Work Text:
Beacon Hills High smelled faintly of new paint and cafeteria pizza, which was usually a warning sign that something had been “approved by administration” and therefore guaranteed to be overorganized, slightly chaotic, and emotionally exhausting in equal measure.
Today, however, there was something else layered into the air. Fabric dye. And the unmistakable scent of someone’s overly enthusiastic attempt at a “celebratory citrus diffuser” that had probably been plugged in since 6 a.m.
The hallway outside the gym was no longer just beige lockers and peeling school spirit posters. It had transformed into a riot of color: rainbow banners draped across railings, hand-painted signs taped unevenly to the walls, and paper chains that looked like half the art club had stayed up all night with glue sticks and snacks.
At the center of it all stood Coach Finstock.
Coach Finstock had a clipboard in one hand, a whistle around his neck, and a rainbow lei that looked aggressively out of place against his usual “perpetually stressed gym/economics teacher/lacrosse coach” aesthetic.
He squinted at the decorations like they had personally insulted him. “Okay,” he muttered to no one in particular, “I said ‘pride theme,’ not ‘Lisa Frank exploded in the gym.’ But honestly? Not mad. Just… mildly concerned for structural integrity.”
Behind him, a group of students wrestled with a banner that read BE PROUD BE LOUD BE YOU in glittery letters that kept shedding onto the floor like colorful dandruff.
“Coach!” someone called from the bleachers. “Where do we put the giant rainbow inflatable dolphin?”
Finstock didn’t even look up. “If it can fit through the gym doors, it belongs in the gym. That’s my official policy on dolphins and life decisions.”
A cheer went up, mostly because nobody had a better idea.
By the time the first class was dismissed, the gym had fully committed to its transformation.
The basketball hoops were wrapped in rainbow fabric. The bleachers were covered in mismatched pride flags from every possible corner of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Even the scoreboard had been hacked—digitally updated to read:
TODAY: BEING AUTHENTIC — GYM 100, INSECURITY 0
Coach Finstock stood beneath it, arms crossed, surveying his kingdom of chaos.
“You know,” he said as Stiles Stilinski walked past carrying a suspiciously large box of cupcakes, “when I agreed to let the student council ‘take the lead,’ I assumed I’d still recognize my own gym. Foolish of me.”
Stiles grinned. “You love it.”
“I tolerate it with aggressive confusion,” Finstock corrected immediately. “There’s a difference.”
From across the gym, Lydia Martin was directing a group setting up a photo booth. Derek Hale leaned against the wall nearby, looking like he’d been convinced to attend through sheer exhaustion and Stiles-related persistence. Scott McCall was attempting to help with a balloon arch, which mostly involved him apologizing to latex for every balloon he accidentally popped.
And somewhere near the bleachers, Isaac Lahey and River Ronan were arranging art pieces, painted canvases of abstract color fields that somehow managed to feel like emotions had been translated into brushstrokes.
Finstock watched them all with an expression that was half confusion, half reluctant pride. “You know,” he called out suddenly, raising his voice, “I went to college in the eighties. We had two pride flags back then: one was ‘don’t ask,’ and the other was ‘don’t tell.’ This is… considerably more festive.”
River looked up from a canvas, smirking slightly. “We’ve improved since then.”
“Debatable,” Finstock said. “But visually? Sure.”
The gym doors opened again, and a wave of students poured in.
For a moment, everything shifted. Noise rose. Laughter echoed. Shoes squeaked against polished floors now decorated with temporary rainbow decals. Someone had already started a playlist that included a suspicious amount of pop music and exactly one dramatic ballad that made no sense in context but was being emotionally respected regardless.
Finstock blew his whistle once. The entire gym somehow quieted. He blinked. “…Huh. Didn’t expect that to work.”
He adjusted the whistle, then pointed vaguely toward the center of the gym. “Alright, listen up. I don’t do speeches. You all know this. Last time I tried, I compared algebra to a torn ACL and the principal made me attend a seminar called ‘Metaphors You Should Never Use in Educational Settings.’”
A few students laughed. Finstock sighed. “But I was told I should say something for this whole… situation.”
He gestured vaguely at the rainbow explosion around them. “So here it is. Short version.”
He paused, “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care who you love. I don’t care how you show up in this world, as long as you show up as yourself and don’t try to set my gym on fire. We had an incident last year. You know who you are.”
A couple of students exchanged guilty looks.
Finstock continued, unfazed. “This school has a long history of people pretending to be something they’re not. Athletes pretending they’re fine when they’re injured. Students pretending they understand calculus. Teachers pretending they know how to use smartboards.”
That got a bigger laugh. “So if today is about anything,” he said, voice steadying just slightly, “it’s about dropping the act. Just a little. Or a lot. Depends on how dramatic you are.”
He glanced down at his clipboard. “…Also, whoever ordered forty-seven rainbow cupcakes, I respect your ambition, but I fear your digestive consequences.”
More laughter.
He nodded once, like that was enough sentimentality for a lifetime. “Alright. That’s it. Go be… colorful. Or whatever.”
He blew the whistle again, immediately regretted it when it echoed too loudly, and shoved it back down.
“Seriously, why do I even have this thing.”
The event unfolded in waves of color and noise.
There were stations set up around the gym: a memory wall where students pinned anonymous notes about identity and acceptance, an art corner where River and Isaac were guiding students through painting exercises that somehow turned into emotional breakthroughs, and a stage area where Lydia had convinced half the drama club to perform spoken word pieces about self-discovery.
Coach Finstock hovered at the edges like a man trying very hard not to interfere but physically incapable of not supervising everything within a thirty-foot radius.
At one point, he stopped a student from climbing a ladder that was “definitely not stable” and “absolutely not part of the approved plan.” At another, he corrected the angle of a rainbow banner by exactly three inches, muttering, “symmetry matters even in self-expression.”
Stiles eventually caught up to him near the bleachers.
“You’re doing a thing,” Stiles observed.
Finstock didn’t look away from a group of students attempting to build a very questionable cardboard archway. “I’m monitoring chaos. There’s a difference.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I have allergies.”
“To what? Pride?”
“To glitter,” Finstock said immediately. “It’s everywhere. It’s in my soul now. I’ll be finding it in my car for months.”
Stiles leaned against the bleachers beside him. “You didn’t have to let us do all this.”
Finstock finally glanced at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I did.”
Then, as if he regretted sounding too sincere, he added, “Besides, I’ve seen worse things happen in this gym. Remember the dodgeball incident with Greenberg in your senior year?”
Stiles winced. “We don’t talk about the dodgeball incident.”
“Exactly,” Finstock said. “This is comparatively harmless. Mostly.”
Across the gym, Derek found himself standing near one of the art stations, watching River help a younger student mix colors.
“You’re not bad at this,” Derek said quietly, as if it had physically pained him to say it.
River glanced up. “High praise.”
“I’m trying.”
“That’s new.”
Derek huffed a small laugh, then looked around the gym, the flags, the banners, the students moving through spaces that felt unusually open. “It’s loud,” he said.
“It’s supposed to be,” River replied.
Derek nodded once, like that made sense even if it didn’t fully fit inside him yet.
From the stage, Lydia’s voice carried over the crowd, introducing the next performance. Scott was clapping too hard for every student who stepped forward, like enthusiasm alone could stabilize the entire emotional ecosystem of the room.
And Coach Finstock, still patrolling the perimeter, had somehow ended up helping fix a microphone stand. “Why is this always bent?” he muttered.
“Because people keep adjusting it,” Isaac said.
“Why do people keep adjusting it?”
“Because people keep existing near it.”
Finstock stared at him. “…That’s the most philosophical thing anyone’s said to me all week. I don’t like that.”
Isaac shrugged.
Later, when the gym had settled into a softer rhythm, less chaos, more conversation, the memory wall had become dense with notes.
Some were simple: I like who I am now.
Others were more hesitant: I’m still figuring it out.
A few were anonymous confessions that had been written and rewritten several times before being pinned up anyway.
Coach Finstock stood in front of it without speaking for a while.
Stiles approached quietly.
“You okay?” Stiles asked.
Finstock didn’t answer immediately. Then: “When I started teaching, nobody talked like this. Not out loud. Not here. You figured yourself out in private, or you didn’t figure it out at all.”
He folded his arms. “This is different.”
“Yeah,” Stiles said. “It is.”
Finstock glanced sideways at him. “Do you think it matters?”
Stiles didn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
Finstock nodded once. “…Yeah,” he echoed, quieter this time. “I think so too.”
He cleared his throat abruptly, stepping back into his usual tone like slipping on a familiar jacket. “Alright. Emotional moment over. Someone tell me who glued a rainbow flag to my clipboard.”
Stiles grinned. “That would be Isabelle.”
“I knew it,” Finstock groaned. “Of course it was your twin.”
As the day wound down, students began filtering out in clusters, some still laughing, some quieter, some holding hands without thinking about it in the way that meant something had shifted, even slightly, even temporarily.
The gym slowly returned to its usual echo, but it didn’t feel the same. Coach Finstock stood at the center of it long after most people had left, rainbow lei still around his neck, clipboard now covered in glitter and notes and at least one sticker from River that said ASK ME ABOUT PRONOUNS.
He stared up at the scoreboard again.
BEING AUTHENTIC — GYM 100, INSECURITY 0
Then he muttered to himself, almost fondly: “Yeah. Alright. I’ll allow it.”
He turned off the gym lights one row at a time, the rainbow decorations fading into shadow, but not disappearing. And as he locked up for the evening, he paused at the door just long enough to glance back at the space one more time.
“Not bad,” he said quietly.
Then, louder, as if to reclaim his identity:
“Still hate glitter, but Go Gays!”
And he walked out into the hallway, whistle in his pocket, gym behind him still carrying the echo of color.