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It doesn’t take a comprehensive analysis to know that Damian isn’t in the correct state of mind. You’d know to that extent— because everyone noticed.
When was it ever normal for the second Desmond to hesitate during recitation or to hit the door on the way out? Not to mention now that he scraped his knee during their sports period. (It was normal for most, but for it to happen to Damian..)
Neither Ewen or Emile can get a word out of him to explain his behavior for the day. He shrugs it off, aggressively reassuring them that he’s fine, all the more making it obvious that he isn’t.
It’s not the first time this happened — if Emile can recall, there was a time when they were in their 4th year where Damian lost his focus which later was because of a family reunion they had, and in his 7th year (which was by far, the worst it’s been for him) there were days where he wouldn’t show up at all.
It’s not as bad as it was from then, but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t bad. And if he could do something about it, he would — but he’s walking a tightrope between his image and reputation, and he scolds himself internally for not being in his best behavior.
But it made no sense at all to be given tremendous pressure, only for none of it to pay off when they chose not to entrust him with anything. They still think of him as a little kid.
For most of the day, it’s the only thing circulating his thoughts. It makes him forget he’s still on the plane of reality, mind absent in situations that need him to be present. It infuriates him, because he knows what he’s doing wrong but he isn’t in the right headspace to do anything about it.
And that’s brought him to the infirmary— sitting down by the ledge of the bed, back turned from the curtain, holding an ice pack against the light swelling of his cheek after tripping earlier on. He wonders how he got into this situation.
While the nurse leaves shortly to get the phone at the main desk, he sits— the fresh wound on his knee exposed, intangible conversations coming and going from outside the door, but he pays no mind to any of that at all.
Someone knocks and enters, informing the nurse of something, but his gaze falls on the floor, feeling his cheek start numbing.
He doesn’t catch most of it, but he hears the words “Forger” and “Principal” somewhere in the sentence, and it makes him think about where he’s heard those words before.
Forger.
Forger..
“He should be over here,”
The moment he realizes, the curtain opens from in front of the bed, and everything clicks into place. Forger. He’s heard Forger before, because it was her last name.
Damian turns to see her at the end of his bed, attentive to the nurse only, but he’s only confused when he looks at her.
Anya Forger.
He stares a little too long, that when her eyes meet his— she smiles. If an expression could be honey dripping from sunlight, that would be her. It’s a smile only Anya can give, and it distracts him from the fact that his care is being entrusted to her.
Damian averts his gaze, placing down the ice pack, embarrassed by how she had to see him be such a mess. Not that he knew that she hadn’t already seen him worse than he was right now, it was embarrassing to be seen like this generally.
He was sure that if he was hooked up to a heart monitor, it would be his end.
Damian cleared his throat, easing the twinge in his stomach once the older figure had rushed out, leaving the both of them to be alone. He doesn’t even realize how effectively she distracted him from his troubles for that moment alone.
Anya walks to his side of the bed, tilting her head to the side to see where the injury was. He doesn’t look up to see the way her face scrunches up at the status of his fresh scar and takes a second to inspect it.
She looks at his face to ask for his permission, and he hesitates before forcefully nodding, eyes rolling, hoping it alleviates the tension in his head. Anya sits on the stool in front of him, cautiously bringing a hand to his knee. He flinches at the light contact of her finger at the edge of his skin, and she quickly retracts her hand.
Up until now, they only exchange wordless gestures — as much as he wanted to tell her off a while ago, he can’t seem to find the right words and so he stays quiet. She doesn’t seem to mind it all too much, either.
As an attempt to relax, his eyes bore towards the messy strands that lay over her face. It bothers him in a way he can’t pinpoint, the way she’s the way she is. But he says nothing about it.
He thanks the existence of gravity, because then he wouldn’t be able to see how perfectly her hair frames her face. He notices the littlest details of her hair, like the way it curls naturally as it goes down.
Before he could think about anything more, his eyes snapped open at the shock, making him jump at the sudden sensation. “Ow—what the fuck, Forger?”
“I didn’t even touch it.” She defends herself, brows furrowed when she switches her gaze towards him, then back on the issue at hand, reaching for the kit on the nearby desk.
Leisurely, she took out a pair of tweezers and compressed a clean roll of cotton in-between the pincers, and let that sit in her hand before she carefully went through the kit with one hand.
Damian isn’t sure if he’s nervous because he can’t trust Anya Forger tending to his wound, or because it’s Anya Forger tending to his wound. He rejects the latter, and observes how she’ll do it.
Then a thought about how cute she was when she was focused comes into mind. He tried not to make the fluster notable on his face, melting further into humiliation for however helpless he feels for another student to be treating him.
“Do you even know how to disinfect a wound?” Damian makes sure to ask, watching how she clumsily puts down the kit beside him, dabbing disinfectant on the cotton. “I swear, that nurse is out to kill— !! ” He jumps for what felt like the third time that day, startled by her gently blowing on it.
Anya chuckles a half-hearted apology when she sees his furrowed brows. “If the nurse didn’t trust me, I don’t think she would’ve risked giving a task like this despite how urgent the matter is.”
She was right. Finding no use in his thoughts, he only breathes out a suppressed sigh in defeat, letting her continue her musings. Damian still flinches every time she swabs the disinfectant over the affected area, but her silent apologies made up for every cold sting he felt.
They stay like that for a while, and it makes him feel like they’ve stopped time on their own, eventually growing to ignore the stinging to wonder when she learned to be this delicate.
He wishes it’d stay like this for a little while longer.
“Does your dad know you became a scholar?”
She takes the initiative to break the silence, and Damian hums in response, pausing for a second to let his thoughts rush back into his head.
It leaves a sour taste in his mouth when he felt a pit form in his stomach.
Damian's expression falls, but he purses his lips upon remembering.
“I don’t know,” he bitterly replies, averting his gaze to look at the ceiling. “He only acknowledges it when I'm not in my best performance. He’s busy enough to give his time to other matters, that’s for sure.”
It's no surprise that he still isn't aware that he became an Imperial Scholar, and the thought of his father seeing him in this state didn't phase him at all.
Anya hums, eyes transfixed on the task at hand. Their eyes don’t meet, but for some reason, she doesn't falter. “So he's the reason why you're like this today.”
Damian chooses to fall silent, gaze falling back down to whatever task she was working on. It gives off the impression that he doesn’t want to talk about it.
Upon disposing of the used cotton, she picks up on it and clears her throat naturally.
“Do you wanna hear what my family and I did over the weekends?”
He scoffs, glancing up to her face. “Why would I—”
“We went out last weekend,”
Damian leans back, shifting his weight to his arms, muttering, “why bother asking me if you’re still going to do it anyway?”
Anya ignores whatever he said under his breath and continues on with her story. For the next couple of minutes, he listens quietly as she tells him about their trip to the dog park with Bond, how she was dragged by her skirt by some German Shepard and how Bond tried to pull her back by biting on her leg.
It’s a ridiculous story, really. He fails to hold his composure in some parts of it and slips out a soft chuckle, but she doesn't seem to notice.
He pretends to feign ignorance, but he’s mentally taking note of every word she says.
Damian’s attentive to her actions and to her words, both watching and listening. He winces every time it burns a little too much, but nevertheless, she continues on with her story. The wound’s successfully sealed with a large bandaid (after some messy attempts to put it on), and she moves back to see how it looks from afar, a smile lighting up her face when she’s satisfied.
He feels the adhesive press against some parts of the scar. Was that supposed to happen?
He takes a look at it himself, brow raising when he sees the large band aid, thoughts circulating with questions while unbeknownst of how Anya quickly rushes to retrieve a pink marker from the main desk then sits back on the stool.
“Hey, what—?”
Her sudden movement startles him, but he only watches her whip her hair behind her shoulder — going back to wondering how her hair just does it. He feels something cold press against the plaster of the band aid.
His gaze falls over her face, and his heartbeat heightens. He's worried that if she took the moment to stop, she'd hear it.
“...what are you doing?”
At this rate, he's concerned for his well-being. She doesn’t reply, but her tongue sticks out at the corner of her lips when she writes whatever it is that she was writing. Anya catches his attention so easily.
She’s cute, he tells himself.
She’s cute.
Damian forgets all of his worries whenever she shows up. It makes him ignore whatever she was doing, and focuses on her only.
And it makes him think that, for a second, all his worries were below him.
“All done!” Anya moves back, and looks at the band-aid in its full glory. It makes her smirk mischievously, and that same expression is the only thing that knocks Damian out of his daydream.
Yet, his eyes are fixed onto her and she doesn’t notice.
“Pretty neat, huh?” She boasts, the satisfying click of the lid closing echoing within the space.
It’s only then that she notices him looking at her with an expression she can’t read, but he scoffs before she could even assess it.
“It’s misaligned,” Damian commented, stretching his leg out to watch it wrinkle. “and you adjusted it so much that it doesn’t even stick properly anymore.”
“That’s a weird way to thank me.” Anya ignores his word, getting up on her feet, ignoring every comment he’s ever made about it. “It looks fine to me.”
As an attempt to prove her point, the patch falls off and hits the floor.
They don’t realize how awfully silent the room was until now. Resilience is Anya’s strongest point, so she picks it up, clears her throat and takes out the box, only to be stopped by Damian when he hands her gauze and medical tape.
Anya stops and looks at him, nervously chuckling while carefully taking it into her hands. She muttered a small "thank you", before returning to her work.
“You’d be horrible in the medical field, by the way.” Damian sighed, turning his head away from her.
“It was one mistake,”
“One mistake could’ve ended someone’s life.”
“You’re so dramatic.” Anya mutters that part under her breath, pressing onto the patch a little to provoke him. This makes Damian yelp a little, and in response, she only giggles innocently— humming off-tune to pretend nothing happened.
In comparison with the first process, the application for this one was quicker. Once the cloth was secured against his knee, she reaches over to grab the same marker — doing the same thing she’s done earlier.
“What’s the next period?” he asks out of nowhere.
Anya's train of thought pauses for a second. If she remembered correctly, Damian already had the whole schedule memorized.
She doesn't look into it, and goes back to her work. “P.E. hasn’t ended,” she replied without missing a beat, surprisingly stable on her hands. “I still have to go back. You’re excused for the rest of the period.”
“Don’t.”
“What?” Anya hums, looking up to meet his gaze after missing the word. Damian opens his mouth to speak, to repeat the same thing he’s said— only to widen his eyes and purse his lips. “Hurry up, then.”
Damian curses under his breath, hoping she also misses that one.
He doesn’t know for how long he can hold back the stinging of his cheeks. She notices the hesitation, but tilts her head.
“You’re kind of odd,” she comments casually.
When she finishes, there’s an awkward pause, and before he knew it — her hand was on his head, tracing along the direction of his hair so it didn't completely ruin the neat style of his head (not that it wasn’t already messy).
From his head, Anya’s hand lands on his shoulder, and it makes him look at her, locking contact. He’s caught off-guard by how sympathetic she looked, as if he’d just accidentally told her all of his issues in one sitting.
She was close enough for him to admire the subtle freckles that were dusted so naturally across her face.
“He sounds like a bad guy,” she nods.
“What..?” It takes him a moment to process what she said, getting frustrated that his thoughts didn't click to her comment.
It’s the last thing she says before standing up and leaving. Damian’s staring blankly at where she was seconds ago, realizing he's present when he hears the door shut from the other side of the room.
He notices how his hand is in the air, reaching out to where her arm was previously. He uses that hand to slap against his mouth, only now exploding in color when he realizes what he’s just done minutes ago.
He held back a lot. For a second, he holds back whatever impulse he just had, hands finding their way over his face and smacks it repeatedly.
A fever. He must be running a fever.
He doesn’t believe that he ever considered suggesting that she skips class just so he could hear her talk about all the useless things, praying it makes time pass a little slower.
Damian groaned, falling back to the bed, voice muffled behind the hands covering his face. It doesn’t fully hide his fluster. Everything about her drove him insane, down to the brink of insanity — and he doesn’t know how she does it.
He takes a well-needed breath after getting back up, hand landing over a familiar texture. Damian hums, slowly pulling it up to his face once he realizes it was the band-aid from earlier.
His finger smudges a bit because the ink hasn't fully dried out yet, but he can only see lines that make up.. something. Then his eyes land back on the gauze taped against his knee, stretching it out to see a similar drawing.
It’s who he assumes to be Bond (though he could be completely wrong), and the letters ‘gws’ cramped up in the corner of the cloth so it could fit within the square.
There’s bubblegum pink ink on the beige of his band aid, and messily bleeding through the layers of his gauze. And it’s ridiculous— Damian finds it ridiculous enough to laugh at it, because the more he looked at the drawing, the more it did look like Bond.
She’ll never be able to survive if she pursues art.
For some reason, he’s okay with that. Because then, the only person admiring her shaky drawings would be him, whether or not it’s a horrible attempt at a dog, or something intangible.
He never expected to feel better over wrinkled band-aids and blotchy ink laced with sincerity.
All his unresolved issues felt of less importance because her touch lingered for just a second longer. And that was enough — so he freely lets a lovesick smile take control of everything he held back for the remainder of his time there, scoffing fondly with the patch still in his hold.
It’s unfair that she didn’t even have to try when it comes to making him feel better.