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Damian felt an explanation for how he had ended up in this situation was both due and at the same time, already available to him.
On the one hand, it could be argued that he was coerced into coming here. He was dragged against his will into entering the Forgers’ unbearably cramped, homely, lower tax-bracket apartment. And it was demanded he sit down at their scuffed and unpolished coffee table, threatened into waiting there while Anya ran to her dwindling closet-sized bedroom, only to return in less than a minute, slamming a box of God-knows-what onto the surface.
Perhaps he could make the case that she boxed him into his seat on one side, the large, unruly creature she called a dog barring his escape on the other. She forced him to splay his fingers over the table and made him watch her absurd little television show, telling him not to move around. It could hold up in court.
On the other hand, it was his driver that had brought them here. Him that agreed to whatever horrendous activities she suggested. And it was Damian that had asked if she wanted to do things together on their free day.
So one might also argue that he did bring this upon himself.
He lifted his chin into his palm, letting out a heavy sigh as he tried to keep his focus on the goofy one-liners Bondman was spewing every ten seconds throughout the episode. His hand was then promptly slapped out from under him.
“Don’t. Those are still wet,” Anya mumbled, not taking her own eyes off the work in front of her (his other hand). “You’ll mess them up.”
He glared at her irritably. Never mind that she was sitting so close to him for this, or even the fact that she was touching all over his hands to complete her task. At some point, he really needed to start drawing a line with her. And today’s activities had him strongly believing that line needed to start with not painting nails.
“What are you even doing that’s taking so long?” he finally burst out. She may have been slow-minded, but even he could recognize ten fingers shouldn’t take anyone over an hour to paint.
“Glitter.” Her tone was ominously calm for the subject matter, and his shoulders sunk even further.
“Glitter?” he repeated through a low groan.
At last, she tossed him a withering look under a raised eyebrow, as if to ask why he had taken her out of whatever zone she was occupying. “Does it look like something besides glitter?”
He flexed the fingers of his free hand to angle his nails upwards. It was, in fact, copious amounts of glitter, piled on top of several different colors on each finger that surpassed the borders of his cuticles.
“This is what you’ve been working on for an hour,” Damian asked, almost in disbelief.
“Good colors, right?”
He examined each finger in turn. A vivid yellow on his thumb, then a murky brown, going to a bluish-gray in the middle that had glitter mixed in to the paint on top of the glitter that was piled in a glopping layer above it, a pitch black smeared on his fourth finger, and finally, a bright red attempted on the smaller pinky nail that was looking closer to a medical accident than a manicure.
A chunkier accessory on the ring finger did catch his eye, though. He squinted at the object, half-marred with polish, before holding his hand up for her to examine. “What the hell is this?”
“What was that?” a clear voice from the office sounding through to their place in the living room made him flinch.
“Nothing, Mrs. Forger!” He hunched a little lower between them. Having parents actually be around to reprimand your actions was something he was still accustoming himself to. “What is this, Anya?” he hissed again.
His question perked her up a bit from her scrutinizing work. “Bondman!” she quipped. Under closer inspection, he could recognize the fictional spy’s iconic hat and smirk beneath the mess on top of it. She tapped the little charm. “They’re called accent nails.”
‘They’… Damian lifted his other hand from her vice grip, slumping a little further to find a second hunk of plastic decorating his other ring finger, this one star-shaped with somehow more gold glitter suffocating it.
Anya didn’t seem affected by his hesitation in the slightest. “See? That hand is Spy Wars colors–” she pointed at his right hand before holding up the one she had been working on “—and this one is Eden colors! With a stella nail.”
“Yay.” Well at least she had been aware enough to paint something that half-captured his interest, even if he would prefer not to have them painted in the first place. It was a little late to be complaining about that at this part of their afternoon. “Now take them off.”
Her grin transformed to a small pouted frown. “You don’t like them?”
“You’re lucky I even agreed to let you do this much to me,” he pointed out. Still, her lower lip quivered ever so slightly at his deflection. Damian moved to pinch a hand to his brow, heart clenching in a way he wished he had more control over.
“They look… nice,” he gritted through his teeth. “But I can’t have them like this for school, right? So…”
Anya rolled her eyes at the excuse, but seemed to accept it well enough. Snatching his hand back up, she set to work with a larger bottle at the far end of the coffee table and a paper towel. He accepted the odd stinging sensation against his skin silently, so long as she got this absurd creation off of his hands.
After several minutes of scrubbing and manhandling, he began to take notice of a particular factor: the two accessories on either hand had yet to be removed. He watched her use her own nail to ease the towel underneath the star for a few minutes before she switched it out for a wooden tool sitting on the table to chip at the polish. Also unsuccessfully.
He voiced his concern: “You can get these off, can’t you?”
“Yes!” she answered too quickly. “Just give me a second, would you?” She picked at the object with increasingly desperate and rapid motions, at one point, catching the tool under his cuticle.
“Ow!”
“Sor-ry.” She leaned in closer to inspect the matter. “Baby,” she mumbled just loud enough under her breath for him to catch, to the point where he felt it almost had to be intentional knowing how much she enjoyed stirring up trouble given the chance. Unfortunately (for himself), the day’s events had aggravated him enough to elicit a reply.
“You’ve glued toys to my hands, Anya. And you can’t get them off! I think a little bit of indignation is reasonable!”
“I told you they are not glued,” she replied sharply, “and I’ll get them off! Just hang on…” She began rifling noisily through the box of polishes and beauty which-whats she had dragged from her room, the action painfully reminiscent of how she dug through her bag in class anxiously looking for homework she never had finished.
“Well they look pretty stuck to me!” Her anxiety was terribly infectious, combined with the less-than-helpful fact that he tended to elevate things rather quickly himself. “I’ve still got to go home, you know! I can’t–”
“Stop shouting at me! I’ll get them off if you would just–”
“Everything alright?” Each teen clamped up as another person walked into the room, Anya releasing his hands at the same time Damian yanked them away and buried them in his lap.
“Yes, Papa.” Anya was quick to put on the artificial grin and cheerful tone as she looked up to her father through doe eyes. He suspected this wasn’t the first time she’d rapidly had to hide something from her parents. Or the last.
“We’re fine, sir,” Damian tried to put on a less played up front, swallowing behind a hard set grimace of a mouth.
The charade lasted all of three seconds.
“Anya, what did you do to him?” Mr. Forger asked casually, as if this were the easiest thing in the world for him to figure out (it probably was, knowing her penchant for trouble).
“I didn’t do anything!” she broke almost immediately. Damian dared for an eye roll. At least hold out for a little bit if you’re going to try to lie.
“Debatable,” he muttered. He stilled, watching with widened eyes as Mr. Forger drew closer, reaching out a hand. He wasn’t sure what the solution to their current issue was, but he was at least certain that the less people that knew about it, the better. Noticing his hesitation, he paused, offering a knowing smile.
“You know,” he noted, “she painted on my face once while I was sleeping. With oil colors– right before I had to go into work.”
Damian’s mouth fell open slightly as he looked over to Anya, who had found something rather interesting to look at in the carpet fibers as she tried to push more hair in front of her face. The fact that she would even dare thinking about something so bold faced was unbelievable in itself. “So whatever she’s gotten you wound up in this time, I can guarantee it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen.”
Slowly, as his reluctance receded, he placed his hands on the table again, trying to keep the color off of his own cheeks. If the man had any judgment, he didn’t show it. He took one of the offending hands in his own, examining it, testing how the accessory had bonded to the nail. His brow furrowed as he dropped the hand and began to shuffle through the mess of little glass bottles on the table, selecting one and reading its label.
He showed the color to Anya. “You used this one?” She nodded. “Hmm.”
“Is… something wrong?” Damian asked, hoping his tone didn’t betray the worry he was feeling.
Mr. Forger beamed at him. “Not at all; but excuse me for one moment, please. Yor?”
He stood up briefly with the polish in hand as he led his wife into one of the back rooms. He strained to hear, but little sound carried back to them down the hall.
––❀––
It really wasn’t that big a deal, in her opinion; Anya had a feeling Damian just always had a knack for drama when it came to her for whatever reason. She picked at some dried paint on the end of a file while waiting for her parents to return with a solution, half-completed bits of thought drifting around her in the meantime.
*...acrylic…*
*...mixed my own up with hers.*
Her ears burned a little less flagrantly. Well, at least it didn’t seem to be entirely her fault. She strained to hear further.
*...cut through the polish maybe? Oh, but the nail could rip.*
Her fingers paused in their workings.
*I’ve got some… but may dissolve his skin… industrial grade…*
She quickly set the tool back on the table, knocking her knee on the edge of the table in her rush to stand up. She ignored the pain. “Let’s go to Becky’s house,” she said curtly.
Damian’s back thumped back against the couch, expression turning to one of disgust and disinterest. “Are you joking? She’s the last person I want seeing me like this!”
“Trust me,” she insisted. She hoisted him up by the arm. “She can fix it.”
“But you said she was busy today. And your parents are–”
Anya halted them both halfway to the door, turning heel and pointing a knowing finger in his face. He leaned back again. “I said to trust me.” He looked lost, but let her lead him the rest of the way to their door without further resistance. “We’re going to see Becky!” She raised her voice a little to reach the bedrooms as they donned their coats. Her mother poked her head around the hall’s entry.
“But the–”
“I’ll deal with it, Mama. Don’t worry,” Anya said sheepishly, hopping on one foot to get her boot on. She closed the front door pointedly before getting a reply.
––❀––
Jeeves had the car waiting as promised for them on the opposite side of their street, setting aside a paper as they crawled into the back seat. He watched the two of them from the mirror. “Ah. How did the afternoon date–”
A gurgled choking sound emitted from Damian cut him off, who was unable to make any other sort of move to shut him up without removing his hands from where they were deeply shoved in his coat pockets. This was not a “date”. It had never been intended as a date. And he wasn’t sure where in the hell his butler had gotten the notion that it was one.
Breathing under control at last, he slumped down to the seat in defeat. “Just take us to Blackbell’s,” he muttered. Anya, thankfully, took the lead, scribbling down a note and leaning over to the front row.
“Could you drive us to this address please, Mr. Jeeves?” she asked.
He smiled pleasantly back at her request. “Certainly, Miss Anya, I’ll have you there shortly.” The engine rumbled into action as he began checking all of the dashboard’s indicators.
“Anya is so kind and polite, isn’t she, Damian?” he remarked too offhandedly as pulled out of the parking lane. If his hands were free, he’d have hidden his face in them. “I can see why you like–”
“DRIVE, JEEVES.”
––❀––
Becky’s boots hit the entryway tiles with sharp, impatient steps. It was bad enough that she was forced into losing her weekend to something as silly as horse riding etiquette. She’d shown absolutely no interest in horses, and “someone of your status ought to know, just in case” was a rather flimsy excuse (in case of what?). It was made worse by the fact that someone had to come to visit, interrupt, and draw out this agony.
Her attitude did, however, brighten considerably as she opened the door, a smile lighting up her features. “Anya!” Her eyes moved past her to her moodier half as her spirit fell again. “Oh.”
Her friend, in classic Anya fashion, would not let the mood be sullied. “Hi Becky! Can we use your fancy instant nail polish remover?”
An odd request, but she would never name Anya for one that came up with predictable questions. Still, she tilted her head. “Is it some kind of emergency?”
“Sort of. I did things.” The girl turned back to Damian, who was making pointed efforts to stare holes through the hydrangea bushes. “Come on, take your hands out.”
“No.”
“You want them off, don’t you?”
His stance became, somehow, even more closed up. “She’ll laugh.”
On the other side of things, Becky was quickly growing tired of his stubbornness. She dealt with enough of this as it was at school. Before the bickering could progress further, the training whip was slid from her belt. She then made a move to arc it over her, seemingly bringing it down on his head.
As expected, his hands quickly came up to shield his face. She dropped the tool as she triumphantly clamped a hand on his freed wrist before he could hide them again.
“What is your problem?!” Damian snapped.
“You play chess,” she said indifferently, closely examining the item glued to his finger. “You should’ve anticipated it.”
“Psycho girl–”
“That stuff you have can get them off, right?” Anya intervened before they could wind up into a real argument.
Becky pursed her lips, finally dropping his hand; he snatched it away with what she felt was unnecessary dramatism. “It can, but you don’t think he’s prettier this way? More glamorous?”
They followed her ushering them inside, clipped strides carrying them down the vast halls. “He is,” Anya agreed, “but he doesn’t want to be.” On the other side of her, Damian was trying to tuck a flushed face further under his collar.
“We. Have. School. Monday,” he enunciated slowly and emphatically.
“So?”
“That’s no excuse to not be pretty, Damian,” Anya pointed out. He didn’t justify them with a response, only wallowing in another deep sigh.
––❀––
Despite his dramatics, his protests, and a little (unnecessary, in Becky’s opinion) yelling, they had the plastic icons removed in short enough time. “Good,” he said, relishing briefly in the lack of glue on his nails. “Now let’s go.”
Anya held her ground in the bathroom. When he realized she wasn’t following him, he turned back around. Her eyes moved quickly from him to Becky, and back. He resisted sighing again. “What…”
She considered her next words, pondering briefly before moving closer to Becky, whispering in her ear. The taller girl’s eyes quickly lit up as she grinned, leading both of them out by the hand. Or leading Anya at least, more of a drag for Damian.
“You can’t just keep pulling me into things without telling me what they are, you know!”
“Well, what else would you be doing today?” Becky asked.
“Oh, infinite things,” he sniffed. “Things that don’t involve toys stuck to my nails.”
“Accessories,” she corrected him. “Not toys.” Out of their lines of sight in this position, he rolled his eyes.
“Are any of those things better than petting horses?” Anya asked curiously.
“I– what?”
He realized Becky had led them out through a sitting room to a vast field at one side of their estate. Dotted across the space were not one but several (of course she owned several) horses, one tied and waiting at the nearest gate. Anya was watching him hopefully. “Mr. Jeeves can wait a little bit longer before we go, right?”
She didn’t bother to wait for his answer, only running after Becky to greet the animal. After a long-suffering moment, Damian followed slowly behind them.
He’d draw a line with her some day– probably after taking the opportunity to pet a horse, but one day.
For now, he supposed this would do.