Chapter Text
He isn’t born into riches.
He isn’t born into lavish furniture, gold-plated door handles and a chandelier over the dining table.
No, he is born into one torn-up mattress, empty beer bottles littering the floor and a cold draft in the winter. He is born to a father with a temper and a mother with an addiction and he can only be grateful that he’s mostly ignored. He is born into nights following his father at the ring, nights following his mother at the bar, nights wandering by himself on the streets. He is born into money won from bloody knuckles and broken noses, money lost on bottles of tequila and sweet chasers.
He is born in the city where none of the schools care about achievement, none of the police care about crime. None of the citizens mind being bought. A fog of apathy covers the skyline and nobody gives a damn.
He learns pretty quickly that there is a chain of command in this city and the people on top are a mixture of the people with the most in the bank and the people with the highest kill counts.
So he takes to those streets the moment he can. So he starts going by his last name. Ramsey. He’s scrawny and dirty and hasn’t hit his growth spurt yet but at fifteen he already knows exactly what this city holds and anyone who walks past the boy can see it has already worn him down, it has already hardened him.
Maybe he takes some questionable jobs. Maybe he figures out some sweet spots where people never feel his fingers in their pockets. Maybe he adopts a persona, a smirk, becomes comfortable with a gun, gets used to the idea of murder, of blood. But when you live in a city where the crime lord is like the mayor and the police hold up the donut-eating stereotypes, well. There’s not much else you can do.
So maybe Ramsey isn’t born into riches. But he sure as hell is born into crime.
And with crime comes money. With money comes power. With money comes control. With money comes everything he never had growing up.
So he buys his own apartment, a base of operations. So he starts making a name for himself, starts making his way up the ladder. It’s a slow process. It takes years. He lends himself out to anyone who’ll take him. He makes deals, breaks deals. He robs a corner shop for money on the side. He does a hit for a man in jail. He robs a bar. He spies on a woman’s husband to confirm that he’s cheating. He robs a jewellery store. He ditches the job offers, becomes his own boss, acquires hirelings and together they rob a bank.
The more crimes he commits, the more Ramsey makes a name for himself. People start coming to him - pledging their alliances, offering their ordnance, paying for their protection.
He’s almost twice the age he was when he started out now.
The money builds up. He buys a penthouse. And now when he looks down over the city, he sees the territory and wealth he is desperate to claim. He sees opportunity. He wasn’t born into these riches, he fought his way up here and boy is it paying off. He’s the kingpin of this godforsaken place now.
.
When Ramsey stumbles across the boy, it’s an all too familiar sight.
The scrappy clothes. The half-empty backpack. The quick fingers. Maybe the boy reminds him too much of himself. Maybe he’s been alone in this business for too long. Maybe he needs somebody else to spend all the money on.
The boy robs him blind the first night but returns everything by the second.
It turns out the boy isn’t really a boy - he’s only eight years younger but he plays his youth like a trump card. He plays a lot of things like trump cards. It takes less than a week to figure out that the boy is a mesh of a hundred different personalities, a hundred different awful and amazing people. He wears layers and layers of masks. It’s his survival tool. That has been his way of making it in the city. Nobody cares about you if you are not exactly what they need you to be.
Ramsey gives the boy a job under him as a thief. He lets him stay in a guest bedroom. He teaches him a new persona - golden boy. Sunglasses, crisp clothing, a sharp tongue and an even sharper smile. Golden chain and golden skin and golden pistol. The boy comes along on a heist and the first time Ramsey hears him laugh in the month he’s known him is when they’re standing back to back, guns blazing, enemy gang members falling one by one. And when it’s over and they turn to each other, chests heaving and hearts pumping, the boy has the purest smile on his face and Ramsey thinks god, he’s beautiful.
The masks start to fall after that.
The boy joins him now for late night video games. Shares stories of his childhood over dinner. He brings home stolen gifts like a cat bringing home a kill. He’s not shy to let himself be fussed over after a knife fight leaves him with a black eye and a shallow gash. He giggles at photos of puppies, cries during sad movies and suddenly he is always by Ramsey’s side. Whether it be sitting next to him at breakfast, singing in the passenger seat during a stakeout, right next to him and ready to spring into action if the deal goes wrong, carrying him away from the gunfight the time he gets shot, falling asleep on his shoulder as they lie on the couch.
Somewhere along the line, Ramsey falls in love with the boy.
And it would be all sunshine and roses if falling in love didn’t mean knowing too much in their world.
One wrong move, one wrong kiss, sends everything spiralling out of control and it all happens so fast, the boy slipping away between Ramsey’s fingers. He can’t do anything but watch helplessly as the only person he’s ever trusted, the only person he’s ever loved, withdraws and snatches himself away so suddenly that it feels as if the sun has died.
Because the boy is not a perfect person, no matter how much Ramsey has viewed him as one. The boy still has trust issues. He’s flighty. He’s volatile.
He’s impulsive.
.
oh, little midas.
.
Ramsey wasn’t born into riches. But he bleeds out on the thousand dollar rug in his penthouse apartment, a chandelier above him and a smoking gun beside him.