BLOOD MONEY || bts mafia au

twenty six.

Six years ago.

For the first time in his twenty-one years of living, Yoongi felt truly alive.

For the first time, he didn't feel like it was an effort to drag himself out of bed, didn't feel like he had to spend every waking moment working his ass off just to prove everyone wrong. To prove he mattered.

And for the first time in a long time, he felt almost... happy.

It had been almost one month since he'd been strapped down to that chair as Hendery had taken delight in his pain. The General, who was the leader of the gang he'd come to realize was called the Purgatory, had told him everything once Mark, the boy with the gentle touch, undid Yoongi's bindings.

He told him of how he'd heard of Yoongi and Jungkook's operation and how he'd known immediately that he needed people like that. Someone young, bold, different. Someone who could take the Purgatory to the next level. The second that he'd offered them a spot in his gang, Yoongi had agreed.

It was everything he'd ever wanted. All he'd been racing towards ever since he'd promised himself that he wouldn't be another nameless face, another unimportant boy with daddy issues and an absent mother who never did anything with his life.

Now, he was important. Now, he had a home inside the gang's den, a room which he shared with a group of other boys around his age. Now, he ate freshly cooked meals that the den's resident cook made each day instead of microwave dinners. Now, people smiled at him as they called out his name in greeting in the hallways.

It wasn't enough to fully erase the first few shitty years of his life, but it was the start of a better one.

It was the start of a blossom of hope that he had tentatively begun to cultivate these past few weeks.

He could see it now.

He would rise through the ranks as the General began to see his full potential. He would be tapped to be the next leader and would spend his days training him to be ready. Jungkook would stay by his side as his right hand when he took over the gang, his only true friend in this world, and together, they would run the streets. They would amass such wealth and fame that no one would dare think to touch them again. Jungkook wouldn't have to play into his father's antics anymore and Yoongi could finally prove to his how wrong he was for ever deserting him. They could finally be themselves.

That was the mantra he repeated to himself every night as he watched the gentle rise and fall of Jungkook's chest as he slept in the bed next to him. He knew just how much the younger was putting on the line just by being here. Every second he spent at the den instead of school, instead of his house, was another second he risked his father's finding out. And while the raven-haired boy had never been completely honest with him about his relationship with his father, Yoongi knew that whatever fate awaited him once he discovered just what, exactly, Jungkook had been doing all this time wasn't a very welcoming one.

"What are you thinking about?"

Snapping out of his reverie, Yoongi twisted to watch as a familiar boy crawled up to the perch he'd claimed on a little ledge that overlooked the spacious room set aside for training and weapons practice in the sprawling den. Mark nestled himself comfortably upon the stone slab beside Yoongi as if it were something he did every day, shooting the other boy one of his signature sweet smiles, which Yoongi found himself mirroring before he could process what he was doing.

"Nothing," Yoongi answered, adjusting his position as he looked back over the small clusters of soldiers milling about the space.

Mark gently knocked his shoulder into one of Yoongi's playfully. "Oh come on. You looked a million miles away." The bright smile dimmed only a fraction into a more serious tint as he focused his chocolate stare on Yoongi's. "You can tell me anything, you know."