Chapter Text
Hongjoong had always known he wasn’t meant for an ordinary life.
He was too sharp, too reckless, too unwilling to kneel. The city was rotten, its underbelly thick with old money and older blood debts, and Hongjoong carved his name into it like a curse.
The Crimson Tides were his creation - born in blood, raised in fire. He didn’t trust easily, didn’t believe in the concept of family after the things he’d seen. But then came Seonghwa.
Seonghwa, who walked into his life with storm grey eyes and a mind like a scalpel. The man could read a room faster than Hongjoong could empty a clip, and in time, he became Hongjoong’s right hand, the one person he trusted to cover his blind spots.
Seonghwa kept the peace. Or, more accurately, ensured their enemies died quietly.
Yunho was next. The boy genius with a crooked smile and a hackers fingers, pulling secrets out of servers and bank accounts as easily as others breathed. Hongjoong saw in him the same hunger, the need to make the world bend.
Yeosang and Mingi followed soon after - snipers, both of them. Yeosang, precise and cold as a winter morning, and Mingi, a barely-contained wildfire, his grin sharp as his aim.
San and Jongho were blunt force incarnate, fists and blades and breaking bones in alleyways when words failed.
And Wooyoung… Wooyoung was the wild card.
A face too pretty for his own good, a tongue sharp enough to cut. He could flirt his was past guards, into beds, and into the minds of their enemies before slipping away with the secrets they needed.
Eight of them. No one else. No outsiders.
Family.