Day 14 - Falling Asleep on Shoulder
Still with Squid Game but with another AU 'United we stand' AU where Dae-ho swaps with Jun-hee to explain himself to Gi-hun, and Yong-sik teams up with them to kill one person so he could find his mum and protect her, meanwhile Myung-gi was a hider with the girls and gets to be there at his daughter's birth.
Because Dae-ho deserved a chance and Hyun-ju should have been leading them.
Spoilers for season 3 Squid games.
Hyun-ju was running through what ifs, all the things she had done wrong since waking up here for the first time, while she sat awake keeping her gaze on the other side of the room staring into the darkness, her eyes had adjusted to the dark letting her see faint shapes and listening.
The vote had been closer than the Os would have likely preferred and she didn’t trust them not to attempt to change the favour to be more on their side.
It was a habit she had long before training, she knew the past was in the past and there was nothing she could do but still her brain went back looking for mistakes so she wouldn’t repeat them, but she was jolted from those thoughts when a head slumped to rest on her shoulder.
“So-sorry.” Dae-ho stummered suddenly sitting upright.
They had grouped back together after hide and seek, sharing beds for protection; Jun-hee and 33- Myung-gi taking one with the baby between them, Geum-ja and Yong-sik another and she had ended up sharing with Dae-ho, closest to where Gi-hun was cuffed and between the others and the rest of the room.
She was aware Dae-ho made sure he was the other side of her away from Gi-hun, despite the fact they had worked together in Hide and Seek with Yong-sik after Dae-ho had swapped with Jun-hee there was a tension between then and Hyun-ju wasn’t blind to the fact Dae-ho was sensitive.
“It's fine.” She told him softly, as long as he wasn’t restraining her there wasn’t a problem, the closeness could be useful if he would wake at any move she made without her needing to say a thing and alert any possible attackers.
“You just remind me of one of my sisters.” he sighed after a pause, “I miss them.
She bit her cheek, the mix of feelings the admission caused almost painful, it was a compliment, that she apparently made him feel safe and reminded him of a sister he loved but also a reminder of her out absence family connections and the knowledge of a sister out there that could lose her brother without ever knowing what happened to him.
“You should sleep,” she told him, hating how the lump in her throat caused her voice to come out even deeper than normal, while shifting to make it easier for him to rest against her. “I'll wake you later to switch.
He caught the permission after just a moment and settled back against her.
“Aren't you scared?” he muttered quietly, she wasn’t sure she would have caught it if he wasn’t so close.
“I'm so scared of dying, so scared of everything.” he blurted out in a desperate whisper. “I just want to go home but you're fearless.”
Her heart ached as she remembered Young-mi sounding the same.
“I'm not, I-” she paused, telling him there were worse things than death, wouldn’t help, “I'm just scared of something else.”
“Wha?” Dae-ho started, before shaking his head minutely “I mean you don't have to tell me-”
“Losing,” she confessed, she was scared of many things; letting Young-mi be forgotten; failing Geum-ja, Yong-sik and Jun-hee, those that had accepted her; going back to what her life was before this; being alone. All those were losing in a way. “I'm afraid of losing anyone else.”
She felt him flinch and she winced at how that could sound.
“It wasn’t your fault.” she told him, blame wasn’t going to help anyone when they had better enemies to focus on. “We were outnumbered, we tried, we lost, we move on.” she said ignoring the hypocrisy of it when she had just been dwelling on the past, he nodded softly against her shoulder and didn’t say another word, she felt him slip into sleep, body growing lax and breathing evening out.
“What’s your plan?” A low voice asked, some time after Dae-ho had fallen asleep against her shoulder. She turned her head slowly to not disturb Dae-ho and found Gi-hun watching her, waiting for an answer.
“We tried to stop the games and failed. Now we need to stick together, help each other, play their games until we can out number the others and vote to leave.” she explained, keeping her voice quiet but sharp, clear, strong, she had been trained to lead, was good at it. “United is stronger than separated and they're all on their own.”
The numbers were close, 12 vs 15, one game and the balance could shift.
