Work Text:
It’s a date!
Even now those three short words rattle in Damian’s brain like a marble tumbling down the first ramp in Emile and Ewen’s Rube Goldberg machine that they built for a science project. Damian knows he’s overthinking it. He knows her response was quickly, thoughtlessly fired off with a typical Forger grin and a jestful two-finger salute before she darted back down the hallway to rejoin Blackbell. He knows that phrase was uttered without a hint of awareness toward its polysemy. Damian knows this.
And yet the interaction loops in his mind, a broken record.
It’s just to work on their literature presentation, Damian tells himself as he chooses a navy blue polo shirt that Emile assures him shows off his toned arms nicely.
It’ll hardly take them more than an hour to get through everything, Damian silently insists as he tousles his hair in a way Ewen vows gives it maximum volume.
It’s not a real date. Just two friends—frenemies, truthfully, friends on a good day at most—meeting up at a small café Damian had suggested off the cuff when Anya asked him where he wanted to get some progress done on their partner presentation. Just a study session. A work session. A time for academic productivity.
Not a date.
And now Damian sits at the round maplewood table in the farthest corner that he could find within this rustic café, sunlight beaming in through the large window and illuminating a steaming espresso miel in a black mug that rests on the glossy tabletop between his lined notebook and his crisp hardback copy of the play assigned to his and Anya’s class. He pretends his knee isn’t anxiously bouncing beneath the table all because he arrived half-a-fucking-hour early. Was it paranoia from how crucial this presentation is to his final grade, given that it’s a precursor to the individual final essays all students in their Year 11 literature classes are expected to write? Was it a horrible, silent hope that Anya, too, might arrive early, allowing them to spend additional time together beyond schoolwork? Was it a benign byproduct of how rigorously Damian schedules his life from second to second to ensure he’s always ahead, never behind, yet never quite good enough no matter how hard he tries—
“Sy-on Boy!”
Damian’s head jerks up from where he was resting it on his hands, elbows atop the table, as Anya’s voice floats through the café. Her melodic exclamation is accompanied by the tinkling of the small brass bell above the glass entryway that sings when she steps inside. Beaming, Anya quickly moves to his table, depositing her well-worn Eden satchel on the wooden seat across from his.
“I should’ve known you’d get here even earlier than me,” she says, shooting him a wink as she pulls out her own notebook and a paperback library copy of the play from her bag, placing both down on the other half of the small table.
Damian immediately regrets his choice of seating. There’s enough room on the table for all of their items, but just barely, they’ll hardly have any elbow room to work at the same time—
“And you picked such a nice spot!” Anya gushes, halting Damian’s spiral before he cascades beyond oblivion. She hangs her satchel off the back of her chair before gesturing to the flowering vines that twine down the outside of the window beside them. “We get some natural lighting, a beautiful view of the garden—it’s perfect.”
Praying he successfully managed to disguise the deep breath he takes to reassert himself, Damian smirks at her. “Just don’t get too distracted, Forger. I know you have the attention span of a squirrel.”
“Wow, rude.” Despite the retort, she’s smiling. “I’m gonna grab a coffee. Want me to get you anything else?”
Damian shakes his head. “No, I’m good with what I have.”
Anya shrugs. “Suit yourself. I’ve heard great things about the pastries here!”
And then she’s practically skipping off to get in line at the counter. Not that it can be called a “line” when it’s just her. Damian has to admit that he expected this café, or any café, to be more crowded on a Sunday afternoon, but he supposes he did unwittingly—or maybe subconsciously, or perhaps just intentionally—recommend a café in a more isolated part of Berlint. Paparazzi didn’t pursue Damian to the same extent they would chase down Demetrius, but there were still plenty of journalists who’d sink their teeth into an exclusive interview even with just the second son.
Damian didn’t—doesn’t—want to deal with any of that.
A quieter café it is.
His eyes drift back across the open space of the coffee shop, flitting over identical wooden tables and chairs, noting the warm-toned hardwood floor that almost seems to glow beneath the simple yellow lightbulbs that individually hang from the ceiling. It’s… not a bad place. Welcoming, even.
Damian’s eyes move to the counter. He watches Anya purse her lips as she contemplates what to order. He can’t hear any of her conversation with the barista, a guy probably not much older than either of them with black hair, purple highlights, and a silver labret—a piercing Damian recognizes only because he was on the verge of drunkenly getting himself one during a rough bender over the most recent winter break. Thankfully, Ewen and Emile stopped him.
The binge incident hadn’t been unprecedented or unexpected, per se. But it had never…
Well, that was the first time it got so bad so quickly.
Damian has been exceedingly wary around alcohol since.
The barista says something, and Anya laughs, tucking her pink hair behind her ear. Damian fights a scowl. Who the hell does this guy think he is, anyway? And the fuck is he saying to Anya?
Damian tries to tear his attention away, to instead crack open his copy of the play and review the cast of characters, to try and anticipate who they might choose to do their presentation on, but his strength of will has never been enough when it comes to matters of Anya.
She’s laughing—again—at something the barista said. Is this guy a fucking comedian? Even at this distance, Damian can see the brightness of her smile, how her green eyes sparkle—
Shit. If his scowl deepens any further, Damian knows he’s going to wind up with creases around his mouth that will never smooth. Taking a steadying breath—well, attempting a steadying breath—he forces his face to flatten into a neutral expression.
He’s fine. He’s calm.
And his jaw definitely doesn’t clench when Anya passes five dalc over the counter to the barista, her fingers brushing his.
Damian groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. This is going to be a long… study session.
Which is all this meet-up is. A study session.
Not a date.
Soon Anya is walking back over to their corner table, a glass of what Damian assumes is strawberry matcha in one hand and a plate with a slice of warm, oozing cake on the other.
“It’s a peanut cake,” she says excitedly, sliding into her chair across from Damian. “Doesn’t it look amazing? Since I’m so nice, you can even try some, if you want.”
Damian tries not to think about Anya cutting off a piece of cake with her fork and feeding it to him.
He tries.
He fails.
“I’m, uh—” He clears his throat, shaking his head to dismiss the all too tantalizing image from his mind. “No thanks. I’m good.”
Anya shrugs. “Whatever you say.”
As Anya sips her drink and starts to eat her cake—he swears he sees her tearing up when she takes the first bite, but Anya has always been one to overexpress her love for peanuts—Damian can’t stop the accursed question from slipping off his tongue.
“So… What was so funny? With that barista?”
“Hm?” Fork between her lips, Anya tilts her head toward him, inquisitive. “Wha—”
“Don’t talk with your damn mouth full,” Damian grumbles, rolling his eyes. “Gross.”
“Sorry.” It sounds more like thowwy, what with the cake still stuffed in her mouth. Anya swallows her bite. “What do you mean?”
Heat rises to Damian’s cheeks, and he ducks his eyes down from hers to stare at the cast of characters, the page his play is still (still) open to, and reads not a word. “I don’t know. You kept laughing, or whatever.”
“I did? Oh!” And Anya laughs now. “Yeah, when I ordered the cake, he was telling me about a customer who came in yesterday with a crop top that said ‘I HEART PEANUTS,’ and I said that was actually me in disguise because I needed to scope out the place before I placed the real order my heart desired, and we both kept riffing off that stupid joke way longer than necessary.” She grins at Damian. “But for real, I need a shirt like that.”
Damian immediately squashes any and all thoughts that surface as to where he might acquire such a shirt for Anya. Why would he buy her something like that? No matter how good she would look in a crop top. And no matter how much it might make her smile. And no matter—
Damian resists the urge to slam his head into the table. “Oh,” he instead says, feigning disinterest. “Yeah. Cool. I was just… wondering.”
Anya stares at him for a moment, then reaches across to flick him in the forehead. “Silly Sy-on Boy. You make me laugh all the time, too.”
“Wh–What?!” Damian sputters, blushing furiously at her touch. “I’m not—I wasn’t—”
“Jealous?” Anya finishes, raising a brow. She smirks. “Sure you weren’t.”
Damnit, she always manages to do this to him, always manages to rile him up, always manages to make him look like an idiot—
You already are an idiot, Sy-on Boy. Damian can practically hear her chirping comment already. No help from me required!
“Anyways,” Damian says through gritted teeth, stressing each syllable. He knows his face is still colored a deep red, but if they pivot to their presentation and get some actual work done, he also knows the humiliation will fade with time. “Let’s do what we’re here to do.”
Anya salutes him with her fork. “Aye aye, Captain!” Sliding her cake aside for the time being, Anya cracks open her own copy of the play. “So, we’re supposed to do some kind of character study, right? On a character of our choosing?”
Damian nods. “Correct. Ms. Koch recommended we pick one of the more primary characters, rather than someone like”—he skims the cast list—“you know, one of the musicians or the apothecary.”
Anya nods. Her nose scrunches up—adorable, Damian thinks, then curses himself for the thought—as she traces the back end of her pen down her page. “Ugh. I wish our class had been assigned a more interesting play. Titus Andronicus? Richard III? Romeo and Juliet is so—is so—” She taps her pen against her forehead. “Overdone, I guess.”
“Well, it’s what our class voted on, so it’s what we’re doing. Suck it up and deal with it.”
“I didn’t vote for it,” she grumbles, but she continues reading through the cast list nonetheless.
Damian, in fact, did vote for Romeo and Juliet. It wasn’t his first choice—he would’ve preferred Julius Caesar or another of the classical “histories”—but it had made the top five of his rankings. Something about fate and forbidden love was… Well. He had a soft spot for it.
For reasons completely unrelated to his own life.
Not that he would ever admit a word of this to Anya.
“I’m going to put in a vote against Mercutio,” Anya finally says. “He’s going to be way too popular.”
Damian raises a brow. “You think so?”
“Well, he’s the funniest character. I can already see people trying their hand at his Queen Mab speech during their presentations.” Anya snickers. “I guess that’ll be funny, too—for how bad most of them will be.”
“Huh.” Damian flips ahead in the play. “I thought people would’ve chosen him for the significance of his death. When Mercutio dies, that’s when Romeo and Juliet stops following conventional comedy tropes of the period and becomes a tragedy. It’d be easy to fill a presentation talking about his central role in that shift.”
Silence.
Did he say something… wrong?
When Anya still doesn’t respond, Damian looks up from his book to see Anya staring at him thoughtfully, and his cheeks immediately heat.
“What?” he says, defensive. “You don’t agree?”
“No, it’s not that.” Anya drops her chin to her hand, still staring, a curious look in her green eyes that Damian can’t quite identify. “I just… I hadn’t thought of Mercutio’s death in those terms. That’s very insightful of you.”
Damian’s blush deepens. “Yeah, well—” He flips back to the cast of characters. “It’s called reading comprehension. You should try it some time.”
The barb doesn’t get the rise out of Anya that he anticipated. Guilt starts to curdle in his stomach, but Anya appears unfazed as she returns her attention to the play.
“Hmm…” She brightens. “Hey, why don’t we do the Nurse? She’s also funny, but she’s like—the only character with her head on straight. That could be an angle for our presentation, maybe.”
“She’s what?” Damian says, dubious. “‘The only character with her head on straight’? Please translate the Anya-ese for those of us who are not fluent.”
Anya rolls her eyes, casually flipping him off. “I’m just saying that the Nurse is the only one in the play operating with a lick of sense. She’s with the Capulets, but also not really, because of her lower social status. She’s able to see things from the outside looking in, so she gets a clearer view of all that goes down with Juliet and Romeo.” She shrugs. “I don’t know! But since she’s the smartest character in the whole play, there’d be plenty to talk about.”
“She’s—what?” Damian shakes his head. “The hell are you talking about, ‘smartest character in the play’? Did we read the same story, Forger?”
Anya crosses her arms over his chest, glaring at him. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it. If you don’t think she’s the smartest character in the play, then who is?”
It’s Damian’s turn to roll his eyes. He can’t believe Anya doesn’t know the answer already. “It’s Juliet. Duh.”
Instead of agreeing, as Damian knows she should because he’s obviously correct about this, Anya bursts out laughing.
“Juliet?” she says through a full-body cackle. “You’re kidding, right?”
Damian’s face reddens again, this time from a different type of embarrassment. “I—no, I’m not kidding! She is.”
Anya’s laughter stops abruptly when she realizes— “Oh, you’re serious.”
“No shit,” Damian mutters. “When am I not?”
Anya grimaces. “Touché.” She leans back in her seat, shaking her head as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Okay, please explain how Juliet is the smartest person in the play. She’s literally 13 years old, falls in love with the first guy who flirts with her, and proceeds to stab herself over said guy’s dead body. Nothing about her screams intelligence.”
“First of all, that’s an extremely disingenuous reading that dismisses the pressure put on her by her parents and how her loving Romeo acts as literal and figurative rebellion against that pressure,” Damian says curtly. Pressure from parents… Nothing he would be familiar with, of course. “At the base level, it’s—it’s—her choice to love is literally a reclamation of agency over her own life.”
Anya holds her hands up in mock surrender. “Fair. Still doesn’t explain how she’s smart, though.”
“Because she’s the only character in the play who sees through the feud!” Damian winces as his voice unconsciously rises. “Sorry. I just—it feels very clear to me.” He flips through Act 2 until he finds the speech he’s looking for, then flips his book around toward Anya so she can see. “This monologue. Read it.”
Though she raises a brow, Anya doesn’t protest. “‘’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,’” she reads. “‘Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s “Montague”? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man.’” She glances up at Damian. “Keep going?”
He nods. “You’re at the most important part.”
Anya’s eyes narrow, clearly skeptical. But she continues. “‘Oh, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were not Romeo called—’”
“Exactly!” Damian cuts her off, gesturing to the final lines on the page. “‘A rose by any other word would smell as sweet.’ Don’t you get it?”
Anya groans, dropping her forehead onto her own copy of the play. “No, Damian, I don’t. You know I’m no good at literature. Not unless I’m translating poetry from classical language.”
“Okay, listen.” Instead of frustration, excitement thrums in Damian’s chest. “The feud between the Montagues and Capulets has been going on forever. So long that no one remembers why it even started. And what all of them—both families—fixate on is the name. The name is everything. It’s the only thing.”
He points at Juliet’s speech again. “But not to Juliet. She sees through all of it—the history, the feud, the name. She’s the only one who recognizes that this obsession with names constantly reproduces a constructed conflict that no longer matters. That probably never mattered! ‘A rose by any other word would smell as sweet,’ because the names we give to something are ultimately just that. Given. Not some predestined self-definition. Roses would smell sweet even if they weren’t called roses. And the same applies to Romeo.”
Anya lifts her head. “He also smells sweet despite his name?”
Damian snorts. “No, genius. Romeo is supposedly defined by his name. By being a Montague. But in reality, his name doesn’t—can’t—truly condition that. And Juliet sees past his name. She sees him…”
Across the table, green eyes meet brown. Damian swallows, his throat suddenly thick.
“She sees him for who he is.” His voice catches, hushed. “Not for what his name demands he be.”
Damian can’t break his gaze from Anya’s. Her eyes are a forest—infinite in their depths, endlessly alive, full of secrets that only those fortunate enough to get lost within may one day uncover.
And how easy it is to get lost in those eyes.
“Damian…” Anya whispers, and the moment is shattered. Rather, Damian shatters the moment when he jerks his head away to break their prolonged eye contact, face flushed to the tips of his ears.
“Romeo, however, is an impulsive idiot,” he mutters, dropping his chin on his hand, “who chooses petty aggression instead of taking even a second to think before he acts. He’s lucky someone as perceptive as Juliet ever gave him the time of day.”
A pause. Anya stares at Damian a beat longer, her expression a cross between incredulous and exasperated, until finally she dissolves into a laughing fit.
Well, more than mere laughter, because Anya practically doubles over in her seat, clutching at her middle. “You are so—I can’t—”
Her own laughter continuously cuts her off, and Damian starts to crack a smile himself until Anya’s raucous laughter dissolves into phlegmatic coughs and wheezes.
“Anya?” he says, alarmed, halfway getting out of his chair. “Are you okay?” Shit. He can’t remember the last time she had an asthma flare-up, hell, he isn’t even sure that’s what this is—
“I’m fine,” Anya manages to force out between coughs. “Just give me—give me—” Continuing to wheeze like a broken train whistle, she sticks a hand in the front pocket of her satchel that still hangs off the back of her seat and pulls out a red inhaler, standing up and shaking the device before inhaling a long puff.
Damian can only stare nervously as Anya holds her breath for as long as she can before taking another puff. When Anya sits back down, he slowly does the same, shoving his hands in his pockets to hide how they shake.
Why is he so—afraid? Anya isn’t, and she would know best, so evidently she must be fine—
Anya releases the second breath she was holding, a mild cough escaping toward the end of her exhalation. Damian is relieved to note, however, that she does not begin heaving desperate gasps for air, nor does she reach for another dose from her inhaler.
She’s fine. Obviously.
(He wasn’t worried.)
“See?” Anya coughs again, then grins at him. “I told you that you make me laugh, Sy-on Boy.”
Damian flushes. “I didn’t plan to make you have an asthma attack, idiot.”
“Well, consider it proof of just how funny you are.”
Damian snorts. “You’re going to regret saying that.”
Anya is already grimacing. “Ugh, I know. You’ll get way too much mileage out of it.” She coughs into her elbow. “But anyways.” She clicks her pen, poising the tip over a blank page in her notebook. “You convinced me. Let’s do our presentation on Juliet.”
Damian hesitates. “Oh. I didn’t mean we had to—”
Anya shakes her head. “No, I really liked your explanation of her… her wisdom, I guess.” She gives him a soft smile that makes Damian’s heart skip a beat. “You’re pretty good at this. Literary analysis, or whatever.”
Damian’s blush deepens. He wants to thank her. He should thank her. And instead— “I don’t think I’m good, Forger. I think you’re just pretty bad.”
Anya snickers. “Ouch. But accurate.” Then she winks at him before clasping her hands dramatically to her chest. “Oh, no! Guess you’ll have to carry the success of this presentation, since I’m so terrible at understanding literature! Woe is me, to be able to contribute so little—”
Echoing her movement from earlier, Damian reaches across the table to flick her forehead. “In your dreams, Forger.”
Anya laughs again, and Damian swears he could listen to that sound all day.
“Alright, Romeo,” she teases. “Where do you want to start?”
Though he knows his face must be beet red, Damian can’t back down from a challenge. Not from Forger. “With where it begins and ends, obviously. For Juliet. For her Romeo, too.”
“Which is… what?”
And the smile Damian gives Anya is maybe a little too soft, a little too tender, a little too real.
“With love.”
The smile Anya returns him is brighter than the stars that crossed any pair of lovers. “Sounds perfect to me.”