Work Text:
Sebastian was not stupid.
He wasn’t.
He could understand what was being taught to him, even if it took him a little longer than the other students. Maybe it took him a little bit longer to figure out the words that he was supposed to be saying because he grew up in a household that spoke more than one language. Maybe it was hard for him to connect the logic between two things because everyone in his house was so much better at it than he was.
But he wasn’t stupid.
When the people in his orchestra group teased him for his scores on tests, it frustrated him to the point of tears, because he wasn’t stupid.
When he got his grades back for a failed test, he’d bring it home and stare at it and cry, because he wasn’t stupid.
When his father would praise him for all the things he did know, he would smile and nod his head, because he wasn’t stupid.
He needed to do something about his grades, though. If he failed a few more classes, he would be held back a year, and that would be another year before he could go to the conservatory he’d always dreamed of going to, something he really didn’t want to miss out on.
His father came up with a brilliant (as always) idea.
“What if,” Gregory had suggested with a smile, “you ask your teacher if she’ll let you conduct if you get an A on your next test?”
“I-I don’t know if I can do that, the test is coming up really fast and I’m still having trouble with-”
Gregory took Sebastian’s hands into his own. “Don’t worry. I can help you with the math. I know you know how to do it, just like I know you know how to conduct, because you’ve been working very hard at it. The math you just need to approach from a different angle. Turn it on its head. What works for another student might not work for you and that’s okay, so long as you give yourself enough time to figure out what works. Does that make sense?”
Sebastian nodded his head, letting the tears of gratitude fall from his eyes. Gregory wiped them away gently and offered him a chocolate chip cookie, which he gladly accepted.
“Is Miles going to be over? He’s usually pretty good at math.”
“He’s visiting Wednesday and your test is Friday, so you can’t rely on him entirely to help.” Gregory explained.
“And Franziska?”
“She’s busy as well. It’s just you and I, Sebastian, and I know we can do this together.”
“Yeah. Yeah! We can do this together. I can do this.”
Gregory pulled him into a hug, ruffling his hair. “Of course you can. Now let’s get going.”
It was so much harder than it should have been. When his father told him how to do it he could do it, but he didn’t understand why it worked that way. When he tried to visualize it, it didn’t work. Neither of them could come up with anything music-related that worked well enough to make it magically make sense, and so they simply had to work at it all week until he could remember consistently how to do it.
Alongside his math class were various other classes that were all struggles, with an English class making allegories out of things that he didn’t quite catch the alternate meanings of, and with his economy class also going entirely over his head, but at least he was afloat in those classes. Music was his only respite.
When he proposed the idea to his teacher he was afraid she was going to laugh at him, but instead she thought it was a charming idea. She asked the permission of the rest of the class when they were in class the next day and that’s when the laughing started, but interestingly none of them actually protested to the idea of being conducted by one of their fellow students.
Maybe they thought that their idiot classmate wouldn’t know what he was doing and they could all have a good laugh about it. Maybe they hadn’t quite heard the suggestion or didn’t understand precisely what was going on. It didn’t matter.
Sebastian was going to be able to conduct, he just knew it.
He was going to pass the test.
The next Tuesday, when Sebastian got his test back, he immediately started crying at the grade he’d received. He wanted to run outside the classroom and call his father, but he knew that the older man would probably still be teaching and wouldn’t want an interruption.
No, actually, this was more important.
“Can I?” Sebastian gestured towards the door. The teacher, noticing that he was crying, immediately nodded affirmation and let Sebastian leave. He pulled his phone from his pocket with shaky hands and called, waiting impatiently as the phone rang.
“Sebastian? Is everything okay?”
He couldn’t even get the words out. “P-P, Pops! Pops! Guess what I got on my test! I got a 95!” He sobbed loudly, going into the bathroom so that at least he wouldn’t be interrupting the other students.
“ A 95? Oh my God, Sebastian, I’m so proud of you! I knew you could do it! Oh, I wish I could see you right now and give you the biggest hug, you’re amazing! We’re going out for dinner tonight. Don’t let me forget. Don’t let me come home late. This is so important, Sebastian. You are so, so smart. I love you so much.”
“I love you too, Pops.” Sebastian managed after several gasping sobs. “Thank you so much.”
“I still am in class, though. My students probably think I’m crazy. Bye, Seb. I love you to the moon and back.”
“Bye, Pops.” He sniffled, wiping away his tears as they came. He was crying at a more acceptable rate now as he gathered the test into his arms, staring at the grade in disbelief as he walked back into the classroom to deal with the horrendous math class. He could hardly wait for the bell to ring and send him off to his next class, down the hallway to the Orchestra Hall, to sit down in his favorite chair with his favorite teacher in his favorite class of the day, and to tell her the excellent news.
While he waited, he even calculated how much his grade would go up by. The boost to his test score would bring him up an entire letter grade, a full ten points. He had gone from a failing grade to almost a B in the course of one test.
He half-skipped, half-ran to his next class, test in hand.
“Ms. Kestrel! Ms. Kestrel! Look what I got!” He demanded, shoving the test into her face. She looked it over and her face lit up with pride as she smiled and pulled him into a one-armed hug.
“End of class today, I’m going to let you conduct. Don’t let me forget. I expect you to do a fantastic job, and I know you won’t let me down.”
Sebastian grinned from ear to ear as he heard that, setting his backpack down and running to go grab his violin and bring it back to his position. As the rest of the class filled in, he knew that even if they made jabs at him today, nothing would be able to pierce through the joy he was holding on to right now.
He had gotten a 95.
On a math test.
He was probably the smartest kid in the room. Had any of them gotten a 95 on a math test? Probably not. And even if they had, they wouldn’t care quite as much as he did.
He took a few deep breaths to calm down before the teacher started their first practice piece, if only to stop his hands from shaking.
Everything was in his breath. Everything was in his body. He knew what he had to do and he knew that he could do it because he’d practiced it a hundred, a thousand, a million times over. He’d conducted to a metronome so frequently that he was willing to bet money that some of his siblings wanted to take and hide his metronome from him.
He could do this. Of course he could. He’d spent hours watching conductors, learning everything he could about the way they did things, sitting, fascinated, by the way they moved their bodies, the way the music moved through them and moved them, everything about them.
He’d known from an early age, from the first time he went to the symphony orchestra, that this was what he wanted to do.
And now, he had his first real chance to do it.
He was going to be exceptional.
He looked down at the sheet music in front of him and up at the orchestra watching him. All eyes were on him as he took a sharp breath in and lifted both of his arms, starting to move his hands in the way he’d seen it done so many times.
And then it started.
The piece wasn’t all that familiar to him, they’d only been playing it for a few weeks and he hadn’t known it before they started, but by now he knew what it was supposed to sound like.
It was beautiful.
The students, who were looking for anything to be critical of, were watching his movements and copying them exactly. If he told any section to play louder, they played much louder than he wanted, and when he told them to go quieter, they would go so faint that they could barely be heard, but Sebastian didn’t care. He almost started laughing as he realized his deep connection to the players sitting in front of him.
Right hand keeping careful time and left hand issuing orders as he saw fit, he continued the piece with a look of absolute bliss about him. He now understood why people who were happy said that they were glowing. He felt like the slightest breeze could knock him over, or that he could fly if he simply tried. He was as giddy as a child who’d just woken up Christmas morning. It was like he’d taken a breath for the very first time.
This was living, and he was doing it.
By the time the song had come to a close, the kids in his class had realized just how much this meant to him. The grin on his face seemed to be infectious as they had started to follow what he was asking them to do without the malicious compliance from earlier.
He bowed at the end of the song to wild applause and cheers from his teacher, along with begrudging applause from his classmates.
The feeling was something he’d never forget, not from the first concert he’d conducted until his last.