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There were two ways a man could accept his defeat; he could either kneel and beg for mercy, or he could go down fighting.
In-ho knew he would not kneel and beg Gi-hun to spare his life.
The game was over. The coastguard... Jun-ho and the mercenaries. There's nowhere to run. And In-ho wasn't running with his tail between his legs. He'd already spent the last decade running. This... he'd go down like this, and it would be fitting, a proper end for a man like him, after what he'd done, the violence, all the blood on his hands. Yes, his death would be fitting. And at least he wouldn't be spending his last moment begging on his knees.
Gi-hun nudged the door open with the barrel of a gun. He didn't even kick it with force and rush inside. Just... a lazy push and nonchalant footsteps, and Gi-hun was inside the control room.
All the guards and Soldiers had already left. Front Man's order. In-ho would rather face Gi-hun alone. There's no reason for anybody else to witness your death, anyone who isn't Gi-hun.
He turned around, and here Gi-hun was. Armed with a gun, pain and, In-ho believed, anger and hatred.
Gi-hun didn't flinch when In-ho reached for the mask and slowly took it off. Gi-hun had already seen it, the grotesque, what hid behind the blackness of the Front Man mask. Regardless, the pain on Gi-hun's face lingered and it only blackened with each passing second. Like a disease. A plague.
"I won't get down on my knees," In-ho said. "If you expect me to beg."
Gi-hun chuckled, hoarse and humorless. Behind him, sirens continued blaring. The noise, though, was a faint background, distant and quiet in a way that promised false unimportance, an illusion of serenity, the state of the situation being under control, not severe. You've lost. There's not a single thing you can still control, In-ho knew that. He swallowed and held his head up high. If he was facing his executioner, he'd rather do so with pride.
"I don't care if you plead for your life," Gi-hun took another leisurely step forward, "if you run. Or if you try going for my throat. If you somehow think you could still win. It's over, Young-il."
The name was a blade. Sharp and precise. A cold and cruel reminder of the hurt — In-ho never expected it to hurt when he decided to wear the skin of Oh Young-il, a ghost of the man he used to be before this world showed its true colors to him (he'd always known it was a rotten world, deep down, he'd never been a naive little boy, but his wife... her death was the last straw, a pair of unseen hands pushing him down the abyss, an endless void of purgatory). Gi-hun still looked at him and saw Young-il. And it terrified In-ho. For a moment. It confused him. Because what if Oh Young-il was not a lie, after all? He may have started as one, but...
But something changed during his time with Gi-hun in the game. The stolen glances. Longing touch that lingered for a breath too long. The tenderness held in the way Gi-hun used to look at him.
In-ho corrected his face into a hard and stoic mask, the long-dead man he'd always been for the past decade. He could tell Gi-hun the truth, his real identity, if he was going to die by Gi-hun's hands anyway. And if he was lucky enough, maybe Gi-hun would say it, his name, not Young-il. In-ho. And it wouldn't be such a terrible death. To die hearing his name from Gi-hun's mouth and knowing that it touched Gi-hun's tongue. His name. His real name. On Gi-hun's tongue. How sacred. How intimate...
He blinked, an evidence of shame a fire beneath his skin. Even now, especially now, In-ho's own feelings were a labyrinth — he couldn't understand them, couldn't understand himself. What this was. The way Gi-hun was making him feel. Precisely like how she made you feel, if not stronger, the voices were a hissing phantom in his troubled mind. In-ho remembered falling for her, his wife. But that was... well, she was a woman and it was only natural. And it wasn't like In-ho still lived in the '80s. It was only — well, In-ho never knew he liked men, was never attracted to one before. Then came Gi-hun. Ever so elegant. Ever so stubborn. The first ray of sunshine after years of pouring rain and raging storms. Gi-hun and his smile. And you ruined it all. Just like how you let your wife down. How you let her and your child die. Here you are, letting down another love.
Fuck.
That was, In-ho realized, the first time his conscience actually gave it a name. Love. It made In-ho's blood run cold, because it was so... easy, to slip into that territory. If he wasn't careful enough. If he wasn't thinking straight. And Gi-hun — Gi-hun's being here was making it hard, too difficult a challenge, for In-ho to think straight.
Your curse, the voices continued, you're doomed to always ruin it all. Everything you touch. Everyone you ever love.
Gi-hun tossed the gun to the side, with no warning, and In-ho flinched. Somehow all the noises, the commotion outside the control room, seemed to have gone quiet — that was not exactly the case, of course, at least In-ho knew what this was, his mind was simply so fixated on Gi-hun that it somehow blocked out everything else. His world had since narrowed down to 132 and 456 — ever since Gi-hun walked in here. Though not 001. 001 never actually existed. What did was 132, a desperate man and a fool. Driven by love and violence, hope and blood. Gi-hun was making In-ho feel like that man again. Only that this time he was no longer fighting for a dead wife. This time... right here. Right here Gi-hun was setting his heart aflame, and In-ho never knew he still had it, a heart, until now.
He watched as Gi-hun approached and crossed the spaces between them. Silent and confident. Why Gi-hun tossed the gun away was a misery, but Gi-hun had always been full of surprises. An unpredictable creature. Closer — In-ho could smell it now, the scents of sweat and blood clinging to Gi-hun's body, the torn tuxedo. Gi-hun walked like a ghost, an angel of death ready to claim his next prisoner. If death was the comeuppance then yes, In-ho thought, he wouldn't want anybody else to be the one swinging the axe. That Gi-hun got rid of the gun didn't mean Gi-hun saw another suitable sentence for him. You don't need a gun to kill. That In-ho would still fight didn't mean he would not accept it with dignity, his death by Gi-hun's hands.
Gi-hun stopped when he was close enough, and In-ho thought, What's your game? How will you do it?
"You know..." Gi-hun trailed off, "I've been thinking about killing you. Ever since you gave me the knife. Ever since you took off your mask last night. I didn't do it then, and maybe that was a mistake, wasn't it? Not killing you. Only a fool would make the same mistake twice."
"And are you a fool?" In-ho asked. He tilted his chin slightly upward, an illusion of control. It convinced no one. Not Gi-hun. And certainly not himself. But he'd always been a man of dignity (one of the only few times in In-ho's life where he bowed and accepted humiliation was when he took the money from his colleague to cover his wife's medical bills, her surgery, and in the end it ended in a tragedy for both him and her, and their unborn child), so — In-ho thought — he was only doing it for one last time, this lie. The false pride of an overthrown king. Or — maybe he was never that to begin with. A king. Perhaps the only thing In-ho had ever been was a desperate dog, tainted by others' sins and greed, the bottomless corruption that swallowed and swallowed and swallowed until all that was left of him was this. A corpse that breathed. A carcass of meat gone bad that was spat out. The grotesque. While Gi-hun... the heroic warrior who refused to surrender to the system. How Gi-hun managed to do that... how Gi-hun managed to still be the same man even after everything. How he kept his soul when In-ho sold his a very long time ago...
Gi-hun was no fool. What Gi-hun was, was as painfully stubborn as In-ho's late wife. As determined as Jun-ho, and...
As brave as the man In-ho wished he could be.
But Seong Gi-hun was no fool. His believing Il-nam's and Young-il's lies never made him a fool. Far from it, actually. It took bravery to still have that trust in people. After the knife Il-nam buried in his back years ago. After the betrayal of his childhood friend, Player 218. After Young-il's betrayal.
"You tell me," Gi-hun said. He took another step closer. "Am I a fool to you?"
Something was off. Wrong. In-ho challenged Gi-hun with a silent gaze, and realized what it was that really bothered him: there wasn't enough... wasn't enough anger. There was anger in Gi-hun's eyes, of course, but the problem was that it was very noticeably not enough. In the sense that Gi-hun should be more angry. What Gi-hun was, was in pain.
Why?
Gi-hun took something out of the pocket in his tuxedo. A knife. The knife — the dagger In-ho gave him last night. How fitting, In-ho thought, How poetic. To be put out of his misery by the same blade he gave Gi-hun. By the same man who somehow managed to make his heart beat and waver again, after years of grief and numbness.
"Is this how you will do it?" In-ho asked. He'd seen Gi-hun make that decision last night, when he walked away from the other finalists' beds with their throats unharmed. He'd wondered how Gi-hun did it, what In-ho failed to do — he'd wondered how Gi-hun kept his humanity despite it all.
He wouldn't expect Gi-hun to let him walk out of here alive.
Gi-hun may be a human, a savior. While In-ho a monster. But —
There's a difference between humanity, between not killing a human being out of principles, and knowing when to put a rabid dog down. When to stop an ill animal from further harming itself and others.
In-ho knew what he was. What Gi-hun had to do.
He wondered if Gi-hun would go for his throat, angle the blade and swing. Clean and precise. He knew what a torn jugular looked like, how it bled — he'd done it before when he was 132. A racehorse who managed to grab the host's attention. Back then. Il-nam had given him a night — the knife. The very same dagger Gi-hun was holding now. Somehow, for some reason, Il-nam never asked for it back, after In-ho performed for him that night and crowned himself the winner of the 28th game. For some reason, In-ho was never able to bring himself into throwing it away. The weapon was his own shame and doom, a reminder of what he became. And now he'd given it to Gi-hun. Only that Gi-hun didn't let it be his downfall, an end to humanity within. Gi-hun. The ever so heroic Gi-hun. What have you done to me?
Gi-hun's grip around the handle shook. In-ho's eyes drifted down towards it. The hand. Rough and strong. Yet tender and kind — he knew exactly what Gi-hun's hand was capable of: all the gentlest things in the world. Yet it never made him weak. Far from it. And right now... right now Gi-hun gripped the hilt to the point his knuckles were white. In stark contrast to the red, the way his flesh split open from the final game, the pit of hell Gi-hun managed to crawl out of. Alive. Again. Against all odds.
In-ho pictured Gi-hun thrusting the blade into his guts and twisting the killing edge until his innards spilled over the floor. He imagined Gi-hun plunging the knife deep into his chest, where his heart was, and allowing the weapon to stay buried inside until his eyes went cold and vacant. And open. Or he could close his eyes and see Gi-hun doing what he didn't do to those Players, slicing the sharp steel horizontally across his neck and letting his veins pump blood right out of his body, where the wound was, until his skin turned pale and ashen.
There's a certain symmetry to it, isn't there? And it's beautiful. How it was this blade that saved you from death back in your own game. No. Nothing ever saved you. Back in your game, the blade only kept you from death, the death that would have saved you from this purgatory in which you've been drowned ever since. But it's okay. It's alright now — it's the same blade that will free you from it all. The pain. The suffering.
Gi-hun was both an executioner and a savior. A judge and a martyr.
In-ho's eyes shifted back and forth between Gi-hun's face and the dagger in his hand. He saw not confusion or hesitation but pure determination in the way Gi-hun's fingers moved, how he slowly, silently, rotated the weapon until the blade rested dangerously in his grasp. Not cutting. Just... resting. Gi-hun's fingers wrapped around the steel. Then — the hilt. In-ho's eyes furrowed into an uneasy knot. Gi-hun was holding the hilt out. An offering.
"Take it," he said. Voice hoarse. Cold. Sharp.
"What?"
"Take your knife, Young-il."
"What are you doing?"
Gi-hun took another step closer. Too close. "Take. It."
"Do you want me to kill you?"
"I'm giving you that chance you gave me," Gi-hun said. "Go ahead. Do what you want. Kill me if that's it."
In-ho stared at the knife in Gi-hun's hand — like it was a cobra ready to strike, if he wasn't careful. The blade lay still between Gi-hun's finger. "Take it," Gi-hun repeated.
"And what will you do, huh?" He wasn't sure what was happening inside him right now. Not quite. But he could feel anger build up. "You won. And now you're deliberately trying to get yourself killed?"
"I didn't win," there was a crack in Gi-hun's voice. In-ho would have missed it entirely if he hadn't been paying enough attention. "Take the knife."
"No," In-ho said. "If you want a showdown, I'll give you that. But I won't —" You won't what?
I won't gut you with the knife I gave you while you just stand there and take it.
"Do you want justice?" In-ho asked instead. "I'm right here. Go ahead. Avenge them all. Your friends. Player 218 and that girl from your first game. The baby. Jung-bae."
A closed fist against his jaw sent him stumbling several steps backwards. It caught In-ho off guard, sure, but if In-ho were to be honest, he was sort of expecting the blade. Why haven't you killed me. He coughed once — not really a cough, a spit. A pathetic means to rid the inside of his mouth of the sudden metallic taste against his tongue. Blood spattered his boots, like crimson rain that, unless you knew where to look, seemed to get swallowed whole by the black leather.
Gi-hun moved, circling him like a predator would an injured prey. The knife — In-ho watched — Gi-hun still held it by its blade, seemingly unbothered by the concept of accidentally cutting himself.
"You don't get to talk about them," the way Gi-hun said it was too eerily calm. Controlled and collected. "You're not worth it, Young-il. You're not worth thinking about them."
"What will you do about it then?" In-ho challenged. He'd only just found his balance when Gi-hun struck again. This time the fist landed just below his eye. In-ho's world went black for a moment, a short breath of pain and a surprise absence of shame. This is good. The fight. It means Gi-hun's not actively seeking death anymore.
In-ho found his footing again. His left eye, and the spot below it, throbbed like a phantom pulse. He looked at Gi-hun, then the knife held still in Gi-hun's hand.
Gi-hun dropped it. "You praise justice," he said, "a man like you has no idea what that is."
In-ho kept looking at him. He swayed once. Only once. Numbness slowly spread across his face, and his head hurt — the impact didn't directly collide with his skull, but it traveled like a silent disease. Gi-hun sure knew how to throw a punch. He wiped the corner of his mouth where blood gathered and raised his brows in false defiance. "Why don't you come teach me?"
Gi-hun lunged like an execution carried out with no ceremony. The force drove In-ho backward, sending him down on his back with Gi-hun on top of him. And for a moment he couldn't breathe — wind knocked out of his body, like a drowned man deprived of air. He choked once, twice. Gi-hun's weight on him was solid and unyielding, a final verdict trapping him in its claws. Though In-ho had made up his mind. He would lose and die, that much was certain. But he would go down fighting.
There were kicks, closed fists, teeth sunk into skin. A cornered dog versus a horse with nothing to lose. Both wounded and broken. In-ho wouldn't know where his attack ended and Gi-hun's began. Wouldn't know if the bite were his own or Player 456's. He figured they morphed into one. Not a person but a ruined thing. Bleeding and bruising.
He was more or less aware of himself rolling on the floor with Gi-hun, mounting Gi-hun then pushed back down to the ground until Gi-hun was straddling his waist again. He learned the taste of Gi-hun's flesh against his tongue when he sunk his teeth as far as they would go and held. Not letting go. Then he learned the feeling of his own skin being torn apart when Gi-hun closed his mouth around his arm, and with all his strength clamped down with a locked jaw.
In-ho shoved and pushed, kicked and bit. Here and there, he managed to trap Gi-hun on the floor and look down at the face of the man he destroyed and worshiped. But in the end... in the end In-ho found himself flat on his back, exhausted and defeated —
Defeated.
Gi-hun had gotten better at hand-to-hand combat. In-ho had watched him fight. Years ago. Squid Game in the rain. 218 versus 456. Gi-hun had been feral that day, but today, right now, with In-ho pinned between his body and the floor, Gi-hun was calculated. Precise. He clearly trained — heavily so. Of course, he'd had years for that. In-ho may possess the skills of a former cop, but Gi-hun wielded the determination of a man who'd lost everything.
In-ho had lost everything when she died. And he'd turned his pain into a cold mask of a machine who killed with no remorse.
Gi-hun turned his pain into a purpose, a weapon forged by blood and betrayal. A dangerous hunger for justice, stripped down to something primal. A promise of violence.
And In-ho knew. Honest to God, he knew. Gi-hun's hands itched for his jugular, the pulse beneath his skin. How Gi-hun wanted to close his fist around In-ho's throat. Like the iron frame of a guillotine — the hard collar locking around a condemned prisoner's neck as he waited for a sentence already decided. A final fate. Gi-hun's body was the blade that had not yet fallen, looming above the helpless sinner awaiting his own inevitable death. In-ho knew all of this.
Gi-hun, as the blade, the judge, and the executioner, was acting not out of personal hatred, but out of conviction. A necessity. What needed to be done to ensure justice. And it was long overdue.
In-ho guessed he'd always known, deep down, it could never have ended any other way for the Front Man.
He'd spent the last decade thinking he wasn't scared of death. But death was looking him in the eyes now. And death had the face of Seong Gi-hun.
What's the matter? Don't tell me you're scared, the voice didn't sound like his late wife or Il-nam. If anything... In-ho swallowed, he remembered that voice, he hadn't heard it since that night Il-nam offered him the knife. One of the Players. The finalists. In-ho never bothered to learn his name, but he knew the guy would have tried and killed him in the final game — his final game, hadn't he acted first. He was the first person In-ho murdered.
(Sure, as a cop, he'd pulled the trigger and taken lives before. But nothing was like that. Nothing came close to slitting a man's throat in his sleep for the first time. He'd thought he died when he came home and learned his wife did, perhaps the point at which he actually started dying was when he succumbed to Il-nam's words — a plague under the disguise of a helping hand and a guidance — and had his soul corrupted by the game. That it had been his only shot at survival back then didn't mean he hadn't lost all the same. No one ever really won the game. One way or another, the game consumed everybody — everybody except Gi-hun. So, In-ho realized, Gi-hun wasn't just the only two-time winner in the game's history. What Gi-hun was, was the only actual winner in the game's history. Even though Gi-hun didn't believe that.)
For a moment, the world stopped and narrowed to — this. In-ho on the floor, overthrown and defeated. And Gi-hun straddling his waist, dominating and paralyzing him with the weight his gaze held.
It was poetic in all its tragedy.
Something shifted. Maybe it was only in his perverted imagination. In-ho wouldn't know. He became aware of how he looked a moment too late — not the blood, not the cuts, not the bruises. But... he blinked. And realized what also came with the shift, if it was real. Gi-hun was caging him with his arms, hands on either side of In-ho's head. And In-ho was holding his own arms inward. They pressed against his chest. His hands were tucked almost politely and innocently beneath his chin. From the floor, he was looking up at Gi-hun — like a dog who had lost a fight and was trying to appear non-threatening. Vulnerable. In hopes of mercy. And In-ho knew he was vulnerable.
Neither of them moved. Or blinked.
How long the trance stretched on... In-ho felt it — something. Almost akin to a burn. Heat coursed through his veins and rushed... south. He swallowed. Gi-hun was straddling his waist, practically sitting on top of him, and it was — too close. Too hot, all of a sudden. Too intimate. You're sick. You're sick, In-ho, whispered the voices in his head, the rational part in his mind that was condemning his twisted desire, if that was what it was. A shameful desire, ugly and forbidden. Wrong.
Gi-hun's eyes darkened with something unpredictable. Dangerous. And fuck — In-ho didn't mean to whimper. It slipped. The sound. Needy and raw. Could've passed for a moan. He could feel that heat creeping up his face, from his neck to his cheeks. It was foreign, in the sense that it'd been, In-ho realized, a lifetime ago — since he last felt something, since he last felt... this. A burn so strong it felt as though his insides were on fire.
She had been the only person who'd ever managed to make In-ho feel this way. Hot all over. Like every part of him had been pulled apart and then put back together, but not the same way, never the same way. What he was, was a changed man whose world was turned upside down. And suddenly everything he knew no longer mattered because she was looking at him.
Gi-hun was looking at him. And — fuck.
By the time In-ho stopped himself, it was already too late. Way too late. He was only partly aware of how he was rutting against Gi-hun like a mindless animal. And that noise, the sound he made as he rubbed his clothed cock against Gi-hun's crotch — where Gi-hun straddled him.
In-ho closed his eyes and whimpered again. He didn't mean to. Nothing about this was in his control. He'd thought death would greet him, and he'd welcomed it with pride and acceptance, he was wrong. The guillotine remained, but the blade never fell, never gave him that clean decapitation. Instead, the steel collar held him captive — a prisoner in his own purgatory. Exposed and degraded. Death would have been kinder, that much was certain. This — shame and humiliation were a cruel poison devouring him alive.
Does Gi-hun know? Does he —
Know what?
In-ho didn't know what it was that he was desperately trying to hide from Gi-hun. He knew it wasn't vulnerability. Or the wounds in the spot where his heart should be. Vulnerability and wounds, while mortifying, a naked evident of dignity loss, were shallow in comparison with —
He whimpered again. His pants felt too tight, all of a sudden. Gi-hun blinked once. Twice. He knows. Gi-hun knows. The shame cut deeper than any blade could; it burnt — brighter than a flame, carving through his flesh and bones all the same. He was — fuck. He was hard, painfully so. Cock prodding against Gi-hun's crotch like a shameless whore.
He'd never been able to get hard since she died. Not... not something In-ho liked to think about or acknowledge. It was, he supposed, shame wrapped in grief. He'd gone numb after her death. And he'd told himself there was nothing wrong with his... erectile dysfunction. He'd hardly masturbated anyway, and on the rare occasions he did try jerking off, when he was alone in the grand suite of the Front Man quarters and the night grew a little too lonely without her by his side, his cock had a mind of its own and decided to stay flaccid and uninterested. In the end, In-ho gave up altogether. It was fine. Not something he was eagerly trying to get fixed. Because he hadn't needed a reason to. Sex and intimacy was supposed to die with the woman to whom he married.
Until Gi-hun.
Gi-hun and Gi-hun's — goodness, his ridiculous stubbornness and everything that made him him. And now In-ho was hard and leaking with Gi-hun on top of him. The dampness on his own trousers, his crotch, must've seeped to Gi-hun's pants. It was humiliating. It was filthy and disgusting. If he'd told himself he would never beg, he might just have gotten on his knees and begged for the mercy of death — if it were possible right now. If he weren't lying flat on his back with his cock prodding at Gi-hun's crotch and pre come dampening the fabric of Gi-hun's pants, as Gi-hun mounted him like this. A clear and final forced surrender.
In-ho kept his hands tucked politely under his chin. A classic gesture a dog made when it lost a fight and was being dominated by the stronger one. You have always been a dog, whispered the voices, so good and obedient to the VIPs. Are you Gi-hun's dog now?
Another whimper left In-ho's throat, small and childlike. A pathetic little sound. Gi-hun took a deep breath then, In-ho opened his eyes saw that. And before he could react or think —
A violent impact, fast and with no warning. A brutal force colliding with his mouth. And at first In-ho had thought it was a punch. A punch would have been expected, something In-ho deserved. He realized a little belatedly that the sudden attack didn't come from a closed fist. Not this time. What it was...
His eyes were wide. Shock and sparks ran through his veins like a live wire, a surge of electricity that set his blood aflame. Gi-hun wasn't kissing him like one would a lover. What he was... what Gi-hun was doing...
In-ho closed his eyes, the final act of surrender, and let Gi-hun devour his mouth like a predator would its prey. Hungry and feral.
Gi-hun bit and pulled his bottom lip, hard enough for In-ho to taste blood in his mouth and moan — the latter of which was dragged from the deepest part within his lungs, forced out against his will. Like the earlier whimpering. Stripped bare of any lingering control, any power he may have desperately clung to in the past minutes. He felt something... something down there. A hand. Clumsy and urgent. And it took another several seconds, embarrassingly longer than it should have, for In-ho to realize what Gi-hun was doing. He reopened his eyes and yelped into the kiss, a small bark that sounded less like a man who once wielded authority and more like a startled dog, when Gi-hun, having seemingly pushed In-ho's coat aside, tugged at the waistband of his pants. Gi-hun looked impatient. Hungry. No, another thing In-ho realized, Gi-hun didn't just look hungry. Gi-hun was starving, judged by the way he consumed, mauling like an animal who hadn't feasted in too long.
In-ho couldn't think. That was the next thing he realized. His brain had short-circuited entirely. Somewhere along the way. Everything was a crackling static in his mind, while his body was on fire. Alive and eager. Something he hadn't felt since —
Since her. His beloved wife.
What would she think of you now? What would she think if she could see you like this? Her husband and the father of her child coming undone and writhing underneath another man like this.
He gasped when cold air hit his thighs. Sudden and all too alarming. His own pants yanked down low enough for his cock to stand tall and shameless against Gi-hun's clothed crotch. Fuck. He'd stood in this place, as the man who held the reins and delivered commands, with no part of his skin exposed. Everything had always been hidden, swallowed by black attire and an unyielding mask. Right now...
In-ho cried, the sound sharp and raw, almost like he was choking on the shock, when Gi-hun pulled away from the kiss, just to look at his face, and grabbed his exposed cock. The grip was firm. Too confident for a man who'd allegedly lost everything.
"Look at you," Gi-hun said, voice low. Dark and dangerous. In-ho gulped. His mouth was open, he realized, but he couldn't — couldn't find a word. Not when Gi-hun was jerking him off and rubbing the pad of his thumb across his slit and coating his finger with thick fluid. He wanted to — no, he should — In-ho tried to think. Operative word being tried. Somewhere in the distance, he figured there was a voice, his own rational part, telling him to push Gi-hun away. This is wrong. But his cock was reacting to Gi-hun's touch and his body was both burning and melting. How long it'd been since the last time someone touched him like this. Since her.
In-ho's eyes drifted shut. His back arched off the floor — he realized this a little belatedly, and he next realized he no longer had control of how he responded. Gi-hun's fist tightened around his length, moving faster and rougher until he was twitching helplessly in his hold. Too much. The pressure. The intensity. And it'd been too long since he lost —
Gi-hun stopped. Not really. In-ho opened his eyes — he wasn't sure if he was about to protest, or beg, words seemed to be out of reach. Though through glossy eyes and blurry vision, he saw Gi-hun move on top of him, rearranging, manhandling his body like he owned it (he feared Gi-hun did). Gi-hun moved, until he seated between his legs. In-ho kept watching. Mouth slack and face burning hot. Gi-hun lifted his legs up and hooked them over his shoulders. Then Gi-hun was unzipping his pants.
Panic kicked in. He was no prude, but he'd never —
Never been with a man.
Something about it still sounded too alarming in his head. Too... intimidating, the uncharted territory and foreign concept of coupling — submitting to another man. His own archenemy. In-ho whined and was partly aware of himself trying to escape, move away. Gi-hun gripped his thighs with a brutal force, a silent yet film you are not going anywhere, there's nowhere to run. Gi-hun pulled his own erected cock out, and In-ho writhed more. He wasn't sure if he was still trying to get away, or if he was begging Gi-hun to give him what he needed and feared the most. Gi-hun was... bigger. Thicker. Already hard and ready. He grabbed his own cock and In-ho's in a firm grip, and In-ho nearly screeched. His own cock jumped at the contact.
"How long," Gi-hun panted, Gi-hun sounded almost like he was on the verge of coming undone himself, "how long have you been — craving this? Me. How long have you been fantasizing about being ruined and claimed by me?"
"I —" In-ho's body gave a sharp twist when Gi-hun let go of their cocks and lowered his hand down his perineum, down toward his entrance and let his finger brush against the ringed muscle. No one had — no one had touched him there before. He could feel it, not only Gi-hun's finger on his hole, slowly prodding and applying pressure, but also the weight of Gi-hun's gaze, how it pinned him down. No matter how hard his body twitched and writhed, how he arched off the floor. Gi-hun's finger was... not dry. Somehow Gi-hun must've coated it in In-ho's own fluids, how shamelessly In-ho leaked at the tip.
"Sensitive. Are we?" there was almost a touch of pride and satisfaction in Gi-hun's voice, the type of pride and satisfaction that resulted in a smug smirk on one's face. In-ho bit his lips, trying his best to cage in the moan, any degrading noise that threatened to leave his throat. His face was wet, and it didn't register at first that he was crying. Between his legs, his own shame, Gi-hun forced a finger past his rim, and In-ho's eyes flared wide. Naturally, he felt himself clenching around the intruder, trying to both push it out and keeping it prisoner. Above him, Gi-hun murmured something, something along the lines of you're tight. Somehow In-ho's ears started ringing. A surge of adrenaline rushed through his veins, and he felt too much. All at once. More than he could bear.
For a moment he thought he might pass out from the overwhelmingness of it all. He felt, vaguely and distantly, Gi-hun pumping the finger in and out. In and out. Each time Gi-hun went in a little deeper. Forced In-ho open a little wider. It felt like Gi-hun was splitting him in two, tearing him apart. And all he could do was lie there and take it.
Gi-hun pulled out. Too fast and too soon. In-ho felt too hollow, all of a sudden, clenching around nothing but thin air. Then — In-ho blinked, trying to process the situation, make sense of it all. Gi-hun moved, guiding his own cock and aligning it with his entrance.
In-ho supposed this was when he said no. He couldn't find it. The word. Gi-hun's cock pushed at his entrance. Bigger than his finger. Way, way bigger than his finger. In-ho whimpered. Gi-hun stopped. Almost like Gi-hun was waiting to see if In-ho would tell him to stop. And he should. In-ho knew that. He should tell Gi-hun to get off him. He should — refuse this. This — humiliation.
His chest heaved, mouth parted, breath too hot against his own skin. Gi-hun held eye contact as he pushed in — slowly, inch by inch, stretching him until it burnt.
In-ho could have sworn it'd go on forever. Gi-hun's cock thrusted into his body. More and more until he cracked. Gi-hun stilled when he was buried to the hilt, cock nesting somewhere in In-ho's belly. And it hurt. It burnt. It was — heavenly. Gi-hun eased out, only a little, before he nudged it back in. And In-ho moaned. Gi-hun started moving too soon, and Gi-hun didn't really give In-ho enough time to adjust. A few slow thrusting before Gi-hun was practically ramming and slamming full-force into him with each snap of his hips, pushing In-ho upward and folding his body more and more. With his legs remained thrown over Gi-hun's shoulders.
Loud cry and the sound of skin against skin made gunshots and commotion outside a muffled, background noise. Gi-hun fucked like a mad man. An animal. Breaking In-ho and building him back up from scratch.
At one point In-ho saw white. Wetness spread across his front, the fabric of his coat, and In-ho realized he was making a mess all over himself. At the same time, Gi-hun stilled once more, shooting his loads deep inside him. It was, In-ho supposed, as filthy as it was holy. His clothed chest and stomach, the Front Man coat, was covered in come, and Gi-hun's own was leaking out of his hole after Gi-hun pulled out. A complete and utter humiliation. A defeat worse than death.
"Are you," In-ho swallowed, he was slurring his words like a drunk, "are you going to kill me now?"
"Huh?" Gi-hun looked at him. He was zipping his pants. Like nothing happened. While In-ho lie still and limp.
"Will you... kill me?"
Gi-hun huffed out. "I should, shouldn't I?" He pulled In-ho's pants back up, redressing him like he a child. "You're not getting an easy way out," Gi-hun said, "Young-il."
"In-ho."
"What?"
"My name... In-ho." Maybe he shouldn't have said that. In-ho was... more or less intoxicated. Gi-hun looked at him, and In-ho wished he could read Gi-hun's mind.
"In-ho," Gi-hun said, seemingly testing how it tasted on his tongue. Gi-hun didn't look surprised or upset. Not really. "Jun-ho's brother," he continued then, "of course. That makes sense."
In-ho blinked slowly, sluggishly. Gi-hun stood back up, but he pulled In-ho up with him. "What are you —"
"We're leaving."
In-ho wasn't sure if he misheard that. He figured he didn't, when Gi-hun started walking with his arm around his shoulders. And In-ho found himself too exhausted, too fucked-out-of-his-mind, to fight.
He didn't expect to make it out of the island alive. And he knew the evidence of what happened was rather clear in the stain on his coat. And Jun-ho —
Jun-ho's here. Jun-ho will see you and he will know just how far you've fallen by the state you're in. Dazed eyes and covered in your own shame.
And isn't that worse than death?
He felt Gi-hun tighten the grip around his shoulders, pulling him closer, as Gi-hun guided him out the door. Something told him Gi-hun wasn't letting him go. Not after this.
Something also told him it was heaven and purgatory.