Idiota, stupido, cant get a damn fucking thing right...

They're all gonna laugh, wonder how I'm related to someone as talented as Feli...

I'm fucking pathetic.

Unbeknownst to the teacher, Romano was fuming in his seat as he cheerfully went on about how alliteration could often help capture one's attention in writing. He held up an example. Feliciano's poem, a breathtaking epic about the mysteries of dreams. Romano looked down at his own work, and saw nothing but mistakes. He had too many commas, it wasn't long enough, it sounded dumb, and he'd chosen far too common of a topic. Way too many people wrote about the sun. He scowled and hid the poem a little more under the table. It was due tomorrow. He'd worked for nearly three weeks on it, and it was due tomorrow, and he was going to throw it in the trash. He'd say that he'd forgotten it at home or something. No way would he hand in such a shit piece of "art."

On his way out, Romano discreetly slid the paper into the recycling (nobody's too cool to save the earth, bitches) and then made a mad dash to his next class. Maybe he could skip class tomorrow. Yeah. Anything to get away from that awful English classroom. God, even the dick teacher sucked, always praising Feli and never even looking at Romano. He didn't want to be there ever again, he wanted to be home in his bed, but he knew that he couldn't be. He still had art class to go to. At least there was one class that he was comfortable in because Feli wasn't there, tch...

Antonio, the English teacher, was cleaning up his classroom the second that his students left. Sure, he loved the little niños (shut up Antonio, they're sixteen), but they were awfully messy! He picked up a rumpled piece of paper from right next to the recycling bin and sighed, shooing hair out of his face as he examined it. He saw Romano's name on it, and frowned. Smoothing it out, his frown deepened when he read the title. English 10 poem: The Sun. This project was due tomorrow. Why had he thrown this out? Romano was always such a spot on kid, if a little grumpy, and he seemed to prefer his space, which Antonio respected. He stayed away from him and let him do his own thing. But this, this was new. Why had he thrown it away?

Antonio set at a desk in the back of the quiet classroom and began to read the crumpled paper.

I don't see the sun how everbody else sees it

I don't see a ball of gold, or a beautiful woman,

I can't imagine a giant star, made of fire and shards of heaven intricately sewn together to create the reason for our existance. I know, however, that with the sun,

Life is beautiful.

When I see the sun, my first thought isn't about how far it is,

How hot it is,

How bright it is,

I never even linger at the thought of all the faces that smiled at it

Nor at the memory of the instances I glared at it and it glared right back

I never saw the sun as my saviour or my hero

I never saw it as a jewel, bathing us all in untouchable gold

I didn't see it as any of these things.

Life is beautiful.

Whenever I see the sun, I'm compelled to look away,

Because I don't deserve to see the light

I want to shield my eyes,

Because I don't want to be reminded how little I shine

I will always cover my ears,

For I want to ignore the laughs of those made happy from the sun,

And for the sake of everything I love, I want to yeild my thoughts, stop them,

Because they remind me

That I will never shine bright.

Life is beautiful.

I want to forget that I don't shine as much as the sun

I want to forget that I will never be remembered as much as the sun

I want to never ever remind myself that the sun makes my loved ones live

And I don't

I want to forget that I don't shine enough in the lives of those I love

That they will love me also,

Enough that I am even the smallest of reasons that they get out of bed in the morning.

Life is beautiful.

I never saw the sun as something beautiful

I saw it as a reminder that life is beautiful

And I am not

I want you to smile at my funeral

Because the sun will be there

You will be alive,

And so long as you have the sun

Life is beautiful.

(I wrote the poem but just to get the point across that Romano interprets things differently than others.)

Antonio sat there in stunned silence, still holding the rumpled sheet of paper neatly down onto the desk. This was... Different. As always with Romano's work. If it were a music style, it would certainly be a soft genre, one that's whispered with only soft piano in the background. His words sounded beautiful when they were whispered.

Antonio slowly rose out of his seat with a grin on his face, quickly breaking off into a jog just as the final bell of the day rang. Students began to pour out of classrooms and into the hallways, and by the time he made it into Romano's art classroom (oh yeah, he knew Romano's last class of the day. He'd seen the artwork hung up on the walls of the school), it was nearly empty. He scanned it hopefully, jumping for joy when he saw Romano packing up at the corner of the room. As usual. The boy had a small frown on his face. But that was probably just focusing on packing up, Antonio reminded himself as he approached the Italian. Romano looked up and nearly shrieked when he saw his English teacher standing there with a shit eating grin and- Wait, was that the shitty poem he'd written?! "Give that back!" He growled, snapping an arm out to grab it, but it was held out of his reach. He looked up at his teacher in surprise and scowled. "Give it back right now or I'll punch you in the-" Antonio cleared his throat and pouted. "Ehh, Roma, you can't cuss at me in school, you'd be in lots of trouble! Well, I just wanted to say, I like what you did with this! Best one yet I've read in the whole class, mi estudiante. Why did you throw it, Roma?"

Romano felt his face grow red in rage and embarrassment. "S-Stupid bastard! Quit mocking me!" Antonio, however, only looked confused. "What? I'm not mocking you, Romano, I really liked it! Nobody else did anything like it at all! Everybody always says the sun is pretty and perfect, si? But you saw it differently." Romano frowned, starting to calm down, though he didn't believe Antonio for a second. The Spaniard, seeing that Romano had calmed down, continued. "See, you may think that this is bad, because you beat yourself up. But think about it, did anybody else try so hard? Roma, you know, even if this totally sucked balls, I would give you a good grade, because you try harder than anybody else in the class. I know you have a lot of stressors... And that you try to be perfect. But Romano, that is not possible."

Romano felt his shoulder's slump, and he looked down at the ground, mumbling one sentence. "Si, unless you're, I don't know, actually good at writing poems."

Okay, he could work with this... "What made you think you aren't good at writing poems, Romano?" He waited a few moments for the boy to work up the courage to start talking. "Everybody... Everyone says that I suck and that Feli is better than me. Besides, you even like Feli's work better than mine, and mine sucks badly. Why would anybody think that mines is good when something that my fucking twin brother wrote is better. I can never get my words right, either. It all comes out wrong, I try to make something and it comes out completely different and then I need to play it off like I didn't just screw everything up." Romano felt a hand on his shoulder, and quickly looked up at his teacher, who was grinning at him. "Ah, Roma, is that really how you think? You know, a friend of mine once said that you cannot compare two different art pieces and dictate which one is worse and which one is better, if they both worked just as hard. Feli is good, si, but you're good too, in your own way. If you can't see that, I sure can, so maybe I can be your glasses?" He dorkily ringed his hands together and held them up to his eyes, mimicking the image of glasses with a chuckle. Romano frowned and snatched the sheet of paper from his fingers before it fell. He smoothed out the sheet, staring at it and feeling it practically stare back. Maybe if he went back and edited it a little...

"Hmph. Fine, bastard. I'll... I'll keep working at it."

Antonio grinned and cheered, shooting a fist into the air. "Eso es genial! Awesome!" Romano felt a tiny smile tug at his lips, but he found it. Fine, maybe it wasn't all that bad. Maybe he did just need to stop putting himself down. And hell, he already knew that his writing style was, duh, incredible, and he didn't need a pervy sage to tell him that.

Yeah. He could work with this.