You Are My Other Half

Part 4

Harry was a sixth form English teacher at the boarding academy just outside the city. When he started, it was like a dream come true and, on most days, he truly loved his job. But, being an openly-gay male teacher in an all-boys prep school practically invited the little shits to torture him.

Normally the little delinquents kept their hijinks on a pretty basic level – throwing paper at him while his back was turned or making crude jokes at his expense in class. Today, however, Harry was sure they were trying to give him an actual heart attack.

During second period, two blokes on the soccer team got into a fight over some girl the both shagged, and Harry almost got punched in face trying to pull them a part. In fairness, he really had no business getting between the two, but he figured, as the teacher, is was part of his job description.

Then, during lunch, he was walking towards the table he normally sat at with the other staff members during his lunch duty when a fifth form boy "accidentally" tripped and spilled both of their lunches down the front of him. The little bastard could barely contain his laughter as he offered a half-hearted apology to Harry. Thankfully, the other teachers jumped to his aid and helped him get cleaned up. They also made sure the little twat that decorated his sweater with mystery meat had a nice chat with the headmaster.

As his sixth period students trudged into the classroom, he could barely contain his excitement to get home. He had had to walk around the rest of the day with a Picasso of food stains on his jumper, and he was just ready to celebrate his special day with Zayn.

A little while later, Harry was wrapping up his lecture on the importance of paying attention to grammar, but, just as he was finishing a terrible comma-related pun, he caught a whiff of something... burning?

He sincerely hoped that he had actually fallenand struck his head at lunch, and that this was some trauma-inducedhallucination...sadly, that was not the case. A few moments later, Harry lockedeyes with the school's resident bad boy, who was currently wearing thetell-tale smile of a successful delinquent. Then Harry spotted the miniaturewildfire he had started in the waste basket next to him.     

*********************

The rest of the afternoon was such a blur. It had felt like the longest three hours of his life, but, at the same time, Harry felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. Watching from above as the fire alarms went off and all the students fled from the room. Watching as the headmaster scolded Luke for setting fire to a classroom. Cringing as the headmaster also laid into Harry for not keeping a better watch over "the impressionable young minds he's been entrusted with."

When it was all over with, Harry felt completely numb. He knew he was lucky to still have a job, and even luckier to have Zayn waiting for him at home. But it wasn't until he was in Zayn's arms that he finally felt like he was back in his body and like the world made sense again.