These Inconvenient Fireworks (original story on ao3 by complemtattoos)

two

Classes started to get into the rhythm now that everyone took a few weeks to get used to the new people and the new schedules. He could hear Niall tuning his instruments as he passed in front of the music room, already preparing for his fall concert, and Zayn kept talking about the study he was doing on Wordsworth, which was almost worse than when he didn't shut up the mouth to speak of Liam. Even Harry was starting to take the exercises with the boys on the team seriously, although he still had time to have lunch with the others every day.

For his part, Louis had chosen Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' to work on, thinking that it would probably be better to get students to loosen up with a comedy rather than something more complicated. He had already handed over the brochures and the auditions were due next month. Until then, however, he still had his classes to focus. His teaching strategy was to start the year with movement, making fun plays and making everyone loosen up a little, making the children want to show up in their classes and then gradually become interested in scripts and writing. He had made the mistake of trying to open the story by saying the concepts about theater in his first year as a teacher and thought he was going to kill himself the moment he realized that everyone was dozing off while talking about Othello.

At that time, he was sitting at his desk again, supervising one of his classes while the students tried to do an impromptu group exercise. It was hilarious, actually. The kids were still learning and taking a lot of awkward pauses with panicked expressions, but they were really trying.

So far it was Stuart Standhill, imitating a drunken wildebeest, who had been the best among the others. He had gotten along incredibly well with that game, which Louis had already expected. He had worked with Stuart on his pieces before. The boy had a natural gift for theater and was excellently funny at the right time. However, this was not what Louis was observing.

Louis watched him crawl across the floor, with his hands above his head and stretching until he laughed like a jester from his colleagues. He smiled a little to himself, but it was almost painful to watch, because Louis knew. He knew and seemed to be a spectator standing in his own memories.

He remembered two years ago, when he found Zayn after school looking bruised and said he had to separate a fight from the boys in the second floor room and how much poor Stuart Standhill had been beaten by two boys of his year. He remembered the way the boy had begged not to report him to the board, and Louis understood that very well. He remembered how much he needed to be normal and he knew very well how much people made you a punching bag at that age.

He watched Stuart through the corridors and his various phase changes since then, observing the way he was close to his friends and the way he was in his classes. He was quieter when he was younger, but in recent years he has become a new person, always telling jokes, making faces and being electric all the time. Louis knew what that meant perfectly, as he spent most of his adolescence hiding behind that line of defense. He remembered the restless and constant energy, the effort he had to get attention or want to be funny so that no one would notice how different he was. You only have an identity at that age and you can't 'be gay' if you're already 'the clown in the gang'.

Stuart was doing his best, really. He had a girlfriend from time to time or a close friend who suddenly found himself holding his hand through the halls and kissing her near his closet. However, most of the time, Louis was able to say what everyone kind of already knew. The girls treated him just as another of their friends, the only one who knows six different ways to make the uniform look less horrible or who knew how to touch up his hair in the spring musical before going to check out the microphones. The boys seemed half divided, half fascinated by the brilliance of his personality and half suspicious of something they would never say out loud, or at least not in front of him. Louis knew that Stuart pretended not to think about it and pretended that he didn't know about himself,