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Damian shades his eyes against the sun, glaring at the swallows chirping merrily in the trees. So noisy. Didn’t they know that it was exam season? And that he needed to study?
Although, it appears that Damian is the only one with a textbook in his hands, annotating the pages and making notes as he reads, while Ewen and Emile lie on the grass, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun with their eyes closed. If they stayed like that any longer, there was a real chance that they would fall asleep in the sun, and then Damian would have to wake them both up and they might be sunburned or too groggy to function or they might hate him for ruining their nap, or worse…
Thankfully, it is Ewen that breaks the silence first, although Damian quickly wishes that he didn’t.
“I think I love Becky.”
Well now they were definitely not going to get any studying done. Damian slams the textbook shut with a sigh, and turns to his friend, frowning.
“What do you mean you think you love her?”
Ewen grimaces, but he does sit up, and to his credit, he only looks a little bit uncomfortable. In no time at all, the three boys are sitting cross-legged in a circle on the grass, all whispering out of earshot of everyone else.
“Well, I mean. She’s a friend, right? So wouldn’t it be awkward?”
“Surely you either love someone or you don’t,” Damian finds himself saying, and he has no idea where the words are coming from. “What’s there to think about?”
In the pensive silence that follows, Damian is suddenly aware of the horrible drumbeat of his heart, deafening him from the inside, and he tries to muffle it. (No, no, his heart is not beating that hard, thank you very much.)
“I dunno,” Ewen shrugs. “Maybe I just like her more than other people?”
“How’s that different from ‘love’, though?” asks Emile, and the question makes the boys pause.
“The difference between ‘like’ and ‘love’, huh…” says Ewen thoughtfully, then Ewen turns to Damian, and says something so absurd, so heinous, so completely outrageous that it turns him to stone.
“How did you know you were in love with Anya?”
The words strike Damian like a thunderclap, and he freezes on the spot.
“What?” He wheezes. “You think I’m in -” Damian chokes on his words, and it takes real concentration for him just to find the air to breathe.
“I’m in love with Anya?” Damian repeats, as though he’s just checking he has heard right, but his eyes are looking into the distance, his gaze fixed on some quiet and unseen horror.
“Come on, Boss,” Ewen tries to be encouraging, but his valiant efforts seem to be spectacularly backfiring. “Everyone knows. You don’t have to keep hiding it from us.”
“I - I mean,” Damian clears his throat and does his best to smooth his facial expression. “Wh-what are you talking about?! Obviously I’m not in…in…”
His face grows very red and his eyes turn into spinning spirals.
“With… her??”
“I think you broke him,” sighs Emile as Damian quietly writhes on the ground. “He wasn’t ready after all.”
But Damian isn’t listening, because he is in the process of realising the worst thing in the world.
It’s his heart. His stupid heart is beating so hard without his permission, and is wriggling in his chest at the mere mention of her . It’s practically flapping at the bone bars of his rib cage, shrieking into his blood, cawing with raw, inelegant emotion, demanding to be seen and heard .
It’s awful. Unbearable. He claws at his hair, tugging on his own locks like he could pluck out his thoughts and throw them away, like that would do anything to drown out the sound, but it only plagues him further.
Ewen and Emile are wrong, he is sure of it. He will absolutely prove them wrong (even though there’s nothing to prove!), and he’ll resist the vehement cawing of his heart (even though there’s nothing to resist!), and if that doesn’t work, he’ll just never speak to her again for as long as he lives (it’ll be easy! It won’t torment him at all!).
Just as Damian manages once again to subdue his own heart and wrangle it screaming back into the cage where it belongs, the sole object of Damian’s torment appears, and with the luscious greenery of the courtyard behind her, it is as if she is emerging from the Garden of Eden itself.
How did you know you were in love with Anya?
White feathers drift from the sky like snow. Time itself slows, and the wings of that single moment unfurl with seraphic grace.
Damian stops breathing.
Oh.
Rose plumage, more vibrant than a sunrise, shimmers in his vision, framing her warm, silly smile. Earnest, emerald eyes sparkle in his direction, and the words he repeated to Ewen echo in his mind, as natural as the dawn chorus itself:
I’m in love with Anya.
The bone cage dissolves into feathers as Damian forgets what it ever felt like to be flightless, and his heart spreads its wings for the first time. Delicate as a wren, it could fit in the palm of his hand - and yet the song of his heart is a serenade sweeter and more melodic than even a skylark’s:
I love you I love you I love you I love you.
Thrumming like a heartbeat. Filling him with life. Every wingbeat a sonorous chant.
After so long.
He is airborne.
Not too far away, a worried voice breaks a mesmerised trance:
“Anya? Why is your face so red?”