Chapter Text
The thing to know about Damian Desmond is that he was smart.
Book smart, yes - he was an avid reader, an excellent wordsmith, and an overall dedicated student - but more importantly, he was intuitive and aware of his reality. The reality that came with being the Second Desmond Son. Not exactly on the cusp of growing into a powerful heir like his older brother would no-doubt become, but still not entirely free from the height of expectation that had been thrust upon him at an early age.
There were few places in his life where Damian could succeed at a magnitude large enough that it would have even the slightest possibility of scraping his father’s awareness. If his brother has already done it, then it wasn’t groundbreaking news, nor was it worthy of wasting the scarce and precious time that he had with his father by bringing it up.
However, there was one thing that his brother had failed to achieve thus far on his imminent trek to success. His parents have even brought it up numerous times as a topic of concern, specifically within the past couple of months.
They wanted grandkids.
Someone to pass on the family name and ensure the continued production of their proud lineage full of influential history-makers. To help turn the tide of public opinion after the Desmond name had been slandered following the outcome of the war.
“If Demetrius doesn’t find a wife soon,” Jeeves, their butler, warned Damian over the phone late one night when he had been trying to get a hold of his parents. “Then your father made it very clear at dinner yesterday that he would be reconsidering who exactly it was that took over the title of Lord Desmond after he’s passed.”
The golden window of opportunity that he hadn’t even realized that he’d been waiting for his entire life had finally been cracked open. The seed of an idea was planted somewhere deep in his brain ever since that rather enlightening conversation with Jeeves.
For the first time in years, Damian felt smug.
His older brother was brilliant in many ways - an unsurpassed Imperial Scholar during his time at Eden Academy - but being a flirt, having allure and charisma, seducing women was not something that he had ever shown an interest in, nor had a particular talent for.
Damian wasn’t exactly swimming in dates either, mind you. He’s been far too busy in his race to keep up with his brother to have even considered the thought.
But at seventeen and entering his final semesters of the prestigious Eden Academy, he was in a far better position to bring home a respectable partner than his OLDER brother. Especially considering the fact that most of the women that his brother hung out with on a regular basis were other politicians and important figures, all of whom had varying societal connections that had to be carefully considered, and generally they were already either engaged or married themselves, since they wouldn’t have been taken seriously by any of their superiors without a husband of their own.
This was Damian’s fateful second chance. The fruition of all his past diligences have led him to this exact moment. His parents wanted to secure a future for their fortunes, to help redeem his father’s actions during the war and spark forgiveness for the next generation of Desmond, and Damian could give them that relief.
He was determined to be everything that his parents needed, and more.
All he had to do was find a nice girl at Eden that he could bring home for an evening or two, preferably another Imperial Scholar with an impressive family history for extra awe and shock-value, and then his parents would finally be forced to recognize his obvious potential as the next family heir. He just had to secure the perfect candidate for the position.
Easier said than done, he supposed, but at least he knew right off the bat that he could eliminate one of his classmates in particular from the extensive list of possibilities.
The high society arm candy that he was looking for certainly wasn’t going to be Anya Forger.
Because, you see, the thing to know about Damian Desmond is that he was smart.
He was well aware of the unfortunate… feelings that he’s developed over the years in regards to the peculiar Forger girl. It was hard to ignore them, after all.
Hard to ignore the uncomfortable wave of heat that would sometimes crawl up the back of his neck and spill into his cheeks whenever she did something remarkably brave or selfless on his behalf. Hard to ignore the stuttered pace of his pulse whenever she happened to brush too closely against him, or stumbled into him like the colossal klutz that she was, or even when she had punched him on their first day at Eden in order to stand up for her new friend’s honor.
Anya Forger was a different breed of girl, Damian discovered. One that he’s never encountered before in his close-knit enclosure of high class acquaintances and vastly pampered peers.
Where the other girls enrolled at Eden Academy were prim and proper and elegant, Forger was fiery and flighty and brash. Where the other girls had been predisposed to strict schedules and have been following orders since they were very young, Forger was undeniably unmotivated and lacked any sort of a similar discipline. Where the other girls had varying interests in horseback riding, crocheting or knitting, and all things fashion related, Forger spent her days reading spy novels, punching boys, and harboring secret alliances with the stray animals on the streets of Ostania.
How she hadn’t gotten expelled from the Academy already was truly a mystery in and of itself.
How she ever managed to get accepted in the first place, Damian would probably never figure out.
She had succeeded in acquiring numerous Stellas since their first year together though. Eleven to be exact. More than Damian had, which was frustrating. Still, her academic track record was atrocious - hardly staying afloat with barely passing grades and an affliction of Tontirus Bolts that threatened her expulsion daily - and yet her mannerisms remained that of a feral peasant with too much free time and too short of an attention span to understand the precariousness with which she lived her life.
No. Damian’s feelings for Forger could very easily be explained away. She was simply different.
Different from his stuffy friends, Emile and Ewen, who followed him around flanked perfectly on either side, and who praised his every move, and who have referred to him as Lord Desmond since they were six. Different from the sleek-haired, smooth-skinned, well-versed girls who would regularly try to sit next to him at lunch, or study with him in the library, or secure themselves an imaginary invite back to his room at the Cecile Hall Boys’ Dormitory.
Being around Anya Forger was like experiencing an entirely different world, and so his natural born curiosity was automatically piqued. He was intrigued by her, and that’s all there was to it.
The childish yearnings of a dumb schoolboy.
Now that he had finally been given the chance to prove himself as a man of great importance to his family, it was time to set aside those ill-begotten fantasies and come to terms with his reality once more.
He needed to find a suitable wife, and who better to fill that position than Anya Forger’s best friend, Becky Blackbell?
Damian couldn’t say that he was particularly attracted to Blackbell. She was fine, of course, as were most of the girls in his year at Eden. Her hair was always diligently groomed, her clothes were designer brand and specially tailored, her nails were flawlessly manicured, her grades were impeccable, and her mannerisms portrayed that of a proper bred, societally enforced, high-class Ostanian citizen.
She could have a bit of a mouth on her sometimes (a bad influence by Forger, no doubt), but she rarely ever let that kind of behavior slip in front of their esteemed professors. She was sneaky with her smarminess like a true lady.
For all intents and purposes, she was his perfect white dove.
Now all Damian had to do was make her fall in love with him.
“Hmm, no.”
“HAH?!”
Getting turned down by Becky Blackbell had not been a part of his master plan to achieve lordship.
“I said no,” Becky reiterated as politely and patiently as possible.
She refused to look in his direction, and her jaw was tight as she roamed about from one shelf to the next, depositing armfuls of books from the cart that he had seen her lugging around the library when he had finally managed to track her down after their evening lessons.
She must be doing some extra volunteer work or something - aiming to earn another Stella to put towards her dutiful quest to become an Imperial Scholar before graduation.
“I couldn’t go on a date with you even if I wanted to, Desmond. Which I don’t.”
The burning flush of heat in her cheeks said otherwise, but he didn’t care much to call her out on it. Perhaps she truly was just furious with him for even having suggested such an idea out loud.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Damian demanded to know instead. He genuinely hadn’t foreseen this complication arising in his careful consideration of which girl to pursue at this school with the efforts to make her his future wife.
It might sound crazy at the surface level, but what you must remember is that Damian Desmond was smart.
He and Becky were a good match - the best match at Eden Academy, societally speaking, which was all that anyone and their entire families cared about at this school.
His father has brought up the Blackbell girl loads of times at dinner in an attempt to entice his older brother’s interest in her, and he was sure that her father must have been doing the same in their mirroring fancy dining hall. As the CEO of a major military manufacturer, he was no doubt clamoring for the support of any high-standing person of political importance in the upcoming elections, and while the Desmond name might have decreased in popularity, the aftermath of the war hadn’t done much to hinder their authoritative influence on its numerous voters.
If Damian and Becky got married, they would have control over the culmination of the entirety of the Ostanian people, right at their fingertips.
The powerful King and Queen of a new-aged Empire.
Surely, an overtly-romantic girl such as Becky Blackbell - who has been staying up late every weekend for the past several years to watch the newest episodes of Berlint in Love and felt the need to catalog every character’s developing relationship - would be swooning at this opportunity to create her very own happily ever after.
Becky slammed a book back into its preferred slot before she placed her hands on her hips and let out a heavy sigh of defeat. Her tense shoulders loosened then, and by the time she turned to look at him with her arms crossed confidently over her chest, her sharp eyes and haughty attitude had softened tremendously.
“I couldn’t do that to Anya,” she informed him very seriously. “She’s my best friend.”
Anya? As in Anya Forger? What did she even have to do with this?!
“I don’t understand,” Damian continued to be baffled by her arguably illogical reasoning.
His father was right. Women were impossible. There was absolutely no getting through to them with any kind of common sense.
Anya had completely forgotten that he existed. She didn’t care about him like she, for some reason, used to - she hasn’t cared about him in years. She didn’t try to talk to him anymore. She didn’t look at him.
Not since the end of the war.
Not even once.
Was Blackbell really saying that she wouldn’t dare do something as horrendous as force his presence around her? Has Forger really grown to hate him so much?
Damian didn’t understand.
“Of course you don’t,” Becky sighed again in a dreamily condescending sort of way. She stared at him with what could only be described as pity in her eyes for his apparent idiocy. “You stubborn, brooding types never do. Not until it’s too late anyway.”
And with that very dramatic and depressing send off, she packed up her now empty book cart and promptly wheeled it away.
Damian stared at the place where she had just been standing in rampant disbelief.
What did any of that even mean??
He clenched his molars in frustrated agitation, and his fingers curled into a tight fist around the strap of his bag. He pursed his lips together while he silently debated his next move in this rapidly growing complicated game of chess to acquire his new queen before he let out a long, haggard sigh of his own.
Damn it. There was no other way around it anymore.
He was going to have to speak with Forger about this.
Anya Forger taught a self-defense class twice a week at their school.
She claimed that it was to help the female population of students feel safer on their walks across campus late at night during exam seasons, and she impressed their professors well enough with the idea to have earned her one of her many Stellas. Mr. Henderson even made a whole impassioned speech about the elegance of a young lady knowing how to protect herself in dire situations, and the nobility and grace that it showed in one’s character to have the desire to teach such an important skill to others.
Damian was certain that Forger had just wanted an excuse to install punching bags in the gym so that she could practice beating the ever-living crap out of people, similarly to how she was doing now.
Her class ended a half an hour ago (not that Damian had her schedule memorized or anything), and yet she had remained behind. Her fists were covered in layers of faded pink knuckle wraps, and she let out tiny gasps with every swing as she slowly chipped away at the fading logo.
Damian came to a stop behind her and watched the muscles of her shoulder blades contract and move through the material of her sports bra while she continued to throw punch after mighty punch.
“What’re you playing at?” He confronted her the only way that he knew how. Directly.
She didn’t seem to have heard him, probably lost somewhere far away in her own head like she always was.
"Oi," he reached out to grab her shoulder and bring her back to reality. "Are you even listening to-?"
Her entire body froze for exactly one second when her hand latched onto his wrist with a vice-like grip in response. Before he had the chance to open his mouth again, she spun on the ball of her foot and yanked him along with her. She bodied him effortlessly over her shoulder and he landed hard on his back on the mats, his arm twisted around uncomfortably before he felt the stiff press of her shoe dig into his chest to keep him pinned to the floor.
When he looked up, her vibrant green eyes were narrowed into dangerous slits. A moment later, she recognized exactly who it was that she had just laid out flat on their ass.
She blinked in apparent surprise. Her mouth parted with bewilderment as she tore her hand away, like the skin of his wrist had just burned her fingers.
“Oh,” she acknowledged him with further mystification before she suddenly remembered herself and cautiously forced her hand out again like some sort of peace offering.
Damian gritted his teeth against the lingering sting in his arm when he reached to accept it. “Do you always make it a habit to beat up every guy that tries to approach you, or is it just me?”
“It’s just you,” Forger told him honestly. She helped him to his feet without looking at him. “Other guys don’t really approach me, you know?”
“I can’t imagine why,” Damian muttered sarcastically under his breath while he straightened out his school jacket and readjusted the strap of his bag.
Forger’s eyes flashed in a distantly familiar way. She stubbornly turned her back on him like he was no longer worth addressing and proceeded to assault the punching bag in front of her. Maybe she was pretending that it was his face.
“What do you want, Sy-on Boy?” she asked when it was obvious that he wasn't going to go away just because she pretended that he wasn't there.
“I want to know why you told Becky Blackbell that she wasn’t allowed to date me,” Damian accused angrily.
Forger paused mid-punch to look over her shoulder in astonishment.
“I never told her that,” she insisted urgently.
“Then why does she believe it?”
“How should I know?” Forger seemed to be genuinely puzzled by all of his incessant questions. “What does that even have to do with me?”
Damian didn’t understand.
“I don’t know! It’s not like you’re…” he stammered over his words, his confidence slipping, which was unusual for him, and he could already feel a familiar, uncomfortable warmth beginning to spread across his skin under the starchy fabric of his collar. “You’re not… secretly in love with me, or something, right?”
Anya stared at him the way that she used to when they were kids. Like she was trying to stop him from reading her mind.
“No.”
The confession hurt Damian more than he thought it would. He didn’t know what else he had expected her to say. He shouldn’t have been expecting anything at all. Not one way or the other.
Still, the blatant rejection, the lack of hesitance, the pure certainty of that singular word spoken with such unwavering assuredness - like it was the only rule in the entire world that Forger ever intended to follow - made his burning skin start to itch. He reached up to scratch at the back of his head, as though that might relieve some of the tension that had begun to squeeze hard and tight in his chest.
“Exactly,” he confirmed dumbly.
And then he turned on his heels to leave her to carry on with all of her pointless punching.
Because that was the thing to know about Anya Forger. That no matter how smart Damian Desmond liked to think he was - she never failed to make him feel irrevocably, infuriatingly stupid.