer right now. He should give Thanos a taste of his own medicine, but there’s something he wants even more than that and after the night he’s had he’s more than earned the right to be a little selfish.
He hits the screen to answer the phone and quickly brings it up to his ear.
“Well if it isn’t Namsu,” he hears Thanos on the other side of the line, his deep voice making Namgyu’s stomach flutter even through the tinny speaker.
“Namgyu,” he reminds him for the thousandth time.
“Namgyu,” he corrects himself.
“What do you want?” he asks, because no matter how swept up in the moment he wants to get, there’s no denying how transactional their relationship is. Even in the moments where it feels beyond that, it always circles back to the same place. He doesn’t mind it. . . anymore. He’s accepted it for what it is.
“Don’t need anything from you, my boy,” Thanos answers and due to previous experiences lets just say Namgyu has a hard time buying it.
“Ah. . . I see. Just wanted to hear the sound of my voice then?” he asks sarcastically.
“Maybe I do. . .” he replies, sounding almost defensive like he’s only saying it to prove Namgyu wrong.
”Sure,” he agrees as he barely holds back a scoff. “How’s that rap battleground show going?” he asks, genuinely curious to know more about what has kept Thanos out of town for the past two weeks.
Thanos doesn’t respond right away. Which is uncharacteristic of him, he’s someone who so often fills the space with words or some lyrics he’s just made up.
It also catches Namgyu off guard because Thanos couldn’t shut up about it once he got booked for it. He was so excited. Practically bragging about it to anyone who would listen and Namgyu despite himself was always listening when it comes to him. Wants to hear about everything when it comes to Thanos, be told each and every detail flowed together in a way only Thanos can spin it. Even if the details are daunting and cruel, it doesn’t matter to Namgyu.
”You know how NDAs are, right? Your boy can’t let out a peep,” he finally answers, and something about it sounds filtered and not just because of the quality of the phone speaker. “What about you?” he asks, his voice sounding more animated than before. “Still making bread, I assume,” he adds on and Namgyu scoffs because he wouldn’t feel like shit right now if that were true.
"If only,” he replies.
“Oh. Why not? Tell Papa Thanos what happened,” he implores and the good thing about being on the phone is that Namgyu doesn’t have to hide the fact that he finds the phrase Papa Thanos amusing and doesn’t need to hold back the small yet earnest smile appearing on his face.
The events of the day replay inside of his head. Even the minor things like how he almost walked in dogshit as he left for work because his dumbass neighbors don’t clean up after their stupid dogs. He opens his mouth to speak but his throat feels tight and he feels himself getting worked up. He’s not some PMSing chick, he doesn’t know why he’s getting emotional over nothing, so he clamps his mouth and tries to ignore the constricted feeling inside of his throat. So instead of recounting what happened today, he lets out a deep rooted sigh.
“That bad, huh?” Thanos replies, picking up what Namgyu was putting down.
“Yeah,” Namgyu agrees. He leans back against the wall. “Shitty ass shift,” he tells him.
“You should quit,” he says casually, like it’s so easy.
“And do what? With what money?” he asks, feeling like those are very valid questions.
“Whatever you want,” he answers simply and for Thanos it is. It’s something Namgyu has always respected the hell out of Thanos for, he’s never been afraid to go after what he really wanted. “Namgyu,” he says almost urgently, his voice radiating a sudden flow of passion that Namgyu can feel even through their large distance. Like all of Thanos' emotions, his joy, his anger, his laughter, it's all so infectious to Namgyu. “Don’t you ever just want to start over?” he asks, sounding truly enraptured by the idea.
“Huh?” Namgyu replies because the sudden swerve in their conversation caught him off guard. Takes him a second to really get what Thanos is even talking about.
“Think about it Namgyu. Just saying fuck your job and quitting. Taking everything you got and going somewhere else, starting fresh, leaving all that bullshit behind you. Just running away from it all. Let’s do it. How about it my boy?”
Namgyu lets out a nervous laugh, because he doesn’t know how else to react to this situation. Let’s? As in let us. The two of them together? The relationship neither one knows how to put a label on so they say it doesn’t matter. Not quite friends, not quite lovers either. A warm body to cling onto on particularly cold nights. An understanding or is there? Namgyu’s not even sure half the time. There’s no way Thanos means that, besides he’s on that show, his whole career is about to take off. He’s just. . . he’s just saying this to cheer Namgyu up. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.
After coming to that conclusion he lets himself indulge in the idea of it. The idea of leaving everyone else behind and creating a space just for the two of them. Thanos doing the cooking, Namgyu the cleaning. Being a team. Sounds like a dream, but dreams are made up in your head for a reason aren’t they. Real life always has a way of destroying the illusion. Still though, it sounds pretty nice.
“Oh yeah? Where would we go?” he asks, playing along.
“Wherever you want, just pick a place and we’ll go.”
“No small towns,” Namgyu jokingly warns, but if he were to move somewhere he'd mean that a million percent. He grew up in one and he'll never want a repeat of that kind of hell.
“Course not.”
“And I want to be somewhere sunny. . . Jeju Island?”
“No problem.”
A laugh escapes Namgyu, this time a genuinely jovial, a sound unbeknownst to him that Thanos finds oh so melodic.
His day overall was still a pretty shitty one, but talking with Thanos like this managed to salvage it somewhat. End things on a good note. He’s tempted to tell Thanos how much he appreciates this, but that’s too. . . like intimate and shit. Somehow even more intimate than actually banging him. Too honest. So he readjusts the grip he has on his phone as he thinks about what to say next.
“It would never work,” Namgyu says playfully, wanting to wrap up this little pep talk in a fun way.
“Oh yeah? Why not?” Thanos is quick to as
“Us being around each other twenty four seven we’d probably drive each other nuts, man,” he answers.
“Think so?”
“Know so, bro,” he says with another laugh. “That’s why what we got now works so well, don’t you think?” he says rhetorically.
This time around it’s Thanos who lets out a laugh, a short and clipped sounding thing. So different from how he laughs normally.
Something that can so easily be from a poor connection, but before Namgyu could think about what if it wasn't the connection his line of thought gets thrown off by Thanos speaking again.
“Look at that,” he says and Namgyu physically can’t so he waits for Thanos to explain further. “Look at what today is bro,” he explains.
Namgyu pulls his phone away from his ear and looks at the date displayed on his homescreen. He lets out a chuckle because of the coincidence. Seeing as Thanos didn’t know what the day was until a few moments ago, he feels pretty confident that this wasn’t some planned thing. Thanos doing something for him on Valentines Day, what a funny thought.
He brings his phone back to his ear with an amused smirk on his face. He wonders how Thanos looks right about now. He can picture it so clearly inside his mind. Probably eyes that shine confidence, a smug smirk that manages to be cute, infuriating, sexy, and charming all at the same time. He wishes Thanos was here so he didn’t have to imagine. He knows he said that if they spent too much time together they would make each other go insane and he meant that. It would be like one of many pills Namgyu’s provided Thanos at the Club. The bad trips will be fucking bad, the worst he’s probably ever felt, but when the trips are good, they’re the best he’s ever felt.
“Happy Valentine's Day, man.”
“Happy Valentine's Day my Namsu,” Thanos replies, his deep voice managing to sound soft.
“Namg—” he quickly tries to correct before the line ends with a click.
Asshole, Namgyu thinks although it lacks any of the malice it usually carries when Namgyu thinks that about anyone else.
That was the last time Namgyu heard from Thanos and in a couple of months time when he watches that broadcast of the Rap Battlegrounds show against his better judgement, he gets the answer as to why. Every so often he thinks back to the last time they talked and wonders maybe if he said something different then Thanos wouldn’t have shut the world out. Wouldn’t have shut him out. Desperately wishes he could have seen Thanos’ face that day, so he can know without a doubt if he’d meant a word of what he said, that he really wanted to runaway, together, with him, if he knew he meant it well. . . or if that was all just some joke to him. He wonders if Thanos had started over on Jeju Island. That he's doing okay. He hopes that’s true, even though he has an aching suspicion that it’s not the case. The rapper's coping mechanisms have never been the best, if they had been. . . well they never would have met, had they?
As he looks out his window into the night sky from the alley that’s behind Club Pentagon, he wonders if they’ll ever meet again and under what circumstances. He hopes, maybe foolishly, that they meet again under good ones.