[valentines] extreme ways
extreme ways
the genius: rules of the game, jinho/sunggyu, sangmin/sunggyu
r, 4747w
poker tournament au. jinho needs a win, but his partner has conflicting victory conditions.
--for gyuberry ♥
--moby, "extreme ways"
ao3 mirror (locked to members)
Sangmin doesn’t give him any way to contact the kid, out of some vague idea that they’ll be better protected that way, so the first time Jinho meets Kim Sunggyu is at the casino table on the first day of the tournament. From Sangmin’s description Jinho had expected a whiz kid, someone radiating brilliance and confidence; but Sunggyu sits at the table quietly, his eyebrows tilted in perpetual worry. He’s polite to excess, bowing his head when the dealer acknowledges him and lowering his eyes. They probably walk all over him in Manila. No wonder Sangmin likes him, Jinho thinks with some derision.
Once the game has started, he keeps an eye on Sunggyu just a bit more than he already keeps an eye on everyone else at the table. Kim Sunggyu plays methodically, without flair. He folds exactly when he should, and he staggers his betting so that it’s hard to predict, but in a way that seems just as premeditated as everything else. He wears sunglasses, but he doesn’t need to - his flat face betrays no emotion or thought, and he doesn’t speak except to let out the occasional sigh of acceptance when someone else beats him. When he takes the first hand, it seems less by his textbook play and more because the other players underestimated him - Jinho included.
Jinho comes back to win the game, but it’s close. Throughout, he never feels like he’s competing against Sunggyu; it’s as if they’re playing parallel games against everyone else at the table, but Sunggyu’s is for slightly smaller stakes. It’s a good thing that he’s there to act as a barrier, because by the end of the game Jinho finds himself wanting to watch Sunggyu more than pay attention to his own play. Then again, winning preliminary rounds has never been the problem for him.
After the game, as the players mill about the casino and chat with audience members and the press, Sunggyu approaches him first. “I’m a fan of yours,” he says, bowing almost in half as he shakes Jinho’s hand. He has an earring in his right ear that dangles when he moves. Jinho liked to wear an earring when he was younger, too.
He smiles. “Are you hungry?”
Sunggyu tilts his head back and forth, pressing his lips together. Jinho wonders if he knows that it’s cute, if he does it on purpose. “A little.”
Jinho pulls out his card case and flips through it - Busan, Cebu, Dubai - until he finds the one he’s looking for, a restaurant close to the A-Ma Temple with a view of the water. He presses it into Sunggyu’s hand. “Meet me here in an hour.” Sunggyu’s eyes dart around them, so Jinho smiles and puts his other hand around Sunggyu’s. “Hey, don’t look like that. People are going to think we’re up to no good.”
Sunggyu stammers, “Aren’t we?”
---
It’s a simple proposition: “I need the money to get these people off my ass, and you need to win to get people off of yours,” Sangmin tells Jinho over the phone a week before the Genius poker tournament in Macau. Despite the lofty name, it’s a one-off cash tournament with a modest buy-in, which is all the better for this kind of thing to take place. “You help me, you help yourself. Easy.”
The phone is what makes it convincing. Jinho knows that Sangmin would rather be there in Macau with him, maybe even entered in the tournament himself, in the thick of the action where he likes it. “Don’t think you can convince me to cheat,” he says. He’s in his hotel room, sitting up on top of the sheets with his shoes off, taking in the aircon. “No matter how much I like you, hyung.”
“I know that.” Sangmin chuckles. “Why do you think you’re always second place, you noble son of a bitch?”
The dig is especially pointed in these circumstances, but Jinho can’t help but smile. “Yah, who do you think you’re--”
“I’ve got it taken care of. I’m sending someone there, he’ll clear a path for you to win it all.”
“Who.”
“Kim Sunggyu.” Sangmin waits, but Jinho doesn’t respond. “What, you don’t know him? He’s been doing great in the Philippines this year. A real ace. Just watch him play, trust me.”
Jinho stares out the window at the towers that lumber over the otherwise flat skyline, chewing on his thumbnail. He picked a bad time to give up smoking. “Trust you?”
“Yah, yah, Hong Jinho.” Sangmin says it gently. “You know, if you don’t win, don’t worry about me. I can always find a way. But I wouldn’t come to you if I didn’t absolutely believe in you. I know you need to win, but what’s more is that I want you to win. Prove to everybody you’re not washed up. Show them the genius Hong Jinho that I know.”
This is just the way Sangmin talks when he wants something, and Jinho knows that. Still, he can’t deny that it’s effective. And it’s true: if Sangmin wanted, he could have sent this kid to straight-up beat him, or paid him off to fold.
“I’ll try my best,” Jinho says. Then he chuckles. “Hey, the next time I visit you in Korea better not be in a prison cell, you old bastard. Don’t make me work for nothing.”
“Ahh, don’t fucking joke about that,” groans Sangmin, and Jinho laughs.
---
Kim Sunggyu is at the restaurant exactly one hour later. Jinho’s barely had time to order a drink when he sees him wander across the room, bowing stiffly to the waitress who directs him to the table by the windows. He’s not charismatic, exactly - not like most of the players Jinho knows - but there’s something quietly magnetic about him, and Jinho knows that this is what Sangmin sees in him.
“Sit down, sit down,” says Jinho. “You played well today.”
“Ah, thank you,” Sunggyu says, and he smiles. “Mr. Jinho was better. It was great to watch you up close. Ever since Mr. Sangmin told me we’d be facing each other, I’ve been looking forward to it.”
Jinho sips his beer. “Did Mr. Sangmin tell you how exactly we’ll be facing each other?”
“He did.”
“Listen, then. I know the players in Manila are...” He exhales stiffly and gestures with his hand. “I know that myself. But there’s a reason this tournament is called The Genius, all right? It’s not going to be easy.” Sunggyu nods. “You did well today. You have to be able to keep that up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you don’t have to call me sir. Or ‘mister’. We’re partners in this.”
“Okay.” Sunggyu smiles sheepishly.
The waitress comes back and Jinho orders cod fritters, Portuguese chicken, another beer for himself and one for Sunggyu when Sunggyu still won’t look up. “You shy about your English or something?” Jinho asks him when she leaves. “What d’you do with yourself in the Philippines? Charades?”
Sunggyu scratches the back of his neck and laughs. “I don’t want to say something wrong.”
“Say whatever you want. Anything. This isn’t a dangerous place.” Jinho gestures around at the restaurant. “And I’m not a dangerous guy. I don’t want anything from you.”
“Besides what we already agreed on.”
“Sure. But that’s back at the casino. I can’t increase my chance of getting that when we’re not playing, except by being honest with you.” Jinho shrugs. “You said you were my fan. You know what I’m like, then. I don’t need to explain it to you.”
“Right.” Sunggyu looks down at his clasped hands, then opens them. “You know, I’m a guy like that too. If it were anyone else, I would have said no. But when Mr. Sangmin said it was to help you, I knew it wouldn’t be for nothing.”
Jinho’s first instinct is to ask whether Sunggyu really would be able to say no, and then he feels bad about it. “Good kid,” is all he says.
Despite Sunggyu’s worry, they have enough to talk about over the course of dinner: their best hands, their worst hands, where they grew up, where they learned to play. After a few drinks, Sunggyu even finds the nerve to ask why Jinho always finishes second in major tournaments, and he laughs when Jinho threatens to kick him out for his disrespect.
The only time Sunggyu hesitates is when Jinho asks how he met Sangmin. He just smiles blandly and says, “It’s not an interesting story,” which Jinho doesn’t believe, but he doesn’t push it. What’s important is that by the end of the meal, he feels good about this decision for the first time since Sangmin called him.
They’re staying in the same hotel, so they take a cab back together. In the elevator, Sunggyu pauses and goes through his wallet, then his pockets. “It’s missing,” he says. “I can’t find my room key card.”
“It’s not at the restaurant.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He looks up at Jinho and his face is completely blank. “Do you think they’ll still let me go in? I...”
The elevator has stopped at his floor. Jinho tilts his head. He’s not drunk, exactly, more like too tired to deal with someone who is. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says. “Just stay with me tonight.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” He pushes the button to close the elevator door. “Don’t worry about it.”
Sunggyu babbles thanks the rest of the elevator ride and down the hallway, and doesn’t stop until they’re in Jinho’s room. Finally Jinho says, “Can it,” then adds, “please,” at the end. “It’s okay. Just go to sleep.”
“Is there enough room?” Sunggyu asks, hovering beside the bed.
“Don’t worry about it.” Jinho picks up his pajamas and heads for the bathroom. “I’ll find somewhere to sleep. Just lie down.” By the time he comes out, Sunggyu’s already asleep, so Jinho sits in the armchair in the corner that faces the bed.
The hotel key card is in Sunggyu’s left jacket pocket. While Jinho was hailing a cab, he saw Sunggyu go through his wallet, take the card out and slip it into his pocket, and decided not to bring it up until Sunggyu did first. He’s not sure why Sunggyu would bother to hide it; Jinho wouldn’t pat him down to make him prove his lie. Or maybe he’s not lying, and he’s just too drunk to remember. It’s hard to tell, and Jinho doesn’t know what he wants to believe more. It’s best not to believe anything for now, he thinks as he falls asleep, still sitting up.
---
After that day, Sunggyu seems to forget his earlier hesitation about appearing suspicious in public, and he sticks to Jinho whenever they’re not at the card table. Jinho doesn’t mind; showing the kid around gives him something to do besides reread strategy in his hotel room all day. They eat, play practice hands of five-card stud and hold’em, play the slot machines, walk around the Senado Square and the old fortress. Sunggyu doesn’t pull the key card trick again, but he ends up in Jinho’s room anyway on the second-last night, tipsy on Sagres beer and sprawled out on the bed.
Eventually Jinho forgets his own hesitations, and he sits on the bed next to where Sunggyu’s lying. There’s enough room for both of them, but not a lot. For all the times that Jinho’s slung his arm around Sunggyu while walking around or leaned on him during a practice round, he feels hesitant to touch him now, like there’s a border he has to cross.
Sunggyu rolls over. “Where do you go after tomorrow?” he asks. “You can go anywhere you want to.”
Jinho grins. “Are you asking me where I’m going or where I want to go?”
“Ah... I don’t know. Don’t ask me anything difficult right now.” Sunggyu rolls his head to one side, then says, “You’ve been to the United States, right? To Europe? What’s it like?”
“Tch. They’re both really big, you know. You can’t tell from one place.” Jinho wiggles his toes, watching his socks move, and turns one foot out to tap against Sunggyu’s leg. “Are you going somewhere?”
Sunggyu gets up. He stays where he is for a second, with the same blank face as always, and then he crawls closer to Jinho, until he’s practically on top of him.
Jinho’s spine lights up. “Sunggyu-yah.” But he doesn’t stop him, and he closes his eyes as Sunggyu kisses him. His lips are firm, smooth and alive. Jinho counts to four as they stay with their mouths pressed lightly together, and then Sunggyu moves backwards, still leaving hardly any space between them, his eyelashes soft on his cheeks.
“I’m going to leave Sangmin,” he says.
Jinho feels like he’s been dropped into a hole, but he only lowers his gaze. “Why do you need to go to Europe to do that? And why do you need to do that at all?” Sunggyu leans in again, but Jinho looks up and puts his fingers against Sunggyu’s lips. His hands are steady. “Tell me before you do that again.”
Sunggyu pouts, but sits back. “Did he tell you why he sent me here?”
Regaining the space between them is like fresh air. Jinho sighs and rolls his head back, trying to get it together. “Of course. We had an agreement. He called you his ace.”
“Ah.” Sunggyu nods. “He lied to you. He wants me to beat you and take it all, and bring it back to him.”
When he’s stating something, Sunggyu’s voice never changes; it’s dull and low and rises and falls in pitch like a song, but that indicates nothing. His face doesn’t seem to change either, which is his weapon at the table. Jinho, though, has started to see the cracks in it: his nostrils flare a little, and not just his voice but his eyes go dull, too.
But it’s Sunggyu’s choice to lie, and it’s not Jinho’s responsibility to force him to tell the truth. It’s not Jinho’s role to force him to do anything. And anyway, what Sangmin wants is the part he already knows.
“So why are you telling me this?”
Sunggyu looks up, startled. “Because I like Mr. Jinho, of course.”
Jinho can’t help but laugh at that. “Yah, you just... You did that, and you’re still calling me Mr. Jinho?”
“Hyung.” He says it so softly that Jinho shuts his eyes for a moment. “The truth is, I need the money. You don’t know how it works with me and him, but...”
“I can guess,” says Jinho. He makes a face. “And don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know.”
“Ah, money, I’m talking about money. He’s in charge of it all.”
“So come in second. You still cash.”
Sunggyu bites his lip, glances down, and shakes his head. Jinho can feel him coming closer, and his eyes lower too automatically. “I can’t keep giving him what he wants.”
Jinho lets Sunggyu end there and kiss him again, deeper, lets himself put his hands on Sunggyu’s narrow waist and pull him closer until Sunggyu is straddling him and pushing him up against the headboard. He lets Sunggyu bite at his lower lip and run his hands over his sides and around his back and listens to him sigh into his mouth, and it feels like his insides are coming loose and melting together all at once.
But when Sunggyu’s hands go for his belt, he hums and turns his head down, putting his hands on Sunggyu’s wrists. “Stop.” He’s out of breath, and he rests his forehead against Sunggyu’s. When Sunggyu tries to manoeuvre his head under again Jinho ducks away. “No. There’s a game tomorrow.”
“So what, you need to rest the night before?” Sunggyu pushes forward, not so subtly rubbing against Jinho’s hard-on with his own. Jinho winces and presses his hand firmly into Sunggyu’s chest.
“I can’t tonight,” is all he says. “And I hate to say it - really,” he adds, with a breathless chuckle, looking at Sunggyu’s pouting lips, “but you shouldn’t sleep here.”
Sunggyu sits back and pauses on his heels, then gets up, a little clumsy. “All right.” He puts his shoes back on slowly, as if waiting for Jinho to change his mind when he sees his body move, but when Jinho stays on the bed he gives in, and stands up. “Good night,” he says, and he squeezes Jinho’s shoulder stiffly before he leaves the room.
Jinho slumps against the headboard and blows out heavily through his lips. His heart is gradually slowing down to a regular beat. He’s still hard, but too exhausted to get up and deal with that right now. Even though his body misses Sunggyu, and maybe something in his chest as well, he feels relieved that he’s gone. When he was younger, he’d had offers too, his skill or his body in exchange for protection, for opportunity. He’d never said yes, too determined to get by purely on his own, but he knows how it goes once you start accepting. Sex for someone like Sunggyu is a contract, and Jinho isn’t ready to sign.
---
The next day is the final round of the tournament. As has been their custom over the last two days, Jinho and Sunggyu don’t talk to each other before the match, but Sunggyu gives Jinho a very long look from three seats to his right before they’re dealt their cards and the first hand begins.
Jinho’s advantage at the table is that he thinks about the play from an outside perspective, so that it can’t affect him personally. It’s something half-instinctual, half-practiced, but he needs it because otherwise he can’t keep things from showing on his face. The brim of his hat helps mitigate some of that, but mostly he keeps his eyes moving, looking at his cards, the cards laid out in the middle of the table, people’s chips, the lower halves of their faces - anything to avoid making eye contact.
By now, Jinho’s become accustomed to Sunggyu keeping himself in check so Jinho doesn’t have to. So he’s surprised when Sunggyu raises the bet on the river, the fifth and final card deal, causing the two players between them to fold. Jinho considers the cards in the middle, considers the two cards in his hand, and then folds as well. The other players seem to take this as a signal, and Sunggyu takes the hand.
As they turn in their cards and chips to the dealer, Jinho catches a glimpse of Sunggyu’s face. Rather than his normal blankness, he looks hard and determined, which Jinho’s seen glimpses of before but never directed at him. Jinho knows he should feel irritated, challenged, disrespected. But it’s the first time in the last three days that he’s had a chance to play against Sunggyu for real, and instead he’s only intrigued at what he’s like when he’s not playing puppet.
The answer is, not easy. Neither of them takes the next hand, but that’s only because Sunggyu folds early, and Jinho is wary of letting Sunggyu observe him freely, of giving away anything that could help Sunggyu to put a hand on him. As they play more and more hands and the group around the table thins out as players lose their chips, Jinho figures it out: Sunggyu only bets on the hands he thinks will win. It’s not a helpful observation, exactly, since it means he folds more often than he stays in, leaving himself with a security cache of chips. Jinho thinks of what each of those chips represents to Sunggyu, versus what they represent to him, and he sighs.
It comes down to him and Sunggyu. Usually the two-hander is where Jinho loses control of the game, either through bad luck or poor planning. If he loses this one, it will be one more second-place finish on the pile that makes up his career, and maybe this will be the one that makes everyone say, Forget you, we want a winner. His legacy right now is in late-game blunders and fluke one-off losses, and even though he’s a favourite to win, the betting odds on him - he’d taken a look before the game began - aren’t much higher than they are on Sunggyu. This tournament isn’t big enough to overturn it all, but it’s big enough to mean something. Sunggyu’s determination makes that much clear.
He can’t let anyone down again.
The layout on the table, as it stands after the turn, gives Jinho a three of a kind with the two 3s in his hand, but there’s also a 7 and 8 of spades.
Sunggyu looks at the layout, then up at Jinho. “All in,” he says, and he pushes his chips toward the centre of the table.
Jinho has only a slight lead in chips on him, and he knows Sunggyu knows this. He also knows that this is the first time Sunggyu has gone all-in since they sat down nearly three hours ago. But he remembers the first game he’d seen Sunggyu play, where his uneven betting had seemed almost like a regulating feature, something to keep him from appearing too predictable but just as predictable as everything else.
“Call,” he says.
“Bet called,” says the dealer. “Last card.”
Jinho glances up at Sunggyu. Underneath his sunglasses, his face is completely relaxed. He doesn’t even look at his cards as the dealer turns over the river: an 8. Jinho has a full house. Sunggyu turns his cards up: a 6 and a 9 of spades, one card away from a straight flush that would have been enough to decide the game.
He doesn’t throw his cards down or collapse in his chair, as Jinho has seen other players do in this moment. He gets up stiffly, bows to Jinho so low his forehead nearly brushes the table’s felt surface, then turns and leaves. “Sunggyu-yah,” Jinho says, but then there are people coming to shake his hand and reporters talking to him and he loses sight of Sunggyu as he slips into the crowd.
---
Sunggyu’s room is on the seventh floor. Jinho’s only been by it once, waiting for Sunggyu while he ran in to pick up something, but he still remembers the way to get there from the elevators. When he knocks, the door won’t open, so he knocks again. “Sunggyu-yah, open up. It’s me.” He waits, then knocks again. “Sunggyu-yah.”
Finally the door opens. Sunggyu’s inside, still dressed, his hair messy. His face is puffy, but not red. “Congratulations, Mr. Jinho,” he says, and his voice is low and sticky. Jinho’s heart breaks. “You needed to win, and you won. How does it feel?”
“Ay, don’t be like that,” says Jinho. “You didn’t make it easy for me, you know. You had a great game. Can I come in?”
Sunggyu shakes his head. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be right now?”
“Party’s over. Come on, don’t be like this.”
“I trusted you,” Sunggyu says. Even at this extreme there’s that same flatness to his face and voice, but Jinho thinks he understands the difference now. “I trusted you to help me.”
“I know,” says Jinho. “But please understand. I made a promise. And the only one who lied, all this time, was you.” Sunggyu slouches, staring at his feet. “I came here to tell you, though, that it’s not over just because the tournament is. This isn’t your last chance.” He looks down at his feet too, then back at Sunggyu. “Honestly, I don’t really know you, but I want to support you as much as I can. Sangmin hyung’s someone I’ve known for a long time, but seeing you happy, it just...” He sighs. “Sunggyu, I...”
Sunggyu takes a step closer to the door. Jinho’s not sure if he’s going to shut it, but he only stands there and looks at Jinho, unsure.
Carefully, Jinho steps inside. Sunggyu stays still as Jinho kisses him, gently, like he’s going to bruise. Then when Jinho steps backwards, Sunggyu leans over him and closes the door.
He takes Jinho’s hand and walks with him towards the bed. All the rooms in the hotel are the same size, but the darkness makes this one feel smaller, like the walls are close around them as Sunggyu pulls Jinho down on top of him. They don’t speak, even though Jinho wants to hear Sunggyu tell him things are okay and what he’s doing is okay. His own words he turns into movements: mouthing them behind his closed lips against Sunggyu’s throat, writing them with his fingers down the tender, exposed line of where his hips join his thighs. Sunggyu’s body opens for him like a puzzle he’s known the answer to all along, and in the split-second that he lets himself believe it’s true, a shiver goes through his whole body, and he groans and pulls Sunggyu closer.
Jinho wants to keep kissing him, the bluntest way to show how he feels, and he does at first, moving his mouth along Sunggyu’s face and shoulders. But eventually he closes his eyes and lets himself get lost in the rhythm, in the motion and the clutch of Sunggyu’s body around his cock and the small sounds he makes with every thrust, pulling him all too quickly toward orgasm. And this, he knows, is what Sunggyu really wants from him: for Jinho to want him selfishly, to make Sunggyu feel good only because he needs to take his own pleasure from it. Sex for someone like Sunggyu is a contract, but there are people you buy in order to have sex with them and there are people you buy with sex, and neither is wanted for themselves alone.
Still, afterward he feels the need to hold Sunggyu close and press kisses into his hair. I’m sorry, he wants to say, but the truth is that he isn’t. Not for winning. The only thing he’s sorry about is that this won’t last, and that this might not be enough to make Sunggyu understand. Sunggyu curls into his arms in reply, as if he’s the smaller one, and Jinho’s not sure whether Sunggyu’s reassuring him or allowing himself to forget, but it makes him feel a bit better.
They fall asleep like that together. The dimmed room lights are still on when the sun comes through the curtains the next morning, and Jinho doesn’t leave the room for a while.
---
Sunggyu leaves the day after. Jinho takes the early morning ferry with him back to Hong Kong; he has to meet his sponsors that day, and business in Hong Kong for the rest of the week. Sunggyu’s only destination is the airport, and he won’t tell Jinho where he’s going after that.
“You’re leaving so soon,” Jinho tells Sunggyu over the ferry terminal’s thin breakfast congee. “What’s the big rush, anyway? You’ve never been to Hong Kong before, have you?”
Sunggyu laughs. “You’ve been living straight for too long, hyung,” he says.
“Yeah, that’s true.” Jinho pokes at his congee. He thinks about what it would be like if Sunggyu stayed: showing him the Peak and the Symphony of Lights, playing quick and dirty cash games in Kowloon, fucking and sleeping in sweaty by-the-hour motels, Sunggyu’s smile at him like a breeze in the humid air. It’s tempting, but the last thing he wants to give Sunggyu is another old guy to follow him around.
Their goodbye outside the terminal is strangely formal, with only lingering glances and touches on arms. “You’ll tell him, right?” Sunggyu says. “That I’m not coming back for a bit.”
That’s all that he wants, but Jinho knows he can do more, can give him not just hope but a guarantee. “I’ll tell him.”
Jinho doesn’t watch him go. Instead he finds a payphone, and turns inward so it’s the only thing he sees.
Sangmin picks up on the second ring. “Hyung,” says Jinho.
“Yah, you bastard,” says Sangmin, only half-affectionately. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Jinho had wired the money to Sangmin between the end of the last game and going to Sunggyu’s room, but only three-quarters of the amount he’d asked for. It’s not cheating; he fully intends to give Sangmin the rest of it, if he cooperates.
He smiles, even though Sangmin can’t see it. “Let’s make a deal.”
notes:
- i feel awkward that this one is so long but my need for genius fic conquered all in the end u___u
the genius: rules of the game, jinho/sunggyu, sangmin/sunggyu
r, 4747w
poker tournament au. jinho needs a win, but his partner has conflicting victory conditions.
--for gyuberry ♥
--moby, "extreme ways"
ao3 mirror (locked to members)
Sangmin doesn’t give him any way to contact the kid, out of some vague idea that they’ll be better protected that way, so the first time Jinho meets Kim Sunggyu is at the casino table on the first day of the tournament. From Sangmin’s description Jinho had expected a whiz kid, someone radiating brilliance and confidence; but Sunggyu sits at the table quietly, his eyebrows tilted in perpetual worry. He’s polite to excess, bowing his head when the dealer acknowledges him and lowering his eyes. They probably walk all over him in Manila. No wonder Sangmin likes him, Jinho thinks with some derision.
Once the game has started, he keeps an eye on Sunggyu just a bit more than he already keeps an eye on everyone else at the table. Kim Sunggyu plays methodically, without flair. He folds exactly when he should, and he staggers his betting so that it’s hard to predict, but in a way that seems just as premeditated as everything else. He wears sunglasses, but he doesn’t need to - his flat face betrays no emotion or thought, and he doesn’t speak except to let out the occasional sigh of acceptance when someone else beats him. When he takes the first hand, it seems less by his textbook play and more because the other players underestimated him - Jinho included.
Jinho comes back to win the game, but it’s close. Throughout, he never feels like he’s competing against Sunggyu; it’s as if they’re playing parallel games against everyone else at the table, but Sunggyu’s is for slightly smaller stakes. It’s a good thing that he’s there to act as a barrier, because by the end of the game Jinho finds himself wanting to watch Sunggyu more than pay attention to his own play. Then again, winning preliminary rounds has never been the problem for him.
After the game, as the players mill about the casino and chat with audience members and the press, Sunggyu approaches him first. “I’m a fan of yours,” he says, bowing almost in half as he shakes Jinho’s hand. He has an earring in his right ear that dangles when he moves. Jinho liked to wear an earring when he was younger, too.
He smiles. “Are you hungry?”
Sunggyu tilts his head back and forth, pressing his lips together. Jinho wonders if he knows that it’s cute, if he does it on purpose. “A little.”
Jinho pulls out his card case and flips through it - Busan, Cebu, Dubai - until he finds the one he’s looking for, a restaurant close to the A-Ma Temple with a view of the water. He presses it into Sunggyu’s hand. “Meet me here in an hour.” Sunggyu’s eyes dart around them, so Jinho smiles and puts his other hand around Sunggyu’s. “Hey, don’t look like that. People are going to think we’re up to no good.”
Sunggyu stammers, “Aren’t we?”
---
It’s a simple proposition: “I need the money to get these people off my ass, and you need to win to get people off of yours,” Sangmin tells Jinho over the phone a week before the Genius poker tournament in Macau. Despite the lofty name, it’s a one-off cash tournament with a modest buy-in, which is all the better for this kind of thing to take place. “You help me, you help yourself. Easy.”
The phone is what makes it convincing. Jinho knows that Sangmin would rather be there in Macau with him, maybe even entered in the tournament himself, in the thick of the action where he likes it. “Don’t think you can convince me to cheat,” he says. He’s in his hotel room, sitting up on top of the sheets with his shoes off, taking in the aircon. “No matter how much I like you, hyung.”
“I know that.” Sangmin chuckles. “Why do you think you’re always second place, you noble son of a bitch?”
The dig is especially pointed in these circumstances, but Jinho can’t help but smile. “Yah, who do you think you’re--”
“I’ve got it taken care of. I’m sending someone there, he’ll clear a path for you to win it all.”
“Who.”
“Kim Sunggyu.” Sangmin waits, but Jinho doesn’t respond. “What, you don’t know him? He’s been doing great in the Philippines this year. A real ace. Just watch him play, trust me.”
Jinho stares out the window at the towers that lumber over the otherwise flat skyline, chewing on his thumbnail. He picked a bad time to give up smoking. “Trust you?”
“Yah, yah, Hong Jinho.” Sangmin says it gently. “You know, if you don’t win, don’t worry about me. I can always find a way. But I wouldn’t come to you if I didn’t absolutely believe in you. I know you need to win, but what’s more is that I want you to win. Prove to everybody you’re not washed up. Show them the genius Hong Jinho that I know.”
This is just the way Sangmin talks when he wants something, and Jinho knows that. Still, he can’t deny that it’s effective. And it’s true: if Sangmin wanted, he could have sent this kid to straight-up beat him, or paid him off to fold.
“I’ll try my best,” Jinho says. Then he chuckles. “Hey, the next time I visit you in Korea better not be in a prison cell, you old bastard. Don’t make me work for nothing.”
“Ahh, don’t fucking joke about that,” groans Sangmin, and Jinho laughs.
---
Kim Sunggyu is at the restaurant exactly one hour later. Jinho’s barely had time to order a drink when he sees him wander across the room, bowing stiffly to the waitress who directs him to the table by the windows. He’s not charismatic, exactly - not like most of the players Jinho knows - but there’s something quietly magnetic about him, and Jinho knows that this is what Sangmin sees in him.
“Sit down, sit down,” says Jinho. “You played well today.”
“Ah, thank you,” Sunggyu says, and he smiles. “Mr. Jinho was better. It was great to watch you up close. Ever since Mr. Sangmin told me we’d be facing each other, I’ve been looking forward to it.”
Jinho sips his beer. “Did Mr. Sangmin tell you how exactly we’ll be facing each other?”
“He did.”
“Listen, then. I know the players in Manila are...” He exhales stiffly and gestures with his hand. “I know that myself. But there’s a reason this tournament is called The Genius, all right? It’s not going to be easy.” Sunggyu nods. “You did well today. You have to be able to keep that up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you don’t have to call me sir. Or ‘mister’. We’re partners in this.”
“Okay.” Sunggyu smiles sheepishly.
The waitress comes back and Jinho orders cod fritters, Portuguese chicken, another beer for himself and one for Sunggyu when Sunggyu still won’t look up. “You shy about your English or something?” Jinho asks him when she leaves. “What d’you do with yourself in the Philippines? Charades?”
Sunggyu scratches the back of his neck and laughs. “I don’t want to say something wrong.”
“Say whatever you want. Anything. This isn’t a dangerous place.” Jinho gestures around at the restaurant. “And I’m not a dangerous guy. I don’t want anything from you.”
“Besides what we already agreed on.”
“Sure. But that’s back at the casino. I can’t increase my chance of getting that when we’re not playing, except by being honest with you.” Jinho shrugs. “You said you were my fan. You know what I’m like, then. I don’t need to explain it to you.”
“Right.” Sunggyu looks down at his clasped hands, then opens them. “You know, I’m a guy like that too. If it were anyone else, I would have said no. But when Mr. Sangmin said it was to help you, I knew it wouldn’t be for nothing.”
Jinho’s first instinct is to ask whether Sunggyu really would be able to say no, and then he feels bad about it. “Good kid,” is all he says.
Despite Sunggyu’s worry, they have enough to talk about over the course of dinner: their best hands, their worst hands, where they grew up, where they learned to play. After a few drinks, Sunggyu even finds the nerve to ask why Jinho always finishes second in major tournaments, and he laughs when Jinho threatens to kick him out for his disrespect.
The only time Sunggyu hesitates is when Jinho asks how he met Sangmin. He just smiles blandly and says, “It’s not an interesting story,” which Jinho doesn’t believe, but he doesn’t push it. What’s important is that by the end of the meal, he feels good about this decision for the first time since Sangmin called him.
They’re staying in the same hotel, so they take a cab back together. In the elevator, Sunggyu pauses and goes through his wallet, then his pockets. “It’s missing,” he says. “I can’t find my room key card.”
“It’s not at the restaurant.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He looks up at Jinho and his face is completely blank. “Do you think they’ll still let me go in? I...”
The elevator has stopped at his floor. Jinho tilts his head. He’s not drunk, exactly, more like too tired to deal with someone who is. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says. “Just stay with me tonight.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” He pushes the button to close the elevator door. “Don’t worry about it.”
Sunggyu babbles thanks the rest of the elevator ride and down the hallway, and doesn’t stop until they’re in Jinho’s room. Finally Jinho says, “Can it,” then adds, “please,” at the end. “It’s okay. Just go to sleep.”
“Is there enough room?” Sunggyu asks, hovering beside the bed.
“Don’t worry about it.” Jinho picks up his pajamas and heads for the bathroom. “I’ll find somewhere to sleep. Just lie down.” By the time he comes out, Sunggyu’s already asleep, so Jinho sits in the armchair in the corner that faces the bed.
The hotel key card is in Sunggyu’s left jacket pocket. While Jinho was hailing a cab, he saw Sunggyu go through his wallet, take the card out and slip it into his pocket, and decided not to bring it up until Sunggyu did first. He’s not sure why Sunggyu would bother to hide it; Jinho wouldn’t pat him down to make him prove his lie. Or maybe he’s not lying, and he’s just too drunk to remember. It’s hard to tell, and Jinho doesn’t know what he wants to believe more. It’s best not to believe anything for now, he thinks as he falls asleep, still sitting up.
---
After that day, Sunggyu seems to forget his earlier hesitation about appearing suspicious in public, and he sticks to Jinho whenever they’re not at the card table. Jinho doesn’t mind; showing the kid around gives him something to do besides reread strategy in his hotel room all day. They eat, play practice hands of five-card stud and hold’em, play the slot machines, walk around the Senado Square and the old fortress. Sunggyu doesn’t pull the key card trick again, but he ends up in Jinho’s room anyway on the second-last night, tipsy on Sagres beer and sprawled out on the bed.
Eventually Jinho forgets his own hesitations, and he sits on the bed next to where Sunggyu’s lying. There’s enough room for both of them, but not a lot. For all the times that Jinho’s slung his arm around Sunggyu while walking around or leaned on him during a practice round, he feels hesitant to touch him now, like there’s a border he has to cross.
Sunggyu rolls over. “Where do you go after tomorrow?” he asks. “You can go anywhere you want to.”
Jinho grins. “Are you asking me where I’m going or where I want to go?”
“Ah... I don’t know. Don’t ask me anything difficult right now.” Sunggyu rolls his head to one side, then says, “You’ve been to the United States, right? To Europe? What’s it like?”
“Tch. They’re both really big, you know. You can’t tell from one place.” Jinho wiggles his toes, watching his socks move, and turns one foot out to tap against Sunggyu’s leg. “Are you going somewhere?”
Sunggyu gets up. He stays where he is for a second, with the same blank face as always, and then he crawls closer to Jinho, until he’s practically on top of him.
Jinho’s spine lights up. “Sunggyu-yah.” But he doesn’t stop him, and he closes his eyes as Sunggyu kisses him. His lips are firm, smooth and alive. Jinho counts to four as they stay with their mouths pressed lightly together, and then Sunggyu moves backwards, still leaving hardly any space between them, his eyelashes soft on his cheeks.
“I’m going to leave Sangmin,” he says.
Jinho feels like he’s been dropped into a hole, but he only lowers his gaze. “Why do you need to go to Europe to do that? And why do you need to do that at all?” Sunggyu leans in again, but Jinho looks up and puts his fingers against Sunggyu’s lips. His hands are steady. “Tell me before you do that again.”
Sunggyu pouts, but sits back. “Did he tell you why he sent me here?”
Regaining the space between them is like fresh air. Jinho sighs and rolls his head back, trying to get it together. “Of course. We had an agreement. He called you his ace.”
“Ah.” Sunggyu nods. “He lied to you. He wants me to beat you and take it all, and bring it back to him.”
When he’s stating something, Sunggyu’s voice never changes; it’s dull and low and rises and falls in pitch like a song, but that indicates nothing. His face doesn’t seem to change either, which is his weapon at the table. Jinho, though, has started to see the cracks in it: his nostrils flare a little, and not just his voice but his eyes go dull, too.
But it’s Sunggyu’s choice to lie, and it’s not Jinho’s responsibility to force him to tell the truth. It’s not Jinho’s role to force him to do anything. And anyway, what Sangmin wants is the part he already knows.
“So why are you telling me this?”
Sunggyu looks up, startled. “Because I like Mr. Jinho, of course.”
Jinho can’t help but laugh at that. “Yah, you just... You did that, and you’re still calling me Mr. Jinho?”
“Hyung.” He says it so softly that Jinho shuts his eyes for a moment. “The truth is, I need the money. You don’t know how it works with me and him, but...”
“I can guess,” says Jinho. He makes a face. “And don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know.”
“Ah, money, I’m talking about money. He’s in charge of it all.”
“So come in second. You still cash.”
Sunggyu bites his lip, glances down, and shakes his head. Jinho can feel him coming closer, and his eyes lower too automatically. “I can’t keep giving him what he wants.”
Jinho lets Sunggyu end there and kiss him again, deeper, lets himself put his hands on Sunggyu’s narrow waist and pull him closer until Sunggyu is straddling him and pushing him up against the headboard. He lets Sunggyu bite at his lower lip and run his hands over his sides and around his back and listens to him sigh into his mouth, and it feels like his insides are coming loose and melting together all at once.
But when Sunggyu’s hands go for his belt, he hums and turns his head down, putting his hands on Sunggyu’s wrists. “Stop.” He’s out of breath, and he rests his forehead against Sunggyu’s. When Sunggyu tries to manoeuvre his head under again Jinho ducks away. “No. There’s a game tomorrow.”
“So what, you need to rest the night before?” Sunggyu pushes forward, not so subtly rubbing against Jinho’s hard-on with his own. Jinho winces and presses his hand firmly into Sunggyu’s chest.
“I can’t tonight,” is all he says. “And I hate to say it - really,” he adds, with a breathless chuckle, looking at Sunggyu’s pouting lips, “but you shouldn’t sleep here.”
Sunggyu sits back and pauses on his heels, then gets up, a little clumsy. “All right.” He puts his shoes back on slowly, as if waiting for Jinho to change his mind when he sees his body move, but when Jinho stays on the bed he gives in, and stands up. “Good night,” he says, and he squeezes Jinho’s shoulder stiffly before he leaves the room.
Jinho slumps against the headboard and blows out heavily through his lips. His heart is gradually slowing down to a regular beat. He’s still hard, but too exhausted to get up and deal with that right now. Even though his body misses Sunggyu, and maybe something in his chest as well, he feels relieved that he’s gone. When he was younger, he’d had offers too, his skill or his body in exchange for protection, for opportunity. He’d never said yes, too determined to get by purely on his own, but he knows how it goes once you start accepting. Sex for someone like Sunggyu is a contract, and Jinho isn’t ready to sign.
---
The next day is the final round of the tournament. As has been their custom over the last two days, Jinho and Sunggyu don’t talk to each other before the match, but Sunggyu gives Jinho a very long look from three seats to his right before they’re dealt their cards and the first hand begins.
Jinho’s advantage at the table is that he thinks about the play from an outside perspective, so that it can’t affect him personally. It’s something half-instinctual, half-practiced, but he needs it because otherwise he can’t keep things from showing on his face. The brim of his hat helps mitigate some of that, but mostly he keeps his eyes moving, looking at his cards, the cards laid out in the middle of the table, people’s chips, the lower halves of their faces - anything to avoid making eye contact.
By now, Jinho’s become accustomed to Sunggyu keeping himself in check so Jinho doesn’t have to. So he’s surprised when Sunggyu raises the bet on the river, the fifth and final card deal, causing the two players between them to fold. Jinho considers the cards in the middle, considers the two cards in his hand, and then folds as well. The other players seem to take this as a signal, and Sunggyu takes the hand.
As they turn in their cards and chips to the dealer, Jinho catches a glimpse of Sunggyu’s face. Rather than his normal blankness, he looks hard and determined, which Jinho’s seen glimpses of before but never directed at him. Jinho knows he should feel irritated, challenged, disrespected. But it’s the first time in the last three days that he’s had a chance to play against Sunggyu for real, and instead he’s only intrigued at what he’s like when he’s not playing puppet.
The answer is, not easy. Neither of them takes the next hand, but that’s only because Sunggyu folds early, and Jinho is wary of letting Sunggyu observe him freely, of giving away anything that could help Sunggyu to put a hand on him. As they play more and more hands and the group around the table thins out as players lose their chips, Jinho figures it out: Sunggyu only bets on the hands he thinks will win. It’s not a helpful observation, exactly, since it means he folds more often than he stays in, leaving himself with a security cache of chips. Jinho thinks of what each of those chips represents to Sunggyu, versus what they represent to him, and he sighs.
It comes down to him and Sunggyu. Usually the two-hander is where Jinho loses control of the game, either through bad luck or poor planning. If he loses this one, it will be one more second-place finish on the pile that makes up his career, and maybe this will be the one that makes everyone say, Forget you, we want a winner. His legacy right now is in late-game blunders and fluke one-off losses, and even though he’s a favourite to win, the betting odds on him - he’d taken a look before the game began - aren’t much higher than they are on Sunggyu. This tournament isn’t big enough to overturn it all, but it’s big enough to mean something. Sunggyu’s determination makes that much clear.
He can’t let anyone down again.
The layout on the table, as it stands after the turn, gives Jinho a three of a kind with the two 3s in his hand, but there’s also a 7 and 8 of spades.
Sunggyu looks at the layout, then up at Jinho. “All in,” he says, and he pushes his chips toward the centre of the table.
Jinho has only a slight lead in chips on him, and he knows Sunggyu knows this. He also knows that this is the first time Sunggyu has gone all-in since they sat down nearly three hours ago. But he remembers the first game he’d seen Sunggyu play, where his uneven betting had seemed almost like a regulating feature, something to keep him from appearing too predictable but just as predictable as everything else.
“Call,” he says.
“Bet called,” says the dealer. “Last card.”
Jinho glances up at Sunggyu. Underneath his sunglasses, his face is completely relaxed. He doesn’t even look at his cards as the dealer turns over the river: an 8. Jinho has a full house. Sunggyu turns his cards up: a 6 and a 9 of spades, one card away from a straight flush that would have been enough to decide the game.
He doesn’t throw his cards down or collapse in his chair, as Jinho has seen other players do in this moment. He gets up stiffly, bows to Jinho so low his forehead nearly brushes the table’s felt surface, then turns and leaves. “Sunggyu-yah,” Jinho says, but then there are people coming to shake his hand and reporters talking to him and he loses sight of Sunggyu as he slips into the crowd.
---
Sunggyu’s room is on the seventh floor. Jinho’s only been by it once, waiting for Sunggyu while he ran in to pick up something, but he still remembers the way to get there from the elevators. When he knocks, the door won’t open, so he knocks again. “Sunggyu-yah, open up. It’s me.” He waits, then knocks again. “Sunggyu-yah.”
Finally the door opens. Sunggyu’s inside, still dressed, his hair messy. His face is puffy, but not red. “Congratulations, Mr. Jinho,” he says, and his voice is low and sticky. Jinho’s heart breaks. “You needed to win, and you won. How does it feel?”
“Ay, don’t be like that,” says Jinho. “You didn’t make it easy for me, you know. You had a great game. Can I come in?”
Sunggyu shakes his head. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be right now?”
“Party’s over. Come on, don’t be like this.”
“I trusted you,” Sunggyu says. Even at this extreme there’s that same flatness to his face and voice, but Jinho thinks he understands the difference now. “I trusted you to help me.”
“I know,” says Jinho. “But please understand. I made a promise. And the only one who lied, all this time, was you.” Sunggyu slouches, staring at his feet. “I came here to tell you, though, that it’s not over just because the tournament is. This isn’t your last chance.” He looks down at his feet too, then back at Sunggyu. “Honestly, I don’t really know you, but I want to support you as much as I can. Sangmin hyung’s someone I’ve known for a long time, but seeing you happy, it just...” He sighs. “Sunggyu, I...”
Sunggyu takes a step closer to the door. Jinho’s not sure if he’s going to shut it, but he only stands there and looks at Jinho, unsure.
Carefully, Jinho steps inside. Sunggyu stays still as Jinho kisses him, gently, like he’s going to bruise. Then when Jinho steps backwards, Sunggyu leans over him and closes the door.
He takes Jinho’s hand and walks with him towards the bed. All the rooms in the hotel are the same size, but the darkness makes this one feel smaller, like the walls are close around them as Sunggyu pulls Jinho down on top of him. They don’t speak, even though Jinho wants to hear Sunggyu tell him things are okay and what he’s doing is okay. His own words he turns into movements: mouthing them behind his closed lips against Sunggyu’s throat, writing them with his fingers down the tender, exposed line of where his hips join his thighs. Sunggyu’s body opens for him like a puzzle he’s known the answer to all along, and in the split-second that he lets himself believe it’s true, a shiver goes through his whole body, and he groans and pulls Sunggyu closer.
Jinho wants to keep kissing him, the bluntest way to show how he feels, and he does at first, moving his mouth along Sunggyu’s face and shoulders. But eventually he closes his eyes and lets himself get lost in the rhythm, in the motion and the clutch of Sunggyu’s body around his cock and the small sounds he makes with every thrust, pulling him all too quickly toward orgasm. And this, he knows, is what Sunggyu really wants from him: for Jinho to want him selfishly, to make Sunggyu feel good only because he needs to take his own pleasure from it. Sex for someone like Sunggyu is a contract, but there are people you buy in order to have sex with them and there are people you buy with sex, and neither is wanted for themselves alone.
Still, afterward he feels the need to hold Sunggyu close and press kisses into his hair. I’m sorry, he wants to say, but the truth is that he isn’t. Not for winning. The only thing he’s sorry about is that this won’t last, and that this might not be enough to make Sunggyu understand. Sunggyu curls into his arms in reply, as if he’s the smaller one, and Jinho’s not sure whether Sunggyu’s reassuring him or allowing himself to forget, but it makes him feel a bit better.
They fall asleep like that together. The dimmed room lights are still on when the sun comes through the curtains the next morning, and Jinho doesn’t leave the room for a while.
---
Sunggyu leaves the day after. Jinho takes the early morning ferry with him back to Hong Kong; he has to meet his sponsors that day, and business in Hong Kong for the rest of the week. Sunggyu’s only destination is the airport, and he won’t tell Jinho where he’s going after that.
“You’re leaving so soon,” Jinho tells Sunggyu over the ferry terminal’s thin breakfast congee. “What’s the big rush, anyway? You’ve never been to Hong Kong before, have you?”
Sunggyu laughs. “You’ve been living straight for too long, hyung,” he says.
“Yeah, that’s true.” Jinho pokes at his congee. He thinks about what it would be like if Sunggyu stayed: showing him the Peak and the Symphony of Lights, playing quick and dirty cash games in Kowloon, fucking and sleeping in sweaty by-the-hour motels, Sunggyu’s smile at him like a breeze in the humid air. It’s tempting, but the last thing he wants to give Sunggyu is another old guy to follow him around.
Their goodbye outside the terminal is strangely formal, with only lingering glances and touches on arms. “You’ll tell him, right?” Sunggyu says. “That I’m not coming back for a bit.”
That’s all that he wants, but Jinho knows he can do more, can give him not just hope but a guarantee. “I’ll tell him.”
Jinho doesn’t watch him go. Instead he finds a payphone, and turns inward so it’s the only thing he sees.
Sangmin picks up on the second ring. “Hyung,” says Jinho.
“Yah, you bastard,” says Sangmin, only half-affectionately. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Jinho had wired the money to Sangmin between the end of the last game and going to Sunggyu’s room, but only three-quarters of the amount he’d asked for. It’s not cheating; he fully intends to give Sangmin the rest of it, if he cooperates.
He smiles, even though Sangmin can’t see it. “Let’s make a deal.”
notes:
- i feel awkward that this one is so long but my need for genius fic conquered all in the end u___u