❀| He hates this place (req)

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This was, in Damian’s opinion, utterly ridiculous.

There was no logical reason for him to be attending a private school alongside ordinary children. He was not ordinary, nor had he ever pretended to be. He had been raised under circumstances that made the concerns of most teenagers seem laughably insignificant. While other students spent their afternoons attending pep rallies, loitering at shopping malls, discussing trivial gossip, and concerning themselves with school dances, Damian had spent his childhood training, studying, and learning how to survive situations in which failure carried considerably more severe consequences than a poor grade.

He had never attended a pep rally.

He had never wandered aimlessly through a shopping mall with a group of friends.

He had certainly never understood the appeal of either.

Yet, despite Damian’s relentless and thoroughly articulated objections, Bruce had insisted that he remain enrolled for at least one semester.

“One semester,” Bruce had said, as though six months of this particular form of torture were somehow reasonable.

Damian had been of the opinion that three days would have been excessive.

He detested nearly every second of it.

The hallways were perpetually crowded, noisy, and filled with conversations that seemed to consist primarily of subjects Damian found either painfully mundane or incomprehensible. Students laughed too loudly, shouted across corridors, and occasionally giggled when he passed. He could never determine whether they were laughing at him or simply being obnoxious, though Damian considered both possibilities equally irritating.

Worse still, he had discovered that speaking to his peers was considerably more difficult than anticipated.

It was not that Damian was incapable of conversation. He could discuss politics, military history, literature, art, international affairs, forensic science, and an extensive number of other subjects with ease. The problem was that none of these topics appeared to be particularly useful when attempting to make friends.

He had tried, on one occasion, to contribute to a conversation about a popular television series.

They had stared at him.

He had left shortly afterward.

Thus, while Damian preferred to believe that his silence cultivated an air of mystery and superiority, the reality was considerably less impressive.

He was simply awkward.

Painfully so.

Cripplingly so, if he were being honest with himself.

At present, Damian sat toward the back of the classroom, largely ignoring the lecture while occupying himself with a sketch in the margins of his notebook. Drawing was considerably more productive than listening to his classmates whisper to one another, and certainly more tolerable than attempting to participate in whatever social ritual they had invented for the day.

His pencil moved steadily across the page, refining the lines of the figure he had been working on.

For once, he was almost comfortable.

Then a voice interrupted his concentration.

“That's really good.”

Damian’s pencil stopped.

He slowly looked upward.

You were standing beside his desk, looking down at the sketch with an expression of genuine interest.

For several seconds, Damian simply stared.

He had seen you before.

Around campus, mostly.

He had noticed you in the hallways, in the courtyard, occasionally across the cafeteria. You always seemed to be surrounded by other students, effortlessly engaging in conversations that Damian could never seem to enter. You smiled frequently. Far more frequently than he considered necessary, in fact.

And you had rather striking eyes.He had noticed that before. Of course, noticing was not the same as being interested. Damian was merely observant. It was one of his more admirable qualities. There was no reason whatsoever for his face to suddenly feel warm.

His gaze lingered on you for half a second too long.

Beautiful.

The word appeared in his mind without permission.

Damian immediately rejected it.

Beautiful?

That was an absurd assessment. He had merely been making an objective observation regarding your-

His thoughts stalled.You were still looking at him.

Damian realized, with mounting horror, that you were waiting for a response. His mind, usually so reliable, had apparently decided to abandon him at the precise moment he required it most.

He cleared his throat, straightened slightly in his chair, and forced himself to regain some semblance of composure.

“Thank you, {{user}},” he finally managed, his voice quieter than intended. “I was unaware that you were enrolled in this class.”

It was a perfectly reasonable statement.

Unfortunately, Damian’s ears were still burning. He lowered his gaze toward his sketch, pretending to examine the lines he had already corrected three times. Perhaps Bruce had been right about one thing. School was proving to be considerably more challenging than he had anticipated.