Photo Box
Thangyu Secret Santa 2025 gift for @floppachoppass ! I hope you like it!
This fic can also be read on my AO3 infinite_hallways if you prefer.
Summary: Forty years ago, Subong did a gig at Club Pentagon and met the promoter, Namgyu. In the time since, they've drifted apart and back together again, won 45.6 billion won, gotten clean, returned to show business, and fell in love along the way. Now, these two old men are reflecting on their wild lives that Subong doesn't really remember.
“Look, check this one out. This was the first gig you did at Pentagon, remember?”
Namgyu held up a small poster advertising The Rap God Thanos, Live at Club Pentagon, July 8th. That was forty years ago, and it showed. Despite their attempt at archiving it by keeping it in a photo box alongside their other mementos, the paper was still frayed and crinkled. Back then, Namgyu chose to hold on to the promo poster just because he thought he might be able to sell it to some diehard fan online someday. He never could’ve predicted how that night would change his life.
“Damn, I looked good. Bet you’re glad you booked me for a show, huh?” Subong laughed as he took the poster to look at it more closely. “The hair was awesome. Think I should dye it again?”
“Hell no. An old geezer like you would look fucking ridiculous with purple hair. Stick with the gray,” Namgyu rolled his eyes, pulling a couple more photographs out from the box. “Here’s some more from the club. You just kept coming back almost every week for a couple months there,” he commented as he looked through them. Most of these pictures were of Subong and whatever buddies from the rap industry he brought to party with him, and usually a couple random girls he picked up.
“Hey, I think you’re in this one,” Subong tapped a spot on one of the pictures. In the background of the shot, a guy with those unmistakable tattoos exposed by a shirt rolled up just below his elbows was turned to the side, apparently talking to some other patron.
Namgyu held the picture up close to his face, squinting at it. “I don’t see it.”
“‘Cause you don’t have your glasses on, dumbass.” Subong picked up the pair of silver-framed glasses from their coffee table and handed them to his partner, who begrudgingly put them on. Namgyu has realistically needed glasses his whole life, and even more so now at his age. He refused to wear them when he was young because he thought they made him look like a nerd, and nowadays because he thinks they make him look like somebody’s grandpa.
“Ah, yeah, I see what you’re talking about now. Never noticed before.” He moved on to another photo from the club, this time a shot of Subong grinning wide with his arm around a flustered Namgyu. “This was the night I brought you some crazy shit from overseas and you said I was the love of your life. Kissed me on the mouth and everything. You were wayyy too fucking excited over some pills,” he chuckled as he recalled the memory of their unexpected first kiss.
Subong sighed as he closed his eyes and nodded. “You were really the best dealer I ever had. Could find a way to get your hands on anything.”
The next photo came from a couple years later. This shot featured them posing with stacks upon stacks of cash, stupid grins on their faces still littered with minor cuts and bruises from the fights they’d gotten into. “You remember us winning all this money?”
Subong smiled wide, “Hell yeah, most money I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“You remember how we got it?”
There’s a pause, and Subong’s smile faltered. “...Uh, not really, man, I’m not gonna lie.”
“Sometimes I wish my memory sucked as much as yours.” Namgyu’s tone took on a more serious note. He’s about to recount the story of that time they were essentially kidnapped and forced to play life-or-death kids’ games, but he stops himself. If Subong doesn’t remember, there’s really no point in bringing it back up and re-traumatizing him. The memory is a burden he’s willing to carry alone.
“Well, a couple weeks after we got the money, that’s when we decided we were gonna go to rehab together, since we could finally afford it. Look, those assholes made me cut my hair,” he commented as he showed Subong the photo they took when they got back home. They looked different here, with Subong’s hair dye faded out more than he’d ever allow it to be and Namgyu’s hair cut short. But they looked happy, and their eyes had a kind of focus to them that was absent from all the previous photos. Subong didn’t need to know the realization that the experimental drugs they’d been taking during the games caused them to mercilessly kill their fellow players was the chief factor leading them to get clean. “You know what you figured out while we were in there?”
Subong’s eyes widened as he experienced a moment of clarity. “That I wanted to get back to making music again.”
“Right. Figured out it was what made life worth living to you, that it made you feel good in a way the drugs didn’t. You wrote a bunch of songs during the downtime.” He handed him a piece of torn-out notebook paper with lyrics scribbled on it: the original copy of the song that would be his first hit single after the hiatus.
“Ohhh, yeah. And then you were saying shit about how you got fired from the club, so I asked if you wanted to be my manager.”
Namgyu smiled, relieved he finally remembered something. “Yep. And I did a pretty fucking great job, didn’t I?” They looked up at the couple of platinum records framed on the wall there in their living room. A hell of an accomplishment for a washed-up 2000s rapper making his big comeback in his late 30s.
“Sure did.” Even if the memories of those decades ago were a blur at best, the tangible proof of his success sitting on the wall made his heart swell with pride.
The following photos showed the pair, surrounded by other friends and colleagues they made along the way, at awards show red carpets and backstage preparing for gigs. Each of them slowly transformed over the years. Wrinkles began to appear on each of their faces and gray hairs cropped up, despite Subong’s best efforts to cloak every strand in dye. In later pictures, Namgyu began to wear short-sleeved shirts again as his old track marks faded, and eventually he got a new tattoo to cover them up. Only somebody looking real closely would notice the scarring beneath the ink, and the only person who’d be that up close and personal with him would be Subong anyways. Even after a couple decades of sobriety, the aftermath of their addictions still followed them, in Namgyu’s veins and Subong’s brain. But…
“Look at us now, two old fucks. Back when this one was taken–” Subong rifled through the box to pick back up that picture of them at Pentagon together, “I really didn’t think I was gonna make it this far. I mean, I was already thinking about ending it all. I was partying so hard ‘cause it felt good as hell, figuring one of those days I’d OD and go out a legend. Me back then would’ve freaked the fuck out if you told him he’d still be alive and kicking at seventy-five.”
“Yeah… I didn’t even think I was gonna make it to thirty. Wasn’t trying to die or whatever, just didn’t think I could ever quit that shit. Thought I’d be a junkie ‘til the day I died.”
Subong closed the lid on the photo box, satisfied with reminiscing on a batshit insane life well lived with his best-friend-turned-manager-turned-lover.
“But we made it, huh?”
“We made it.”
