You try to keep a straight face.
You really do.
This is going to be a serious story, you can tell, and you shouldn't be laughing.
It's just that...
It's just that Jin.
The utter drama and inflection in Jin's voice combined with the irresistibly comical widening of his eyes forces a snort of laughter out of you before you can stop it.
"Crap." You cover your mouth with your hand, holding back the laughter. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but...can you get any more cliche?"
Even though you thought it physically impossible, the man's eyes get even wider. Whether the offense is fake or genuine, you can't tell.
He's a good actor.
"Hey, I went easy on you. I could've gone for the 'long, long ago in a land far, far away' method, but I resisted," Jin says, his voice affronted enough that you can perceive the amusement leaking through it. Relieved, you let out another small giggle.
You slap your own hand. "Sorry again. I'll behave now, I promise."
After a tiny glance of doubt, Jin taps the end of his chopsticks on the table. "Well, if it makes it any less dramatic, Namjoon really did hate his life. He grew up here, in Seoul, and his father was a mid-ranking member of a group here. He handled low-level stuff, I think - maybe some minor drug deals, working the intimidation. Namjoon's father is a big man."
Ah. That just be where the towering leader got his impressive height.
Jin shakes his head, and you see in his eyes that he knows the depths of Namjoon's suffering. You make a mental note to inquire about his own past when you can, but redirect your train of thought to choo choo on by the information he's willingly giving now.
"So, he was a member?" you say, amusement gone as the idea settles in. "Of the gang, I mean?"
"Of course he was." The rice on the plate yields to the monolithic cut of Jin's chopsticks, his long fingers directing them like a puppeteer. "What else did he know? That was his life. That put food on the table. He was raised, very similarly to you, to fill a role in the organization his father was loyal to."
Like you?
Like that cold, sterile, isolated life you grew up in?
Looking at the man Namjoon is now, all settled on the outside but bursting through with hidden warmth and kindness, it's hard to believe that he was ever frozen into submission like you were. The underlying warmth of Namjoon's personality is the kind of deep affection and family bonds.
"Like you," Jin says again, "-but also not like you. Fundamentally, it was completely different."
"How so?" you ask.
Jin's fingers tighten around his chopsticks, sending grains of rice scattering along the plate with the sudden tension. "This isn't me trying to downplay what you went through, Y/N," he says quietly. "You have to understand that. But, while you might've been smothered and contained, at least you were comfortable. You had everything you needed in life, for survival: plenty of food, plenty of clothes, plenty of money."
Although your first reaction is to bristle, you force yourself to relax. He's right, and he told you that he's not out to put you down.
You were comfortable, as isolated and right-less as you were.
Never hungry, never needing.
"It's not the same as what we went through," Jin whispers. "What he went through, Y/N. Desperation and crime make a whole lot more sense when you're scrambling just to survive."'
...it never crossed your mind.
Once again, oblivion and your own special brand of selfishness have prevented you from thinking beyond your own problems to consider the possibilities of the extent of their situations.
"He became a member like it was a coming of age ceremony. As soon as he was old enough and smart enough to function beneficially within the group, they jumped at the chance to add him. But he was different from the rest."
You can only imagine why ambitious, young Namjoon would be seen as different. Gangs and criminals may be fairly smart, but they don't have vision or passion like Namjoon does. He must've stuck out like a sore thumb among the close-mindedness of the gang.
"Namjoon was too bright for them," Jin says wistfully, his eyes displaying the mental trip back to the past he's taking. "Always a new idea of how to do things better. Safer. More efficient. But the families have this tendency to stick to tradition like a lifeline."
"How long was he stuck there?" you ask, trying to calculate the years. All of them must've started so young, had their innocence taken so soon.
Maybe some of them never had any innocence at all.
They were born into a rotten world of corrupt morals and even more corrupt people. The Apocalypse chapter of American Horror Story doesn't have anything on the poison-filled, deteriorated tatters of childhood that the Bangtan Boys wore on the daily.
And all of that is only what you gather from knowing the in-detail pasts of a mere two out of seven.
The contents of Namjoon's and Hoseok's backgrounds combined with the hinted traumas from the rest of them suggest a bloody, unbelievably horrific overall theme of violence and poverty, physically as well as emotionally. They've been beaten and bruised until now, when their bodies and spirits have become so painfully unrecognizable from who they were that they've become someone else completely.
"He was stuck there," Jin says on a feather's breath, the vicious hostility in the tone speaking louder than his words, " -bound there, subjugated to the will of people who never saw him for the light that he was...until he met someone who saw. Someone who saw him."
You go still, watching the dark and light emotions flitting through Jin's velvet eyes. "He met you."
Jin leans back in his chair, settling his hands flat on the table. "Kim Namjoon's genius would have been sucked out of him if he stayed in that place. He had no outlet, no way to let his mind grow an develop; until he met another man who got sent to Seoul to learn the trade from the big city gangsters. I lived in a small province out in the country, my father wanted me to be more of a city gangster than a country gangster. I did sort of an internship with Namjoon' gang. We met, and for the first time, someone listened to the ideas that Namjoon had. Someone listened to his theories and helped him when he felt like his brain was going to explode from being so repressed."
It's like a fairy tail described in Jin's voice; a tale of two brothers destined by fate to meet at the worst point of their lives, to escape the gruesome hand they'd been dealt and create something better by the merit of their own will.
"You saved him." The softness of you voice is a physical manifest of the state of you heart; beating steady and warm at the story of Kim Namjoon and Kim Seokjin.
"He saved me, too. It wasn't a one-sided deal." Jin smiles a tiny smile that makes his bow-shaped lips pucker into a curve. "We saved each other. And we're still saving everyone that we can."
MinYoongi.
Kim Taehyung.
Jung Hoseok.
Park jimin.
Jeon Jungkook.
Even Wooseok and Mina can be added to that ever growing list of 'saving everyone that we can'.
At this point, even you.
They've created a family from dust, a life from the ashes of a burnt and blackened world. They've created a paradisaical world where souls ruptured beyond redemption can rest, a world of justice and safety and dignity and love.
A hideaway for the children of the dark world that exist in that unknown place, where the only witnesses of its existence are either victims or perpetrators in its ungodly embrace.
Jin and Namjoon, they escaped that; and one by one, they're dragging out anyone who sends up a plea from the dark depths, fighting tooth and nail as the black works to pull them back.
"It's all another reason for why we do what we do. You can't grow up like we did and live a normal life with a good conscience, but we also can't dive back in head first to the very thing we resent from growing up. So what do we do?" Pausing, the man lets his knuckles rap on the table with a decisive thump. "Be the middle men. We hover on the edge of criminal society, dance our way around in between the families and keep as many people safe as we can. It's not perfect, and it's not a job of peace and happiness. But it helps a lot more people than we would have helped by trying to lead a regular life."
With every hour you spend with these men, a job you originally thought of with horror is morphing into a twistedly noble feat.
"You're kind of like the Suicide Squad," you say thoughtfully. "Sending out criminals to stop the even bigger criminals."
A debate of morals and ethics, but effective nonetheless.
For the first time since he began to share his story, Jin's eyes crease and a laugh squeaks out of him. "In some ways, yeah. We like to think we're a little more messed up version of the Avengers."
That too.
By now, the afternoon is beginning to die down into early evening. The food on your plate is cold, almost untouched, but you aren't hungry anymore.
You're filled to the brim with pride for the man in front of you.
Said man sighs and stretches, rolling his broad shoulders beneath his shirt. "I need a shower," says Jin. His eyebrows raise with the stretch, bringing their obligatory double piercings with them.
Standing, you grab the dishes from the table and smile. "I'll clean up. You go ahead and shower."
Jin grins, clearly pleased with the offer. "Thanks, Y/N. I appreciate it."
In an instant the tall man is up and disappeared into the back of the house, just a flash of color and then nothing.
You gather up the dishes, carting them to the sink, and let your mind work to encompass the whole of what you've discovered today.
Each layer of mystery that you peel back from these men makes your heart deepen more, capable of holding more pride, more pain, more emotion than you even knew it could before.
If you're not careful, your heart will fill up and up and up with them until it can't hold any more.
If you're not careful, you could lose your heart completely.
[A/N]
Unedited
More updates on their way! I'll probably do a live stream on instagram later tonight if y'all have any questions, about writing, update schedules, or the plot! Be watching for it around 11:30 - 12:00 EST tonight!
My Instagram is @pocketbangtan
Thank you guys for your amazing patience!
❤️PB
P.S. IF ANYONE ELSE IS GOING TO THE FORT WORTH CONCERT ON SATURDAY, ppplllleeeaaasseee come say hi if you see me!😄❤️❤️