Don't Ask Don't Tell

Chapter 16: Checkmate fuckers.

The metro station was busy at this time of day. Yoongi thanked the very god he was sure had forsaken him that he'd been wearing black since unless someone was creepily staring, they wouldn't notice the blood on his shirt. He'd wiped his face off earlier, and now he was just hoping for a peaceful ride home.
Yoongi took stock of what he had left. Jihoon's college fund was more than enough, and nobody could touch that unless they pried the passcode to Yoongi's bank account out of his cold, dead hands. He'd murdered two people. He'd lost his closest friend. His father was dying. His mother couldn't hold down a job. And in three days, he'd be participating in a bank robbery.
Everything was starting to look just a little bit fucked. Just a hue of fucked. A mere shade.
More like hugely, massively, irrevocably fucked, but Yoongi paid it no attention. If he thought about how bad things were, then he'd likely fuck it up even worse.
Yoongi got elbowed in the side of the head, and the suited asshole responsible didn't even acknowledge it. That was fine. Yoongi listened to the chatter and the moving of the rail car, until he got off at his stop, walked the blocks to his house, walked in, and went straight to bed.

"Yoongi? Can I talk to you after class?"
The teacher's voice barely broke through Yoongi's reverie. He looked up, his teacher looking very concerned. Yoongi faked a smile.
"Of course. Can I ask what about?"
"Our test. It's important."
"I see."
Yoongi assumed he had outdone everyone again like he was used to doing. Maybe that was a bit of a stretch since he hadn't studied and he knew he hadn't done as well as he could have.
Namjoon raised an eyebrow at him. He'd heard; they'd chosen to sit together, after all. Namjoon's face was finally beginning to look normal again, and Yoongi didn't feel guilty every time he looked at it.
"What do you think the teacher wants?" Namjoon asked him. Yoongi peered at the bright red grade above Namjoon's neatly written name. 85%. Not his best work, but pretty good.
"I don't know," Yoongi answered. He hadn't gotten his paper back. He didn't want to think about why.
Class ended too soon. Yoongi ventured up to the teacher's desk like he was on a death march.
"You wanted to talk to me, sir?"
"I did, yes. About your grade."
"What about it?"
"Yoongi, there's not an easy way to tell you this."
Yoongi held his breath.
"Out of a possible 56, you didn't get a single question right."
"What?"
"You failed. I couldn't even find a way to give you part marks, because the work you wrote down was also entirely wrong."
"You... you can't be serious." Yoongi said. He felt like his brain was about to explode. He failed? Yoongi had never failed in his entire life. He'd never gotten so much as a near-fail. He'd always excelled in academia.
"I wish I wasn't serious. Your grade for this was zero."
"Was?"
"I'm more than willing to let you retake this since you're one of my best students, if not my best. This is a one-time offer though, and I'm going to have to be less lenient if you do poorly on this test again."
"I won't. Thank you."
Yoongi hurried out, running face-first into Namjoon's shoulder. Of course. Of course, Namjoon would be nosy enough to eavesdrop. Yoongi should have known.
"You... failed?"
"Apparently."
"How did you-"
"None of your business. Why do you even still want to talk to me? Why the fuck does it matter?"
Namjoon stepped back, and Yoongi stormed off.

Yoongi stared at the textbook in front of him. Math. he could do math. Math was easy. Wasn't it? It was supposed to be. Yoongi had always found it one of his easier subjects. He hated it, but it wasn't difficult. Yoongi stared at the numbers before him. The last thing he remembered doing was geometry. Plane geometry was fucking annoying, but that was twenty pages behind what was written on his study guide. He had managed to get behind an entire unit. How was that even possible? None of this seemed to make any sense at all. It should have made sense, since he had done this exact sort of thing before, more than once, and it worked. Trigonometry. Triangles. What could be simpler?
Apparently, absolutely fucking everything.
Yoongi sighed, planting his face firmly between the pages of his textbook. He'd never been faced with something he couldn't do before. The stress was making his head ache.
Yoongi could hear a small pattering of footsteps outside his door. Jihoon. It was late, what was Jihoon doing up? He should be asleep, what normal eight-year-old is awake at 11 pm on a school night?
Jihoon pressed his door open, and Yoongi lifted his head to see what he wanted.
"Yoongi?"
"What?"
Jihoon grabbed onto his sleeve. He looked like he'd been crying, and Yoongi didn't like seeing that.
"Bad dream?" Yoongi asked. Jihoon nodded and sniffled. Yoongi lifted Jihoon up onto his lap and held him close. Jihoon buried his face in Yoongi's chest. Jihoon hadn't done that since he was five.
Yoongi felt his heart ache. He'd had some kind of shitty times with Jihoon when they were younger, because Jihoon was the baby and he got more attention, That sibling rivalry didn't mean anything now, obviously. Jihoon was the reason Yoongi had completely broken the law for the last year and a half.
"It's alright, you're okay," Yoongi said, as softly as possible, running his fingers through Jihoon's messy hair.
"It was just a dream, you're alright."
"But," Jihoon stammered, wrapping his skinny arms around Yoongi's neck and holding on tightly. "I'm scared."
Me fucking too, kid. Yoongi thought but didn't say out loud. Yoongi thought that "scared" was probably the emotion he felt most in his entire life. His father, his grades, failure, losing Jihoon, going to jail, and now he had to worry about fucking dying before he even reached adulthood. I'm more scared than you'll ever know.
"It's okay. I'm here, I got you." Yoongi rubbed small circles into Jihoon's back. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise? Promise you'll stay?"Jihoon said, tearfully, muffled by the lapel of Yoongi's school uniform that he hadn't bothered changing out of yet.
"I promise."
"For forever?"
Jihoon looked up at him and Yoongi felt his heart snap straight in half. Wide, wet, innocent little eyes, full of hope.
"Forever. I promise."
Jihoon looked at him like a veal calf that had been lied to about its imminent slaughter.
Yoongi slept fitfully that night, Jihoon curled into his side, not letting him go. Yoongi wondered what kind of nightmare he'd had to make him this upset. Usually Jihoon never even hugged him, but now, all the sudden, Jihoon wouldn't let him go.
To be fair, Yoongi didn't want to.