Work Text:
Art class was one of the few subjects where Anya Forger didn't have to try too hard to get a decent grade. Not because she was particularly talented at drawing or painting—in fact, her artistic skills left much to be desired—but because their teacher, Mrs. Smith, valued "creativity and personal expression" over perfect technique.
Today's assignment was simple: draw a classmate.
Damian Desmond was seated at his workstation, his sketchbook open before him, his colored pencils meticulously organized by shade. Beside him, Emile and Ewen worked on their own drawings, occasionally whispering about who was drawing whom.
"I'm drawing Boss Damian," Ewen declared enthusiastically, already beginning to sketch the familiar shape of his best friend's face.
"Hey! I was going to draw Damian, too," Emile protested. "He's the easiest subject because we see him all the time."
"Too late now. I called dibs first."
"That's not fair..."
"Both of you, shut up!" Damian grumbled, feeling his ears begin to burn. "I don't need you drawing me. Draw someone else."
"Who are you drawing, Boss?" Ewen asked curiously, leaning over to peek at Damian's sketchbook.
"No one. I haven't decided yet."
That was a lie. Damian had decided exactly who he was going to draw the moment Mrs. Smith gave the instruction. But there was no way—absolutely no way in the world—he was going to admit it out loud, especially not in front of these two busybodies.
His eyes drifted, almost against his will, to the other side of the room.
There she was.
Anya Forger was sitting with Becky Blackbell, both hunched over their own drawings, whispering and giggling. Anya had her tongue slightly poking out in concentration—a quirk Damian had noticed she always had when she was focused on something—and a stray lock of her pink hair fell across her face.
"That stupid pink hair..." Damian thought, quickly looking away as he felt his face heat up. "Why does it have to be so... so...?"
He didn't finish the thought. He couldn't.
"Boss, you're turning red," Emile observed with a mischievous grin.
"I-I am not! It's warm in here!"
"It's chilly in here," Ewen pointed out.
"Then it's... it's allergies! Yes, allergies to... to the paint."
"We haven't even opened the paint yet."
Damian slumped in his seat, defeated. His friends exchanged a knowing look but, mercifully, decided not to press further. They'd already learned it was better to let the Boss process his... feelings... at his own pace.
With a sigh of resignation, Damian finally picked up his pencil and began to draw. His strokes were careful and deliberate—he was a Desmond, after all, and Desmonds did nothing by halves—but as he progressed, he found his hand moving almost from memory.
First, the outline of the face. Heart-shaped, with a small, pointed chin.
Then, the eyes. Large and expressive, with that gaze that always seemed to be seeing something no one else could. "Probably imagining one of her dumb spy missions," Damian thought with involuntary affection. "Or thinking about peanuts. She's always thinking about peanuts."
When it came time to draw the hair, Damian paused. He picked up his pink colored pencil—a shade he rarely used in his other drawings because, honestly, how many things in the world were actually pink?—and began to carefully color in the locks.
Anya's hair was... difficult to describe. It wasn't just pink. It was a bright, almost luminous pink, as if someone had taken the color of cherry blossoms in spring and woven them into strands of silk. And depending on the light, it sometimes seemed to have nearly white highlights, or it would darken to a deeper shade, like the inside of a seashell.
"It's ridiculous," Damian told himself, his strokes growing softer as he worked on the details. "No normal person has pink hair. It's weird. It's flashy. It's..."
"It's beautiful."
The thought came so suddenly that Damian nearly dropped his pencil. He felt his entire face burst into flames.
"No, no, no! It's not beautiful. It's just... different. Unique. That's all. I'm just being objective. Like... like a scientist observing a rare natural phenomenon."
But even as he tried to convince himself, Damian knew it was useless. He couldn't fool himself. He'd spent too many years—since that cursed first day at Eden, since that punch that changed everything—observing Anya Forger. Memorizing every detail without even realizing he was doing it.
He knew exactly how her hair moved when she ran. How it shone under the playground sun during recess. How a few strands curled ever so slightly at the ends when it was humid. How she'd tuck it behind her ears when she was nervous, only for it to fall again seconds later.
It was pathetic, really. Damian knew it. But he couldn't help it.
He kept working, now on the final details of the face. And that's when he got to the part that was, secretly, his favorite: the eyelashes.
Damian paused, his pink pencil hovering over the paper. Anya's eyelashes were as unique as her hair—delicate pink lines that framed her green eyes in a way that shouldn't be possible but somehow was. Even her eyebrows were pink, though a slightly paler shade.
Everything about her was like that. Pink and distinctive and completely impossible to ignore.
"How many people in the world have pink eyelashes?" Damian wondered, beginning to draw those delicate lines with the care of an artist working on a masterpiece. "Probably no one. Probably she's the only one."
The thought made him feel something strange in his chest. Something warm and tight all at once.
Anya Forger was one of a kind. Literally one of a kind in the world. There was no one else like her, with that bright pink hair, those same impossible-colored eyelashes, those green eyes that sparkled with a thousand secrets, that smile that could be both sweet and mischievous in an instant.
And Damian... Damian knew her. Not just knew of her—he knew her. He knew how she scrunched her nose when she disliked something. He knew how her eyes lit up when she talked about her stupid spy shows. He knew the exact sound of her laugh—that laugh that made him feel like he'd just won the world's biggest prize and simultaneously wanted to hide in a closet from sheer embarrassment.
"No one else is like her," he thought, and this time he didn't try to deny the thought. "And no one else... no one else makes me feel the way she makes me feel."
It was terrifying. It was confusing. It was frustrating and wonderful and completely overwhelming for his seven-year-old brain that was still trying to figure out why girls suddenly didn't have cooties and why holding someone's hand made his heart beat so fast.
But it was true.
"Wow, Boss," Ewen's voice interrupted his thoughts. "That drawing is coming out really well."
Damian startled, instinctively covering his drawing with his arm.
"I-It's nothing! I'm just practicing... shading techniques."
"Shading techniques?" Emile stretched to get a better look, and his eyes widened. "Boss... are you drawing Anya?"
The silence that followed was absolute. Damian felt every cell in his body freeze in pure horror.
"NO! It's... it's just a... a generic drawing! It could be anybody!"
"It has pink hair."
"Lots of people have pink hair!"
"Literally no one at this school except Anya has pink hair."
"Well... maybe it's someone from my imagination!"
"Your imagination wears an Eden uniform with the Stella Star pin Anya won last month?"
Damian opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Finally, he gave up and simply let his head thump down onto the desk with a dull thud.
"I hate everything," he mumbled against the wooden surface.
Emile and Ewen exchanged another look, this one of genuine sympathy. Yes, they teased their Boss constantly, but they also knew him well enough to know when he was genuinely suffering.
"Hey, Boss," Ewen said softly, giving him an awkward pat on the shoulder. "It's not that bad. It's a really good drawing. Seriously."
"Yeah," Emile added. "You captured her... uh... her unique essence really well."
"Please stop talking," Damian groaned.
"But seriously, the eyelashes look great. How did you get that shading effect?"
Despite his mortification, Damian felt a small spark of pride. He had worked very hard on those eyelashes, after all. Slowly, he lifted his head from the desk.
"...Used very light layered strokes," he muttered. "To create depth. And left some white spaces for natural highlights."
"That's super smart!" Ewen exclaimed with genuine awe.
"Clearly, our Boss is a master artist," Emile added with a grin.
Damian grunted but couldn't help feeling a little better. At least his friends appreciated his technique, even if the subject was... well. That subject they weren't going to discuss.
He continued working on his drawing for the rest of class, adding small details here and there. Every so often, his gaze would drift to the real Anya across the room, checking details, making sure he'd captured the angle of her nose just right or the exact curve of her smile.
During one of those moments, Anya happened to look up at that exact instant. Their eyes met across the room.
Damian froze, his pencil suspended in mid-air. His heart was beating so loudly he was sure everyone in class could hear it.
But then, Anya smiled at him. It wasn't one of her mischievous or teasing smiles. It was just... a smile. Simple. Warm. The kind of smile you shared with someone when you saw them across a room and thought, "Oh, there you are."
And then, to Damian's complete mortification, she gave him a little wave.
Damian, operating on pure panic, did the only thing his seven-year-old brain could process: he quickly looked away and pretended to be intensely focused on his drawing, as if he hadn't seen a thing.
"Smooth, Desmond. Real smooth," he berated himself internally. "You definitely didn't act like a complete idiot. She definitely doesn't think you're weird now."
He could feel Emile and Ewen's amused stares on him, but he refused to give them the satisfaction of a reaction.
When the bell finally rang signaling the end of class, Mrs. Smith asked a few students to share their drawings. To Damian's horror, Becky Blackbell immediately raised her hand.
"I drew my best friend, Anya!" she announced proudly, holding her drawing aloft.
It was... well, it was an attempt. Becky had clearly tried her best, but the result looked more like a pink alien with bug eyes than a real person.
"Very expressive, Becky!" Mrs. Smith praised diplomatically.
Anya, from her seat, laughed affectionately.
"I look great, Becky!"
"I know! You're the perfect model because your hair is so unique!"
Damian watched the exchange, then looked down at his own drawing. Compared to Becky's, his was objectively better—more detailed, more accurate, more careful in its execution. But he would never show it. He would never admit that he'd spent the entire class working on every little detail of Anya Forger's face.
Because that would require admitting other things. Things he was too young and too proud to say out loud.
Things like the fact that he thought Anya Forger was the most interesting person he'd ever met. That her pink hair wasn't ridiculous—it was beautiful. That her pink eyelashes weren't strange—they were magical. That when she looked at him with those bright green eyes, it felt like he was the only person in the world who was truly seen.
"She's one of a kind," Damian thought again, carefully tucking his drawing into his backpack where no one—especially not Anya—could see it. "Completely one of a kind. And no one... no one could ever be like her."
It was a thought too big for his seven-year-old head. A feeling too complex for his childish heart. But it was true.
And someday, maybe—just maybe—he would be brave enough to tell her.
But for now, he would keep this drawing. Keep it safe, tucked between the pages of his textbooks where no one could find it. A secret just for him. A silent promise that no matter what else happened, he would always remember this moment. This day. This feeling.
The feeling of knowing someone truly one of a kind in the world.
That night at the Desmond manor. Damian was seated at his desk, supposedly doing his homework. In reality, he'd been staring at the drawing he made in class for the past twenty minutes.
In the light of his desk lamp, the colors seemed even more vibrant. The pink of Anya's hair practically glowed on the page, and he'd managed to capture something in her eyes—that glint of mischief mixed with kindness—that made it look almost alive.
"It's just a drawing," he told himself. "Just a stupid drawing for a stupid art class. It doesn't mean anything."
But even as he thought it, his fingers lightly traced the outline of the drawn face, pausing at the pink eyelashes he'd drawn with such care.
A knock on his door startled him. Quickly, he shoved the drawing under his math textbook just as his mother, Melinda, entered.
"Damian, sweetie, are you ready for bed?" she asked, her voice soft in the dim light.
"In a minute, Mom. Just finishing my homework."
Melinda walked over, looking at her son's desk. Her eyes briefly landed on the edge of the drawing peeking out from under the textbook, but she didn't comment.
"How was school today?" she asked instead, sitting on the edge of Damian's bed.
"Fine. We had art class."
"Oh? What did you draw?"
Damian felt his ears heat up.
"Just... a classmate. It was the assignment."
"I'd love to see it sometime." Melinda smiled softly. "You've always been good with details."
There was a moment of silence. Damian fidgeted with his pencil, debating something internally. Finally, without looking up, he asked:
"Mom... have you ever met someone who's... different from everyone else?"
Melinda tilted her head, considering the question.
"Different in what way?"
"Just... different. Like..." Damian struggled for the words. "Like no matter how many people you meet, that person is still unique. Like no one else could be like them, even if they tried."
A knowing, slightly melancholic smile crossed Melinda's face. She thought of Yor, her only true friend in years. She thought of how, despite all the elegant, sophisticated ladies she knew in her social circle, none made her feel as comfortable and accepted as that awkwardly sincere woman.
"Yes," she answered finally. "Yes, I have met someone like that."
"And what... what did you do?"
"I appreciated her." Melinda reached out and ruffled her son's hair gently. "When you find someone truly one of a kind, Damian, someone who lights up your world in a way no one else can... the best thing you can do is appreciate them. Value them. And let them know, somehow, how special they are to you."
Damian finally looked up to meet his mother's eyes. There was something in her expression—understanding, perhaps, or empathy—that made him feel less alone with these confusing, overwhelming feelings.
"Even if... even if it's scary?"
"Especially if it's scary." Melinda leaned in and kissed her son's forehead. "Things that are worthwhile are often frightening at first, sweetheart. But that doesn't make them any less precious."
After his mother left, Damian pulled the drawing out from its hiding place again. He looked at it for a long moment, his eyes tracing every pink line, every carefully rendered detail.
"She's one of a kind," he thought again. "And maybe... maybe that's okay. Maybe it's more than okay."
"Maybe it's perfect."
Carefully, Damian placed the drawing inside a special folder, one he kept in the deepest drawer of his desk. Someday, maybe, he'd have the courage to show it to her. Someday, maybe, he could tell her what he really thought.
But for now, this was enough.
Knowing that she existed.
Knowing that she was one of a kind.
Knowing that, of all the people in the world, he had the privilege of knowing her.
And that, Damian decided as he finally climbed into bed, was more than enough for now.