BLOOD MONEY || bts mafia au

fifteen.

Smoke chased Jin through the streets as he sprinted around corners, chancing a glance over his shoulder every five seconds to be certain that the footsteps that echoed in his ears belonged solely to him. Roulette hadn't seemed suspicious when Jin had made it out of the building seconds before it exploded, his attention drawn away from the older boy to the inferno eating the structure from the inside, giving Jin just enough time to slip away unnoticed.

By the time Hoseok would have put the pieces together, Jin was gone.

Worries fluttered about in Jin's head like startled butterflies, searching for an escape he couldn't give them. Following Yoongi's instructions, he'd dialed the police and darted for the closest exit as soon as Namjoon announced he'd found the drugs. But as much as he wanted to obey his boss's orders, he couldn't keep his thoughts from straying to a certain boy he'd left behind.

He got out, Jin tried to convince himself, repeating it over and over to himself like a prayer, forcing it to stick inside his mind.

He got out.

He's okay.

He has to be okay.

Because if he wasn't...

Not for the first time, Jin wished they didn't have to smash their comms. Then he could put an end to the endless torrent of questions swimming around his brain with a simple exchange over the line. Then he wouldn't have to feel like he was breaking into a thousand pieces with every step he forced himself to run in the other direction, heading for the spot Yoongi had picked for them to meet up.

This had been the one part of the plan Jin hadn't liked.

Betraying the Purgatory and showing those arrogant self-entitled shits just exactly what they were capable of - he'd agreed to that without hesitation. Blowing up the building, stealing the drugs and the thirty billion for themselves, it'd all been easy to accept. But leaving behind Namjoon, the one person who'd stood by him for years, who knew the heart he hid behind the layers of swagger...

"Don't worry, Jinnie," Namjoon had said in the quiet of their shared room after Yoongi had laid out his idea, a faint smile curving the edges of his lips like he knew the emotions warring inside of the other boy. "Yoongi knows what he's doing. If this is the way the plan has to go, it's the way it has to go. I'll be fine."

"You don't know that," Jin had argued, taking Namjoon's hands in his own like the simple action alone would be enough to make him understand the panic racing through his bloodstream every time he thought about the plan. "Yoongi can't guarantee anything."

Namjoon had only slipped his fingers from Jin's grasp to cup the elder's face gently. "We've been doing this type of stuff for years, hyung. I can do this."

"It's not that I don't trust you to get it done," Jin found himself whispering. "It's just that... How can I ever forgive myself for running away when you could be hurt?"

The memory washed over him, sweeping him up in its suffocating embrace, threatening to wipe away the last remains of his resolve that kept him from discarding the entire plan and dashing back to the rubble of the facility, desperately praying that he wouldn't find the broken body of the boy he loved among the crumbled blocks of concrete and twisted steel.

Jin released the breath he'd been holding onto since he fled the graveyard they'd created as he made it into the abandoned building they'd tapped as their rendezvous point.

And wanted to suck it back in the second he realized it was empty.

The rational part of his brain tried to reassure him this was because he was the first to start on the path here, but another part of it, a part that wouldn't shut up, was spinning scenario after scenario of all the possible things that could have gone wrong.

It had been a feat to take down the Purgatory and their fierce boss. Now they were standing in the eye of the hurricane, the rain that had been increasing with every passing moment now at a standstill.

But there's always the other half of the storm waiting on the fringes.

• • •

Thick droplets of blood oozed down the side of Yoongi's face, clinging to the swoops of his eyelashes, but he didn't stop to wipe them away. Despite all the lengths he went to to ensure that they wouldn't be followed, he couldn't help but feel the weight of a second pair of eyes glued to his back.

That blistering hatred harbored in Jimin's eyes as the lights from the police cruisers were cast across his face haunted Yoongi no matter how much space he placed between him and the other boy. What if he hadn't decided to run away with Roulette and the blind boy after all? What if he was lurking in the darkness around every corner, a sinister smile fixated in place on his face, waiting for the perfect moment to execute his revenge? Yoongi had snatched the very thing he promised to help them achieve from his hands and killed his boss in an explosion large enough to bring an entire building to its knees. Those weren't things Jimin would be willing to overlook.

Yoongi had spent his entire life cloaked in the shadows of others. He wasn't a stranger to the incessant craving to watch all those who doubted him, who scoffed at him every time he laid bare the desires of his heart, who tossed him the barest scraps of praise and then expected him to fall at their feet in gratitude, suffer.

And he had a feeling Jimin was more like him than the other boy was willing to admit.

Puddles of filthy rainwater sloshed onto Yoongi's boots as he splashed through the back alley he knew would lead him to the other members of his gang. But when he got there, he only found one.

"Have you seen Namjoon?" Jin demanded, disappointment creeping through his body as he recognized the figure that crept through the door to be his boss and not the one he'd been anticipating. He barely even saw the smattering of blood smeared across the side of Yoongi's face.

"No. I thought he would've made it here by now," Yoongi said as he plopped down onto the dusty skeleton of a once plush couch. Knotting his fingers around the sleeve of the stolen uniform, he ripped off a section of the fabric and used it to dab at his wound. "I'm sure he's on his way," he added under his breath. But the words were more for his benefit than Jin's.

What kind of fool would that make him if he couldn't even manage to get a bag across a couple of streets?

Before Yoongi's mind could travel any further into the darkness he called home, the door flung open, revealing the outline of a tall man.

Launching himself at Namjoon the second he recognized that silhouette, Jin buried his face in his boyfriend's neck, clutching him tight like he could erase every terrifying thought that passed through his head with just the sensation of holding the younger close. "I thought maybe..." Jin choked on the rest of the sentence, unable to even speak the words that, up until this moment, were his reality.

"It's okay, I'm okay." Namjoon met Yoongi's eyes above Jin's head, lifting the nondescript bag in his hands. "We did it."

Yoongi leapt forward to pluck the bag from his soldier's hand eagerly, a grinning splitting his face as he glanced down at the tangible proof of his triumph over his sworn nemesis. All these years of never being good enough to shine brighter than the sun that was Jungkook, all the pain that had bottled up inside him watching Jungkook take everything he ever wanted and discarding it like trash. They had finally pulled off.

He had finally won.

And yet, the victory didn't feel as good as he thought it would.

It felt like something was missing.