Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gi-hun wrung his hands, a nervous habit he’d sworn he’d kicked by now. It made him look twitchy and immature. Like a teenager—an awkward one at that—rather than the grown man he was. He let out a breath, smoothing his palms down the sides of his shirt. 

It was the nicest shirt he owned—which, frankly, didn’t mean much at all. The button-up was more button-less, with the bottom three having popped off God knows where, leaving thread-ridden holes in their wake. The cuffs were frayed and folded just the wrong way, and the collar stuck up in the back no matter how many times he tried to press it into place. 

But the fabric was dark and (mostly) stainless, and if he tucked the edge of the shirt in, the missing buttons didn’t cause too much of an issue. He’d rolled the sleeves up to hide the cuff problem, and Gi-hun had thought—looking into the mirror with a hint of satisfaction—that he didn’t look quite like his world was on the brink of collapse. 

Anyways, he’d wanted to dress nice. 

He knew this wasn’t the most… conventional job interview— interview? Would he be interviewed? Hopefully not —but dressing up rather than down felt like the right choice. 

He stood in front of the door to a bustling bar. The place was way out of budget for him—believe that if it wasn’t he would have been in there before—and people cast him sidelong looks as they shouldered past him. 

Each of them were decked out in black-and-gold finery, all smooth leather and tight-fitting satin. He watched a woman walk by with maybe six gold piercings—in her left ear alone. She gave him a black-lipsticked smirk, her eyes scanning him up and down. She was, as he took it, thoroughly unimpressed. 

God, what was he doing here?

Well, currently? He was loitering. 

Which he should… probably stop doing. 

Gi-hun grimaced, reaching up to slide the dark mask over his face. It’d been handed to him by the suited doorman, and he’d been outside fidgeting with it for a long couple of moments. The plastic was smooth as it slid over his skin, cool and unyielding. The mask covered everything but his mouth. He shrugged out his shoulders, feeling the high-pitched buzz of nerves under his skin. 

Yet another person body-checked him on their way in, barely casting a glance backwards to mumble an apology. Gi-hun stumbled, straightening with a huff. Right. Fine. Point taken. 

He turned the handle of the door with a trembling hand, ducking into the space with his heartbeat loud in his ears. 

The door swung open smoothly, opening with it the drone of a dozen voices murmuring at once. The noise hit him before the perfume of the room did—it smelled like citrus and whiskey, smoky and laced with sweetness. Dim and warm from the combined body heat of all of the patrons, the bar felt like a bustling hive, alive with sticky-sweet voices. 

Gi-hun heard the door click closed behind him. He wiped his clammy palms off on the backs of his pants. 

Only a few eyes turned his way, but he felt, immediately, how he stuck out. He didn’t glitter like the rest of them—the light didn’t catch him like the facets of a rare little jewel. He absorbed it, dulled it, made it yellow and ordinary. Like a rock. That was it. He was a rock in a pile full of gemstones. 

A broke rock in a pile of gemstones, actually. 

Gi-hun’s shoulders curled forward, that dance of how-small-can-I-become-just-by-hunching. The truth was, not very small at all. Gi-hun was, for good or bad, a tall sort of man. 

He scanned the warmly lit bar, craning his neck to peer around patrons. He knew, vaguely, who he was looking for. He just didn’t know what the man would look like up close, in person. In real life. 

A hand settled on his shoulder. Gi-hun gave an embarrassing half-squeak, tensing as he whipped around. He’d swatted the hand violently away by the time he realized who it was. 

The man tilted his head, golden hood pooling around his face. He wore the same black mask as Gi-hun, his lips pursed in what very well looked like contained laughter. The hood connected to a golden band around his neck, his shirt form-fitting and a dark, velvety black. The golden buttons adorning it flashed in the low light. He lifted his hands in mock surrender, the aurous bands around his wrists glinting. 

“If you don’t like being touched,” the man began, voice low and smooth, “this might not be the position for you.” His smile was just the tiniest bit wolfish, and Gi-hun felt his skin prickle. In warning. In interest. Heat scoured the back of his neck, and he rubbed the feeling away with unsteady fingers. A nervous chuckle bubbled past his lips. 

“No, ah—” he began, stumbling over the refrain. It was difficult to speak over the hubbub of other conversations, and he struggled for the right words. “That’s not it.” 

The man stared at him, his head dipping to look him up and down. 

“Don’t worry,” Gi-hun tacked on at the end, shifting uncomfortably with the silence between them. He watched the other man’s lips purse, before that sly, sharp-toothed smile peeked back out. 

His eyes were like the press of two delicate fingers, tracing lines down Gi-hun’s skin. Over his torso, his arms, his neck, coming up to scrutinize his face. Gi-hun shifted under the intensity of his stare. His eyes were liquid, ebony dark and glittering. He’d never realized that from the man’s livestreams. 

Actually, now that the thought had surfaced, there were a lot of things he was now confronting that he hadn’t noticed when the man was separated by a screen. 

Firstly, Gi-hun was the taller of the two. Which—yeah, that wouldn’t be clicking for a long time.

Secondly, the man radiated heat. Like a furnace, warmth washing over Gi-hun in waves. Gi-hun had been expecting someone icy. Someone who sucked warmth away—not someone who had it in such abundance that it flowed over his skin and out into the room. Gi-hun felt sweat begin to bead on the back of his neck. 

He opened his mouth to speak again, twitching nervously. The silence felt tense and awkward. Dark eyes gleamed from under the mask. 

“I—” he was drowned out by the roar of raucous conversation permeating the bar. He swallowed down the rest of the words, cursing himself silently. A woman in a black blazer and a gold undershirt ducked past him, appraising his outfit before turning a bewildered, maybe even half-offended, look to the man Gi-hun faced. 

FRNT was the alias he went by. His channel? Well—

“Shall we go somewhere a little more private?” the man murmured, his voice swirling loud and clear in Gi-hun’s ears despite the rowdy background. He swallowed, pushing his sleeves up further—they’d started to fall down. His throat clicked as he nodded, not trusting himself to say anything of the intelligent sort. 

Gi-hun had to scurry to keep up with the smooth pace of the man, who cut through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. Gi-hun, on the other hand, managed to knock, bump, or jostle every other person he passed. He mumbled a litany of apologies, ducking his head, grateful, suddenly, for the mask. 

Candles scattered the room in flickering, wavering light, perfuming the air with cinnamon and myrrh. The ceiling was strung with delicate blown-glass bulbs, aglow with pinpricks of gold. The floor was black marble, shot through with streaks of white that were painted in the yellow glow of the entire place. 

Slow, delicate music floated through the air, a devastating, methodical type of sweetness embedded in every note. Gi-hun caught the glare of the lights on the alcohol—champange and scotch and black cocktails with gold foil along their rims. He narrowly avoided crashing into a waitstaff carrying a tray of drinks, earning himself a huff and an exasperated double-take. His heart thudded harsh and loud against his ribs, and he let out a sigh of relief when he’d finally extricated himself from the suffocation of the crowd. 

FRNT had stopped at the edge of a curtained-off room, leaning against the paneled wall. Gi-hun wiped his clammy hands against his shirt, approaching him with an apology on his lips. The man only inclined his head, drawing back one edge of the sleek fabric. 

Go on. 

Gi-hun ducked slowly through the curtains, feeling the soft press of velvet as he went. The room inside was small and cozy—cozy like rich-person cozy, cozy like Gi-hun was afraid to touch anything cozy, but cozy nonetheless. He stood awkwardly in the centre of it, hands hovering at his sides. 

Was this the interview part? What did an interview for… this even entail?

In-ho followed behind him, easily taking a seat in the black-velvet loveseat that occupied the left side of the room. He reclined smoothly, one arm slinging over the back of the couch. He crossed an ankle over his knee, humming softly. The bands on his wrists glimmered in the low light. It was even darker here than it had been in the central area, lit only by a crystalline lamp—the shade made of opaque gold fabric. 

The sounds of the rowdy bar had been softened slightly by the curtain, leaving a more incongruous hum of background chatter. The man had procured a glass on their way there, holding it lazily in one hand. The silence stretched on as Gi-hun shifted from foot to foot—still in the centre of the room. Still unsure. 

All he knew was he couldn’t walk away. 

After a long moment, In-ho tilted his head at him. “Sit?” His voice ventured up at the edge; a question. Gi-hun eyed the black cushions of the couch, his nerves buzzing. It was like being in the wolf’s den now, all glinting teeth and focused eyes. “I want to get to know you,” The man took a slow sip of his whiskey glass, his eyes glinting. “Seong, is it?” 

Gi-hun nodded, his fingers curling and flexing, stretching out the hum of adrenaline, as he eventually made his way to the loveseat. Good impressions , he heard himself thinking, almost like a prayer. 

“Seong Gi-hun,” he mumbled as he sat down. The cushions were plush and soft, warm under him. He immediately leaned back into them, letting out an appreciative sigh. God, he could fall asleep here. The man—FRNT—inclined his head, humming softly. And Gi-hun was then very much not asleep. 

“Well, Seong Gi-hun, ” he said, his voice a low purr. “Let’s see if you’re the right fit for this.” 

So it was an interview. Aish, he’d never been good at those.

The gold hood swayed as he leaned closer. Gi-hun watched his eyes glitter beneath the mask. 

He needed this. Needed whatever money could come from it. He just hoped that fact wasn’t written plainly across his chest like a brand. 

The weight of the man’s stare pressed down on him—assessing, considering. The space between them felt like a wire pulled taut, trembling with the silence. Gi-hun drew in an unsteady breath. FRNT’s eyes lifted for just a moment. 

Then, he moved. 

It was fluid, effortless—the way he shifted forward, the way his presence filled every inch of Gi-hun’s world before he could even process it. One moment, they were sitting beside each other, the air thick with anticipation—

The next, warmth was flooding Gi-hun’s space—his veins—running over him in waves. FRNT’s black mask gleamed down at him. 

And then he was in Gi-hun’s lap —which was—

“Okay?” The man asked steadily. Gi-hun spluttered, his throat working as he felt heat singe the tips of his ears. 

When he didn’t speak, FRNT hooked his fingers under his chin, tilting his head back. 

“You’re going to have to get used to answering me, Seong,” he murmured. His fingers were calloused and warm, unyielding against his jaw. Gi-hun’s pulse thudded loud in his ears, almost drowning out the next words that the man on top of him uttered. “Is this okay?” 

Gi-hun was short-circuiting, just a little, but managed a soft yes in response, throat clicking as he swallowed. FRNT hummed, the sound appreciative, before his fingers trailed down from their place at Gi-hun’s jaw. 

Gi-hun felt the man’s warmth, the feverish heat of him, seeping through his skin. Those fingers mapped down his shoulders, pressing through the cheap fabric to trace lines down his body. Appraising. 

Gi-hun’s own hands moved from clutching the couch to hovering uncertainly over the man, unsure what was allowed, what he was supposed to do. The man chuckled softly as he noticed, his eyes pausing in their examination to meet Gi-hun’s gaze. 

“You can touch.” Gi-hun belatedly placed his hands on the man’s waist, hoping that somehow his trembling couldn’t be felt. He felt the press of hipbones, the tension of corded muscle under his fingers. The man had finished running his palms down Gi-hun’s sides, leaving paths of tingling nerves wherever his touch went. His fingers circled the top button of his shirt, as if in contemplation.  

“How much experience do you have with this kind of work?” Gi-hun almost laughed—would’ve, if he hadn’t been knocked breathless by the feeling of the man shifting forward in his lap. It was such a professional-sounding question, a question that belonged more in a cold, white office building rather than the heat-drenched, gold-filigree darkness of his current situation. 

“I—well,” Gi-hun paused halfway through the sentence. How much could he lie without getting himself caught? It wasn’t like he was a blushing virgin, that much was true. And he’d—had some late nights at cheap bars that ended in someone else’s bed before. Mostly recently. Mostly where he took their wallet afterwards. But any of the things he’d watched during FRNT’s shows? He’d only ever seen it done through the screen. Still, it couldn’t be the hardest thing, right? Nothing he couldn’t do, anyway. 

His grip had tightened on the man’s waist while he’d been thinking, and he blinked, letting go. “Some?” he finally said, his voice unsteady. The man tilted his head in acknowledgement, grinning slyly. 

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t lie to me, Seong,” he said, his eyes glinting knowingly. Gi-hun inhaled sharply, his heart jerking into his ribs.

“Ah—” he ducked his head, his hair falling in waves against the plastic of the mask. “that’s—”

“It doesn’t matter to me how little you’ve done,” the man murmured. Gi-hun dared to look up at him, the words escaping him before he could check them.

“Really?” It seemed strange that he wouldn’t care. 

FRNT shrugged, “Anything you don’t know,” he undid the top button of Gi-hun’s shirt. One of his only buttons, damnit. His fingers flickered over his collarbone, “I can teach you.” Gi-hun swallowed, mulling the notion over. The man shifted closer, knees braced on either side of his hips. Gi-hun had to tilt his head back to look at him. It was a strange kind of intoxication, being near the man. Gi-hun hadn’t even had an ounce of booze the entire day—he’d made sure of it—and yet, here he was—dumbstruck, glazed-eyes, hammered. 

That someone could make him like that so effortlessly was almost alarming. 

The man leaned in closer, his eyes intent as he brushed his fingers over Gi-hun’s face. Over the planes of his mask—stalling for just a moment on the edge of the plastic, down his jaw, coming to rest, feather-light, against his mouth. Gi-hun exhaled shallowly. He, honestly, had no idea how this was going.

Gi-hun wished that he could see the man’s face. See what expression he was making, besides the fire in his eyes. Maybe then he’d have an idea of how badly he was doing. If he should just quit while he was ahead. 

Quit, and then what?  

The thought sobered him. This was money—a way to get money. More money. Any money. More, surely, than being a fucking chauffeur. And he needed it—more than even he was willing to admit to himself. 

Gi-hun had begun to trace circles against the man’s hips, more out of nervous energy than any real intent. The smooth fabric of his shirt ruffled under his touch. FRNT almost stiffened—too smooth to be called that but nonetheless a distinct tension in his frame. 

“Open,” he murmured. His thumb pressed, gentle, coaxing, against his bottom lip. Gi-hun’s breathing shuddered to a halt in his throat. His lips parted, almost more out of surprise than anything else. The man nudged two of his fingers against his mouth. Asking. 

Gi-hun hesitated for just a fraction of a second, his pulse tripping over itself. The slightest bit of pressure.

He opened. 

It was dizzying, the taste of his fingers—of his skin against Gi-hun’s tongue. FRNT pursed his lips, that expression Gi-hun was beginning to notice was reserved for when the man was suppressing a smile. His fingers dragged into Gi-hun’s mouth, growing slick and warm. Something stirred, molten, in his core. 

“Do you have a gag reflex?” Okay, not prepared for that. But FRNT seemed to answer his own question, pressing down against the flat of Gi-hun’s tongue until an unseemly noise left his throat. Gi-hun choked, leaning forward as the man dragged his fingers out. They glistened in the dim light, and Gi-hun looked away, flush rising to his face. His mouth still tasted of him—whiskey and metal and something that he didn’t have a name for.  

FRNT wiped his hand off casually on the couch, the golden bands on his wrist glinting with the motion. “Good to know.” 

Gi-hun knew he was blushing at that point, heat rising to the back of his neck. Thank god for the mask. His breathing was coming in rough patterns, and he leaned heavily against the couch, grateful for the support. 

A smooth hand grasped his wrist, lifting it. The man turned to inspect the curve of his wrist with a languid tilt of his head. He lazily pressed his thumb to the pulse point there, probably feeling the frantic roar of Gi-hun’s blood in his veins. 

“Have you been tied up before?” Gi-hun choked on nothing at all, his eyes widening. 

“What—” Warmth spread down from his thundering pulse through his body, firm and insistent. 

He had. But not like that. No—he’d been handcuffed. He’d been tied up by some particularly nasty officers. But not…that. The man’s lips pulled up into a sly grin, as if he’d expected as much but just wanted to see Gi-hun react. 

FRNT leaned back, bringing Gi-hun’s hand with him, He pressed Gi-hun’s fingers to the band around his neck. The material shimmered gold under the light. It was cool under Gi-hun’s touch, a contrast to the heat of the man it belonged to. With Gi-hun’s touch pressed to his throat, his eyes flashed. 

“Choked?” Gi-hun let out a harsh breath, his head ducked. It felt wrong, watching his fingers curl around the man’s neck. FRNT chuckled, leaning forward into it. Gi-hun’s nerves buzzed, shuddering with the pressure of those dark eyes. The pressure made him honest, the roar of blood under his skin. He shook his head, swallowing thickly. The man’s eyes tracked the dip of his throat as he did so.

He heard the low hum FRNT made. Gi-hun looked up as his hand was released, returning as if by default to grasp his waist. “You’re an interesting man,” he heard, the voice smooth and warm. Like whiskey. Like candle wax. FRNT paused, that wolfish half-grin coming back. “You break so easily.” Gi-hun’s breathing gave an embarrassing hitch. Was that a good or bad thing? 

In the silence, the gentle lilt of the music drifted through the curtain, catching in the soft corners of the room. 

Gi-hun shifted. He was hot, bothered, all of the fucking above. But as he glanced down between them, gaze sluggish and dazed, he noticed that he wasn’t the only one. 

Which, okay, yeah, was maybe a little gratifying. 

FRNT smoothly moved off of him, leaning back into the couch as he swiped his whiskey glass from the side table. He raised it to his lips, taking a contemplative sip. Gi-hun watched him, his pulse thrumming. Had he passed? The man turned those dark eyes his way. He needed to pass. 

“You can call me Hwang In-ho when we’re not working.” A flare of relief burst through his chest. Thank fuck. He’d made it through. Whatever test that was, it seemed like he hadn’t entirely failed. 

“And,” Gi-hun swallowed, “when we are?” 

Hwang set his whiskey glass down, the edge clinking against the table. He leaned forward, resting his chin in his palm. 

“That,” he began, the hints of teeth peeking into the words, “is almost entirely up to you.” Gi-hun stiffened against the seat cushion. The man watched him, the faint outline of a smile on his lips. He picked up the glass to take a thoughtful sip. 

“Some prefer ‘Master’,” he looked into his glass, watching the liquid swirl in the bottom of it. Gi-hun glanced over at him, his eyes wide. He hoped the shade of red he was turning wasn’t too noticeable. But Hwang’s grin widened as they locked eyes, and Gi-hun knew he’d caught on. “Others prefer something like ‘Lord’,” he continued, turning to twist forward, draping himself over the couch right next to Gi-hun. 

The heat of him was overwhelming. His voice was low, saccharine. He must be enjoying this, Gi-hun thought with a touch of petulance. 

“I tend to prefer ‘Sir’ myself,” he mused, his fingers tracing over Gi-hun’s shoulder. Gi-hun shivered, finding himself leaning into the touch. Sir, huh?

“But,” And Gi-hun was embarrassed to admit that he missed the pressure as soon as it lifted. Hwang waved his hand smoothly through the air. “In the end, you call me whatever you’d like.” 

Gi-hun blew out a breath, looking down at his hands where he was twisting them together. He slowly nodded, pressing his palms to the velvet cushions. 

He was suddenly cold without the press of the other man’s warmth. 

A black card was offered out to him, materializing in the man’s hand. Gold lettering. Gi-hun read it quickly. An address. Hwang tilted his head, gold hood catching in the light of the lamp. 

“I do hope I’ll see you there.” The man rose, lithe as a cat, all sleek lines and easy balance. He cast a backwards glance at Gi-hun, still on the couch. He nodded to him, lips quirking up, “Gi-hun.” 

He swept out of the alcove without another word. 

Gi-hun felt all the tension leave him in a whoosh, leaning heavily against the edge of the couch. 

Wow. 

He turned the card over and over in his hands, watching the text glint in the dim light. He almost could’ve believed that entire sequence was a dream, if not for the sleek black card between his fingers. 

That, and the lingering taste of the man’s skin on his tongue. 

He pocketed the card with a sigh, brushing his ruffled hair out of his eyes. A cautious triumph fluttered in his chest—he’d done it. Gotten the job. 

The only thing was—Gi-hun slowly ducked out of the alcove, feeling the press of eyes on his skin. Heads turned in his direction, alcohol-loose mouths spilling whispers in a giddy haze. It was as if they’d known what’d happened behind the dark curtain. What he’d just gotten himself into. 

The bright lights of the outside world were dazzling after the darkness of the bar, all the fluorescents and headlights stabbing at his eyes. 

He took what might’ve been his first full breath since entering the bar, the air second-hand-smoke-sour and sharp. 

It steadied him. Helped him get his footing. He squared his shoulders. 

Now the question allowed itself to fully surface: 

What, exactly, had he gotten himself into?

Chapter Text

“You’re doing what?”

Gi-hun paused, halfway into his plastic container of japchae. 

“I—” mouth full, he awkwardly turned away to finish chewing. “Going to work?” 

His mother sat across from him, her mouth just slightly ajar. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, wrinkles more pronounced in her suspicion. 

“You?” she began, eyeing him up and down like he’d just announced he was going to the moon. “Work?”

He nodded, looking down into his container for a moment. It wasn’t a lie, not technically. 

“Where?”

Ah. 

Gi-hun felt the tips of his ears flare with heat. He made a sound in the back of his throat, a noncommittal grunt, as he scratched the back of his neck. 

He slowly unwound himself from his cross-legged seat on the floor, bringing an empty dish with him to the rusted sink. He set the bowl down with a soft clatter, taking a glance at the piles of dirty plates. Something knotted in his throat, tight and familiar. Guilt. He scrubbed a hand down his face, looking out their one dingy window. 

“It’s—“ Gi-hun fumbled for words. How does one explain something like that? He heard the slow, heavy sigh behind him. The scoff. Oh Mal-soon looked tired. Not even angry—just tired. 

“You know what? Just go. Do your ‘work’.” She looked away, hands resting against the low surface of the table. Gi-hun blinked at her, his embarrassment waning to make way for that familiar rock in his throat. The sink sputtered as he turned the knob. Died. A few drops of water dripped onto the dirty plates. They hovered on the grimy surface for a moment before rolling in forlorn streaks down the dishes. 

His mother turned back to picking at her food. She hadn’t been eating—Gi-hun had noticed. She mostly just pushed the meal around with her chopsticks, sighing as she dropped uneaten food back into her bowl. She’d grown thinner, the bags under her eyes more pronounced. 

Gi-hun tried to swallow back the wash of worry, sharp and bitter, that flooded his mouth. It didn’t work—it never really did.  

A thick, suffocating silence—a familiar silence—filled the small room. Gi-hun’s hands hovered over the stack of filth in the sink. Itching to fix. Itching to push away. 

It was starting to eat at him—the silence. It never lifted, never stopped needling him in the side. Slinking under his skin, writhing with every flare of disappointment he found in his mother’s eyes. Like an ugly little shadow, nipping at his heels. 

It just made everything… difficult.  

And so, Gi-hun did what he did best when things got difficult: 

He ran away. 

The quiet was broken by his footsteps, the shuffle of fabric as he pulled his threadbare jacket around his shoulders. 

“I have to, uh, get going,” he mumbled. If his mother said anything, it was drowned out by the squeal of the door as he swung it open. He ducked through the hallway, ignoring the discoloration—the stains—that lined the walls. Gi-hun climbed the few steps to reach street level, letting out a breath as the cramped space fell behind him.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, ducking into the chill of the street outside. 

He was running late anyway. 

The wind eased through the gaps between buildings, whistling through his hair.  

He pulled his jacket tighter around him, cramming his cap on. It helped, somewhat, with the problem of his hair being whipped into his eyes. 

He squared his shoulders, glancing down at the sleek black card in his hand. It felt wrong in his fingers—too pristine, too polished. It felt too perfect for him to even be holding it. 

He’d checked the address after returning home. Turns out the allotted building wasn’t too far away. Not that he minded walking; he’d grown accustomed to it over the years. 

Gi-hun weaved through the streets, turning among brick buildings and the half-slice of banjiha windows. The bar where he used to frequent— ’used to’ being the relative term—the convenience store where he picked up cigarettes, the corner where he tended to meet Jung-bae—all passed by as he mapped out his route. The wind snagged greedily at his jacket, a phantom touch he flinched instinctively away from. 

The glare of the sun off a nearby window dazzled his vision, leaving teal-bright spots behind his eyelids. Gi-hun winced, rubbing at his eyes. Storefronts and apartments meshed into a clutter of spaces, leaning against each other like drunkards. The whole collection looked vaguely like it might collapse, tumble onto him in an instant. Gi-hun inhaled sharply as he caught the time in one of the convenience store windows.

Now he was running very late. 

What a first impression . 

Gi-hun shoved the card in his pocket so he could move a little faster. Not quite running, but something close. He encountered few people on his way, skidding around back alleys and empty sidewalks. He nearly tripped in his hurry, stumbling over the uneven ground until he—mercifully—reached his destination. 

The front of the building was far more nondescript than he’d expected, beige and smooth—ordinary. He checked the card again. Held it up to the light, as if some secret message would erupt from it. The shimmering golden letters remained the same. He didn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe a glimmering building, all sleek modernity and glass paneling. Maybe a shady alcove lined in black satin curtains. Not this. 

Not what looked to simply be a bland office building, the windows small, squat rectangles—like beady little eyes. There were two dingy steps leading up to the entrance, worn down with weather and the press of footsteps. The forgotten stubs of cigarette butts littered the ground by his feet. 

Gi-hun let out a slow breath. He could really use a smoke right now. 

Maybe Hwang would have some. 

The sudden thought of the man, glinting eyes hooded by the sleek mask, made something rise, hot and quick, to his mouth. Nerves, yes. But something else, something darker. He swallowed it down, tasting the echo of whiskey sweetness that Hwang’s fingers had left. 

He took the two steps up to the entrances, exhaling harshly through his mouth. Trying to push the taste away, maybe. It didn’t work. The wind nipped at his heels, seeping through the cracks in the buildings to ruffle his clothes. Go. 

The interior of the place was as unremarkable as the outside—speckled linoleum floors, walls painted an unassuming tan, a scraggly black mat running under his shoes. 

It smelled like aerosol cleaner, flowery and manufactured. 

There was what looked to be a receptionist’s desk in front of him, nestled at the end of the small entryway. A woman with a glinting eyebrow piercing manned the small counter, fingers flying over her keyboard as she stared intently at the screen. 

The door closed behind him with a bang . 

Gi-hun jumped, and the woman seemed to notice him for the first time. 

“Oh!” she looked up at him, at the rumpled cap over his hair, the jacket hanging too-loose around his shoulders. “You must be here for FRNT.” 

He offered a sheepish grin, his shoulders lifting in something like a shrug. “That’s right.” 

She returned the smile after a moment, gesturing him forward. Her bangs hung low in front of her eyes as she turned back to her keyboard. Gi-hun watched her as she punched in a few rapid commands. 

“First time here, huh?” He nodded, a prickle running down his back. She hummed, entering something into the computer. “Didn’t know he was hiring.” Gi-hun swallowed down the ball of nerves clogging his throat. The young woman seemed to catch the imperceptible tension in his shoulders. Her dark eyes rose to catch his. There was something warm there. Soft. 

“Don’t worry,” she said gently, turning back to click the printer behind her to life. It grumbled appreciatively, the sound filling the small room. After a moment, and a few deft keystrokes, it began to cough up a sheet of paper, sliding haltingly into the tray. Gi-hun watched it, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

Don’t worry. 

He scoffed quietly at himself. How, exactly, was he supposed to do that? 

The sheet was presented to him with another smile. He took it, feeling the warmth of the paper seep into his fingers. The young woman inclined her head. 

“Just bring that with you, yeah? He’s on the fourth floor. Down the corridor and to the right—third door.”  

Gi-hun nodded, staring down at the paper. Some—contract, of sorts. There was a line at the bottom where he assumed a signature would go, points in small, professional typeface. Gi-hun began to drift towards the elevator, absorbed in the document. His head jerked up as he quickly turned, realizing he’d forgotten to address her. He bowed, an awkward smile lifting his features. His favorite defense.  

“Yes, well, thank you, thank you.” 

She nodded to him, that smile twisting wryly to the side. 

“He’s waiting for you.” 

Right. He was late. Gi-hun chuckled weakly, jamming his thumb into the elevator button as if that would make it move faster. 

The doors slid soundlessly open, the inside walls mirrored and sleek. He stepped inside, jumping at the soft ding of the elevator as it closed. 

He was fidgeting again, rolling the contract back and forth into a tube. The paper was thick. That hefty, expensive kind of paper. It didn’t hold the tube shape all that well. He caught sight of his reflection, fumbling as the contract sprang out of its roll once more. 

His hair was sticking in all directions from the wind, bits of it poking out from under the grimy cap in a jumble of dark wisps. He took the hat off, trying to tame down some of the mess. He hadn’t shaved, and the suggestion of stubble marked his skin, the outline of the mustache that could grow there, if he’d let it. The jacket hung a few sizes too large, the shirt under it a size too small. He scrubbed a hand down his face, turning away from the mirrored wall. His chest gave an unpleasant squeeze. 

It was fine. Probably. He was fine. 

His foot tapped restlessly against the floor, watching the floor number tick up.

One. Two. Three—

Was this thing purposefully moving slowly? 

Just as the elevator door began to ease open, Gi-hun was already slipping through the gap, making for the hallway. His footsteps were swallowed by the plush rug under his feet, soft and thick, a dark, midnight black. Even in the hurry, he noticed the change as soon as he stepped into the corridor—the finery, the gold. This was what he’d been expecting. 

As he turned the corner, Gi-hun smashed right into someone, letting out a startled grunt. He stumbled back a step, inhaling sharply. Aish. His shoulder smarted from the impact. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, bowing deeply. 

The chuckle that the apology elicited was a familiar one. Gi-hun’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. 

Hwang In-ho just tilted his head, muffling the laughter behind a gloved hand. Gi-hun fumbled, mortification staining his ears red and hot. “I’m so sorry—” 

The man put up a hand to stop him, his eyes glittering from beneath the mask. Gi-hun stilled. The next apology wavered on his lips.

“I thought I would come and get you,” Hwang mused. “Didn’t realize I’d run right into you here.” A smile seeped into his words. A blazer—black, golden inner lining—was slung over his frame. He wore no shirt beneath it. The press of his collarbones beneath the skin shifted with his breathing. Rising. Falling. Gi-hun looked away, something buzzing in his veins. 

He had dropped the contract in the small collision. He reached for it, but Hwang had already bent to retrieve it, examining the half-rolled situation the paper was currently in. His eyes flicked to Gi-hun—a question there. 

“Ah, I didn’t get a chance to read it.” Gi-hun managed, wiping his palms on his jacket. The man’s sly smile widened. He tapped the roll against Gi-hun’s shoulder, inclining his head in the way that was beginning to become familiar. 

“Then why don’t we do so inside?” Before Gi-hun could muster a response, Hwang had turned in a swish of golden fabric, making his way towards one of the doors lining the hallway. His gait was smooth, leisurely, his hood swaying with every step. Gi-hun’s fingers dug into the fabric of his cap, clutching the thing like some sort of anchor. His heart beat loud in his chest, thudding against his ribs like it was dying to get out. 

He followed Hwang up to a dark wood door. Adorning the space right beside it was a square black panel. The man turned to him, leaning against the intricate molding of the wall. 

“I trust you still have the card I’d given you,” Hwang said. His hand was loosely held out. There were veins of gold lining his gloves—thin as gossamer, so faint that they almost faded away when Gi-hun wasn’t looking for them. He rummaged in his pocket for the small black card, flipping it over in his fingers to extend it to the man. It caught the low light of the fixtures lining the corridor. 

Instead of taking the card from him, Hwang offered a flash of teeth, a victorious little smile. His fingers closed around Gi-hun’s wrist, pulling him forward with a firm tug. 

The feeling of leather against his skin wasn’t unpleasant—just different. Empty of the warmth that radiated from Hwang’s bare skin. Gi-hun inhaled sharply, stumbling just a step as his hand—card within—was pressed to that small black panel. He was inches from Hwang now, looking down into the glittering pools of the man’s eyes. Even through the layers of metal, Gi-hun would’ve bet money that the man was raising an eyebrow. 

He heard a click; a low tone. Hwang released him to nudge the door open. Gi-hun felt air reenter his lungs, returning from the hiatus that the man’s closeness had induced. 

Must be a keycard. He glanced at the pristine face of it. It glittered back at him. 

Through the door was a sofa, a cushioned seat not too different from that loveseat back at the bar. The low table before it was adorned with a sleek black vase. Beside that, a matching paper to the one Hwang now held. A matching contract. 

As Hwang sat down he smoothed Gi-hun’s copy out beside the original. The edges came curling right back in, still fighting to retain their telescopic roll from earlier. Hwang hummed thoughtfully, leaning back in his seat to gesture Gi-hun forward. 

“Please,” that voice, low and smooth as honey, “sit.”  

Gi-hun swallowed hard. The room smelled like the flowery cleaner from downstairs, overlaid with something new. Something different. Sweet and warm, smoky like the curl of heat off of a campfire. Coffee and sugar, syrup and whiskey and something else that he couldn’t put a label on. That something that tickled along the back of his throat and stuck there until he tasted it in his teeth.  

He took the far edge of the couch—as far away from Hwang as one could humanly be, actually, without being fully perched on the armrest. It was less a conscious decision than that animal instinct that whines to stray as far away from the thing with teeth as possible. But the man only chuckled, the sound like gentle water over the bed of a river, musical and flashing and Gi-hun wanted to sink his hands into the tide of it and pull until he found whatever it was that made that sound. 

“You don’t have to hide, Seong,” he murmured, “I don’t bite.” 

Gi-hun blinked once at the flash of canines. “You sure?” And he hadn’t really meant to say that aloud. 

But it only seemed to amuse Hwang further, smile stretching as he splayed a gloved hand over the paper before him, head angled in acknowledgement. 

“Only when asked,” he amended. 

Gi-hun thought about it. Tilting his head aside, feeling the press of fever-hot lips against his throat. Teeth grazing the skin as he nosed down to the juncture between neck and shoulder. Not breaking skin. Not yet. The heat of pressure against the muscle, low and animal and dangerous. Gi-hun blew out a breath, his hair lifting from where it hung before his eyes. He combed it away from his face hastily, in one sharp swipe, that practiced motion that was more instinct than anything else. Warmth flushed high on his cheekbones. 

“Ah,” he managed softly. Not really an answer. But Hwang didn’t seem to mind. His mask tilted, catching the reflection of the overhead lights in glittering flashes. Gi-hun shifted a little closer, peering down at the two sheets of paper. Hoping to distract himself, really. 

There were six lines—six chunks of too-small text—that occupied the breadth of the contract. 

Gi-hun skimmed them over, eyes flicking past the legal jargon to try and dissect what they actually meant.

1. Contractor agrees to participate in exclusive, live-broadcast engagements as assigned by FRNT. These may include, but are not limited to, performance-based sessions, personal appearances, and other on-site or remote productions deemed suitable.
2. Contractor will receive an agreed-upon stipend per session, as outlined in a separate, sealed appendix. Additional bonuses may be awarded at FRNT’s sole discretion.
3. Contractor agrees to maintain absolute confidentiality regarding all aspects of FRNT operations, staff, clientele, and any activities witnessed, recorded, or overheard in the course of their engagement. This clause survives the termination of this agreement indefinitely.
4. Contractor acknowledges that certain sessions may involve high emotional or psychological intensity and assumes all risks willingly. FRNT is not liable for any distress, physical or emotional, incurred during the engagement.
5. Contractor reserves the right to terminate the proposed agreement at any given time. A notice of resignation must be submitted at a minimum of one session prior to agreement termination.
6. By signing, the Contractor affirms they are entering this agreement voluntarily, and without coercion.

Gi-hun traced a thumb over the words stipend and bonuses. His mouth had gone dry and gummy, and his tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip. Money. That’s what those words meant, amidst the jumble of legalities. Money. 

There was a line adorning the bottom of the contract. 

Signature:

Print Name:

April 12th, 2020.

“Finished?” Hwang was at his shoulder, reaching over to offer Gi-hun a sleek black pen. 

The line on his own page had already been signed—a looping, elegant signature that curled around and over the paper like it had always belonged there. As Gi-hun took the pen from him, Hwang sat back, one arm slung over the back of the couch. Lazily. Confidently. Aware of his own magnetism in a way that felt practiced, earned. 

The Contractor affirms they are entering this agreement without coercion. 

Gi-hun leaned over the paper. His pen hovered for just an instant, wavering in the air like a held breath. What am I doing? He exhaled slowly, carefully, through his nose.

He signed. 

Seong Gi-hun. 

Because what else was there to do?

His signature looked sloppy and crude—childish—trailing uncertainly off at the edges. He set down the pen before he could make it any worse. It clicked against the laminate tabletop. 

It felt like the room had grown both brighter and dimmer at once. Gi-hun looked up, taking in the space as if for the first time. 

Past the little couch was a complicated setup of what looked to be recording equipment. There was a monitor perched on a sturdy dark oak desk, the screen blank and dark. Cameras. Lights. Maybe a speaker. There were more mirrors than he would have expected. He caught the flash of one adorning the ceiling in the other room. Another nestled against the wall where the small foyer gave way to the larger room, full-length and glinting with his image. Like he needed a reminder that he looked like he’d crawled off the street. 

His thumb traced nervous circles over his knuckles, glancing back at Hwang. Wrenching his gaze away from the mirror like that could hide what was reflected there. 

“Now what?” He didn’t know what he expected. Dark magic? Blood oaths? 

Hwang clicked his tongue softly, sitting forward to slide both of the contracts together. He tapped them twice against the table, aligning the edges before sliding them into a sleek black folder. 

“I have a few housekeeping items to discuss with you,” he murmured, setting the folder down. “Nothing contractual, but important nonetheless.”  

Gi-hun turned to him, his eyes flicking down from the mask to his chest, catching the bare skin there and flitting away with a startled burst of nerves. “Yeah, alright.” He found himself mumbling and cleared his throat, working a stray thread from his sleeve between his fingers. “What is it?”

“Firstly,” Hwang tilted his head, “as I’m sure you’re aware, this relationship,” and he gestured between the two of them, “is strictly transactional.” 

Gi-hun nodded, one shoulder rising in a shrug. Not unexpected. This was—however unconventional—a job. Hwang was—in whatever sense—his boss. 

Hwang hummed, satisfied enough with the response, before moving on. 

“Secondly, I expect you to be entirely honest with me in-session. If something is wrong, I cannot read your mind—” Gi-hun somehow doubted that. “—and I do need you to tell me.” The hood slid forward, gold rippling over the smooth black mask. Gi-hun shifted, rolling his shoulders out. He felt those eyes on him, gaze sweeping across his skin like turning the page of a book. Reading him like one.  

“Sure, yeah.” Hwang watched him silently, lips pursing just slightly. “Can-do,” Gi-hun added, a sheepish smile twitching over his mouth. Hwang ducked his head, huffing through what could only have been a chuckle. 

“Can-do,” he echoed, voice lilting with the slow drawl of humor. “Well, Mr. Can-do, I also would like you to think of a safeword.”

Gi-hun paused. “A safe—?”

“A word that, when spoken,” Hwang crossed one leg over the other. The belt at his hips winked under the lights, gold eyelets flashing alongside the stretch of bare, muscled skin— 

Gi-hun blinked. His throat worked over a breath. Focus. 

“—ends the session. Full stop. No questions asked,” Hwang finished smoothly, eyes catching Gi-hun’s with a knowing glint. Gi-hun frowned thoughtfully, his mind working it over. Safeword. Turning it carefully like a stone in his palm. Examining the shape of it on his lips. 

“No questions asked?” he murmured. Hwang nodded, his smile softening. 

“Sometimes you just need to stop.” 

“Okay,” he mulled it over for a moment, “okay.” But what word? 

It had to be something memorable. Something that would stick to him, in his mind, easy to grasp and easy to recall. 

Gi-hun came to a decision with a slight toss of his head, a habit he’d picked up and never managed to put down. 

“Ojingeo.” 

It reminded him of that game he used to play as a small child. Of kicking up dust along the field, the hot summer sun on his shoulders. The crackle of laughter and breathlessness in the air. The shove to his side, the ache in his ribs. A good kind of ache. A young kind of ache. 

He looked up to see something tighten in Hwang’s shoulders. Not a flinch, not quite, but something alarmingly close. The man was silent, gloved fingers curled against the couch. Velvet to leather. Coiling under the skin. 

Had he said something wrong?

“Sorry, is—?” 

The flicker of tension was gone almost as quickly as it’d come. Hwang unfurled like a sail, like a cat stretching, his smile twitching at the corner of his lips. The snag smoothed out so fast Gi-hun wondered, briefly, if he’d imagined it. 

“No—Ojingeo,” he mused. “Ojingeo is good.” 

Hwang rose from the couch, shoes clicking against the hardwood as he crossed the room to the large oak desk. He tugged at one of his gloves like it’d suddenly come loose, adjusting each finger with methodical precision. Tension lingered in Gi-hun’s mouth like an aftertaste. He stared at Hwang’s back. The fabric swayed behind him, bunching around the curl of capable shoulders.“I’ll assume you’d also like to remain masked during sessions?” Hwang asked, sliding one of the desk’s many drawers open with a practiced flick. 

Gi-hun nodded quickly, his veins thrumming with the reminder of nerves. “Yes, that’d be great.” Latching onto the change in subject. 

Hwang seemed to lift something from the drawer, turning it gently over in his hands. 

“Is it unprofessional to ask that you close your eyes?” There was the lift of a familiar smile behind the words, the sound like a soft flash of teeth. The knot of tension in Gi-hun’s shoulders loosened. Whatever had flickered in the man earlier seemed to have faded. Smoothed over like silk. 

“Don’t think so,” Gi-hun murmured, a grin tugging at his lips. 

The room became at once the soft red glow of his eyelids, light seeping through his lashes, his arms braced against the couch for balance. He heard the scrape of a heel turning, the press of footsteps against the hardwood. The warm breeze of the breath Hwang let out. The sweet smoke of him, growing thicker as Gi-hun felt gloved fingers press against his temple, back through the mess of his hair. 

The cool press of metal nudged against his forehead; the smooth click of a clasp behind his head. The mask was affixed with careful, almost gentle precision. Gi-hun felt it curve over his features, snug to his nose and cheekbones, flush to his skin but never tight. 

Like being submerged just under the surface of a lake. Dipping his head back, water closing over his mouth. 

The slide of hands disappeared, the shade of his eyelids dimmed by the lids of the mask. 

A beat of silence. The warmth receded. Gi-hun hadn’t realized he was cold until then. 

‘Can I open?” he asked belatedly. It was a genuine question, but he heard the breath of laughter he received in response. 

“Of course.” 

Gi-hun blinked, his vision dazzled from the lights. He adjusted slowly, reaching up to rub at his eyes, finding smooth, cool mask beneath his fingers. Hwang leaned over him, granting a momentary respite from the brightness. There was a wolfish slant to his mouth. The promise of something else in his lips. 

“Thank you for asking, though, Seong,” Low in his throat, more breath than words. Something in Gi-hun’s chest gave a startled leap. “It’s good that you know how to ask.” 

Gi-hun laughed, nervously, breathlessly, heat rising to meet the cool flush of the mask. He warmed under the praise, something animal curling up in his chest and purring happily. 

Hwang’s gaze poured from the eyes of his mask with liquid, shimmering intent. His thumb traced along the seam of the newly fastened accessory—walking the line of skin and metal, flickering between heat and ice. An appreciative hum left him, the sound striking something in Gi-hun’s chest like a guitar string. A shiver like the note plucked against his spine. Gi-hun canted his head back, turning up to meet the examination. Slow. Methodical. It felt like he could drown in the attention. He didn't mind the feeling as much as he thought he would. 

“You wear it well.” And the way Hwang spoke, like it was less an opinion than an observation and a statement of fact: “It suits you.”

“Does it?” Gi-hun managed. Hwang paused, thumb skating down the line of his jaw. Fingers tensing there like he was coming to a decision. 

“Would I lie to you?” A dare. A test. 

“Maybe,” Gi-hun heard himself saying, before his brain caught up with his mouth and he clamped down hard on his bottom lip, trying to bite back the word even as it’d already escaped. 

Hwang’s mouth tugged upwards. 

“Maybe,” he echoed, one knee pressing into the couch by Gi-hun’s hip. The weight shifted the cushion beneath him, running a lazy finger up his spine. Igniting every nerve along the way. “Then, do you think I’m lying to you?”

He was very close. Intoxicatingly close. Gi-hun inhaled sharply, fingers curling into the couch cushions like he could be anchored there. Hwang inclined his head, the black mask framing the pools of his eyes. Keen. Focused. And utterly locked on him. 

And—

“No.” 

That curl of a smirk broke into a smile. Hwang shifted back just an inch to study him. “I’m glad,” he said, his fingers sliding almost absently down behind Gi-hun’s ear. A shiver radiated out from the touch, ripples through still water. “It’s rather important that you trust me.” 

He must have seen something slacken in Gi-hun’s face, some knee-jerk bile at the idea—the familiar panic. His hand lifted. 

“I don’t expect complete confidence,” he said. Almost soft. Almost sharp. He somehow managed to sound both like he was folding his fingers together at an interview and unbuttoning his shirt between silk sheets. “I have to earn some things, in the end.” 

The idea that earning his trust was something on the mind of FRNT —who had to have a million other Gi-huns lined up at his disposal—was… disorienting. 

Hwang suddenly pulled away, examining the desk behind him. There was a brass hourglass perched proudly at its edge—because why would Hwang ever use digital clocks, they weren’t mysterious or mildly difficult to read, that’d be no fun—and the black sand inside had piled dutifully into the bottom, coming to a gentle, peaked halt. 

“Almost time,” Hwang said, turning back with a renewed intensity. Not rushed. Not harried. Just intent. His gloves ran the length of Gi-hun’s jacket, catching in the collar. Slowly pushing the fabric aside. “Think you might change?” Another question that wasn’t really a question. Another gentle command. 

Gi-hun reached up, hands brushing over the leather of the gloves. He worked one shoulder out of the threadbare coat first, feeling the cotton slink against his arms as the rest of it pooled behind him. 

Hwang’s head dipped, pausing. 

Gi-hun tried to work around the knot that’d appeared in his throat. The shirt was tight to his skin, a size or two too small. Leaving precious little to the imagination. That analytical gaze swept across his body, and Gi-hun felt his shoulders hunching forward. Protective. Unsure. He knew what he looked like. Grimy and underfed. The muscle visible not because he’d earned it but because hunger had taken most anything else away. 

Coal-dark gloves began to slide along his collarbone. The touch hooked into the thin fabric of the shirt; nudged his shoulders back. Smoothing him out. A sharp inhale broke from under the lip of his mask, a burst of sound in the silence. Gi-hun froze like he’d been cornered, pulse thudding loud in his ears. 

Hwang was silent, a thumb tracing slow circles over his clavicle. Warmth like honey over his skin—slow, sticking. 

“You’re still hiding,” he said quietly. 

Not angry. Not surprised, either. Something— soft —lingering around his mouth. 

“Sorry,” Gi-hun whispered, breathless. The apology flew up between them like a shield, his familiar, well-worn defense.

Hwang stilled. The softness calcified into the sliver of a smile. His head slowly cocked to the side, like he was running a particularly stubborn knot between his fingers. He pulled:

“That wasn’t an accusation.”

Gi-hun couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look away. 

Then what was it?  

The warmth seeped away like a tide, the sway of the air as Hwang reached up to adjust his hood. A breath filtered against the edge of his mask. He rose in one lithe motion, straightening the edges of his blazer. The gold lining glimmered under the ambient wash of the room. He’d folded his sleeves up, the stretch of his forearms bared to the light. 

“I should begin preparing some of the equipment,” he said, the professional clip edging, just briefly, back into his voice. He headed for the studio, the amalgamation of screens and recorders. “If you could join me when you’re ready.” 

“Okay,” Gi-hun managed. A nod. Hwang’s footsteps retreated into the other room. 

A beat of silence. “Okay.” Again, softer now, soothing himself. Okay. He was okay. 

His eyes dragged across the room, across the table where the contracts had rested. Running his fingers along the laminate, feeling the stain of ink on his tongue. He worried the hem of his shirt between his thumb and index, tugging at the edges to avoid fidgeting any more. Gi-hun heard the steady rhythm of keyboard strokes, the gentle whirr of machinery coming to life. The light grew brighter, seeping across the floorboards like liquid metal. 

Taking a deep breath like plunging into icy water, Gi-hun shrugged clumsily out of the t-shirt, leaving it like a ghost beside his jacket. The room felt colder. Gooseflesh prickled against his skin. He smoothed his hands down his sides, wincing at the faintest press of ribs his fingers found. 

As Gi-hun rose to his feet, planning to rid himself of his wrinkled jeans, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. 

His breath caught against his teeth. 

He looked… 

He looked like something carefully wrapped, carefully arranged, glittering and polished under the swell of the lights. The mask was perfect porcelain, smooth and bright as glass. Golden eyeshadow markings where his eyes met the gaps in the material, flashing with every tilt of his head. The curve of it along his jaw, cupping his features like it’d been made for him. 

He looked rare. Special. 

The surprise faded, melted into something hotter beneath his skin. His hair still fell in a mass of dark waves over his forehead, across his cheeks, but the mask made it look intentional—the mess of allure, not the mess of wind-battered fatigue. 

Hwang’s mask was all sharp, sleek cubism. That angular suggestion of a face fractured into diamond pieces. Like one of his machines: steel and sleek and sharp. Gi-hun’s mask, by comparison, had softer features. Smooth pearl, undulating slow over the rise of features like a tide. Subtle curves to faceted geometry. Gentle hills to ravine. The rolling give of dawn light to the firm press of midnight. Black and white. Antitheses. 

And yet— 

Complementary. 

The lights dimmed, the overhead bulbs lowering and warming until the entire space felt like a secret. A held breath.

“Mind your eyes.” Hwang called from the other room. Gi-hun tore his gaze away from the mirror to stare towards that voice. That voice. 

Gi-hun wasn’t so sure what he’d been expecting. There weren’t really any parameters around this sort of thing. There wasn’t a mould to which Gi-hun could compare the shape of him. But Hwang In-ho was—even so—something entirely unexpected. 

Everything he wore was harsh, dark edges. Geometry. Focus. Discipline. Leather gloves and black mask. The consummate professional. The picture of control. 

But underneath the sharp, cool veneer was something else. Something he’d been wholly unprepared for. 

Gi-hun was used to being on the back foot. That was, after all, where he’d lived out most of his life. 

But this—

This was unusual. 

Did all of his… employees— Gi-hun supposed that was the word —get this treatment? 

There were gloves on the table. He hadn’t noticed them when he’d first come in, and yet there they were: black, like Hwang’s, but fingerless. The cuffs lined with gold and white filigree. They probably cost more than everything he’d been wearing that day. The thought tugged at something sharp between his ribs. Faint, like an itch. He shrugged it away.  

The gloves slid on like butter, the leather supple and soft against his palms. Gi-hun flexed his fingers, marvelling down at the material as it coated his hands like a second skin. It made his hands look capable. Sleek. He shook them out—the way one flicks wet hands dry—before he turned his attention back to the recording studio. 

An expectant kind of quiet met him.

“Should I…?”

“Come in, Seong,” Hwang answered, filling in the blank half of the question. 

His voice sounded different when he was busy. Just a little less polished. 

Gi-hun wondered what his voice would sound like if his hands were busy with other things. 

He promptly tucked the thought away before it could flare inside him. 

The low hum of machinery intensified, cooling fans and power sources thrumming together as he crossed the threshold into the studio. The faint metallic scent of the computers. A bed, the sheets dark and silken. Tidy—even though Gi-hun would’ve guessed that having a neat bed would be… counterintuitive, in a job like this. The mirror on the ceiling was much larger than the brief glint of it he’d noticed earlier, stretching to reflect much of the mattress beneath it. Something in him buzzed to life. Uncertain. Interested. 

Hwang caught his attention like falling into orbit; the liquid smoothness of every movement, carving through the studio like he owned every inch of it. Gi-hun felt his eyes snag on the man, pulled away from the sheets to study him. When Hwang paused, glancing back to catch Gi-hun’s eyes with his own, the air stole out of the room in a single, sharp instant. 

Gi-hun shifted. Rolled his weight from one foot to the next. 

“Where do you want me?” he asked quietly.

Direction. Call and response. That, he could muddle through. 

Hwang drew in a breath like it’d suddenly come loose. His shoulders lifted, just slightly, under the blazer. He slowly canted his mask towards the bed, the sleek, dark oak frame of it reflecting the spotlights. 

“There is perfect,” he said, one gloved hand gesturing him forward. 

Gi-hun watched him work as he seated himself gingerly at the edge of the mattress. The sheets were as he’d expected—unbelievably soft, supple and bunching under his weight like clouds. 

What he wouldn’t give to sleep in sheets like these. 

He drew some of the material up between his fingers, just running his hands over it, feeling the pleasant give of the silk. 

Hwang carefully adjusted the monitor, keying into the recording equipment with practiced ease. Hummed. Paused in his methodical arrangement of the machinery. 

“I have something else for you.” His heel scraped against the floorboards. Gi-hun’s head whipped up, smoothing the sheets out guiltily, like he’d been caught touching something he shouldn’t have. Hwang approached where he sat, the low purr of transformers rumbling at his back. 

A flash drew Gi-hun’s attention to where the man’s glove swayed at his hip. 

In his fingers were several shimmering golden bands. 

They looked remarkably like the bands that’d glistened around Hwang’s body back in the bar. Actually—they could’ve been the very same. 

Hwang reached out, his touch grazing along Gi-hun’s skin. 

“Tell me if you don’t want any of them.” Quiet. Coaxing. The taste of it stuck in his throat like molasses. 

Gi-hun nodded dumbly, watching Hwang begin to adjust the golden bands, slowly, around the slope of his wrists. Tight to his skin, gooseflesh rippling out from where they rested. He fastened them in cool metallic presses, his hands sliding to tighten matching ones to Gi-hun’s biceps. His gloves lingered after the metal was in place, tracing the seam between jewelry and skin. 

“They shouldn’t impair your movement,” Hwang murmured absently. As if that was what Gi-hun was concerned about. They weren’t rigid—the bands—more a mesh that shifted as easily as fabric. 

Slowly, deliberately, without fanfare, Hwang reached to fasten another set of bands around his thighs. Gi-hun hissed softly at the cold, his hips twitching—away, towards, he couldn’t really tell. Hwang hummed, smoothing over the skin for another second longer before he grasped the last band. 

A coaxing hand at the back of his head, drawing him just slightly forward—

Gi-hun tilted, a low huff of confusion pulling on his lips. 

“Around your neck,” Hwang offered as an explanation. Ah. 

Gi-hun breathed in sharply at the cold, the hair on the back of his neck lifting. 

Around your neck. The metal looped, clasping at the nape like a necklace. Like a collar. It was fastened as elegantly as all of the others, settling comfortably against his skin. Hwang’s thumbs smoothed over the curve of his throat to examine it. Gi-hun’s breathing stuttered to a halt. 

Hwang stepped back as if to evaluate his handiwork. He nodded once, softly, to himself. Approval. Gi-hun didn’t know what to do with the warm thing that reared in him at the look. As Hwang worked at bringing the monitor fully to life, Gi-hun shifted, catching the flash of molten gold around his body. Reflected in the mirror above him. Bisecting him in shimmering metal. Like the flesh under it was just as valuable. He looked down at his arms like they’d become foreign objects. 

“One last thing,” Hwang said, adjusting a final dial with a click.

Gi-hun glanced at him.

“I’ll expect that you do not use my name in-session, and I will not use yours.” 

Gi-hun nodded, pulling at his gloves. Fair enough. 

“Then,” he wondered aloud, “what will you call me?” 

Hwang paused, his mask flaring white as he flicked on another spotlight. His lips were pursed in thought, and he turned away from the machinery for just a moment. 

“I suppose it depends on the instance,” he finally said, the glint of teeth coming back. Gi-hun flushed, weight tipping forward and then back, hands braced against the mattress. 

“Ah,” he murmured, gaze sliding away to take in the setup. There were at least two screens—that he could make out—ringed by lights and microphones and an array of glass buttons, dials and machinery. 

He heard the beginning of a recorder firing. 

Nerves buzzed under his skin, writhing like a thousand tiny little insects. He tried to swallow. Couldn’t. Tried again. Tugged on the gloves. It felt like he wasn’t moving enough and he was moving too much and everything was just a little too close to him to feel comfortable. It was like something in him could feel every eye opening, stares burning holes through him like flame to paper. A little like crumbling. 

He jolted when a hand lightly grazed his shoulder. Just like being back in the bar, swinging up as if braced for attack. His heart jumped into his throat, a tremor running through him as he tried to straighten himself out. It wasn’t working. His hands had started to tremble.  

“—Gi-hun?” 

He flinched. Hwang pulled away. The racing static of his brain quieted, suddenly, to white noise. 

“We’re going to do audio-only today,” Hwang said quietly. “It’s a good way to introduce the viewers to newcomers more gradually.” 

Gi-hun took a breath. The cameras weren’t rolling. They hadn’t ever been rolling. The buzzing under his skin receded, slowly, like a tide. Audio-only? He hadn’t seen that done before. Though, he wasn’t the most avid watcher—maybe he’d just missed those. Maybe. 

“Okay,” he managed, his gloves running against the sheets. 

“Okay,” Hwang echoed, filling the space where Gi-hun’s soft, almost unintentional echo would fall. 

A chime sprang from the computer, a happy little tolling sound. 

Hwang looked up. One hand raced across the keyboard without looking. Fluid. Practiced. “That’s our cue.” 

A flutter began under his skin like a current being run through him. The corners of Hwang’s mouth softened. He must have caught the cold wash of nerves in Gi-hun’s face. 

“Just follow me,” he said quietly. 

Then, lower: “They’re going to love you.”

Gi-hun blinked up at him. A thud in his chest like a wet boot hitting the ground. Hwang’s eyes were unreadable. Thrown into darkness by the mask. But the mouth, the spark of the spotlight off of his lips. The tiny half-smile he allowed.

Stay. It’s okay.

Words failed him. But Gi-hun managed to dip his head into what could be considered a nod.

I understand.

I will.

Chapter Text

Hwang In-ho spoke just once into the monitor. His voice was low. Sharp, almost. A blade unsheathed from velvet. He tapped a gloved finger against the keyboard. Checked the readings. Then he was at the bed, one glove trailing the microphone as he left. 

The mattress creaked quietly at the added weight. Hwang—or, well, FRNT, now—situated himself behind Gi-hun, knees bumping his sides as he slotted himself slowly at Gi-hun’s back. Legs bracketing his frame. Not touching. Not yet. 

Gi-hun inhaled shallowly through his mouth. He felt the warmth of him; the fire. Hot at his skin, fanning over the cool metal at the nape of his neck. 

The light was bright. 

Almost too bright, yellow and hot against his skin. 

It pooled under the eyes of his mask, caught in the space between his lashes and fractured his vision. 

It felt like the sun bearing down on him. Like maybe the whole universe had turned to watch. 

He wasn't sure how to feel about that. 

Probably afraid. 

At least a little afraid. 

But he heard a slow, measured breath behind him, felt the glare of the spotlight dim as Hwang reached up to turn it down. Just enough. Just until it felt less like being burned. 

His arm, tapping against Gi-hun’s where he’d reached over. The material of the blazer brushed over him, warm and soft and faint as a breath. 

The leather of his glove eased against the skin, settling to an expectant halt. Gi-hun watched the gentle scroll of the screen, the monitor dark but for the steady line of volume monitoring. Flat with the silence. 

“Tell me where I’m touching,” Hwang said quietly, just next to his ear. The line spiked with the pickup. 

Gi-hun turned back, wide-eyed. A shiver ran through his shoulders, settling low in his gut. Trembling there like it was waiting for another strike. One of his first real commands. Hwang met his gaze, his smile warmer than his voice. 

They can’t see you, that smile said.  

Only I can. 

“My… shoulder.” 

A hum. “Good.” 

The animal thing in his chest preened, a coal smoldering slow and hot in his core. 

Yes, it whined. I am good. I am. 

The feather-light, methodical circling over his skin paused. Gi-hun realized then that he’d inhaled sharply, roughly, harsh enough to draw the man’s attention. His face blazed warm with the realization, his head ducking as if he could tuck the sound away. 

Hwang was silent. Not poking, not prodding, not teasing. Just absorbing the reaction. Making it real. 

Smooth leather slid carefully down his body, tracing him with a focused kind of precision. The solid press of heat through the gloves settled firm against his skin. 

“Again.”

“My hips,” Gi-hun managed softly, his voice strained at the edges. A squeeze there, fingers tightening like a pleased nod. He heard the breath Hwang drew in—measured, slow. 

And, “Good.” 

And that wasn’t really fair. Because Gi-hun could’ve buckled at the matching strain that’d entered Hwang’s voice. As it was, the breath he tried to bite through escaped from his throat, a little huff that bordered on panting. The heat gathering in his core flared, pulsed through him with enough force to make his head spin. 

He felt Hwang smile against his ear, like he’d just proven something to himself and now could decide what to do with it. 

That touch, pure fire wrapped in leather, dragged down over his hips, lower, firm like he wanted to make sure Gi-hun felt it. Like that would ever be a problem. Gi-hun shifted where he sat, shoulders rolling out as if he could ease the tension crackling through the air with one stretch. 

It didn’t work. Shocker.

“Now?” Hwang murmured, gloves stalling, pressing into the skin. And that was—

“My—” Gi-hun stumbled over the words, staring down at the deft hand splayed across his thigh. Still. Paused. Barely even touching him. And he couldn’t. He couldn’t. “…leg?” 

He knew that wasn’t the right answer. But Hwang only chuckled, low in the back of his throat, dragging his fingers even higher, punching a breathless little sound from Gi-hun’s mouth like it was nothing. 

“Close,” he said quietly. His fingertips traveled in tiny, practiced lines against the skin. Tracing. Coaxing. Drawing out what he could earn. “Again.” Gi-hun shivered. His fingers tightened against the mattress, released, tightened again.  

“My thigh,” He finally whispered, leaning into the solid warmth at his back. The words were hardly more than a breath, and he felt Hwang’s head nudge upwards to check the microphone reading. To see if the audience had caught that. 

The reminder of the audience almost managed to cool him off. Gi-hun blinked, glancing up at the lights, at the recording equipment. A jittery kind of anxiety gathered in his throat. The idea of so many eyes—

Hwang seemed to sense his distraction. Those insistent, careful fingers combed through his hair, smoothed down his neck, over his body like a path of warm water.

And then, “Well done.” Pleased and low and just for him, and he was gone again. Gi-hun pressed up into the praise, coiling tight as a bowstring, his gloves creaking as his fingers grasped at the bed beneath him. He hummed past the involuntary noise in his throat, swallowing down the rest of it before it spilled over. 

And then as suddenly as the hands were drawing up to where he needed them, they were gone. Cold spilled over his skin where the burning touch had left it. He huffed, half in surprise and half in blind, animal frustration, blinking through the lidded haze to stare at the man. 

He had moved away; slid around to stand in front of him. Hands balanced against the mattress, head cocked to examine Gi-hun. Like a puzzle—like something that fascinated him. 

Gi-hun had never fascinated anyone before. Not his ex-wife, certainly not his mother. 

But FRNT—smooth, calculating, enigmatic—

Gi-hun fascinated him. 

“Tell me where I’m touching,” Hwang said again. Gi-hun snapped out of the reverie, expecting to feel the warm skate of leather against his skin. But Hwang’s hands were still planted firmly against the bed. 

He wasn’t touching anything. 

That was just the problem. 

Gi-hun stared at him, brow knitting together in confusion. He didn’t want him to say ‘the sheets’, did he? 

But Hwang said nothing else, the silence stretching out and onwards until Gi-hun felt it wrapping slender arms around his torso, clinging to him like a drunkard. The sour breath of it against his cheek. He looked up at the screen. At Hwang. The lights. It was so utterly quiet. Not even the whisper of fabric, just thick, suffocating, empty. 

“Me,” he finally said, more out of desperation to shake the silence off than anything else. “You’re touching me.” 

Maybe because he wanted him to. Maybe because he felt the echo of gloveprints on his skin, under it, simmering with an aching kind of need. 

Hwang stilled, a breath held in the slant of his shoulders, and Gi-hun was certain he’d done something wrong. He braced, his mouth creasing together in a thin line. Waiting for the disappointment or the anger or the disgust. Too much. Too soon.

Then that smile, breaking from under the mask like the spark of a flame. Hwang moved closer, shifting back onto the mattress, his knees coming down to bracket Gi-hun’s hips. He leaned over him, sweet and burning and almost overwhelmingly close. Caging him in one smooth motion. 

“And, where am I touching you?” he mused, his hood glinting in the pool of light. His eyes were dark and shimmering, his pupils liquified under the glow of the machinery. He looked otherworldly. He looked like some kind of benevolent god. He looked—and Gi-hun finally let the thought surface— hot.

He hesitated, rolling the words over in his mouth. Almost choking over them. His skin warmed. 

“My…” he inhaled shallowly through his nose. “My chest.” 

A pause. He swore he heard the measured, even keel of Hwang's breathing falter. Even for just an instant. Enough to snag in Gi-hun’s mind with a self-satisfied purr. 

Then the warmth of him was washing over Gi-hun's skin, painting him gold and flushed and aching. 

A quiet hum—appreciative, hungry—left the man. 

Gi-hun wanted to bottle the sound and get himself drunk on it every single night. 

Then gloves were guiding up Gi-hun's sides, flickering over him not like he was ragged or bruised—which he was, large patches of purpled flesh left over from a few misplaced words at the bar—but like he was pristine. Fragile. A patience not born of pity but something else. 

One hand trailed over his collarbone with equal patience, the other skating across his chest, over the place where his heart tapped against his ribs. Pausing there. Just there. Where the frantic drumbeat of him lived. As if committing it to memory. 

“Very good,” Hwang said quietly. Gi-hun would’ve bet money—a lot of money—that the man could feel his heart stutter under his fingers. His chest rose and fell, shallow under the firm pressure of the gloves. Lips parting, head tilting forward. Very good. And he didn’t know how to stop the ragged sound that escaped him. 

His fingers curled in Hwang’s blazer, gathering the material like a lifeline, almost knocking heads with the man before realizing what he was doing. Off, the touch begged. Off with this. 

The sliver of skin afforded to him when Hwang leaned forward wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted—

Gi-hun swallowed. Released the fabric. Felt the apology burble in his throat. His fingers burned like he’d accidentally clutched a handful of hot coals. He shouldn’t have grabbed like that—reached like that— wanted like that. 

“I’m—”

But by then Hwang had already reached to unbutton the blazer, his fingers steady, not missing a single beat nor button before the material fell away. The whisper of fabric sliding from his skin to the bed beneath them like the hiss of a snake. He molted like one, going from velvet-dark fabric to capable, carved-stone muscle under the warmth of the skin. 

And the apology died in Gi-hun’s mouth. 

In its place was a flash of hunger so sharp Gi-hun felt it in his teeth. So much that it surprised him. He wanted to tear, to press and bend and slide until the two of them fit together. Living, animal pieces. Aligned through raw, breathless motion. 

He hungered like a feral thing. The feeling was enough to make him dizzy. 

The man could’ve been carved from marble—arms rippling with that kind of muscle that felt earned. Shifting and coiled; every new place Gi-hun glanced snagging his attention. But more than sculpted, Hwang looked strong. Solid. Capable. Like at some point in his life—maybe recently, maybe a long time ago—he’d been trained that way. 

He returned his hands to their work, the press of his thumb against Gi-hun’s collarbone, skating down to circle the rise of a nipple. Gi-hun hissed, his breathing cracking on exhale into a sound not dignified enough to name. 

Hwang’s dark eyes traced down, pressing that observant stare to his skin. Watching the way Gi-hun’s shoulders tightened as his thumb applied just a little pressure. The way his eyes fluttered weakly closed. Gathering enough information to decide that this was a weakness, and, subsequently, that he could utilize it. 

His hood slid forward as he ducked down. That analytical gaze passed up to him, waiting. Asking. 

Gi-hun nodded. 

Feverish lips to his skin, hotter even than he’d expected, dragging up to close over the oversensitized bud. 

It felt unbecoming of Hwang In-ho to do something like that. To lower himself to Gi-hun, press his divine mouth to the skin there. It felt like Gi-hun was sullying him. 

That being said, it also felt fucking good. 

A sound, a whine, erupted from him before he could clamp down on it. 

Hwang hummed against him, triumphant, lips and tongue working at the flesh until it throbbed in slow, aching pulses. Gi-hun bit down hard into his bottom lip, breathing shallow and ragged. Trying to muffle himself. 

Having noticed, the man pulled away with a sinful little pop. That didn’t feel fair. Neither did the warm fan of his breath against the newly-sensitive skin. Every one of his nerves flickered like a match had been held to them, flames licking up and down his spine. Hwang leaned up. Close. Too close. His lips were slick, glistening in the low light. Gi-hun wanted to bite them. 

“They need to hear you,” Hwang breathed, low and hot against his collar. Gi-hun shuddered, his eyes flicking briefly to the monitoring screen. To the soundwaves displayed there like heartbeats. Hwang angled his head into Gi-hun’s line of sight, boxing out the visual. But, and Hwang’s eyes glittered, they don’t need to see you. And you don’t need to see them. 

“Could you do that?” Sleek gloves running through his hair, soothing away the command with coaxing fingers. “Let them hear?” 

Gi-hun leaned into the touch, his head dipping in a lazy kind of nod.

“Yes,” and he couldn’t resist, “Sir.” 

Hwang did the closest thing to freezing that one could while still being frustratingly graceful about it. Gi-hun watched the tendons in his forearms flex, a tension there that toed the line of restraint. His mask dipped, a slow—slow—breath fanning from his lips before he turned back to Gi-hun. 

“Again.” Like he couldn’t believe it. 

“Yes, Sir,” Gi-hun repeated. 

An exhale shattered out of the man like he’d been keeping it trapped in his chest the entire time. Hwang ducked down, dipping his head to the join between neck and shoulder. Gi-hun felt the scrape of teeth there like a warning. Like a promise. The coal simmering low in his gut throbbed in response. His head tilted back, instinctively, hair whipping into his eyes. Baring the column of his throat. Watching the flash of gold reflect in the mirror above him. The collar. The offering. But Hwang only nosed along the skin, pressing his mouth there in faint, burning marks. Too faint. Not enough. 

Why wouldn’t he—

Gi-hun remembered it now. 

“Only when asked.” 

“Sir?” he heard the inhale against his neck. Sharp. Harsh. Decidedly unmeasured. It made something trill, high and content, in his chest. 

“Yes?”

A pause. Gi-hun squirmed, his lips parting around the words, “Bite me?” 

Hwang’s fingers flexed where they held him. Tension like a live wire, buzzing with current. 

For one terrifying, thrilling moment, Gi-hun thought he wouldn’t. 

And then Hwang paused just at the flutter of Gi-hun’s pulse. Stilled, coiled over him like a panther, like a hunter, mask sleek and cold against the heat of his skin. 

And he bit down. Hard. 

A sound was punched, dragged from Gi-hun’s throat, picked up by the microphone in full, wrecked clarity. The pain was quickly washed over with something higher. Hotter. Hwang’s teeth clamped down on the skin until it gave, until blood seeped into his mouth, red and metal and blossoming. 

Gi-hun wondered if Hwang could taste his pulse. 

As the man pulled away to press a bruising kiss to the mark, Gi-hun hoped he had.  

He hoped Hwang had the taste of his heart on his tongue all day. 

The man inhaled like he’d suddenly remembered something. His mask hovered over Gi-hun, ringed by the glimmer of the spotlights. Gi-hun felt his thumb trace over the bite, lining the reddened groove where his teeth had punctured the skin. Blood stained his bottom lip. Gi-hun’s blood. Another pass over the skin, the pressure gentling. A mark. 

A tension in the man’s jaw. Gi-hun saw the faintest flicker of a muscle there. The band of anxiety around his ribs flickered in response. 

Then, as if with great effort, Hwang extricated himself, shoulders rippling as he reached backwards to one of the desks’ drawers. Gi-hun leaned forward—

“Stay.” 

Gi-hun froze like he’d been struck. Something had slammed closed in Hwang’s voice. 

Gi-hun could tell Hwang knew where the drawer was—his fingers found it in an instant. But the man turned away to examine the desk as he slid it open, leather-clad hand sliding carefully along the edges. He was grappling for something. Something Gi-hun didn’t think was actually in there.

“I’m sorry,” Gi-hun tried, breathless. 

That snapped FRNT back into motion. 

“Don’t.” Like a growl, suddenly retrieving whatever it was he’d been rifling for. Grasping it in one hand as the other planted firm against his shoulder. Fingers tense. “Can—?” Just as harsh. Just as biting. But Hwang waited. Burning, eyes flashing with more than the spotlights, Hwang paused. 

Gi-hun swallowed. “Yes,” he breathed. No title. He dropped it like a tether snapping. 

Hwang noticed. 

Gi-hun was quickly learning nothing ever slipped past him. 

He pushed Gi-hun’s shoulder back—pressed him into the mattress. Not hard; not rough. Just final. The silk eagerly welcomed the dip of his body. Looking upwards, on his back as he was, the mirror reflected the entire length of him. Flashes of liquid gold, flares of porcelain white. The red-purple of the bite at his neck. His mirror image, outlined in silver light. 

Gi-hun felt a sudden wave of vertigo, the disorienting feeling of existing in a double world. The feeling that he could float between one gravity and the next and never really land in either. 

The item from the drawer was abandoned up by his head. Leather gloves sliding firmly down from his shoulders to his sides. 

He heard the ripple of a breath. Slow. Becoming measured again.

“Yes, what? ” Just the faintest edge of a smile. 

And there he was. Honey and smoke. Sweet and loose and filling Gi-hun’s lungs until he felt like he could burst. The bubble of nerves popped, his limbs melting into the silken bedding. 

“Yes, Sir.” 

Hwang hummed. Musical. Low. Gi-hun decided firmly that there was no way the microphone could fully capture it. That the full body of the sound was for him and him alone. Something warm and sharp in his chest was very pleased with that conclusion. 

Slowly, almost lazily, those hands trailed over the taut stretch of his stomach. Mapping him out. Every fingerprint a new point of data. Gi-hun felt a shiver building low near his spine. Even through the roughness of the leather, that insistent, ever-present heat. Gathering in his core, molten and consuming. Aching through him with a need that bordered on unbearable. 

One of Hwang’s knees nudged under his thigh, lifting Gi-hun’s hips from the mattress. His breathing hitched unbearably loudly, crackling in his own ears as he felt the pattern of deft fingers along his hips. 

Hwang reached up to grab the mystery thing from the drawer. A small bottle. Black; gold cap. 

Even the lube was color-coded. 

Gi-hun almost snorted at the thought. 

“Use your word if it’s too much.” Hwang murmured. “I’ll stop. Understand?” 

The cap of the bottle clicked as he snapped the lid open. Gi-hun looked up into the dark mask, past it to his own image flickering back at him. He nodded faintly. 

Hwang leaned forward, hand braced beside his head. The silk shifted with the weight. “Say it.” 

He swallowed. Smoky sweetness hung at the back of his throat. Every breath like the man was being further ingrained into his senses. Like woodsmoke in clothes, folded into his creases like the air itself. 

“…Yes, I understand.” 

Hwang nodded, lips pursing in acknowledgment. 

One hand pressed flat to his stomach, against the fluttering pit of warmth that was steadily pooling there, sliding down to hook in his waistband. 

Hwang undressed him slowly, carefully, like he had all the time in the world. His unending patience was beginning to become unbearable. Gi-hun hissed softly at the cold wash of air, his skin prickling at the exposure. Hwang even folded his boxers before placing them to the side. 

Heat thrummed through him like a living thing, highly unhappy with the lack of hands on him. With the fact that the owner of those hands was now sitting back on his heels, turning the bottle over against his fingers instead of running them along Gi-hun’s skin. 

Hwang slicked his fingers with a clinical kind of focus. It was almost disorienting, the thoughtful purse of his lips with the visual of lube coating the leather of his gloves in a thin sheen. 

He tossed the bottle loosely to the side, coming back to Gi-hun in a lithe stretch. 

“Good.” Fingers tracing the length of him up and down. 

And the entirety of his coherent thought flickered out like a shot bulb. 

Gi-hun twitched up into the touch, mouth falling open before he could think to close it, a gasp slipping high and ragged from his lips. Hwang barely touched him. Didn’t have to, really. Just watched as the mic picked up the slick sound of it, watched Gi-hun’s ears blaze red with the realization they could hear that. 

Before he had the time to absorb the thought, though, Hwang’s expert fingers slipped lower, down between his legs. 

His thighs clamped instinctively together, a low, surprised groan bubbling between his lips. Hwang easily caught his knee, pressing it right back down. Open. A sharp exhale left him, tripping over his own breath. Maybe the flush was hidden by the mask. Hwang’s eyes flicked up to his face, something like a smirk pulling at his lips. Gi-hun suddenly doubted it. 

The leather was slick. Cold. Circling at his entrance in gentle, teasing pulses. Gi-hun winced at the chill, the motion quickly, easily, melting into a shudder. 

“Okay?” Hwang asked. 

Like he even needed the answer. Gi-hun’s hips twitched needily towards the touch. Rolling down onto the faint press there almost without thinking. More. He nodded frantically. Please, more. 

Finally— finally —Hwang nudged past the tight ring of muscle. Gi-hun breathed harshly through his mouth, the heat of it catching under his mask, fogging along the metal like smoke.  

The man hummed, one hand settling at his hip. Fingers hot through the leather. 

Up to the knuckle now, the stretch setting his nerves alight. Gi-hun twitched, hips flexing against the feeling. How could he be so tightly wound when they’d just barely started? 

Hwang worked him open in deliberate, unhurried presses, free hand trailing down to the metal clasp around his thigh. Running his glove over it with something dangerously like care. 

“Still with me?” Hwang whispered, the mask shadowing his eyes. A question. A reassurance. 

Gi-hun blinked. Nodded. Swallowed down the sound that caught behind his tongue. 

“Yeah,” his voice quivered, “right here.” 

Hwang rewarded the response with the slow drag of his hand away, a second digit pressing in beside the first. Gi-hun arched up like a man possessed, a gasp catching in his throat as Hwang shifted to press him flat against the mattress. One hand against his chest. 

He hadn’t taken off his gloves. The slight ridge of knuckles pressed through the material, dragging  intoxicating and slow. The slick sound of it was somewhere in that fuzzy area between humiliating and something else. 

The mic picked up everything. 

The crackling falter of his breathing, falling from him like he’d lost control of his own mouth.

The thick squelch of Hwang’s fingers, spiking the reading with every thrust. The groans each of those thrusts punched from his throat. They could hear it all. 

Hwang seemed unbothered by the fact, leaning down to mouth up his chest. To draw more sounds from him like there weren’t already plenty. Hwang’s lips left a burning, aching path up his skin, leaving Gi-hun pressing up into the heat like he might just die without it. The scrape of teeth then like a hot pulse through his core. 

“Fuck—” Gi-hun’s hands, tangling in the fabric of the hood to push the man down again. Dangerously close to pushing the entire hood aside. He wanted to curl his fingers into whatever hair was hidden underneath, to drag his hands through it and hold on tight. The man had soft hair—Gi-hun was sure of it. 

Hwang paused, head lifting. His fingers began to work with more force, his free hand coming up to steadily remove Gi-hun’s hands from the fabric. 

It stung, kind of. Only long enough to register as a flicker before he was distracted by the overwhelm that was Hwang—that was FRNT. The glint of gold under his lashes as the man leaned back, just slightly. Hand sliding to his waist, fingers working him open in maddeningly smooth thrusts.

He felt the ghost of whiskey on his tongue. The sudden, maddening urge to drag the man’s free hand to his lips. To feel the press of leather—to be left choking on the taste of him. In his haze, Gi-hun didn’t startle at the idea. 

“Tell them what I’m doing to you,” Hwang said firmly, roughly. 

“Y-you’re…” Gi-hun gasped past the rest of the words.

“I’m?”

“Fingering me,” Gi-hun finally managed, one hand thrown over his face. 

“And how many?”

“T-two—” A short, breaking gasp, “—three…”

“Fast?”

“Slow…” Gi-hun answered, his words slurred by the feeling of pleasure so thick he tasted it in his mouth. 

Hwang leaned into him, his voice low and thick and burning—whiskey going down, “And how do you feel?” 

Not loud enough for the recorder. Not loud enough for the microphone. 

Just for him. 

“Good—” he whined softly, keening into the touch. “So good.” 

He felt a huff next to his ear. “I’m glad.” Soft, again, quieter than before. His voice dipped like an outstretched hand. “You’re being very good.” 

Gi-hun huffed into his forearm, coiling tight at the note of approval. Grabbing that hand like a lifeline, sinking into the foggy place where white rimmed out his vision. He was trembling, muscles twitching, eyes fluttering closed because if he looked into the sly slant of Hwang’s smile he might just fall apart. 

Maybe he was good. Maybe he could be good. 

Every other intelligent thought had long flown out of his head. Just heat and friction and hiccuping breaths, just gloves on skin and the taste of want, of need, in his mouth. 

Hwang grasped the arm he’d been hiding behind, flicking it aside like it’d personally offended him. Gi-hun blinked, dazzled, feeling the slide of leather against his wrist. Against the golden cuff there. Hwang pressed the offending arm flat to the bed. Fingers firm. And Gi-hun ached, spine curving off the mattress as he rocked further into the pressure. 

Hwang had him like something pinned beneath a microscope; analytical gaze like a second pair of hands. Lining the hollow of his throat where it fluttered, the unsteady rise and fall of his chest. The quiver like he was breaking. All laid out under careful gloves and that steel-cut black mask. 

When the man’s hand lifted, returning to its anchor at his hip, Gi-hun wasn’t sure if he should’ve been disappointed or not. The next rock of gloved digits inside him tossed the question effectively aside. Heat broke like a wave over his skin. Curling deep at his core. Fast and warm and quivering. 

The golden glow of the spotlights played off the curl of Hwang’s shoulders, brushing along the stretch of muscled abdomen. Gi-hun’s eyes dragged lower—sliding past the glint of the belt slung low over his hips. 

“Want— want you—” He heard himself saying. Hwang smiled; a sharp, wolfish thing. His fingers curled, pressing hard against that spot inside him like he already knew what it’d do to him. 

Every muscle jumped, whole body rolling in a twitch as the words dissolved into a guttural cry. 

“You have me.”

And that wasn’t fair. Gi-hun clutched at the sheets, his hips rocking into the friction that wasn’t enough, that was too much, that was absolutely perfect all at once. 

“You— know what I mean,” he grumbled. Or, tried to. It came out more of a breathless rasp than anything with real fire. Hwang chuckled. Warm. Amused. 

“Do I?”

A whine of frustration trapped itself behind his teeth, shattering into something else, something more base, as Hwang tilted his hips up higher. Rocked his fingers in another slow, firm thrust. Taking him apart like one of his machines. Like he’d already memorized every button and knew just where to press. 

“Sir—”

“Hm?”

“Please,” Gi-hun gasped, propping himself up unsteadily on his elbows. Trying to get closer. To the mask. To what lay underneath. 

Hwang paused, his lips tugging in what Gi-hun strongly suspected to be a grin. His knuckles brushed against the flutter of Gi-hun’s entrance. 

And Gi-hun was more than prepared enough—melting against the fingers inside him, shuddering at every press. The faintest tinge of pain had long since evaporated into pure, overwhelming heat—insides twitching with a throbbing ache for more. He could take it. He wanted to.

“No,” Hwang said simply, his voice light as he resumed the pace of his ministrations. 

Faster now, as steady and unflinching as before. Gi-hun’s head knocked back against the mattress, a cry leaving him that bordered on a sob. 

Why? The words stuck in his throat like honey. Why not? 

The lights seeped into his vision, catching in the corners of his periphery, spiderwebbing behind his eyelids when his eyes fluttered closed. 

A low chime from the monitor—some sort of alert. Hwang’s eyes glittered under the mask.

“They like you,” he murmured, right to his ear. Gi-hun shivered, a groan slipping from his tongue, breaking against his spit-slick lips. “They like hearing you moan.” 

The heat in his core throbbed. In spite of the idea—in response to it. His gloves creaked as his hands scrabbled for purchase in the silk. 

“God—fuck—” Gi-hun panted. 

“God’s not here,” Hwang whispered. Gentle. Sharp. Hot and steel-cold all at once.”Only I am.” 

Gi-hun’s breathing stuttered to a halt. The spotlight flared like a halo around the man’s hood. His eyes were dark. Intent. Swallowed by the black pools of blown-wide pupils. He had to want to. Gi-hun felt the hard prod against his leg. He had to. 

“I… ah, want—”

“I know,” he soothed, touch smoothing through his hair. Skating down to take him in one hand. Gi-hun cried out, thighs spasming with the sudden addition. Too much. Finally enough. Still not what he needed.

Hwang managed to steadily work both hands, driving Gi-hun up into the downstroke then back down onto the drag of his digits. It was unfair, how good he was at this. How easily he reduced Gi-hun to a boneless mess. Pushing him higher, hotter, words dissolving in his mind as his mouth betrayed him over and over again. 

He melted. Sugar in hot water. Writhing under the pressure building low in his gut. The fog of his ragged breathing gathered under the lip of his mask, warm and aching against the porcelain metal.  

Another tiny little chime. Through the haze of pleasure that tinged his vision white, Gi-hun heard Hwang’s soft chuckle. 

“They want you to come,” he mused, wrist flicking on the upstroke in a way that made Gi-hun’s head spin. The little they needled him, faintly. Like being poked through a thick cloud. Not enough to really feel, but there nonetheless. 

“Do— ah ...” He inhaled harshly. Tried again. “Do you want me to?”

Hwang’s hands didn’t stop, but his shoulders flexed. 

He tilted his head, leaning in until their masks were almost pressed together. Gi-hun panted unsteadily, hitching on inhale and stuttering guttural and needy on exhale. He hardly had the presence of mind to try and bite back the sounds anymore. There were too many. It was too much. 

“And if I say yes?” Hwang murmured. His grip squeezed. Gi-hun groaned high in the back of his throat. The knot of throbbing heat in his core had coiled tight enough to snap, drawing him up like a taut bowstring. Every muscle quivering.

“Then— I’d… listen,” Gi-hun managed thickly. Hwang chuckled again, his hands moving in perfect, dizzying tandem. 

“Then,” and the cold face of the mask was like ice against the heat of his jaw, “be good and come for me.” His voice was low. Rough. Like water over sandstone. 

It didn’t take anything after that. 

Gi-hun keened, body twisting, undulating between both hands as pleasure wracked him in waves. Down onto the ridges of Hwang’s fingers, up into the curl of his palm. The pressure in his core released all at once. Hot and overwhelming and bursting in his veins. He arched up off the silk, heat spurting across his stomach to paint it in thick ropes. 

The sound he made wasn’t human. 

An inarticulate mix between a cry and a groan, breaking at the edge into something that could’ve been mistaken for a sob. His eyes rolled back in his head, hair obscuring his flickering vision. Overwhelmed. Dizzy. 

His hands, searching for something— anything —to grab onto, curled harshly against Hwang’s back. Blunt nails digging into the skin. Ragged lines drawn from his desperate, mindless clutching. 

The moment he became aware of it—the moment the haze of orgasm faded—he jolted, palms smoothing over the marks like that would erase them. He worried the raised lines under his fingers, heart jumping into his mouth. With it came a familiar echo—

I’m sorry. 

But before the words had even fully formed on his lips, Hwang had pressed a slick thumb against the corner of his mouth. Like he’d sensed the apology coming—like he’d decided to intercept it. 

Gi-hun’s breathing wavered shakily. Spent, shuddering through the aftershocks. 

He didn’t need to be asked this time. 

He remembered. And he opened. 

Hwang traced the flat of his tongue, fingers tasting of salt and sex. Less the low burn of sweetness from before, tainted now with the reminder of his undoing. 

Hwang dragged his thumb against Gi-hun’s bottom lip—eyes flashing at the harsh exhale he received in return—tugging his mouth open. Wider. Gi-hun felt a tremor of heat work its way down his spine. 

The monitor dinged softly, but FRNT didn’t bother turning around. Ignoring his audience. 

Gi-hun swallowed thickly around the leather, throat working over a ragged huff. 

Hwang paused for just a moment, hood shifting downward with his gaze, before he slid his fingers free—both of Gi-hun’s mouth and of his lower, tighter hole. Before Gi-hun was left with an aching, hollow emptiness that bordered on unbearable. An upset little sound escaped him, ears blazing with warmth at the realization. 

Hwang only hummed, drinking in the noise with that unreadable slant of a smile. 

One hand slid cautiously under his back, fingers splayed against the curl of his spine. Gi-hun only had a moment to absorb the five gentle points of contact against his skin. Then he was being hefted up into Hwang’s lap, legs draped beside his hips. Gi-hun inhaled sharply, less surprised by the strength of the movement than by the sudden closeness. His hands faltered, found the man’s shoulders, the filigree of his gloves shimmering under the low light. 

At some point, the spotlight had dimmed even further, casting the room in an amber half-glow. 

He was acutely aware of his state of undress—made even more stark by the fact that the man whose lap he was currently straddling was infuriatingly clothed. Hwang’s slacks were soft to the touch, the fabric whispering with every shift of Gi-hun’s hips. 

He felt messy next to Hwang. Undone. Debauched. But the hand at his back kept him firmly in place. 

And now he knew. He felt the firm press of the man’s arousal through the linen, hips twitching down at the feeling. 

So FRNT—as stone-cut as he seemed—wasn’t entirely unaffected. 

Something about that was nice. 

But Hwang didn’t move to loosen his belt, didn’t reach to remove his slacks—his hands didn’t move at all. Instead he leaned up—Gi-hun was made substantially taller by the fact he was perched in the man’s lap—chips of gold glinting in his eyes. 

“Well done,” he mused, teeth flashing as the warmth of the words coasted over his ear. Gi-hun flushed, his cock giving a valiant twitch. That smile widened. “You are… an excellent performer.” If possible, his flush deepened, ears reddening at the praise. Hwang’s palm slid up and down his back. Soothing. Smoothing away the last remaining tremors of aftershock. 

“…Thank you,” Gi-hun managed roughly. His voice was ragged, raw from the use it’d been put through. He cleared his throat softly, catching the flicker of light in Hwang’s eyes. 

The chiming had increased trifold, the sound bounding through the room like a handful of marbles—knocking into each other and against the walls. Loud and insistent—unignorable. Hwang exhaled slowly through his nose, head tilting in the direction of the monitor. 

After a moment, he meticulously untangled himself from Gi-hun, making his way to the array of computer screens and recorders. A tiny blinking light atop the frame—red—caught Gi-hun’s attention. The white bar adorning the edge of the blank screen circling by like a never-ending receipt, fast enough to dizzy him. 

FRNT murmured a final something to the monitor, the reading flaring red and sharp. 

Gi-hun, perched at the edge of the bed, could make out just a few words of the tiny little messages scrolling alongside the recording.  

did y’all hear him begging??

pretty voice~ 

when’s FRNT ~actually~ gonna break him in 

Hwang quit the screen to black, his mask slanting in Gi-hun’s direction. 

“I recommend you pay them no mind.” His voice sounded clipped. Almost… strained. “They are not—” he hummed thoughtfully, “—creatures of substance.” Gi-hun wasn’t sure what he meant by that. But he nodded, biting the question back. 

His skin prickled with gooseflesh. It was cold without Hwang near him. Sweat cooled in a grimy film over his skin. His hair had been ruffled by the hands running through it, catching around his face in a mess of dark waves. His lips were red from trying to muffle himself, bitten and raw. 

The clarity that came after was always the worst part. The reconciliation with the fact that a crowd of faceless listeners had just heard what he sounded like when he came—well. It was… a lot. 

And Hwang was still pretending he wasn’t hard. 

Which was, maybe—as of the current order of things, probably —worse. 

In the silence, Hwang busied himself, powering down each of the spotlights in turn. He stopped once to punch something into the keyboard, then paused. The room was darker now—warmer. The burn of embers in the depths of midnight. As he came to a stop, Hwang leaned back against the desk. His gloved hands were braced against its smooth surface, head just slightly angled.

“That would conclude your first session.” 

Gi-hun breathed out softly—a feeling he had no name for gathering in his chest. 

Session One. An inception, of sorts. A trial run. 

Hwang pulled at one of his gloves, a sly curl to his mouth. “How do you feel?” Words so similar to earlier, but so entirely different. Lighter now. Less ragged. Asking less about what could be given than what had already been received.

How did he feel? 

Spent. Aching. A feeling in his head like wading through a thick fog. Sated. Ashamed. Guilty—the feeling like a living thing in his chest, howling against his sternum. 

“…Good.” 

Hwang tilted his head in the way that was already growing familiar; the look that caught right through Gi-hun like light through glass. Unsurprisingly, the half-truth didn’t seem to slip past him. But he said nothing else, mask dipping in a nod. Letting the word hang in the air like a promise. 

Gi-hun didn’t know when it’d started, but the low thrum of jazz had begun to thread through the space, filling the air with a gentle breeze of melody. 

“How… do you feel?” Gi-hun said, voice crackling from overuse. Hwang paused. His lips parted, something like surprise in the slackening of his jaw. Gi-hun stared at him. Was that not something he was always asked? 

But the man huffed over a chuckle, shoulders rising in a languid little shrug. 

“Good,” he murmured, eyes flashing in Gi-hun’s direction. Tossing his own words right back at him. Gi-hun smiled sheepishly. Touché, he supposed. 

After Hwang’s mirth subsided, he lifted a hand. Gesturing Gi-hun forward. 

Gi-hun rose from the bed, nearly losing his footing entirely as he took the few stumbling steps to the desk. That was new. His balance was thrown off, legs weak and trembling. Still trembling. 

Gi-hun pressed a hand to the desktop for balance, looking down into the flash of Hwang's eyes. In the dim light, they looked almost black—pools of liquid obsidian, taking him in with a glittering kind of scrutiny.  

Hwang reached up slowly, the way one would approach an easily-spooked animal. Like Gi-hun might run. Leather glove tracing the edge of his porcelain mask. His fingers guided along the latch holding it in place, lips pursing as if in contemplation. 

“Don’t suppose you need this anymore,” he murmured. The next breath hitched in Gi-hun’s chest. 

“No,” Gi-hun cleared his throat. “…guess not.” 

The corner of Hwang’s mouth tugged upwards. 

The faintest pressure at the back of his skull. 

A soft click.  

The white mask fell away like taking a breath of fresh air. 

Gi-hun winced, his shoulders lifting as if he could hide his features if he ducked hard enough. 

Now that the moment was over, he desperately craved a shower.

But Hwang just looked at him. The mask rested easily in his palm, other hand coming up to smooth Gi-hun’s hair out of his eyes. 

Half clinical observation. Half something else entirely—something Gi-hun didn’t want to give name to, didn’t want to feed. 

Hwang’s palm, leather-clad, sliding faintly against his cheekbone. Fingers curling in the hair by his ear. In the amber light of the recording studio, Hwang’s hood glinted like melted gold.  

He paused, then, a muscle feathering in his jaw. A sudden wash of tension, gone as soon as Gi-hun looked closer for it. Like the flicker of candle flame in the breeze—steadying itself back to warmth. 

“I’ll assume you’d like a shower?” 

The soap smelled like him. Cinnamon, caramelized sugar, the heady scent of sweetness filling the humid air of the shower. Gi-hun turned the faucet all the way to the left—being used to a heater that hardly worked, a shower that had to be begged to give up even a drop of lukewarm water. 

Turns out, Hwang In-ho’s studio did not have such an issue. He realized his mistake shortly after he’d nearly scalded the skin of his shoulders off, ripping the faucet the other direction with a yelp. He was then promptly iced with frigid water: blanched like a bowl full of vegetables. With a hiss, Gi-hun settled the faucet into the middle. 

And then promptly ran the man’s water bill into the ceiling. Only after his third go-around of standing there, head tilted back, enjoying the rivulets of warmth down his skin, did he decide that maybe he should stop. Wasting water, and all. 

Well, if he had this much, Gi-hun reasoned. He could spare a little, no?  

It felt like a remaking; being—changed in some way as much as being cleansed. Like the suds along his skin were taking with them some ugly part of him, swirling in the drain with the echo of a different self. 

As he stepped out of the glass stall, grasping the condensation-slick door for balance, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. The surface was cloudy, fogged up from the heat, but the dash of reddened skin adorning his neck was unmistakable. The bite mark. He reached up to prod at it, a hiss of air through his teeth. The flesh was tender. Sore from the force of Hwang’s teeth puncturing it. 

The memory of the bite, though, was far from unpleasant. A low twinge of heat shuddered along his spine like a string plucked by phantom fingers, gathering under the skin with an animal purr.  

The towel hanging beside the door was soft—unbelievably soft. White, plush, that thick kind of towel that reminded him of an expensive spa. Not that he’d ever, y’know, been to one of those. But the effect was the same. He towelled himself off, eyes wandering around the finery of the bathroom. Black marble countertop. White brick patterning. Lights that painted the whole place in gold. Even clean, soap bubbles still popping on his skin, it felt like he was dirtying the place.  

A set of clothes had been laid out for him beside the sink. Plain. Civilian. No gold, no leather, no pearlescence. Just a loose black tee and soft white shorts. Obviously nice, by the feel of them. But not fancy. Nothing like Hwang’s usual dress. Gi-hun appreciated the simplicity. 

As he pulled them on, humming contently at the gentle softness against the skin, he wondered faintly where his other clothes had disappeared to. They’d been left on the floor of the little entry area, if he remembered correctly. But when he stepped out of the bathroom, steam curling into the room around him, he didn’t see them anywhere. 

He circled the table a few times, brow furrowing. He could’ve sworn—

“The clothes you came in are in the dryer.” 

Gi-hun jumped. Hwang. He must've noticed Gi-hun’s searching. The man leaned against the doorway, a cigarette hanging between his bare fingers. He’d removed his gloves. Probably to wash them, Gi-hun thought, with a flash of embarrassment. He still wore the pants from earlier, but the glint of metal—the belt—had disappeared. 

“Oh, well—thank you,” Gi-hun bowed his head gently. 

Hwang inclined his head, making his way over to the sleek velvet sofa. Lowering himself into it with a grace that Gi-hun had to marvel at. From one of his pockets he produced a small lighter, tilting it back and forth to glint under the room’s lamplight. 

“While we wait.” His eyes flicked to Gi-hun. Gi-hun frowned, puzzled. “For everything to dry,” he explained. “Why don’t you take a seat?” Gi-hun nodded hesitantly, making his way closer. He exhaled with the effort as he sat against the base of the couch. The rug was soft enough that it didn’t really make a difference—and, besides, sitting at the same level as Hwang felt… arrogant. 

If Hwang noticed, he didn’t comment, his mask still firmly obscuring his expression. 

Gi-hun searched the man’s face for any sign of displeasure, waiting for him to speak. The room fell into an expectant silence as Gi-hun, again, came up with nothing. He’d never been particularly good at reading people. But it seemed Hwang was a particularly difficult one to gauge. And, really, the mask didn’t help that matter much. 

“Do you have any questions?” Hwang finally asked, looking out at the mirror opposing them. 

“Questions?”

Hwang glanced towards him. “It was your first experience of this kind, was it not?” 

Gi-hun reached up to scratch at the back of his neck. 

“Yeah… I guess it was.”

“It wouldn’t be unusual for you to have questions.” Hwang said, his voice smooth, coaxing. Gi-hun found his hands fiddling in his lap, shoulders curled forward in a deflective hunch. He toyed with the soft fabric of the shirt, bunching it between his fingers. Smoothing it out against his palms. 

“Was it…okay?” He heard himself saying. Small. Quiet. Gi-hun grasped for the words, but they’d already dissipated into the air, gone like smoke. 

Was it okay? Was I okay? Was I enough? 

“‘Okay’?” A note of questioning had entered the man’s voice. 

“Normal,” Gi-hun mumbled. Was I too different? 

Hwang chuckled at the word. Normal. Which, all things considered, was fair. Nothing about this whole business was all that normal.  

“If you’re asking what changed between you and the previous,” Hwang mused, “you were altogether not too different.” 

Gi-hun felt the slide of Hwang’s eyes; the edge of mirth in his voice: “You are more vocal.” 

Gi-hun knew he’d turned bright red before he even caught his flushed face in the mirror. 

Hwang sat up slightly, as if recalling something, “Actually, very few get to get off during the first session,” he said thoughtfully, elbow propped against the armrest, head angled like he was contemplating the weather. Gi-hun blinked at him, mouth dry. 

“Ah?”

Hwang’s shoulders rolled in a loose shrug. He lifted the unlit cigarette between his fingers.

“I suppose you’re an exception.” 

Gi-hun swallowed hard, something fluttering high and warm in his throat. 

“An exception,” he echoed. 

“I did mean it,” Hwang said, igniting the end of his smoke with a deft flick of the lighter. “When I said you were quite the performer.” 

Gi-hun’s mouth opened. Closed. He didn’t know—really… what to say. Did Hwang want something? Gi-hun searched what he could of the man’s face, coming up frustratingly empty. Compliments were usually currency— You say you like something to prime me for the request that’ll follow it. That was the natural order of things. But—Hwang didn’t seem to be asking for anything. Just taking a slow drag on the cigarette, smoke curling in white spectres around his head. Still staring at him. 

That stare. There was an intensity to his eyes that was at once unnerving and gratifying, instinct wavering somewhere between the urge to move closer and the urge to hide away. With the pale wreath spiraling into wisps around his head, the gentle shimmer of his hood, the gleam of his mask, he looked at once more—and less—than human. 

Gi-hun leaned back, spine bumping into the base of the couch. The shirt was looser in the collar than he’d originally assumed, sliding down past his shoulder as he tilted his head away. 

The man’s gaze shifted. His dark eyes settled heavily on the angry red mark just above Gi-hun’s collarbone. 

“You didn’t use your word,” Hwang mused. More of a question than an observation, his expression masked by the rings of smoke. Gi-hun looked back at him, eyebrows furrowing together. Quizzical. 

“When would I have?” 

Hwang hummed thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re right.” But his eyes stayed on the bruising skin, tracing the line of teethmarks with a subtle twist of his mouth. He took another long, slow drag on the cigarette. Gi-hun watched the smoke fan out from his lips in smooth curls, that old instinct rearing up in his lungs. The craving. 

The addiction was still an addiction, as it were. 

Gi-hun shifted, clearing his throat. The air tasted of cigarette smoke, the second-hand feeling only warming the ache in his chest. “Could I—?”

Hwang pulled the lit smoke from his lips, hood swaying. He slunk down from the couch to the floor beside Gi-hun, extending the cigarette towards him. Gi-hun gratefully took it, drawing a pull in. Full, slow, the taste filling his lungs in a familiar kind of numbing. When he exhaled, ghosts of white smoke curling into the air, something in his ribs loosened. That itch, sated just for a moment.

His head tilted gently against the couch, a relieved huff, sour with the aftertaste, escaping his lips. 

“Thanks,” he murmured. Then, remembering himself, “thank you, I mean.” 

Hwang’s lips quirked with amusement. He took the smoke from Gi-hun’s extended hand, taking another drag as he produced from his side a thick black envelope. Gi-hun’s eyes tracked it, catching the brief seal adorning its corner.

Hwang tilted it towards Gi-hun. 

Right.

The money. The payment. 

He’d almost forgotten. 

The reminder sent something sharp cascading down his spine. Not disappointment. No, never disappointment: money was money and he’d be a fool to view it with dissatisfaction. But something else. Something that hid between the curling fumes of cigarettes, the wisps of heat in the air, the white mask abandoned in the other room. 

Gi-hun wondered, briefly, of the previous owner of that mask. What they’d done to be replaced. If he would be replaced so easily. The thought sobered him, seeped into the cracks that the last—hours?—had created, filling them with stone cold reality. 

His fingers closed around the envelope the same way he’d grabbed the cigarette. The twitch of an addict; a junkie, clutching the thing to his chest like it might run away. It felt heavy—heavier than he’d expected, at least. 

Hwang watched him with that passive—never absent—kind of scrutiny. Like he was trying to pick something apart or put it back together. Such attention was unusual. Overwhelming. It made his skin feel like it’d somehow become someone else’s. A high chime startled him. 

“Dryer,” Hwang murmured, rising from the floor. As he did, he handed the cigarette back to Gi-hun, flicking ash from his fingers. 

The filter was damp from their shared breath. Gi-hun watched Hwang’s back as he entered the other room, struck, again, by the fact of his situation. That this man had just taken him apart so easily, so effortlessly. That he’d… 

That he’d liked it. 

Gi-hun took in another lungful of smoke, tapping the envelope absently against the low table. As he did, he caught a glimpse of black plastic, the metallic shine of a familiar little item. Gi-hun reached for it, holding the cigarette loosely near his mouth. 

Ah. The business card. He’d almost forgotten about that. His keycard, of sorts. His entry key. He flipped it over, blinking down at the smooth surface. At some point, a number had been printed onto the back, scrawled in gold lettering. A phone number. 

Gi-hun saw the shimmer of gold-laced gloves. The sleek, panther-smooth onyx of the mask. The soft midnight of the sheets. The slow clip of footsteps against the hardwood like a drumbeat. 

He smiled faintly, staring down at the card clutched between his fingers. 

Maybe he’d bet on black today.

Chapter Text

Turns out—betting at all wasn’t the best of ideas. 

Not that that surprised him. The rush of placing the money down, of picking the numbers or the color or the name, was only ever a temporary high. One that was bolstered, yes, extended, by the spike of endorphins from a near-win, but one that always came crashing down. That seeped away like the tide through his fingers, staining the skin with its echoes. It tended to leave a terrible shade of emptiness in its wake. A gnawing, awful kind of hunger. That wild, cornered instinct to step back into the pain, into the very source of such hunger. 

A win, though—

Winning was a drug like nothing else. His lungs filling with the intoxicating smoke of victory, mouth sugar-sweet with triumph richer than liquor and thicker than booze. Like a shot of lightning straight to the veins; spine straightening, blood alight with a crackling, burning joy. It was, really, the purest form of happiness he’d experienced in years. He chased the feeling into and out of grimy, overcrowded casinos, between the pattern of hooves against dirt, among the shouting and the whistles and the dinging of money draining away. 

Every hit drove him deeper. Because if he could win once, he could win again. And if he could win again, he could win one more time. 

Just one more time. 

The refrain, the mantra, both a prayer and a curse. Just one more. Nights passing in a syrup-thick haze, the twitch in his fingers as the bills were pressed to the table—out of his hands, into his hands, exchanged and multiplied and lost so quickly that often he didn’t catch the emptiness until it was far too late. Just one more. 

There could have been people at his side, surrounding him, flowing past, but they never stuck in his mind for more than an instant. The things he said, the things he heard, like music through a thick storm. Meaningless noise, all of it. 

The only thing that mattered was the track. Was the wheel. Watching until his eyes ached, until they burned with the strain. The air, smoke-ridden and gold-lined, curling around him like arms in a feverish embrace. Every loss triggered a different win. Every win another loss. An overexposure like drowning, flooding his vision until everything—the people, the track, his own hands in front of him—became nothing more than white-hot silhouette. The flashing, flickering lights brought him to life and blinded him in equal measure.

A poetic, vicious cycle. 

He’d approached the night with that special brand of overconfidence that only a gambler could master. The firm belief, against any form of fact or figure, that the universe would part for him. That tonight, everything would turn out right. That he’d multiply the cash inside that thick black envelope into something impressive, something worthy of all the time he’d spent away from the apartment. That he’d be able to come home with something greater to show for a day of absence. 

And he remembered, vaguely, that it had been good. That he’d been winning. When the moon hadn’t yet peeked over the horizon—when the night was still young enough to trip and fall into his hands. 

But the night was nothing if not a creature of change. 

Writhing where he tried to grasp it, slipping through his grip with frustrating ease—turning darker, uglier.

Growing teeth; growing fangs.

The good fortune bruising into something far lesser. Purpling with the poisonous beginnings of that familiar spiral. Everything becoming colder and brighter, warmth leeching away from his body as bills suddenly failed to materialize. When the drumbeat of a winning streak had long been outpaced by the roar of reality. Because, eventually—always—the high would fade. And, often—more often than not—he came stumbling back to earth with nothing left to risk. 

Nothing to risk, and nothing to his name. 

And in that stupor, that hazy, drunk-on-disbelief kind of grief, Gi-hun found himself looking down at the slim black envelope. Empty now, mocking. The jostling crowd of the betting ring, faces lit from within with hope—something sicker, expectation—shining in their eyes like cheap carnival bulbs. Gi-hun caught his reflection in the mirrored surface of a darkened television screen. The glow in his own eyes had been shot out, glass splinters glinting somberly from the corners of his vision. 

He tasted the remnants of the feeling on his tongue, that sour kind of bile that belonged to something once saccharine. Coating the inside of his mouth with the ugly press of memory. Like a reminder. Like an accusation. Swallowing it down was never easy. The guilt, the directionless anger that blossomed in its place. The far easier emotion. That simple thing that could take the shape, the name, of whatever suited him best. 

Anger was the thing he clung to when the harder things tried to crawl back in. Nursing a bottle of soju like it was keeping him alive, his one-too-many-th of the night, slumping on one elbow against the grimy countertop of the bar. Pockets empty. Eyes aching. 

“Damn rigged,” he muttered, voice slurring. Tipped the bottle back, swallowed like taking a pill. The soju didn’t help, not really. But it blurred the edges. And, for now, that was enough. 

“Tell me about it.” A matching bottle—peach instead of apple. 

Jung-bae, eyes lidded in the low light of the tavern, outlined in the sickly amber of faux-flame lanterns.

That kind of flicker that mimicked real fire in every way but its warmth.

His collar was affixed improperly, skewed at the edges where the fabric bunched awkwardly around the missed button. His eyes were bloodshot from overuse, the scruff around his neck grown darker, more pronounced, since the last time Gi-hun had seen him. He looked just about as good as Gi-hun felt, over-dilated pupils sliding over to catch against his face. “How much’d you lose?” 

A scoff bounced against the glass of his bottle, coming back to him artificial-sweet and sharp. 

“All of it.” 

Jung-bae blew out a low breath. 

“Shit, man. No wonder you look so rough.” 

Gi-hun blinked indignantly at him. “Like you’re a real looker right now,” he said into the lip of the glass, petulant frown pulling at his mouth. Jung-bae slurred through a laugh. 

“C’mon, don’t be like that. You look like you just crawled out of the gutter.” 

Gi-hun sputtered, aghast, waving his finger unsteadily in Jung-bae’s direction. 

“You look like you just took a nap in the dumpster,” he accused, hardly getting through the words before they dissolved into a lopsided grin.“Like a rat.” Tacking it on at the end—for good measure. Jung-bae relented, nodding as he clinked their bottles together. 

“Fine then. Two sewer rats.”

“Two broke sewer rats.” Gi-hun corrected, leaning back into his stool, downing the rest of the soju with a huff. Jung-bae hummed in agreement. Not quite humor. Not quite light. But… young. Balancing, in a way. The rueful kind of sound that spoke of something numbed past feeling. The unspoken understanding that could only exist between friends of as many years as they had together. The ability to point at the mess around them and—not fully laugh, but smile.

Share in the misery. In a way, that made it easier. 

“Fucking scam,” Jung-bae mused, voice bitter, wavering with alcohol. 

“Right.” Gi-hun agreed vehemently. 

Certainly easier than wading through the aftermath alone. 

Gi-hun rolled the base of his bottle absently against the bar’s countertop, listening to the dull thrum of glass against the wood. Like the slide of the wheel clicking into place. Coming to a stop with a somber finality. Gi-hun lifted the drink, frowning at the comparison. The anger, easy and all-consuming, back in his mouth. 

“Cheaters, all of them.” 

Jung-bae nodded. “Oh yeah.” He tipped his soju back, swiping a hand across his mouth. “Me and you just might be the last honest men on earth.” 

Then Gi-hun laughed. Head dipping, the chuckle warm and rumbling and real in his chest. Pressing a hand to his forehead as if to support the weight of the sound, the smile lingering around his mouth even as he lifted his eyes. 

“To the honest men,” he proclaimed, raising his empty soju. Jung-bae shook his head, that same lazy, slanted grin tugging at his lips. And they were—the gentle tap of bottles together, like an acknowledgement—honest men. 

Or, had been, honest men. Gi-hun believed that, if nothing else. That there had been some honesty, some abject truth in their course of action. Some compass; some direction. Even from so many years ago. Even if they were still paying for it. Even now. For the good fight. For the right thing. 

A tired sound, somewhere sharper than a sigh but smoother than a scowl, had left Gi-hun’s throat before he was consciously aware of it. 

What a load of good the right thing had earned him back then. Flesh bruising under batons, the organized chanting giving way to hellish bedlam. Violence. Noise. The frantic drumbeat of footsteps against concrete. The punctuated thuds of bodies hitting the ground. The energy of the strike fizzling out into cold, hard silence. The bloody aftermath. A surf, a tide, roaring with the awful sound of reality. He was still paying for that fight. Maybe he’d always be paying for it. 

And what a load of good more fighting would do him now. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. Do the right thing, that is. Be the better man. It was just—hard to afford, being that person. Especially now. Especially here. Gi-hun dragged his thumb across a splinter that the bar had raised. Since when did being better have a price tag? The wood snagged on his skin, and he sighed, letting the train of thought dissolve into something easier. 

He needed another soju. 

The bar wasn’t yet something amorphous, more color and scent than tangible reality. Which meant that he wasn’t nearly hammered enough. 

“How much did you lose?” Gi-hun asked belatedly, searching that wear-worn face. Jung-bae clicked his tongue, the bottle tapping lightly against the countertop. 

“Most.” Vague. But it was easier that way. Numbers only rubbed salt in the still seething wound. 

“But not all,” Gi-hun mused, elbowing him. Like that was a win. Like he should be proud of himself. He received a warm kind of sigh in response. 

“No, not all.” 

“You were always better at getting out.” Gi-hun heard himself saying, staring up at the glasses that had been hung from the ceiling to dry. They caught the meager light of the lanterns, glinting like they were precious. Glinting gold.

The words hung in the air for a moment, lingering like the heady scent of smoke.

It was true, in that scarred, stinging kind of way. Jung-bae had always been the better of the two at removing himself. At scraping by just as the boot came down. Ever since they were kids, the wraithlike way he managed to vanish. Not untouched, no—never so lucky. But left in a place that was, more or less, recoverable. Even now, left with a foothold in the sand. A place to start, at the very least. A place to go from. 

“And you were always shit at it.” Jung-bae murmured.

The soju made them wry. Made them honest.

Gi-hun chuckled, colder now, sharper.

The abject truth of it stung like a twice-opened wound—scabbed over once but never healed. The one that never got away. Never fast enough. Never lucky enough. Always crushed, the full force of the fist, the loss, the pain, left to him. Maybe he should have been used to it by now. But that didn’t mean he had to like it—the bruises, the ache, the utter exhaustion of it. Even if it was true. Even if he was, by almost all definitions, the divine loser. The best at taking it the worst.

“Fuck off,” he said warmly.

But Jung-bae caught the sharp flicker at the edge of the word. The sense that he’d struck a nerve.

His shoulders rolled forward into a familiar slouch, his eyes scanning for the damage in Gi-hun’s expression. Gi-hun wondered as if through a thick fog what his friend saw there. If he could read whatever it was lurking beneath the skin. Jung-bae had never been the most observant of people. But the man just silently tapped the bar’s counter, gesturing the bartender over with a wave. 

“Another, for my friend here.” Knowing, probably as well as he himself did, that Gi-hun didn’t have the means of buying another. The funds. The scent of manufactured apple poured forth as Jung-bae extended the bottle to him. A peace offering. An apology in the language only they had mastered. Gi-hun took it without another word, inclining his head in silent thanks. 

And that was enough. 

Condensation slithered against his fingertips, running down his knuckles like dipping his hands into cold water. And it should have chilled him, the way a brisk wind would. Raising gooseflesh, biting at the nerves. But instead a warmth—like fever, like embers—seeped over his bones. The burn of alcohol like a flame in his chest. He tugged uncomfortably at his jacket, nudging it down, leaving it to pool around his elbows. 

And that helped. Kind of. Took the worst of the edge off. Until he felt the heat of two eyes against his neck. Jung-bae had paused, bottle half-raised to his lips, brow beginning to furrow. He set the soju down, turning more fully towards him. 

“Woah.” Voice unsteady, but still struck through with an unmistakable thread of concern. “What the hell happened there?” 

Gi-hun blinked at him, uncomprehending. Raising a hand up to where Jung-bae’s stare had snagged, settled, fixated. Finding the raised gauze of the bandage there. Freezing. 

The bite mark. 

Right. 

He’d slapped a covering over it, but the red of the flesh could still hardly be considered hidden. Gi-hun inhaled sharply, pressing a palm to the area to cover it. 

“Nothing,” he mumbled, fumbling with the jacket to pull it back into place. Ignoring the sheen of sweat that bloomed against his skin under the added layer. Jung-bae frowned, shifting closer in his stool. Gi-hun yanked the collar up, shooting a glare in the man’s direction. 

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Jung-bae said quietly. One hand hovered in the air uncertainly—as if to pull the shield of fabric away, as if to more fully examine the wound. 

“Fucking—dog, got me.” Gi-hun held his collar up protectively with one hand, the other working at the seal of the soju. Now he really needed it. 

Jung-bae huffed incredulously. “Dog? There?” 

“It’s fine,” Gi-hun waved his hand dismissively through the air. 

Jung-bae looked thoroughly unconvinced. 

“It’s nothing,” he repeated, emphatic. And that almost seemed to work. The man’s mouth snapped closed over his next words, turning them over in his mouth as if they’d soured. He moved hesitantly back to his soju. Contemplative. Eyes finally drifting away from the bandage at his neck. In the quiet, Gi-hun slowly began to release his hold on the jacket’s collar, the tightness in his chest loosening; just a fraction. But then, as if it had suddenly occurred to him, Jung-bae stiffened, leaning forward, both elbows on the table. Drink forgotten. 

“It wasn’t—“ his voice dropped, as if saying the next words too loudly would bring the roof crashing down on both of their heads. “You don’t have any of… those guys after you, do you?” 

Gi-hun snorted, tearing through the seal with a low snap. Tossing the little bit of metal aside. 

“No, those guys aren’t after me.” He lied. Smoothly. Easily. This one, a dance he’d practiced. Almost perfected. Jung-bae eyed him, glancing down the edge of the jacket. As if the patches of grime there would blossom into blood before his eyes. 

“You’re sure?” He said haltingly. The falter less from the booze than from something else—something far brittler. 

“Are you kidding?” Gi-hun scoffed. “I think I’d know if they were.” And, did he ever. But he’d handle it. Soon. He just had to be a little more patient. Careful. It’d all work out, really. No need to worry anybody else. Really. It was under control. All of it. 

Jung-bae deflated, letting loose a heavy sigh. “Ah. Well, that’s good then.” 

Maybe he saw the cracks in what Gi-hun was saying. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just wanted to believe the lie. And—honestly—Gi-hun couldn’t blame him. What would he do, if he heard the man sitting across from him was being hounded by loan sharks? What could he do? Would he take the fall for him? Somewhere deep in his chest he sensed the answer. The real answer. The stupid answer. The answer, the instinct, that’d gotten him where he was now. He doused the thing in soju until it wavered and drowned.

“Very good,” he agreed thickly. Now it was starting to hit him. Waves like the world had suddenly become a snow globe shaken too quickly, the air jostling around him like something come loose. The dim light was altogether too bright, the sharp sweetness of alcohol burning up his throat. 

Jung-bae peered at him the way one would look through clouded glass. Unsure what lay underneath. Unsure if he wanted to find out. He settled for sipping cautiously from his bottle, eyes never leaving Gi-hun’s face—flitting from his cheek to his jaw to his forehead, like there would be some clue there if he just looked hard enough. Gi-hun didn’t know whether to be flattered by the concern or irked by it. 

Jung-bae had surely seen him in worse shape before. This wasn’t anything new. 

“What? Am I missing a tooth?” He tilted his head, hair swaying into his eyes. Words breaking the fragile kind of silence that’d settled between them. Jung-bae seemed to shake himself, lips tugging upwards as he scoffed through another swig. His attention lessened, lifted, smoothed out into the absent wander of a man whose mind was far, far away. 

“Nah.” 

Gi-hun pressed against his back molars experimentally, just to be sure. After finding them all in place, he nodded to himself, humming in satisfaction. None missing. Jung-bae chuckled, rolling his eyes in a way so familiar it was almost painful. “You’re ridiculous.” But this was better. Miles better. The tension had seeped out of the dingy bar like a tide, leaving behind a place not empty but blissfully blank. Just two darkened silhouettes. Just figures without name or form or future.

It was easier—to live that way. In the hazy in-between moments, removed of past yet still treading the line of present. 

“So.” The wash of sour apple against his tongue—loosening it. “How’s the boss?” 

A misdirection: a bait. 

Jung-bae swatted at him the way one would a fly. Or a younger brother. 

“Don’t get me started.” He muttered. Gi-hun grinned sideways at him. It seemed he took the hook well enough. 

“That bad, huh?” 

Jung-bae scrubbed a hand down his face, pulling at the lines there. “The worst.” He looked older under the carved shadows of the bar—his wrinkles more pronounced, dark circles bruising under his eyes. Like the night had drained something in him away. 

Gi-hun hummed. “Shit boss is better than no boss, right?” 

But the crow’s feet around his eyes were still there when he smiled. Leftover from a time before—that easier time, that impossible time that Gi-hun both longed for and loathed for its freshness in his memory. Jung-bae inclined his head. “Always the optimist.” Gi-hun huffed into his soju. 

“Someone’s gotta be.” 

The last few of the remaining patrons had either risen from their seats or hunkered down for morning, hands clasped tightly around their lightening bottles. The bartender—retired to the far corner of the dingy room, hunched, half-asleep against the countertop—rubbed mindlessly at a perfectly clean glass, mopping at imaginary stains, invisible marks. The dull hum of radio music had stiffened with the night, sound growing sparse and thick into silence.

Suspended, like the universe had expected everyone to be asleep by now, like time had given up on her inching forward, leaving everything hanging unsteadily on its axis. 

The world outside appeared as nothing more than darkness; a sea of oil and ink, convenience-store fluorescents dappling sickly and faint against the rippling surface. Flickering. Fading fast. It seemed even the buzz of midnight waned eventually. 

“Then what about you?”

Jung-bae’s voice almost startled him, the internal fog he’d fallen into parting to make way for the words; for the question. 

“Hm?”

“Your boss.” Jung-bae tipped his bottle back, having swapped out the peach for strawberry. “Another hellspawn?”  

Gi-hun swallowed. 

He was probably talking about the family he chauffeured for. That pretentious, gaunt-faced man and his shifting, watery eyes. The snarl, lip peeling back to reveal bleached-white teeth. The disdain carving through every half-smile he gave Gi-hun; like he was an ant—a dung beetle.

Even so, a different image jumped into his mind. Newer. Darkened and outlined by buttery light, black fabric warming to a golden sheen under its reflections. A familiar almost-smile. A laugh like a struck piano chord. Dangerous. Magnetic. More myth in his mind than concrete memory. Floating out of reach, wisps of heat and shadow. 

FRNT —an ache behind the ribs. The gentle reminder: a different kind of itch. Not yet addiction. Not too far from it. 

“They’re not so bad.” 

Jung-bae frowned, tilting the bottle in his direction.“Lucky bastard.” 

Gi-hun chuckled, feeling through his empty pocket. Fingers closing loosely over the card there. Not money—the envelope was tossed in some bathroom trashcan by now—but an entrance key. His way to that strange other world.“Yeah, right.” 

It was too hot. Still. The muggy air sluggish in his lungs. And without the option of removing his jacket, Gi-hun was half-worried he might just pass out into the countertop. It wouldn't be the first time. Slumped forward, unconscious, cheek pressed against the greasy stickiness of old liquor and God-knows-what-else. His fingers twitched against the wooden surface, drumming nervously. The alcohol was hitting him harder today. Now. A thick bile like a warning under his tongue. 

Jung-bae blinked at him. “Where are you going?” 

“Air,” he said vaguely, planting a steadying hand to the bar’s surface. Fingers curling, finding the shape of a lighter; a pack. Not that he had any on him—not that he had the money to get more. “It’s fucking—hot in here.” 

Jung-bae’s mouth pulled down with something like suspicion. “Not really.” 

Gi-hun gestured backwards, waving away the words like fog.

He was already moving, up out of his seat, shoes patterning the creaking boards of the floor as he made for the exit. It was less the heat, maybe, than the stagnation. The fact of sitting still, letting the rot crawl up his spine, gathering at the base of his skull and decimating his nerves. It felt better to take the poison down when he was moving. When he could play alive. The small space had suddenly, easily, crossed the threshold from cozy to claustrophobic; pressing in like something imploding.  

Gi-hun had never liked feeling caged in. 

He was a creature of impatience—instant gratification, straight to the veins, fast enough for everything important to fall away. He got twitchy when the things started to become confined. It made him feel… tiny. Insignificant. Another reminder that he didn’t need. 

Nobody stopped him. And soon the thick metal door of the bar was swinging open; clicking shut. 

The night air welcomed his exit, cupping his face in ice-cold hands. It smoothed away the restless, jittery instinct in his chest, calming fingers threading through his hair, tousling the already-mussed waves. He pressed his back to the wall of the building, relishing in the roll of his spine to the brick. Solid, steady, grounding. 

At least something was. 

The moon was hardly more than a sliver among the clouds, peeking out hesitantly to pour its light over the horizon. A meager argent wash like a rumpled blanket. Not quite comforting. But, there, nonetheless. Gi-hun drew in a long breath, closing his eyes through another wave of dizziness. The streets canted ever-so-slightly sideways behind the film of his eyelids. Wavering as the glassy ripple of heat off pavement. 

The rumble of distant traffic. The murmur of a thousand far-off conversations. The dim hum of neon lights. The melody of the world around him, drawing together to form something that could only sound like home. 

It would rain soon.

He could smell it in the air, that indescribable sharpness, the tang of metal and moisture gathering in the sky above. A smile tugged at his lips. He had always liked it when it rained. When the fabric of his jacket was so soaked through that no one could distinguish the hand-me-down nature: the wear. The rain was an equalizer. A leveler to the playing field. He liked that. Under the onslaught of a monsoon, the pattern of the storm, everybody suddenly didn’t feel quite so different. Just drenched animals, all of them; hair slicked to their foreheads and arms clasped tight to form. All wet. All cold. A sea of dark umbrellas, the endless rush of the world loosening, slackening into a slower rhythm. 

When nobody was moving quickly, Gi-hun mused, fingers tracing the grain of the brick building, it felt less like he was falling behind. 

He was still smiling, nursing the thought, when a fist collided with his jaw. 

“Aish—”

Alleyway gravel tilting under him, the world knocked sideways in one cold, sharp hit. 

The force blackened his vision even as he scrabbled for it back, instinctively reaching up to clutch at the thundering ache under the skin. Like a bell jostled inside his head—ringing alarm. Ringing danger. Someone was pissed at him. Someone big. The world was spinning too fast for him to focus, another hand—the same one?—curling in the front of his shirt. Hauling him up—when had he fallen down?—to spit something in his face. 

The sound was garbled, chewed up by the incessant pounding of blood in his ears. He shook his head like a dog, trying to clear it. 

“…what?” His voice sounded thick, his tongue gummy against the roof of his mouth. 

He received no pity for his misunderstanding. Only a sharp knock of his head against the brick. Then, like the blare of a warning siren cutting through fog, he heard it: 

“—the money?”

His heart sank violently enough into his stomach to nauseate him. 

Like a fucking omen. Like he’d uttered their names one too many times and they’d suddenly appeared, clawed and snarling and all. Those thugs. Those cronies. Sharks in the water, as ironic as that was, scenting the blood off his wounds. Circling under the surface, fangs gnashing. Not showing fins until he was fully, utterly submerged. Coming for him now. He was shaken until his teeth rattled in his skull, the whip of the question coming again. 

“Where’s the money?” 

“I’m still…” he fumbled for the words, making out the faint oval of a face. The glint of teeth. “I’m getting it. I’ll get it. Soon.” 

Soon. Soon. Always soon. The glimmer of bared molars morphed into something else. A different shine. The unmistakable gleam of a blade. Gi-hun swallowed over the ball of fear in his throat. “Just… a little more time.” He wasn’t sure how clearly his mouth was forming every word, if all they heard was a jumbled vomit of different syllables. 

“We’ve given you a hell of a lot of time, haven’t we?” 

Well, at least they’d gathered the gist of what he was saying. Lucky him. 

“A little more,” he managed, “I’m sorry, it’s just—” The rest of the sentence died in his throat as he felt the unmistakable slide of metal to the skin. Not biting in. Not yet. There were three pairs of eyes, yellowed and slitted, distorted by his haze. Eyes more animal than human, the type of eyes he’d always imagined hidden in the depths of a darkened wood. Predator’s eyes. Only now, they were no longer hiding. 

Gi-hun wished he could see clearly. He wished he couldn’t see at all in equal measure. Maybe, if he just closed his eyes, all of them would disappear; he’d be back in the bar with Jung-bae’s hand at his shoulder, shaking him awake. Telling him the bartender finally got sick of them, that they oughta retire for the night. 

“You know sorry don’t pay any bills.” No dice. His eyes snapped back open. 

That sour breath fanned out against his turned cheek. A hot, rotting breeze. He felt his nose scrunching up involuntarily—never any good at masking his discomfort.

The sandpaper skin of the fingers holding the knife scraped against his neck. Sliding sideways, tracing the blade against the hammer of his pulse. He could only breathe so shallowly, so faintly; avoid the rise of his sternum for so long. He swallowed down the thick taste of bile against his tongue, almost choking on the resulting flood of nausea. 

He felt sick. Less from the soju or the pain than from the overwhelming buzz of fear in his veins. The tremor of being reduced to something hunted: a sniveling, kicked dog. Every muscle locked, fight or flight abandoned in favor of freezing stone-solid. 

“I’ll—” 

“Always making promises,” one voice sneered. Roughened: a smoker. “When’re you gonna keep them?” 

“I will,” he begged, inhaling sharply as the prickling bite at his throat sharpened. “I will.” 

In its path to the side, the blade-wielding hand had brushed against the lump of the bandage. Stilled there. Noticed the anomaly. A spike of panic through him like the white-hot glare of lightning, singeing the nerves in its wake. 

Gi-hun felt the sudden burst of night air against his collarbone—suppressed the answering shudder. He knew what they saw before he felt the pause. The stare. Even the sound of the city faltered; held its breath as if it, too, had decided to watch. 

He tried to shrug the jacket back on, something rising in his throat—something that wasn’t quite nausea but came alarmingly close. He was stopped. One hand firm against his shoulder. 

“What’s this?” He heard the slow drawl of glee, the delight at uncovering a new crack in something that was already in the process of shattering. That kind of smile that promised things far worse. Gi-hun’s mouth fell open, speech suddenly abandoning him, syllables dissolving on his tongue into little more than bitter aftertaste. The hair at the back of his neck lifted. Cornered. Caught. 

The sound of the bandage ripping from the skin struck him before the sharp sting of pain did—a sound like something breaking open.

It’d stopped aching by now, the mark.

But the frigid slap of the air still hurt. Still stung. Gi-hun flinched away, reaching for the area. He was stopped again. More violently. Spine smashing against the wall behind him. The impact shuddered through his ribs, splintering into razor-sharp shards. Sticking him in the side. 

The next breath was difficult. The one after, worse. 

“Your whore give you this?” 

Gi-hun shook his head vehemently, a crazed kind of laugh bubbling against his teeth. The question was almost absurd enough to be funny. He wrestled down the laughter with the desperation of a drowning man—both hands dragging the reaction underwater. Silencing it. He knew what something like that would get him. He’d seen that play out before. He wasn’t drunk enough to be stupid.

A huff whistled between his teeth, low enough to be mistaken for a hiss of discomfort. 

“You got time for this shit but not paying up?” He wasn’t sure who was speaking. Not the man with the knife, not the smoker. The third one. Voice sharp enough to feel like nails scraped along his skin. He should’ve been deaf to the sound of alarm bells by now, but somehow—now—they’d risen in pitch. In fervor. His head pounded with the noise. 

“That’s not—” But it seemed they were through with listening. Like they’d ever been listening. Gi-hun’s voice fractured, becoming nothing more than brittle pieces in his mouth as he felt the slow skate of the blade against the mark. Tracing the outline of every ridge, the pattern of canines in the skin. Not harsh. Not yet. 

A venomous chuckle. The flex of tendons against his skin. 

It didn’t take long for the pain to come. It never really did. 

The feeling of flesh tearing, pulling apart under the pressure, slicing slowly ragged. The searing in his veins that followed, the protest of his body to the intrusion, to the damage. The agony ripped a thin sound from somewhere deep in his chest. Not words. Not even a plea. An instinctive, primal reaction to the feeling.

Some small part of him had considered the mark a gift. 

A reminder that someone had… 

That someone had wanted him. Maybe just as a body, maybe just as a tool, but still— wanted him. 

The knife carved that gift from his skin with brutal, agonizing precision. 

He didn’t remember his knees buckling.

But all at once he was far too close to the ground, jeans sliding in the grime, in the filth. Old liquor. Dirt. Probably vomit. Back against the wall, his shoulders flexed against the seething ache. He bit his tongue so hard copper flooded between his teeth. The matching tang of iron in the air, scarlet running fast and hot down his collarbone. Sickly warmth welled in the slit teethmarks.

He didn’t remember his head being shoved against the brick. But the ringing—blossoming sharp and instant at the base of his skull—told him that well enough.  

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” A sharp blow to the ribs, a boot. 

“Shut up.” His jaw snapped shut so quickly his molars ached. 

The blistering metal bite dug in deeper, blackness encroaching on his vision like the edges of a battered phone screen. Crackling, darkened, useless. He wasn’t sure when they’d finished cutting him open—if they’d ever stopped. But the flash of metal—red now, glimmering with his blood—floated in front of him, shuddering like a mirage. There and then gone, as if he’d only imagined it. The alley reduced to a smudge, a phantasmagoric blur. 

Hands—too many hands, invasive and brutish—worked at patting him down. Wrenched the jacket from his crumpled form. Pawed through the pockets. A new, different kind of fear rose in his mouth. A different shade of panic. He wasn’t sure why until he saw the glimmer of sleek, laminated plastic. 

“Fuck is this?” 

No. Gi-hun’s head lolled forward, watching the man twist the card between his fingers. No, he needed that.

That was his way out.

His exit ticket.

His fingers twitched where they rested, useless, at his side. His throat worked over the plea, faltering over the shape of it—reaching for something through a thick fog. Their voices dipped in and out of his understanding, words uttered in a language he had suddenly become clumsy in. 

“Credit card?” 

“Nah, look at the back—” 

“—calling or some shit.” 

“Hey.” The card was rapped twice, sharply, against his forehead. Gi-hun blinked dumbly at him, dazed. “Where’d you get this?” 

He coughed over the answer, blood running in a thin stream down his chin. 

“Just a business card—” he managed thickly, hating the slur in his voice, the waver in it. “Friend… gave it to me.” 

Give it back. Please. I need that. Like swallowing glass, slicing him open all the way down.

He knew—he knew— that if he showed them that desperation, he would never see that small square of plastic again. He only hoped he could hide it well enough. 

The black shimmer flitted from one greedy hand to the next, never vanishing from the tunnel of his vision. His eyes tracked it in the same way he’d watch his horse round the bend: heart in his mouth, breathing paused. Absolutely still. Only now he stood to lose more than a couple thousand won. 

It passed to the final man, flipped over twice and then examined. The silence stretched until the thrum of a distant machine, a sputtering generator, became like static in his ears—deafening.

Gi-hun contemplated how long it would take him to lunge for it. If he even could, in the state he was in. If that would just make things worse. He had a guess at the answer to the latter.

Wondered if he would do it anyway. 

A derisive scoff. 

“Fucking useless,” the smoker rasped. The card was tossed like trash at his feet. Glinting inside a puddle of who-knows-what. 

Gi-hun clamped down hard on his gasp of relief, releasing the breath slowly, carefully through his nose. 

Ssi-bal, did his neck hurt.

The stinging burn had spread down from the bite mark to his chest, carving tracks through his lungs on the way until every breath came unsteadily. Shuddering. Neon yellow lights swam through his periphery, flickering in and out of focus. Unnaturally bright, unnaturally close. Like flashlights in his eyes. 

He opened his mouth, unsure if what would come out would be a thanks or another apology. He had time for neither. A dirty mitt of a hand closed over the open wound, thick fingers tilting his head back. Gi-hun inhaled sharply, a curse sticking in his teeth. 

“Three months.” 

Gi-hun registered the command dimly, over the clatter of danger in his ears, straining to hear beyond the thud of his own heartbeat. 

“I’m—” The pressure tightened, vicelike, his blood slicking that filthy palm. Gi-hun cried out, tears prickling at his eyelashes that he hadn’t realized had been hanging there for some time. The flesh screamed under the man’s grip, ragged edges pulling viciously apart. 

“Three months.”A verdict. “You don’t start paying up by then, you’re dead.” A sentencing. A gaping black tunnel out of which he would never return. Gi-hun grit his teeth hard against the sting, breathing thickly through his mouth. It was hard to focus when everything felt so sluggish. So off-kilter. A ship tossing him uncaringly across the desk—unaccustomed and unprepared for such rough waters. He was yanked up, his head wrenched back. Looking up into a maw of yellowed teeth. “You fucking listening?” 

Gi-hun nodded frantically, struggling for breath as he garbled an answer around his leadened tongue. “Three months,” he echoed faintly.

The eyes surrounding him gleamed: a trio of glinting spotlights.

He wanted to run. To hide. To duck his head and let their stares pass right over and right through him. That familiar itch wriggled under his skin, unbearable, vile, until he longed to crawl out of it, to curl up somewhere safe and warm and soft, let the feeling dissolve like the last vestiges of a nightmare. 

He was dropped like a sack of potatoes, collapsing in a heap to the ground. 

“We’ll be watching you.”

Fantastic. 

The sound of footsteps receded, sickening heat soothed away by the answering chill of the alley wall.   

Gi-hun scrabbled for the card the minute they were out of sight, nearly sprawling in the muck as the burst of movement sent a sharp spike of pain through his skull. Smoothing the plastic against tattered denim, turning it over between his fingers like something precious. His hands were trembling, the gold lettering blurring before his eyes. His. He pressed the thing to his chest. Mine. 

He slumped back against the wall, breath crackling over a sigh. They were coming more frequently. More violently. And—and three months— 

Well. How much could he even make in three months? Gi-hun threw the grimy warmth of his jacket over his lap, muttering a string of curses under his breath. Blasted wheel. Blasted track. 

The seethe of the wound was duller now, an off-beat thump that pulsed just beside his heart.

He aligned his breathing to it, sucking in thick mouthfuls of fetid, back alley dumpster air. Everything ached. His ribs. His lungs. His eyes. Just one giant bruise—purpling and yellow, discolored and sick with the noise of it all. He watched the red glare of the exit sign above his head flicker unsteadily.

The bulb would die soon. He wondered, vaguely, if it’d outlast him. 

Gi-hun had always quietly nursed the conviction that he was cursed. 

Not deliberately. Not by any malicious deity, not out of any hatred for him specifically, any long-standing grudge—but more in the way he believed something had gone awry. 

A factory accident. A miscalculation. 

Someone up there that had tripped after pulling one too many late-night shifts, spilled misfortune on the way down. Soaked him. Stuck. His flesh oversaturated with it—waterlogged; like gasoline—invisible until ignition. Then it burned. Then he burned. And—just like gasoline—anything he touched found traces of that inferno. 

It was a special brand of torture, to carry combustion like a disease. Knowing that the rot he was afflicted with could never be self-contained. That the only way to keep everybody safe from it, maybe—would be solitary confinement. Absolute quarantine. 

He watched the darkness grow from the corners of his periphery, curling like smoke, to swallow everything whole. Almost soft—the feeling. The feeling of sinking into a nest of blankets, alarm forgotten, chasing back the caress of sleep. 

“Gi-hun?” That familiar voice. Ringed with alcohol, slurred, but still recognizable. Gi-hun supposed forty-or-so years of friendship might help with that. 

His head swayed in the direction of the sound, vision warping, clearing, to make the man out.

Jung-bae stood uncertainly before him, his brow furrowing as he caught sight of the burgundy stain down the side of Gi-hun’s neck.

He couldn’t imagine how he looked—hair matted and filthy from the wall he’d been shoved against, jacket abandoned in the mud beside him, crimson fingerprints marring his skin. Surely a far thing from a sight for sore eyes.

Jung-bae blinked down at him, quiet, lips pursing. Gi-hun returned the appraisal.

“What?” Gi-hun tilted his head, wiping at the thin line of blood staining his chin. How much had he seen?   “Am I missing a tooth?” 

Jung-bae laughed; bitter, sad. 

“You’re lucky you’re not.” Stooping to help lift him to his feet, arm circling firm around his middle. Gi-hun winced, feeling the slide of a hand against his aching ribs. 

Jung-bae didn’t apologize. But he adjusted, silently, shifting to take the pressure off. Gi-hun muttered a thanks into the stale alleyway air. 

They walked in a silence that couldn’t rightfully be called comfortable but was far too natural to be considered awkward.

Gi-hun felt drunker now, inundated with a heady mix of pain and soju, that particular cocktail that could fuck with a nervous system like nothing else. There was a second heartbeat in his neck—a neverending, thudding ache there. He reached up to prod at it, his fingers coming away slick and cherry red. He wiped the hand swiftly on the front of his shirt. The black fabric would hide the stain well enough. 

The world had widened, the sound of the resting city coming back to him in pieces—streetlights humming softly, the rhythm of a drainpipe leaking against the asphalt, the collective murmur of the few remaining nightwalkers drifting against the darkness of the horizon. Even in the dead of the night, never fully asleep. He’d always kind of liked that. Kind of resented it. 

“You should’ve told me.”

Jung-bae’s voice was clearer than before. Weary. It was less an accusation than it was an admission. Like he hadn’t expected anything else from him but, maybe, had wanted to be proven wrong. Gi-hun sighed softly through his nose. He wasn’t very good at proving people wrong as of late. Their steps slid in an unsteady kind of tandem—almost in sync. Not quite there.  Gi-hun’s eyes tracked his shoes’ drag against the pavement. There was blood on the laces now. 

“I’m handling it.” He gave as answer. Jung-bae scoffed. Not derisive. Just… tired. Resigned. His grip shifted, settling more of Gi-hun’s dead weight against his shoulder. 

“You’re an idiot.” 

Gi-hun chuckled, wincing as the motion stretched at the torn skin. His neck really was… bleeding a lot. That would be okay, though—he’d been through worse. Would go through worse. It wasn’t too deep of a gash, anyway. No arteries hit. Just kinda—y’know—hurt. 

“You’re not surprised.” 

He felt the sidelong glance that was thrown his way. Peach soju, hanging in the air between them; Jung-bae’s slow exhale. 

“Should I be?” 

And Gi-hun supposed that was fair. He let the question hang in the air until it dissipated, until the not-quite-silence crept back in. And Jung-bae let him. Didn’t pick up the dangling tether, didn’t say another word. Maybe he didn’t know what else to say. 

The moment felt almost choreographed in its familiarity: the shuffle of two ghosts through a street that still felt alive, the matching sets of labored breathing—one from injury, the other from exertion. Loose chips of pavement crackled under their matching footsteps.

They’d danced this number before.

When the nights got bad; when the bets got worse.

Walked this same path—back to one apartment or the other, hardly speaking because there wasn’t anything that hadn’t been said before. Both reeking of alcohol and something more bitter—that unspoken thing that they traversed like a tightrope. Understood but never faced. Shared but never addressed. 

Gi-hun thought it might kill him, that thing. If the sharks or the soju didn’t get him first. 

He hardly registered the passing storefronts, the darkened windows of sleeping apartment buildings, the sterile white glow of the 24-hour convenience store seeping across the street like oil.

His world had begun to spin like a shitty kaleidoscope, shapes melting into each other, forms becoming something less than tangible. A muddle of yellow light and sharp shadow, diverging into detail then collapsing back into fog. 

But he knew where they were going. Could sense the moment they got there, even before Jung-bae helped prop him against the worn wall of his building. It was some change in the air, an unidentifiable combination of scent and sound that he knew by heart. Home—as much of one as he’d get. The slice of a window was empty; dark. Asleep—or not yet returned. 

Jung-bae rolled out his shoulder, kneading the muscle there with a huff. 

“You’re heavier than you look,” he muttered. Gi-hun’s head tilted in his direction. 

“Thanks,” he said dryly. 

“Any time,” Jung-bae shot back, practiced, quick, the smallest twitch of a smile on his lips. The expression sobered as his stare shifted lower, down to the mess at his collarbone. A flicker in his eyes.

Jung-bae hadn’t ever been an open book. But Gi-hun had known him for long enough to understand what that little falter meant. Fear. Or guilt. The in-between space where the two became indistinguishable. “Do you need—?”  

Gi-hun was already shaking his head, wincing as the muscle pulled tight. They played this game often. Extending the offer. Refusing. Gi-hun never let him finish the sentence, never let the word help drift out into the air between them. His own private little vow. 

A faint buzz broke through the end of the question. A recognizable sound, like something from a dream. 

Jung-bae cursed softly. 

“What is it?” The press of the concrete wall through the thin fabric of his shirt, blissfully cool, gooseflesh prickling up and down his arms. Waking him up. Slowly, in pieces. Pulling back together. 

“The uh,” Jung-bae began haltingly. His face was doused in a sickly wash of blue light, eyes flitting guiltily down to the small rectangular screen resting in his hand. Phone, Gi-hun’s brain supplied belatedly. “The wife is calling.” 

Ah. A bit of a sore subject, that. 

Gi-hun’s head dipped forward, gesturing him on. 

“Go,” He worked a smile onto his face in the way of one picking at a knot. Pulling tight, tangling everything in its wake. “You did your job. I’ll be fine.” 

Jung-bae looked… entirely unswayed. 

“Go, keep your marriage,” Gi-hun tried again, a blackened kind of humor in his voice. Keep yours. Because I couldn’t keep mine. 

Jung-bae chuckled weakly. More convinced. His thumb tapped absently against the glass of the screen. Began to swipe to return the call. 

“You’ll be fine?” He asked, already raising the phone to his ear. Gi-hun felt the thrum of the dial tone somewhere against his sternum. Deeper A sharp kind of reminder. 

“Don’t call me again.”

He swallowed the lump that’d materialized in his throat. 

“Yeah.” He pressed a palm to the wall behind him. Traced the prickle of the concrete with his fingertips. Flattened the crackle in his voice. “I’ll be fine.” 

Jung-bae gave him one last, searching look. His lips parted as if he’d say something more. But then the line picked up, a voice coming thin and muffled from the speaker. And Jung-bae turned away. 

“Hello—” The muffled scrape of his footsteps, retreating across the street. “Yeah, I’m coming home.” Gi-hun didn’t hear the response, but he heard the answering sigh Jung-bae let out. “—Yes, I know. I’m sorry.” Silhouetted by the singular wavering streetlamp, a pinprick of icy light against his cheek that was snuffed out as he rounded the bend—as he disappeared. 

Gi-hun’s eyes fluttered closed. His knuckles scraped the concrete as he slung the jacket over his good shoulder, splitting the skin. He couldn’t find it in himself to care. He listened for the beat of Jung-bae’s steps—uneven, favoring the right side—until he could no longer pick the sound out from the gentle din of traffic. Then he sighed.  

God, could he use a smoke. 

He forced his gritty lids open, face lifting towards the sky.

There was a pocket of it visible, framed by the outline of the surrounding buildings, structures crawling into the night like they planned to someday touch it.

But the pool of inky black was a deep one, stretching up and outwards to pour over the entire world. He didn’t think anyone would be dipping their fingers into those depths any time soon. He reached up anyway. 

Hand splayed unsteadily above his head as darkness pooled in the gaps between his fingers. The wind nipped at his fingertips in feather-light kisses, like the midnight sky was rewarding him for the effort. Silken and smooth, even smogged up. Even if it was missing the diamonds in its fabric—even if the stars were tucked away. 

He wished for stars, sometimes. The glimmer of something otherworldly, the strange elation at watching far-off light shimmer—like sharing in a secret. The closest thing he had to stars was the glint of fluorescents off the stone brick. Cheapened. Leadened. Like toy sparklers, the kind meant for small children. 

A breath lodged against his ribs.

Gi-hun didn’t mean to think about it. About her. Then again, he didn’t have much control over the endless slide of memory churning behind his temples. The pain could do that. Make him… sentimental.  

He pulled his hand down, weary, examining his palm as if he expected it to have changed. It hadn’t. Still flecked with scars and wear, lines folded into the skin with use. 

Ga-yeong. 

Fingers closing over the name, holding it, feeling the writhe of an old, old ache under his grip. Every time he let the thought surface, the strength of it—the force—surprised him. 

He missed her.

He remembered how she sounded when she’d lost one of her front teeth, the way the air whistled through the gap when she spoke. Her little brow furrowing in mock suspicion. How she used to laugh, like she’d discovered something she couldn’t wait to share with him. With everyone. All of these, of course—stolen memories. Not really his. Gathered like pieces of something broken into the palms, parts missing, edges frayed. 

His daughter. 

No, something in him chided. No longer yours. 

His hand dropped back to his side. You gave that privilege up. Kang Eun-ji’s sharp, damning voice. You abandoned us. 

Was it even right—to want her back? 

What would she—what would both of them—think of him now?

Gi-hun felt a scoff break against his teeth. If they found him like this—bloodied, chewed up and spit back out. Drunk. Staring out into the winding street as if a solution would materialize from between the bricks. Ga-yeong’s small mouth turning down, that polite kind of disappointment that he was growing to see more and more and more of. A distant sadness to her mother’s rioting fury.

Gi-hun had never known what to do with either of those things. 

He shoved his hands in his pockets, skin prickling at the bite of the wind. 

Maybe he didn’t want the answer. A breath whistled through his nose. He probably didn’t want the answer. He didn’t need that confirmation—the reaffirmation of all of his many faults. He knew those well enough by now. 

A bitter breeze filtered through the cracks between buildings, ruffling his hair, tossing up the hem of his shirt. The chill of it swept steadily into his bones—cooling the flesh, slowing his mind. 

And he had been right. It was going to rain. 

The clouds opened up the way one begins to weep—slowly, and then all at once. 

A drizzle became in an instant a downpour, sheets of rain drumming against the pavement. Another heartbeat. A chill through the ribs. Freezing him over. Washing him clean. A great heaving like a ragged breath, petrichor and mineral-sharp, the earth returning to gasp for air against the city street.

A catharsis. No thunder, no lightning. Just steady, soothing deluge. A setting down of something. A rest. 

His hair fell in dripping clumps into his eyes, matted against his cheekbones, tousled and flattened by the storm. He pawed it out of his face with icy fingers. 

Rivulets of cold beading against the skin. Sliding down his neck to the festering warmth at his collarbone. The feeling only stung for an instant before the muted rust of blood joined the swirl of water at his feet. Once-soft fabric clung to his skin, drenched, sliding down from his shoulder under the added weight. 

Raindrops gathered on his eyelashes, pooling in the curve of his eyesockets and sliding down his cheeks. Some of them tasted of salt. He didn’t bother to wipe those away. It was just water. Just rain. Gi-hun fished through his pocket, pulling free the chip of glimmering black. Dried blood flecked the corner of the card, seeping away under rain’s smooth fingers. Becoming new again. Free of his grime. 

He rubbed his thumb across the golden scrawl of numbers. They shimmered unsteadily in the misty fog of the downpour. 

Would it be… impolite, to call so late at night? 

Gi-hun imagined it—the thrum of the dial tone. The phone pressed warm to his ear. The click; the connection. A voice, no longer smooth but roughened with sleep. Bleary. Human. There. Answering him. Answering. The lilt of questioning, tugging up at the edges. 

The strand of thought faltered, snagged. What then? What was there to say? 

Hey, I’m tired, and wasted, and stuck outside—because I left my key—and there’s not another soul in my life who would pick up my calls— 

Gi-hun snorted bitterly. Yeah, not that.

Cool water dripped down his wrist from where he held the glittering card, tracing careful lines down his forearm. Mapping his skin, picking out flaws—scars and bruises, dips in the flesh. The rain had always been good at that. It pooled in the potted plants adorning the streetside in a line, overflowing the clay vessels and tracking dirt over the cracks in the stone brick. Returning the earth to its rightful place. He watched the roll of floodwater into the grate by his feet, catching the streetlamp’s glow, gleaming with movement. 

The melody of the storm was joined by another sound. The drumbeat of off-kilter footsteps. A new instrument. Another musician. Gi-hun’s head wrenched in its direction—vision swimming, half from the blur of the rain and half from the wash of lingering disorientation. He tucked his card back in his pocket instinctively, quickly. Guiltily. 

For a moment, he was sure he’d imagined the sound. That it was just a leftover shred of panic, the fear of being cornered again. Then she materialized. 

A hunched figure, dwarfed by the soaked fabric of her cardigan. Grey hair hanging in limp strands by her face—some had slipped out of the knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes, keen as ever, slicing through the rain, straight through him. 

“Omma?” Gi-hun winced even as the words left him—hearing himself speak aloud, the unmistakable hiccup of alcohol in his voice.

And she caught it—he knew she did. His mother had never missed much. Not when it came to him.

Her gaze slid over him slowly, settling on the space between his neck and shoulder. Gi-hun’s hand twitched where it rested, balled in his pocket. Too late to try and hide it, now. A part of him still wanted to. 

Rainfall drummed the ground between them, a divide of mist and fog. 

Oh Mal-soon just clicked her tongue. 

“You’ll catch pneumonia if you stay out here.” 

His mouth opened. Closed. But she didn’t give him time to flounder. Her thin fingers closed around his wrist, tugging him away from the wall. Her grip was surprisingly firm. Surprisingly strong.

“Come. Get out of the cold.”

He stumbled a step, shoes sloshing through the smooth surface of a puddle, sending bits of light scattering.

She held him steady, walking just slowly enough for him to keep balance. His footsteps broke the turbulent surface of the gathering floodwater, a wavering glow like sunset dancing across the surface of a lake. He caught a final flicker of the rain-drenched landscape in his periphery. There was a defiant beauty to it. A grim kind of allure. And then the roar of the storm was dulling, muted by peeling plaster and off-green wallpaper. Still present; hovering. But no longer deafening. 

Their door clicked closed. Mal-soon busied herself with locking it. Gi-hun stared at her back. It felt suddenly too quiet in the wake of the downpour. The air felt empty of sound. Barren. He didn’t know if he wanted her to fill it.

He was sure she had plenty to say. 

But she didn’t ask him about work.

She didn’t ask where he’d been.

Didn’t ask what he’d been doing. 

She just sat him down against their ramshackle cabinet, ducking into their laundry-room-kitchen-miscellaneous-living-space.

Gi-hun stared after her as if in a trance, flickering between consciousness and someplace else, someplace filmier. Without the steady thrum of the rain, the thudding of torn flesh felt louder. More insistent. He exhaled slowly through his mouth, watching the raindrops race each other down his arms. 

Watery moonlight filtered through their sliver of a window, cascading across the floor as Mal-soon made her way back to him. There was a falter in her step. A waver. Gi-hun's brows furrowed. 

With a grunt of effort, she lowered herself to kneel by his side. She raised a cloth to the tender wound—she must’ve boiled it—wiping down the grime that’d crusted the ragged flesh. Silent. Gi-hun opened his mouth to speak. She shushed him. Hummed softly, terrifically out-of-tune, under her breath. 

And suddenly he was eight years old again.

Nursing a split knee, sitting atop their counter as she knelt to press a bandage to the wound. Chiding him about being careful. Smoothing back his hair as he whispered an apology. Young and sullen and fractured. The feeling burned hot at the back of his throat, scouring all the way down.

He’d always been a reckless kid, wearing the little injuries like badges; like proof of his adventures. Oh Mal-soon had patched up every single one. 

Now… now those little hurts just scarred. 

“Why are you always like this?” she muttered. Gi-hun glanced up at her. There was no anger in her voice. Just thick, bruised acceptance. Underneath it, quivering like a wire pulled taut—something warm.  

She smoothed balm into the gash with a practiced, easy hand.

Treating him with a care that wasn’t even gentle. Just steady. Just there.

Treating him like a son.

That—maybe, hurt the most.

Because, that—he hadn’t deserved that in years.

She pressed too hard. He winced. Her stare flicked up to his, thin lips pursed. There was a deep, blooming sadness in her dark eyes. 

“I don’t…” he swallowed thickly. Gave her the most honest answer he could. “I don’t know.” 

And she nodded. The lines on her face had deepened when he hadn’t been paying attention, the bags under her eyes heavy and dark. She rolled a bandage out between her fingers, pressing it cautiously against the wound. It stuck without issue, sealed over the blood and stayed put. 

He’d begun to shiver, the dampness, the cold, sinking into his ribs. She looped a ragged towel over his head, scrubbing at his drenched mop of hair.

The lump in his throat had risen again, bobbing, floating back up when he tried to swallow it. 

“…Thank you,” he managed. His voice crackled at the edges, dangerously close to breaking. He bit down on the end of the refrain. Hard. 

She pressed the bandage flat to his skin one more time. Her eyes found his face. Something shifting there. “You should get to sleep.” She struggled to her feet, using the cabinet for balance. “It’s late.” She, too, was drenched, and Gi-hun watched the tremble in her hands as she smoothed them down her soaking cardigan. He extended the towel towards her, wet as it was, used—

“You’ll get sick,” he mumbled. She paused, a flicker across her wrinkled features, before she grasped the cloth from his hand. 

“Go to bed, Gi-hun.” 

And then she’d slipped away, vanishing into the dark corners of the apartment, out of his periphery. Gone.

Gi-hun watched the empty doorway for a long time.

Feeling the groove of the words in his mouth, wearing down the shape of them until he could choke them back.

Then he got unsteadily to his feet, clutching the wall behind him for balance. His head spun, vertigo grasping him as he blinked through it, waiting for the fuzzy blackness to clear. 

Go to bed. 

His stomach groaned unhappily.

That was right. He hadn’t really eaten anything, had he?

Surely he could fix that. He pulled a container of their leftovers from their clanking junkbox of a fridge, hunched over the plastic cup like a raccoon, like a scavenger. He ate like one too, not having realized just how hungry he was. How empty his body had been. Running on fumes the entire day. 

The rice had congealed. Something from two nights ago, maybe. Seaweed and sesame oil clung to the sides. He didn’t care. He almost remembered when it’d tasted like comfort.

Emptied that, moved on. Grabbed another clear plastic cup. His fingers grew greasy, sticky with leftover grime. 

He ate until he felt his stomach twist uncomfortably, until he realized that he may’ve made a mistake. Breathing thickly through his mouth, chest hiccuping, a warning coating his tongue with vile warmth. 

He did better this time.

He made it to the bathroom; made it to the bowl.

Kneeling over their toilet, clutching the porcelain as his stomach emptied itself. The alcohol, probably. The eating too fast. The hardly-working refrigerator. Not that the reasoning made it feel any better. He shoved his hair away from his face, coughing over a mouthful of bile. The convulsions, the shudders wracking his body, pulled at the bandages until he wasn't sure if he was vomiting from the food or from the pain. 

When it finally ended, he slumped over to the side, one hand trailing the edge of the bowl. Drained. Emptier now. Aching. 

He heard a familiar ding—a buzz.

The noise was so unexpected that he blinked up at the tiled ceiling for a moment before recalling what it was that made that sound. His phone, stuck in the back pocket of his grimy jeans. Right. 

He fumbled for it before the bathroom was flooded in blue light. Finally spotting the unknown number. The number he’d accidentally memorized. Looping golden font. Charcoal-dark backdrop. That smooth, careful voice in his ears. 

You’ll be here tomorrow?

Another not-quite question. But—even so—it felt like a lifeline. A hand extended, gloved as it was. 

He typed hazily through the fog of drink and sickness, agreeing to the time, the place—same as before. Hoping vaguely that if Hwang noticed the mistakes—the typos—he would choose not to comment on them. 

He stared down at his chain of texts until the screen went black. Until the bathroom was plunged from cyan relief back into darkness.

There was something hammering against the cage of his ribs, something that didn’t quite feel like anxiety but buzzed all the same. Hwang had been awake. Gi-hun could have called. He didn’t know if that made him feel worse. He thought it made him feel better. Just a flicker. Just a little. Enough to tug his lips upwards into a forlorn smile. 

The blur of illness reached for him again, thick claws of exhaustion punching right through his lungs. Overcome with weariness, his forehead pressed hard against his palm. Focus slipping—sliding away. 

And Gi-hun sunk into unconsciousness—phone still in his hand, shoulder listing against the bowl of the toilet. So far removed from that world of gold and velvet.

So far gone. 

Chapter Text

Gi-hun left early. 

Slipped free of the building like a wayward wraith. 

Sober now, pressing against the thundering ache behind his eyes—mortified. A burn between his ribs of embarrassment, a button-up—dug out of Mal-soon’s closet—clasped firmly, stiffly, at his throat. 

The place had been empty. Mercifully abandoned. Good, he’d thought blearily, regaining his balance, putting the machine into gear. 

He hadn’t wanted to see her. Not now. 

There had been blood on the cabinet. His blood. The outline of a shoulder. Smears, flickers of memory, rusted and blackened from the night. 

Gi-hun remembered very little. Pieces of a dream. More feeling than fact. But he remembered— 

The sharp, sweeping gaze. The softness that bloomed there. The tired warmth. 

He remembered that in such vivid clarity it ached. 

Gi-hun scrubbed at his splotchy vision. He was a grown man, for fuck’s sake. 

Certainly wasn’t acting like one. 

The post-storm world glistened like a coin rubbed clean, streets aglow with filmy sunlight. Still overcast, but brighter. Sharper. Even the meager light prickled uncomfortably at his eyes. Washy puddles of rainwater swirled lazily through the dips in the street. Umbrellas leaned sodden against the inside of apartment doors, dripping slowly onto tile flooring. All of it a little bit blurred. 

Like the world, too, was still waking up. Or settling back down to sleep. Maybe somewhere in between—a drowsiness born not of time but of wear. Washed clean, yes. But also washed away. Worn down. 

The air had been momentarily cleared of the scent of cigarette smoke and rot, clean, sharp ozone in its place. Chilled asphalt, drenched concrete. The streetlamps curled through the air like hooked fingers, silver and gleaming, wearing rings of moisture. 

It sunk into his skin, the chill of it. Slipping easily through thin white fabric, that feeling wavering between damp and cold—such similar sensations they soon became indistinguishable. 

He had read the messages again and again in the half-light of the semi-basement. 

Just two. 

The initial question—shortly thereafter, the time and place. 

Nothing earth-shattering. Nothing that should’ve stuck in his head with the force it did, digging its heels in like a stubborn child and refusing to slip out of his mind. Insistent. He ran his thumb over the pale glow of the screen, tracing the evidence. 

Maybe because he could hear the voice beneath the text. Maybe because the warmth of it had been an ember in a night that had gone terribly fucking cold all at once. Gi-hun hummed, letting the glow fade. Maybe. 

The empty husk of the bar. Convenience store brightlights. Rain-slicked brick. Ssangmun-dong was a different creature now. 

The styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand—more akin to motor oil than anything recommended for ingestion. He’d always preferred tea: aromatic and steaming, ginger and spice curling into the air. The gentleness of it rather than the sharp, bitter bite of black coffee. 

But at least the coffee had eased the pounding in his head. At least it was warm. Gi-hun wandered through the street like a marionette led by tangled strings, stiff and slow-moving, every movement half-aborted. 

He had time to kill, strangely enough. Stopping suddenly in the window of a gleaming flowershop, the buttery glow of the lights inside drawing him like moth to flame. The tentative perfume of the place twisted into the street—as if uncertain if it belonged there. Soil and sunshine, moran and jangmi and jasmine, sweet and clear and surprisingly painful. 

Gi-hun swallowed hard. 

The ache had dulled. 

But it hadn’t faded. 

It thrummed beside his heart, rippling from beneath the stained cluster of bandages. Wrapped in bile and memory. 

When he was a child, his mother used to press spring petals between the thick pages of his school textbooks, gathering the beautiful, dead things to keep beside her bed. Filling the space with the scent of bright, swollen life. She’d keep them even after they’d long since faded, even after time had begun to fray the edges, turn the color to dust. 

She always had cared for things long past their time. 

Petals pink and sighing and smiling out at the day. Red and vibrant and ferociously alive. Flowers reminded him of older things. Lost things. The blooms, always capable of rebirth, new growth. Other things—

Gi-hun’s chest squeezed. Other things, not so much. He ducked out of the circle of saffron light, the scent of flowers clinging to him. 

The few souls he encountered on his way were like kin—fellow drifters. Shuffling through the fog not because they’d chosen to but because it was the only way to run, now. Now that the day had come, breathed, exposed the cracks. Heads bowed, shoulders curled forward, a slouch Gi-hun knew he mirrored. 

It was almost difficult to slow his forward motion when he’d reached his destination—so attuned was he to the mindless movement. A dazed inertia, an endless path forward. Without an outside force, near impossible to change his course. Gi-hun came to a stop, one heel sinking into the icy puddle by his feet. Eyes tracking upwards. 

Clean. Plain. Few windows and even fewer frills. 

The building hadn’t changed. Though it was nice to not be running there, Gi-hun thought wryly. 

Still beige. Still ordinary. But now it seemed to shimmer at the edges, as if the knowledge of what lay inside was seeping through the plaster out into the dampened world. 

The glimmer buried under concrete—a seam of amethyst waiting to fracture through stone. Shining once one chipped away the deceiving shell. 

The rapid-fire clack of a keyboard being struck greeted his entry—much the same as it had the day before. The young receptionist, dark stare focused, eclipsed in blue light. She really did look little, blonde highlights in her hair as if she’d just bleached the ends. How had she gotten tangled up in this business?  

Her eyes flicked up. Brows raising. “You’re back.” Gi-hun inclined his head. 

“And on time,” she added, the slightest smile tugging at her lips. He sputtered, looking away as he mumbled a non-answer under his breath. He might’ve tried to sneak an apology in, too, before she leaned around the computer screen. “I’m just messing with you.” She grinned fully now, turning back to rifle through the drawer of her desk. 

Gi-hun swallowed, wincing at the mouthful of soured coffee and lingering sickness that washed down his throat. Gross. 

She finished shifting through one drawer and moved on to the next. Papers strewn within with little rhyme or reason, the colorful pops of different pens, scraps of scribbled-on notes. The furrow that’d appeared between her brows suddenly smoothed out. 

“FRNT asked me to give this to you.” Extending her hand, a thin black envelope. Full of something, once he was holding it aware of the weight. 

“Oh.” He scanned the surface, reminded suddenly of its counterpart—crumpled in a distant trash somewhere. “Why?” 

She shrugged. “Didn’t say.” Gi-hun glanced at her, tapping the paper absently against his palm. Considering. What could FRNT be thinking? 

The secretary typed something out into the computer. “He’s just got his things.” The words spoken through an almost half-sigh. There was something almost soft in her voice. A familiarity. 

Gi-hun, in spite of himself, felt a chuckle leaving his chest. 

So it wasn’t just him. Hwang seemed inaccessible to everyone. 

“Does he?” Turning the envelope to examine the seal. Done in golden wax. Like something out of the medieval ages. Money? Something in him perked up, eyes widening. Hopefully money. He rubbed at the glinting circle contemplatively. She tilted her head. 

“Oh, yeah.” Her blunt nails clicked against the counter. “The whole ‘mysterious’ thing doesn’t really go away.” 

Despite her utterly serious expression, something else glittered beneath the surface—catching light. Gi-hun couldn’t help but feel like she was poking fun at the man. It made him feel better than he’d expected. It solidified the wisps of myth and memory back into a person. A real human being. Gi-hun looked at her with a tentative smile. 

“Good to know, that.” 

She returned it brightly. 

“Don’t take it personally or anything.” She reached up to brush her bangs out of her eyes. 

Gi-hun hummed to himself. It probably came with the territory—being masked; the figure he was. The paranoia of that life. Couldn’t help but seep into the time off-screen. He turned the thought over against his tongue, again confronted with the lingering venom there. Like something had died in his mouth. He really needed to do something about that, actually. 

There was a bowl of what looked like mints, individually wrapped in shiny green foil. Suddenly self-conscious, he contemplated the collection. Wondered if he could take one without her noticing. 

The young woman caught the direction of his attention. She leaned forward in her chair, a smile on her lips. 

“They’re free,” she’d said warmly, eyes twinkling. “Go ahead.” 

Gi-hun now rolled the mint over between his teeth, staring across the hallway to the dark door facing him. Flipping the card over and over between his fingers. It flashed under the glow of the fixtures lining the walls, glittering in the corner of his vision. 

Fourth floor. Down the corridor. To the right. Third door.

It was more intimidating, to enter on his own. 

Rather than be pulled through into orbit, to feel the gravity on his own two feet. 

Every step suddenly felt heavier. 

The candy cracked, dissolving into sugar and oil on his tongue. Leaving a chill against his molars. His mouth tasted like ice and leftover spearmint, unnaturally cold with every breath. But it was better than the lingering taste of bile—sourness washed over with shitty coffee. He guessed anything, really, was better than that. 

The door was staring at him. He could feel it. He shot the wood paneling a suspicious glare. 

Rich people’s doors didn’t suddenly become living, did they? 

He pressed the little chip of plastic against the scanner in the manner of a man defusing a particularly sensitive explosive. 

Several mechanisms shifted, an appreciative beep emitting from the pane of black glass. Open. He fidgeted with the cuffs of his shirt, smoothing out the creases that’d formed along the wrists. Wrinkled lace had been sewn against the hem of the fabric—something he hadn’t noticed until he was well out the door. It’s fine, he worried the threadwork under his thumb.

Gi-hun hesitated just a beat too long, and the lock clicked back into place. 

Aish. He huffed, shaking his head as he reached over to try again. You’re fine. 

He let out a slow breath as the mechanism clicked—again—reluctant but yielding. Bounced nervously on the balls of his feet. He tasted his heart in his mouth; an unreasonable, fluttering anxiety. Like he’d find something dangerous on the other side of the door. 

Well—his hand closing around the cool handle, turning until the lock disengaged beneath his fingers—FRNT was some form of dangerous, he supposed. 

A quiet kind of dangerous. 

That kind where he could point to nothing concrete, nothing tangible, to make sense of the feeling. But the feeling didn’t shrink under that rationalization. If anything, it only grew thicker. Like the lack of evidence was evidence enough. Like the stillness meant something was bound to break. 

He wasn’t as unnerved by the fact as he maybe should have been.  

The room was empty as he stepped inside—furniture unoccupied, no sign of movement. No glinting mask, no FRNT. Gi-hun stood uncertainly in the doorway. He half turned back, shoulders rolling, before resolving himself to at least get fully inside before he started recalculating—overthinking.

A few steps in. Still nothing. Gi-hun shifted uncomfortably, wiping the dampness of his shoes off by the door. No need to be tracking muddy water all over the carpet—nice as it was. The little table was unadorned; no contracts, no sleek pens. Just glassy, dark. 

“Hello?” he tried quietly. The room had a faint echo, bouncing back to his ears thin and strained. No answer. He hummed, skating a palm against the smooth material of the couch. 

Black sand steadily trickled into the bottom of the delicate brass hourglass, a slow drizzle, mesmerizing. The gentle whisper of sound hissed softly through the air, curling in the corners of the small room. Gathering there like a rising tide. Hissing like a snake, coiled, waiting. Marble eyes glinting. 

Gi-hun shot a furtive glance towards the doorway, unsure. Had he gotten something wrong? He didn’t think so—though, really, that didn’t mean much. 

He dug for his cell, brows creasing. The phone screen still displayed the same messages. The same time. 

“Hello…?” he tested, just one more time. He received nothing. Gi-hun sighed, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Picking at the peach-fuzz softness of the couch. 

Well then. 

He could wait. 

Gi-hun sunk onto the cushions with a grunt, grateful for the give—the comfort of it. He felt like he’d been electrocuted or something. Every muscle shot. Sleeping on the cold tile floor, neck awkwardly craned against the base of the toilet, probably didn’t help. Gi-hun reached up to roll his knuckles into the tendon, kneading at the knot until it lessened. 

Was he relieved, to not be immediately confronted with the overwhelm of the man? 

He could’ve been; maybe he should’ve been. But something else curled in the hollow of his throat. Dripped there and stuck—like honey, thick and insistent. 

Now that he was back here, the memory of his last visit was becoming more and more difficult to ignore. 

Coming back in flashes—hot pulses of imagery behind his eyes. Leather and velvet, teeth to skin. The crimson smudge against that bottom lip, the bright stain of cherry-red. Like something sugary, melting into the teeth, coloring the tongue. The fever heat of the form curled over him, infinitely close and infuriatingly far away. Fingers scrabbling in dark fabric, back arching—

Gi-hun sat forward, tossing his head. Nope. Not right now. He took in a slow breath of cleaner-sharp air, pressing the heels of his hands to his cheeks to cool the burning skin. Tucking the mental picture gingerly away, into some unlabeled box inside his mind, quieting it. One of the hinges to that little box squeaked, sticking, never fully closed. The tentative flutter of heat in his veins, undeterred. 

He squirmed, tugging the rumpled envelope free of his back pocket. Curling the edges of it up between his fingers. Looking for distraction. 

The contents inside shifted, sliding against each other, paper-thin. Gi-hun could almost count how many slim bills there were. Started to try, before frowning—unsure of how much each one was. Was it even money? He flipped the dark paper, pausing to slide both thumbs across the back. Brushing against golden wax. Gi-hun stilled.

He could break the seal. 

It would be so easy. 

And, well, the young lady hadn’t said anything about not opening it. 

So, really, it was fair game. 

He felt the interest seething behind his eyes, pouring over the ebony cardstock. Curiosity gnawed at him like a living thing, scurrying between his hands and nipping at the envelope’s wax. 

Gi-hun didn’t like secrets. 

Never liked the things hiding behind whispers and locks, things addressed in hushed language, hardly given breath. Back when he was a child, he’d quickly developed a blunt, stubborn openness. Honest. Honest to a fault—often throwing himself into more trouble than he’d started out in, earning himself looks both incredulous and vaguely amused. That honesty had dulled with the years—tarnished. Grown rust. Lies came easier now. 

That didn’t mean, though, that he had to ever like them. 

But—and his fingers paused—he knew someone who did. 

Someone rather fond of secrecy, actually. 

He saw the obsidian glint of the mask in the face of the envelope. The flash of gold like a chiding tongue. 

He sighed, resigned, sliding the thing onto the tabletop before him. It flashed mockingly out of reach as he sat back, his fingers twitching as if to grab it. Folding his hands back into his lap, his eyes began to wander; more to avoid looking at the gold-lined onyx than anything else. The doorway to the next room—the space empty of the glow of spotlights. The thread of sound in the air, like a song just too faint for the melody to materialize. The careful crown moulding. The mirror. Gi-hun winced.

The mirror grabbed his attention the same way it always did. Wrenching his head around, unbidden but insistent. Refusing to let him look away. 

His cheeks, his nose, were ruddied from the chill, hair curling damp against his forehead. 

He looked a bit like a wet dog. His mouth turned down at the comparison. Flattering. Really. 

The shirt—too loose in some places, too tight in others, tailored for a body that wasn’t his. It hugged his waist sharply, falling loose around his chest. It was glaringly, obviously, a borrowed thing. The lace wasn’t helping. Gi-hun set about unbuttoning one of the cuffs, planning to fold it upwards enough times until it could hide—

“Gi-hun.” 

He jolted. 

“Aish—” 

Whiskey, sweet and smoke-curled. Spiced chai. Incense and sandalwood and caramel. 

How did he move like that?

Gi-hun aborted the yelp of surprise halfway up his throat, swallowed it down sharply as he glanced towards the sound, the familiar voice. Abandoning the half-unbuttoned sleeve. 

Hwang had materialized in the entrance to the next room, weight tipped to one side. Hip cocked. He wore a slim charcoal turtleneck, tight to form. The throat of it was collared with a thin gold chain, nestled between the arc of his hood. Identical chains hung around his hips, clipped to his belt loops. Clinking gently with every step Hwang took. 

Which meant Gi-hun should’ve heard him coming. 

How had he been silent? 

Maybe he just… defied the laws of physics. Which felt—Gi-hun’s eyes drew up to the angular mask—in-character. 

Hwang tilted his head as if listening in to the train of thought. Intrigued by it. 

“Did you wait long?” he asked, crossing the threshold into the room. One smooth, almost languid stride. His chains jingled merrily. Gi-hun tried not to let his eyes drop to where they rested, ducking his head to examine his shoes. 

“No, no, not really.” Hwang’s boots stopped at the far edge of the little table. Parallel to his own.

“Jun-hee didn’t keep you, did she?” 

Gi-hun glanced sidelong at him, testing the name in his mind. Coming up empty. Hwang caught the confusion before it dropped to the floor between them, shifting back to roll out his shoulders.

“I have her work the desk.”

“Oh!” Gi-hun sat forward, eyes lighting. The receptionist with the bleached ends. “No, not at all.” 

Hwang clicked his tongue. “Chatterbox, that one.” There was something like a ghost of a smile, caught in the palm of his hand as he slid a glove down his face. 

Gi-hun chuckled softly. Hwang wasn’t wrong. But he hadn’t minded it. There was something refreshing about her, about how lively she was. How warm. Still so young. He brought the name up to the image in his mind, nodding to himself. Jun-hee. Bright. It suited her. 

Hwang eyed the envelope. His lips pursed as he lifted it from the table, examining the condition. 

“She said you wanted me to have that?” Gi-hun prodded him. Hwang nodded slowly, gaze sweeping over the slightly curled edges, the greasy fingerprints he’d left, the unbroken seal. 

“You didn’t open it,” he finally said. Gi-hun shrugged. 

“Ah, I thought maybe I should wait,” he offered. He was faced with a contemplative silence, dark eyes sliding along his face. Probing. For what, Gi-hun had not a clue. 

Then Hwang tapped the cardstock once against his palm, head tilting, almost owlish. Like he’d discovered another dial, another variable—slotting some interesting pieces together. He turned to tuck the stationery into some indeterminate drawer of the dresser, the glimmer of wax disappearing into the dark oak. 

He murmured something under his breath, clicking the drawer closed. 

“What?” Gi-hun leaned forward, curious. 

But Hwang didn’t speak again. 

Instead, he reached over to flip the hourglass—at some point all of the sand had trickled into the bottom—and restart the hiss of time passing. 

Gi-hun wondered, briefly, what had kept him up. Not just to the room—he probably had his reasons, things to set up, rooms to prepare—but… last night. Three o’clock in the morning was hardly a regular time to be sending out messages. To anyone, much less to an employee. 

Gi-hun had been awake to receive it. But he was Gi-hun. And Hwang was Hwang. 

And Hwang In-ho had seemed to have a penchant for the professional. Gi-hun narrowed his eyes at the man’s back. 

Half-nocturnal, maybe. Didn’t seem entirely out of the question, Gi-hun mused, taking in the slant of Hwang’s shoulders. A creature like him might hardly need to sleep at all. Maybe night didn’t even matter, not to him. Maybe time was just something that fluttered like a moth's wings before the fire. Pretty but inconsequential. In the grand scheme of things less than a breath. 

A glove—extended towards him, fingers curled. Head expectantly tilted to the side. Hwang scanned him, mask catching chips of the washy overhead lights. 

Gi-hun hesitated, uncomprehending, before he placed a hand tentatively in the leather-clad palm. Hwang’s lips pursed. Behind the mask, his eyes seemed to shimmer. Glow. He lowered the hand Gi-hun had offered him—right—instead catching hold of the half-undone sleeve—left. Gi-hun colored. Ah. Okay. That was embarrassing. 

Hwang set about readjusting the fussed-over fabric, buttoning up the lace. Not folded over or folded away, like Gi-hun had planned, but put back into place. Gi-hun exhaled slowly, trying to calm the skittish thing in his chest. It paced a restless circle around and around his ribs. 

Hwang’s eyes dropped to his mouth. Gi-hun swore he could see an eyebrow tick upwards. 

“Peppermint?” he guessed. Gi-hun clamped down on inhale, the next telltale brush of mint on his breath. 

“Ah, I think so?” 

Hwang shifted closer, head cocked thoughtfully. 

“No,” he amended. His voice was low. Contemplative. His fingers trailed smoothly from their place at his wrist to his jaw. Flickering over the invisible bruises there. He tilted Gi-hun’s chin up. “Spearmint, isn’t it?” 

Gi-hun wasn’t sure he was breathing. Certainly not deeply enough to speak. He nodded uncertainly into the press of fingertips. 

“That’s what we have downstairs.” Hwang pressed a thumb against his bottom lip. Gi-hun nodded again, slower, warmth gathering against his teeth. Flushing against his cheekbones. Hwang was so close, now. Right there. It was so hard to focus, with the tang of leather brushing soft against his mouth. Dark and slick against his tongue, gentle to more, smooth and intent and was his mouth watering? 

Just as he blinked through it, just as he got a handle on the feeling running rampant between his ribs, Hwang was gone. 

Headed for the next room. 

Gi-hun huffed. In relief, maybe. In disappointment. 

“There’ll be just a little bit more fine-tuning today,” Hwang said over his shoulder. “The cameras can be delicate.” 

The cameras. Right, the cameras. Ice washed up his throat that had nothing to do with mint. Gi-hun nodded, following at his heels, an off-beat echo to the steady rhythm. 

There must’ve been more lenses, Gi-hun thought. Or maybe he was just now noticing the difference. The amount. Blinking, beady eyes. Little insect exoskeletons—glassy and dark, fragile—glimmers off their shells that just faintly made his skin itch.  He felt like the whole setup could come crawling off the wall, skitter over to him and start feeding on the flesh. Pick the bone clean. He scrubbed a hand roughly down his arm, as if to ensure that hadn’t yet happened. He found no bone. No scraps of skin. Just gooseflesh, prickling under the surface of damp fabric. 

This whole place had the strange effect of making him feel like he could be devoured. The studio like the open, gaping maw of a predator. Teeth flashing in his periphery, patient. Waiting. Tongue velvet-smooth and black. Shimmering. Silk. 

Hwang was more careful with the lights this time, adjusting the shade, the intensity—even the warmth—of the bulbs nestled like eggs in a mechanical, clicking nest. Gi-hun sat cross-legged, stare tracking the way he swept about the room. Efficient. Precise. A well-oiled machine. Warmth skittered down his spine, circling gently beneath the skin. Capable, it mused. 

The man tilted one beam of light just so, humming.  

“Would you like me to provide you with more feminine attire for later sessions?” 

Gi-hun blinked at him. 

Hwang just met the stare, one gloved hand gesturing loosely to his shirt. His blouse. A beat, a microsecond of incomprehension, before understanding doused him in sudden clarity. Heat blazed up the back of his neck. 

“Ah—no, that’s—” He fumbled for words, curling in on himself. Half trying to laugh through it. Half failing. “No, I’m— I’m good.” 

A small smile curled at the corners of Hwang’s mouth. 

“I see. I’ve misinterpreted.” 

Gi-hun nodded weakly, ducking his head—face reddened now more than rosied. The man leaned back against the desk. 

“I do apologize.” 

He sure didn’t seem sorry. Gi-hun’s mouth screwed up petulantly at the thought. He waved the words aside, clearing his throat. Surprised at the warmth there. 

“S’okay.” he mumbled, breathless. 

Hwang’s mask gleamed gold as he dimmed another lamp, stepping back to examine his work. His analytical stare, that endless machine behind his eyes ticking away, cataloguing the shimmer of the black velvet, tracing up to provide Gi-hun the same scrutiny. Dipping over his hunched shoulders, the thin lace fabric of the shirt. 

A part of him squirmed. A part of him preened. Gi-hun was equally put off by both reactions. Caught, in some kind of way. Pinned. 

“I have a question.” He blurted, once that heavy stare lifted. Hwang adjusted three dials— click, click, click. 

“Go ahead.”

“Why do you do—” Gi-hun gestured vaguely to the complex web of metal and wire, “all of this, by yourself?” He leaned forward, combing his hair out of his eyes.“Wouldn’t it be easier to, I don’t know, have someone else set everything up?” He certainly had the means to do so. The connections. The money. If he so chose, Gi-hun doubted he’d have to lift a finger. Except the ones he used to touch—

Gi-hun shook himself. Right. 

Hwang paused, gloves lifting from the array of machinery for just an instant. He turned back, the gentle murmur of the chains at his hips an appreciative echo. 

“Would you prefer more people bustling around here?” He mused. Gi-hun’s nose screwed up at the thought—more faceless figures scuttling around, masked and alien, the whole place transformed fully into a hive of whirring dials and near-silent footsteps. For some reason, the little people wore bright pink. He shook his head vehemently. 

“Not really.” 

Hwang inclined his head. “There you go.” Then, as he set back to work, Gi-hun heard him speak again. Quietly. As if thinking aloud. “Other people make mistakes.”

Gi-hun watched his back, one eyebrow raising. “And you don’t?” 

He heard a rumbling chuckle. “I try not to make a habit of it.” 

Gi-hun nodded sagely. No, of course not. 

The pristine man, the faceless man, the perfect statue—came around to face him. 

His hood flared as if it’d caught flame, turned molten, just instants away from puddling in his collarbone and sliding down his back. What would that hood feel like, Gi-hun wondered, slipping through his fingers? Tracing twin paths down his wrists? What, who, would emerge from the dripping gold? 

And then the nebula of him dimmed, leaning against the desk to produce a familiar white mask. 

“You’d still prefer to wear this, no?” 

Gi-hun jerked his head in a hasty nod. Hardly even a question, that. 

“Perfect,” Hwang hummed. “Then I should inform you of a few things.” 

A dark glove ran the length of the mask. Searching for something. Hwang paused, fingers stilling; flicked an invisible mechanism. 

A sharp click. 

And then the metal eyelids were snapping closed, flaring gold against pearl as the mask sheathed away its sockets. 

Gi-hun leaned closer, heart jumping into his mouth. Melting against his spearmint tongue. The image was almost peaceful, the manufactured face smoothed out into something gentle. Like sleep. Like rest. 

“Your vision will be suspended for the duration of this session.” 

He spoke in the same manner as a teller— your card will be suspended for the next two weeks. Voice muffled behind plexiglass, protocol-smooth. 

Gi-hun’s pulse rattled against his sternum. 

Hwang turned the mask over in one gloved hand, examining the compact machinery set into the porcelain surface. 

With another slow brush of his fingers, another gentle tick, the lids slid back open. 

“Is that understood?” 

Gi-hun nodded, staring down at the gleaming metal. 

Hwang pulled the mask away, hood tilting. 

“Yeah,” Gi-hun amended. Vocal. “Understood.” 

“As always—” Ink-blot eyes caught his. “If it grows to be too much, simply use your word.” 

Ojingeo. Squid. It felt a little silly, now, to have picked a word like that. 

He smiled up into the dark mask. 

A little childish, even. 

Well, Gi-hun thought, shifting to the edge of the silken bed. It wasn’t like he’d ever really need to say it. 

There were only a few more things to prepare. Gi-hun shimmied clumsily out of his pants, fingers fumbling at the buttons. Damp from the rain. 

He tried—honest, he did—to fold them neatly. In half, over, over again. The end result was… passable. Hwang smoothly set the mask down, helping to move the clothing elsewhere. Surreptitiously refolding them before he placed them to the side. 

The next part was more complicated. Gi-bun contemplated the lacy white, fingers flexing but never moving. Uncertain. Noticing his hesitation, Hwang seemed to take it upon himself to help get the rest of his clothes off. 

His gloves drifted across Gi-hun’s shoulders, brushing dangerously close to the lump of bandages clasped tight to his skin. The ghost of a touch jolted him back into focus. He couldn’t have Hwang seeing that. No way in hell. 

Maybe he flinched, maybe Hwang read something in his eyes, the sudden burst of panic like a wave over his spine—whatever it was, the man stilled. 

“Sorry, could I…” Gi-hun cleared his throat. “Keep it on?” 

Hwang’s eyes skated down the length of the fabric. Hooking in the lace by his waist. 

“Of course.” 

Gi-hun sighed, tension dissipating from his shoulders. Oh, good. 

“May I ask why?” Hwang murmured, thumbing the button fastened just against his throat. 

Oh, not as good. 

“Uh…” Gi-hun swallowed, searching the dark recesses of his mind for an answer; an excuse. He found nothing but dust and cobwebs and an increasingly awkward silence. “It’s, you know—”

“I don’t,” Hwang interjected, the slightest curl of a grin in his voice. Enjoying this, clearly. He traced a gentle path over the curve of Gi-hun’s neck, around and around the button there until the tiny circle felt ingrained, branded into the skin. 

“I just… want to keep it on,” he settled on the rest of the sentence with the resignation of someone who’d been dealt a shit hand at the table. Quiet, head ducked, cheeks blazing. Cards clutched tight to his chest. “If that’s okay.” 

Hwang hummed quietly. He pressed once, experimentally, against the hollow of Gi-hun’s throat. Warm, even through the fabric. Even through the leather. That warmth seeped hot up his neck, staining the tips of his ears. 

“I suppose we can make it work,” Hwang said, retreating like a tide, like a breeze. Leaving salt-spray echoes in his wake. There was something still questioning in his voice, a thin vein of curiosity through the smooth veneer. But he didn’t pry. 

We, not I. 

Gi-hun dipped his head, loosing a breath. “Thank you, Sir.” The honorific had slipped out in a breath, between the teeth, his relief given syllable; given sound. 

Hwang’s shoulders shifted sharply—tensing—before they smoothed out into something calm. Fast. 

Not quite fast enough. 

“You don’t have to—” Hwang inhaled; let it out with a quiet chuckle. “Until we start.” 

Gi-hun angled his head to better take the man in. He’d returned to the machinery, gloves moving, but there was hardly anything left to adjust, now. Everything pristine.

Gi-hun was surprised by the grin crawling up his face. 

Was FRNT… fidgeting? 

“Right,” Gi-hun said slowly, reeling back the triumph running warm through his voice. 

He liked that Hwang was—affected—by that. A little chink in the smooth veneer—a handhold. Something he could grasp. 

The man circled the room twice, a little like an animal, as if searching for imperfections. He didn’t seem to find any, not in the silk sheets, not in the light off of Gi-hun’s mask, not in his half-undressed state. 

He tugged once at the middle finger of his right glove. Hummed. Satisfied. 

There was a faint buzz through the room—under Gi-hun’s skin, a blanket of white-noise static that was not quite loud or present enough to distract but just there enough to be felt. 

Hwang turned on the monitor last. 

Booting up the screen with a deft one-two tap against the keyboard. Blue light washed over the bronze fog of the room in a sharp wave, bright as a lightning flash, almost blinding. Gi-hun winced, ducking his head. The after-image burned hot behind his eyelids. He blinked it away, watching as Hwang’s silhouette worked. 

He felt, stupidly, like a mistress. 

Perched against bed sheets that weren’t his own, tangled in the scent of a room that felt borrowed; temporary. Waiting for a man that wasn’t his, staring at a turned back, fingers pressing intent to the keys. Set on more important things. In that in-between where he was not yet needed. Not yet wanted. A strange limbo where Gi-hun felt unnervingly… alone. 

He shook his head. Swallowed. It should feel that way. That’s all this is, Gi-hun told himself sternly. Temporary. That’s how it was built to be. A transaction. His body—money. His voice—payment. Gi-hun fiddled with the lacy sleeves of his shirt. He’d known that. Knew that. 

Don’t want more. Not a difficult task. 

Had he ever been good at that? 

Always trying for something else. A nasty habit in the betting world and an even more dangerous one in the real. Two failed businesses, risky ventures even in the time when he’d had enough to keep them afloat. Even in the time when he could have made them work. A strike beaten into submission. Funds spiraling into cotton-candy bulbflash and sour soju. If he could just push a little farther, maybe—one more bet, one more reach, he might just grasp something solid. 

He folded his hands away. He was finished— needed to be finished—with grabbing at smoke. 

The spectre of aurous fire and obsidian flame turned his way. Not quite material, in this light. A foggy outline. Gi-hun felt his fingers twitch. 

He’d retrieved the white mask. 

The feeling of cold metal to his skin was less shocking than it had first been. The milky opalescence, the pale swirls of his shirt—made him almost a ghost. Wraithlike, where he caught his own image in the mirror. Wavering.

“Ready?” Hwang murmured, outlined by glittering white spotlights. Gi-hun looked up into the faceless silhouette, awe fluttering high at the back of his throat. 

“Yes.” Sir.

Then he cupped Gi-hun’s cheek in one hand, a touch surprisingly… tender, for what it was. Leather splayed against his jaw. That smoke, calcified to human touch, to something solid. Gi-hun inhaled sharply, almost stunned by the sturdiness of him. The surety with which his hands lingered. Hwang found the tiny mechanism lining the mask, rolling a careful fingertip over the edge. 

Gi-hun felt the whole thing ripple, rearranging itself against his skin. 

A slow, almost languid click. The world shuttered. Darkened. Dimmed. Closed off to him entirely. Gi-hun’s breathing caught hard in his chest. Hiccuping on inhale. Snagging against something sharp and hot and overwhelming, racing down his spine to circle, purr, by his core. 

Oh. 

His fingers curled into the buttery velvet.

Oh.

He’d severely underestimated how much this— changed things. 

Where before blinding haloes of amber light had swelled and flexed against his retinae, leaving teal bubbles behind his eyelids, there was now nothing. A uniform, golden dimness. Not quite absolute. But soft. Easy. 

It wasn’t the darkness that got him. 

It was what that darkness created. 

The vacuum from which bloomed something entirely other. More. 

Every sound—suddenly amplified a thousand times over. Computer fans to the roar of roiling surf. The gentle, easy rhythm of breath at his back to crashing waves. Cliff-sharp wind in the shift of weight against hissing silk. The clink of chains like a thunderclap—sudden and instant and, oh, that was why he’d worn them. Like the bell of a cat’s collar, familiar, dangerous. Gi-hun drew in an unsteady breath, deafening in his ears. He could hear the hum of the air. The pulse of his heart, loud and fast and wet. Throwing his system into immediate overwhelm, drowning in the stormfront of gentle sound. 

His lips parted with a tiny pop that felt thunderous. Pulling air against a tongue that suddenly felt overripe. Swollen. Leadened and thickened and over-sweet. 

The mattress dipped beside him, shifting like a wire, like the dappled surface of a lake. Every breath a tremor across its surface. 

“How do you feel?” 

Gi-hun twitched, shoulders drawing tight together.

Fuck. 

That rich, honey-smoke drawl. Thick, dark chocolate and char-roughened firewood, soft and sharp at once—a glowing burn like molten caramel. Fermented by the darkness into something luxurious, red-wine smooth and amber-lined. 

Gi-hun felt like he could taste that voice, lap it straight from the feverish heat of the mouth and swallow it down, sweetness spilling over his lips and down his chin. 

He hoped Hwang would let him.

A hum, musical, the rumble of it snagging at his spine, curling his frame forward like he could hide from the weight of the sound. It was difficult to think of anything else, in that honey darkness. He was trembling—not exertion but anticipation. He was burning. 

And— fuck, was he already hard? 

“They’ve named you,” Hwang said placidly, his voice rumbling low. There was something performative in it now. An unnatural edge; a sound produced from a different part of the throat. Moved elsewhere. A minor change, really. Something slight. But it grated at him—that difference. How it warped the image of Hwang like the mirage of heat off pavement, wavering into a figure less than familiar. “Pearl.” 

PE4RL After the marblesque, porcelain mask. The silvery-white gloss. The name slid over him like a different kind of shield. An empty mold. A name. An alias, really. A lie. 

“Let’s see,” FRNT said, slow and dark—malt liquor, “How well that suits you.” 

Gi-hun tilted his head towards the sound. “Sir?”

The faintest shuffle of fabric, the mattress creaking. That voice came again, combing through his hair, the heat of it curling by the shell of his ear. “Do you know how pearls are made?” 

Gi-hun paused, his tongue thick in his mouth. Gooseflesh raced down his arms. The slightest inhale like the crackle of a roaring flame. 

FRNT didn’t wait for an answer: 

“Pressure.” He finished. Gi-hun could hear his smile—the sharp, indulgent melody of it. “I wonder… “ 

Gi-hun couldn’t help the noise he made. 

That choked, bitten-off groan. 

He couldn’t help it. 

If sound alone was a thunderstorm, touch was an ignition. A crackle of lightning tearing down his spine. 

Gi-hun flinched from the fire of it, muscle jumping as leather slid firm down his back. Fingers splayed. Claiming.  “… Pearl,” 

FRNT leaned closer. The delicate weave of his sweater—the impossibly soft kiss of it against his shoulders. Saliva pooled thick in his mouth. 

The form behind him stretched, shifted, reached over. 

A click. The rolling buzz of three… two…

“How you shine under pressure.”