Ace has gotten an A- in a test, sabo just an C+. Sabo is shocked! marco is some class higher?
Sabo wasn’t quite sure what to feel staring at his test results. On one hand, he realized that a C was passing on the other….
How could you possibly get a C?! This is obvious that you aren’t taking your education seriously! You are going to sit at that table and not move for three days until you pick this grades up!
The blond shakes his head trying his hardest to silence that voice. Once upon a time that would have caused him to panic to not want to take the paper home.
He knew how his parents felt, knew the nearly impossible standards he had to reach to please them and how they would react to anything below what they expected.
The consent pressure that put on him as a child was near suffocating. He was always that one kid who managed to get an 82 and still panic beacuse it was so close to a C. So close was unacceptable.
Sabo remembers the kids that scoff at his worry, claiming it wasn’t as bad as their grade and yes that’s true he did good but it was never good enough. It was never ever good enough.
People don’t understand how hard it is to know that no matter what if you messed p even a little, you were an instant failure on one said and a snobby know it all for others on the other. He was in the middle of consent worry, sleep deprivation and anxiety all beacuse he wasn’t allowed to have anything lower than a B at best.
There many times were Sabo would look at his grades- amazing grades, ones that other kids would kill for- and feel like the biggest waste of space in the world. He could do better. He had to do better. Why wasn’t he?
These thoughts plague his mind day after day, night after night until he started thinking he was never going to amount to anything. Sabo didn’t remember a single time that school didn’t stress him to near tears growing up, and it was all do to the pressure his parents put on him.
They made him feel like if he couldn’t be perfect then he couldn’t be of any use no matter what his skills and accomplishments said otherwise.
Even now away from that home, he still gets a sick panicky feeling in his stomach. Still feels pathic and so useless, even when rationally he knows that he still passed, that he did well.
Trying to get those thoughts out of his head Sabo closed his eyes and imagined his upperclassmen Marco. Who had listen to his worries one day after finding him crying behind the gym.
Sabo remembers the slight spring wind that was pushing against his hair. There were no clouds that day, it was bright and sunny though chilly. He was supposed to go home and tell his parents that his parents didn’t do their side of the project and thus lead to his grade dropping to a C in chemistry.
He had panicked so much about it- he’s grade had never been that low- and he couldn’t handle it anymore. He just broke down and started crying upon the grass sobbing with his head buried in his knees.
That’s how Marco found him, the senior walking to his car that he illegally parked behind the gym so he didn’t have to pay for a student parking space.
The purple shirt Marco was wearing, every little wrinkle that the older blond created by sitting down next to him and listening to all the chocked up words falling out Sabo’s mouth after asking why he was sad was one of the weirdest things to remember so clearly but Sabo did.
He also remembered the question Marco asked him.
“What do you call a doctor that graduated at the bottom of his class yoi?”
“The first loser.” Sabo sniffed angrily glaring at his report card.
‘”No, a doctor.” Suprised by the words red dyed blue eyes turn to find similar ones but much richer in shade. Marco quivered a little smile at him as he finished “All that mattered was that he graduated. He’s a doctor. He still made it. And you can too kid.”
Smiling at the memory Sabo reopens his eyes just in time to see Ace running towards him screaming “I did it! Sabo, I did it! I passed! Thank you so much for tutoring me!”
The blond’s face softens as his lover runs into his arms thanking him over and over again for taking time out of his own to help him get a A-. For this reason, he’s okay with getting a C on one test.
Just like his other boyfriend said.
He can still make it.