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Some say there are two authorities in the world: money and power.
Others think that those are good and evil, God and the devil.
Yoongi doesn’t know which one was on his side, but one thing was for sure, it wasn’t God.
Money? Not yet, but that could potentially change very soon.
The devil? Some people would definitely say that.
Power? That was what everyone else would say.
He wouldn’t be here without power, six men who answered to him at his beck and call, and a note with a scribbled address in his pocket. He’d traveled far to get here, so it better be worth it.
As soon as he steps into the restaurant, he can sense that he’s hit the jackpot. The whole place reeks of gang activity, and Yoongi knows that scent so well he could identify it better than a police dog.
Taking out the poor bastards who’d been positioned to guard the place is the easiest part, he doesn’t even need to get his hands too dirty. He leaves his men to take care of the rest and goes to the back where, based on his knowledge of gang leaders who think too much of themselves, a duffle bag is stuffed in a closet. Inside is the money Yoongi had been promised for a job that he’d done weeks ago. Whoever thought they could get away with scamming him was well up their high horse and in need of a reality check, one that Yoongi is more than willing to provide them with. No matter how far they fly, his reach goes farther.
He sees one of the bastards calling the police, which was perfectly fine by him. Exactly what he wants.
That would bring the power he wants right to him.
Except he doesn’t see him there when the police car pulls up.
If the fucker thought Yoongi was going to let someone put him in a police car and bring him to him like that then he’s mistaken. Min Yoongi doesn’t let outsiders interfere in personal business.
That, however, leaves him with only one option, he has to run. Not that he can’t, he would be damned if he was a gangster who couldn’t trust his own legs, but it will be a close chase. With no other option, though, he takes off, marking all the side streets he can make a swift escape from and get lost in the crowd. Street vendors poking their heads over their stands to see what was causing the commotion, police sirens wailing, anxious slamming of car doors, glass shattering from the windows over his head blast in his ears and flash before his eyes, but his gaze only stays in front of him
He doesn’t make it far before some idiot on a bike pulls up in front of him, forcing his heels to dig into the gravel desperately to keep him from tipping over and falling right into the person’s clutches.
He’s about to bypass them, possibly throw them off their bike and let them become an obstacle for the police officers when a voice addresses him.
“Yoongi-hyung, get up.”
The familiar voice sends a shudder through his body, and he looks up to get an actual look at the bike rider, only to be met with the rougher, more mature face of autumn breeze during reckless teenage years and tangled school uniforms in dark hideouts.
He leaves pleasantries up for later, because he could never not listen to this person, and climbs onto the back of the bike where an extra saddle seems to be waiting for him. He wraps his arms around the driver’s waist, hoisting the duffel bag with his money up first, and then his companion takes off, riding the bike through the crowded streets like there’s an engine on it, like he himself is the fuel that will carry him away back to their youth, to polluted dirty streets that don’t seem half as bad when they’re together, and ink smudging their hands as they scribble away for hours at endless homework sheets.
Min Yoongi doesn’t trust, but he doesn’t need to look back or check where they’re going to know he will take him to safety.
—
At the age of seventeen, far from home by choice, Yoongi doesn’t have much to keep him company other than the second-hand scooter that might break down on him any day in the middle of a shift and the school uniform he’s kept so he can trick restaurant owners into thinking he’s a student so they can give him discounts on his lunches.
Cruel, but as a runaway in hiding, he can’t register his actual name to any school, not that he cares too much about returning to one anyway. He’d taught himself how to drive the scooter he bought with his savings, and after he survived the countless attempts, he’d headed to the best hiding place he knew of, the biggest city in his country.
He’s not looking for Seoul’s glitz and glamour, so the slums fit his needs just fine. He works every evening to pay for a shabby little apartment away from scarred faces, constant looks over his shoulder, and chills even in the middle of winter. In the mornings, he explores the gutters, and if he has enough money for gas, he drives his scooter to every corner of the city.
It’s on one of those mornings that he meets Namjoon, sees him standing on the side of the road next to a bike with a busted tire, looking like the kind of kid he should let fend for themself, in his pressed uniform, tidy book bag and combed hair. Yet, he stops by his side and remarks, “You won’t go far on that.”
The boy stares at him like he wants him to disappear, and it tugs at Yoongi’s sentiments a little. He knows those looks, but this boy’s eyes hold no real malice, and, somehow, that feels special to him.
He gestures to the back of his scooter. “Come on, hop on,” he tells the boy.
“Nice try,” the boy replies, standing all tall and proper like he’s defeated a crime lord with those two words.
“Seriously, how threatening do I look?” Yoongi rolls his eyes, “Do you want to be marked absent and try to blow up your tire by yourself, or let me take care of it while you get to school on time?”
Who knows what possesses the boy to trust him, but he hops onto Yoongi’s scooter, eyeing him suspiciously even as he gives him directions to his school.
As he drives to the nicer parts of town, the occasional flowery garden coming into view and the stench of pollution giving way to freshly mown grass, the sun shining on their faces, Yoongi feels the boy lean closer and closer to him, closing the distance until he’s pressed against his back, and he can feel the rhythm of his heartbeat.
He feels connected to something real for the first time at that moment.
It becomes a routine after that for them, he picks Namjoon up every morning, and they exchange minimal words while Yoongi whirrs them off on his blue scooter into the other dimension of Seoul and back hours later, as soon as Namjoon is let off.
Slowly, Namjoon pressed himself closer and closer to him, his hands hold onto Yoongi’s arms to steady him, then hold onto his waist lightly, then tighter, and tighter, until they feel like an embrace.
—
“Didn’t think I would ever see you in the driver’s seat, Namjoon-ah,” Yoongi comments when they’re far enough for conversation to be possible again.
“I always felt like you would get yourself in trouble someday,” Namjoon answers, “Someone was gonna have to save your ass.”
“I don’t need saving,” Yoongi counters, looking at the tattoo on the back of his hand, where the gang symbol now sits where Namjoon used to write numbers he had to remember years ago.
“Yet here I am,” Namjoon insists.
He rides his bike like he knows this city, even though Yoongi could have sworn he would have no reason to ever come here. At least, that was the case years ago. Time changes people. Yoongi doesn’t drive helpless kids to school anymore, so why would Namjoon be any different?
In his mind, Namjoon had always been someone untainted.
That was why he’d left in the end.
He has Namjoon drop him off at a gang safehouse, where he will reunite with the rest of the men he left at the restaurant.
“Don’t be a stranger again,” Namjoon tells him, “My number is still the same, you know.”
“You’re better off changing it, Namjoon-ah,” Yoongi answers, “We’re not the same people anymore.”
“We’re more similar than you think, hyung,” Namjoon says.
Yoongi ignores him and turns around. “I don’t want to step away in silence again,” he tells him, “Let’s get a proper goodbye and leave this behind us.”
When he turns again, it’s Namjoon who has vanished into thin air.
—
Namjoon is a year younger than him, so Yoongi offers to help him with his homework, using all he remembers from his last year at school. The boy asks him why he doesn’t go back. Yoongi doesn’t answer.
They meet at abandoned lots and containers because they both know Namjoon’s parents won’t appreciate having someone like Yoongi in their home, and Namjoon tells them he goes to a study room near school. In the winter, when it gets colder, they lie close to each other and write side by side. Occasionally, they reach over each other’s arms and add something to what the other is doing. Sometimes, Namjoon writes calculations on Yoongi’s hands, or notes long numbers he doesn’t want to forget. Yoongi lets him.
“Did you run away?” Namjoon asks one day, when the first warm breeze of spring has peeled them apart from one another again.
Yoongi tries to ignore him again, like he does every other time, but now, Namjoon persists.
“I’m not stupid,” the boy presses, “You’re hiding, I can tell.”
“Don’t let your imagination run too wild,” Yoongi scolds him, a cold stone lodging in his chest at the thought he might be too obvious, that the underworld may have seen that he has secrets and seek out to sell them to the highest bidder.
He doesn’t want to tell Namjoon anything.
At the same time, he wants to tell him everything.
“I ran away,” he says, settling for a middle ground, “And just don’t feel like studying again.”
For a bit, that’s all there is to it.
Then, Namjoon shifts to sit closer to him again, like he knows his warmth is Yoongi’s kryptonite. He goes back to the essay he’s writing, not looking at him.
“Why did you leave?” he asks a few beats later, out of the blue.
“Family issues,” Yoongi says nonchalantly, “In some years it will probably seem silly.”
—
The confrontation Yoongi has been waiting for isn’t as soon as he’d calculated, but here he is, standing in front of the one he’d been running from all these years, hands bound and hair dripping water, lungs pulling in desperate breaths as rough hands press into his shoulders.
“Aren’t you bored yet?” he asks.
“Not in the slightest,” the figure in front of him answers with a smile. It makes the skin around his scar crease strangely.
Yoongi is pushed underwater again, and when he comes back up, his expression is that of anticipation. He’s not sure if he’s waiting for him to break somehow or if he’s just entertaining himself by holding Yoongi’s life in his hands like that. Yoongi finds it pathetic. He doesn’t even have the guts to hold him long enough to push him down himself.
Fucking stupid.
If he knew how easily others’ hands can be bought, he wouldn’t let anyone do his jobs for him.
Middlemen are a hassle, especially in such personal business. When it runs this deep, it can’t leave those involved.
“We always knew only one of us would remain eventually,” the scarred man tells Yoongi.
“And you think that will be you?” Yoongi replies with a laugh.
The man’s face tightens. “You’ve known all these years what was coming,” he sneers, “That’s why you ran back then, brother dear.”
“Of course I knew,” Yoongi tells him, “That’s why I left, so you could have a little glory before I finished you the proper way.”
His brother’s eyes darken.
“Really, a policeman?” Yoongi scoffs, “After everything, a bit ironic, isn’t it? A little too on the nose.”
“I disagree,” the man replies, “I’m cleaning up the weeds of society. One by one.” He fixes him with a dark gaze as he says that, taking him back to all those years ago, the moments before Yoongi had fled.
With that, Yoongi is pushed down again, but this time, he’s done. He doesn’t feel like entertaining any longer. He feels like he’s playing with his own food.
He reaches to the bottom of the water and grabs metal.
When he’s brought up again, he aims a gun at his brother.
—
Yoongi slips into the world of crime as easily as he slips his hand into Namjoon’s.
The more he works, the higher he gets, and as he climbs the bloody ladder, he knows that this is somewhere he can’t let Namjoon accompany him.
He leaves him sleeping one night, when they’d stayed up late writing a book analysis.
The first step away feels like he’s severing the hand that held Namjoon’s, leaving their fingers intertwined forever, and cutting a piece of him off.
—
He’s the first one Yoongi calls when he walks away, when his brother lies dead in front of those who used to be his men. He holds his phone in one hand and a black suit jacket in the other.
“Let me take you out,” he says, “We can actually get words out this time.”
“Who’s going to drive this time?” is all Namjoon asks, and Yoongi chuckles.
“That scooter is buried in a dump by now,” he replies, “Unless you want me to carry you.”
“Where can I find you?” Namjoon asks.
They meet at the same restaurant they reunited at, which happens to not be far from where Yoongi ended his past. Fate has a strange way of weaving the web of life sometimes.
When Namjoon arrives, he gives Yoongi a smile, but his eyes widen when he takes a closer look at him.
“Hyung, what’s that on your jacket?” he asks.
Yoongi looks down, finding his jacket stained with blood.
He shrugs it off and pulls his brother’s police jacket on in its place. He lets the dirty piece of clothing fall to the floor.
“Is this more acceptable for our date?” he asks Namjoon.
The man’s eyes light up the same all these years later.
They order food and soju, and Yoongi pours for both of them, the fabric around him filling him with the euphoria of victory.
“He’s dead then,” Namjoon says suddenly, no question in his voice.
Yoongi freezes.
He stares at the man in front of him, who looks impassive about what he’s just implied, what he’s just done to Yoongi. Yoongi’s mind rushes to try and fill gaps, to figure out what Namjoon means, what Namjoon knows .
“The one you’ve been chasing,” Namjoon continues, “Since you were pretending to be hiding in Seoul.”
“Namjoon,” Yoongi hisses, “Whatever you’ve heard, you have to forget it now. I can’t bring you into this world.”
To his surprise, Namjoon laughs. “You bring me into this?” he asks, “Hyung, the only reason you ever found the underground was me.”
“What are you talking about?” Yoongi seethes, overcome with an emotion he hasn't known much of: fear.
“Those numbers,” Namjoon tells him, “That I would write on your hands. They were codes we used to mark those under our protection, who can’t be touched. With my rank back then, no one would have dared to lift a finger against you. Why do you think they welcomed you so well when you started seeking them out? Why they eventually let you start your own gang so easily?”
Pieces fall together and form a picture, one Yoongi doesn’t think he ever could have prepared himself for.
“And why go so back?” Namjoon continues, “Even now, did you really think that by coincidence you and that man ended up in the same place at the same time? When I knew someone was a danger to you, I dug to find them. I was going to let you take them down once and for all.”
Silence envelops them.
Such a discovery should mean the end for Yoongi. If not that, it should at least scare him, that someone he’d thought he knew was keeping so much from him.
But, when a soft breeze blows through the restaurant’s window and hits his skin, he doesn’t feel cold.
“I should thank you then,” is what he says.
Namjoon smiles at him, a face he recognises. “Just don’t walk away from our date,” he tells him, “Say goodbye if you need to leave. You’re not easy to track down.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary this time,” Yoongi assures him, and it seems like something lifts off of Namjoon then. He seems lighter, younger, as close to the boy in Yoongi’s memories as he can get after all these years.
“Let’s drink to that then,” he decides.
Yoongi knocks back his glass and lets the soju fall down his throat. He drinks to spring breezes, to the coming warmth, this time one that will keep Namjoon close to him.
“What was he?” Namjoon asks later, when they’re in the middle of their food.
“Brother,” Yoongi confesses.
Namjoon hums. “Twins?” he asks, “Long rivalry?”
“We always knew that only one of us would make it to the end,” Yoongi replies.
“The most powerful one will remain standing,” Namjoon muses.
Yoongi isn’t sure how correct that is. Each of them was powerful in their own way, ruling their area in their way. This was deeper than that, so much so that he doesn’t think anyone other than them will ever understand.
Still, he lets Namjoon indulge in the story no one else has heard before, and sees as he imagines two brothers, bound by blood, waiting to see the mirror of their veins spill.
He thinks that maybe, someday, he will tell him about the third one too.