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Like most imperial scholars at the prestigious Eden Academy, Damian Desmond practically lived in the Eden library. It was a constant point of teasing with Emile and Ewen, telling him to ask the librarian to install a bed in a corner of the library since he spent all his time there.
If he was being honest with himself, the library could easily replace his dorm or his father’s house since he spent more time in the stacks than anywhere else.
Eden’s historic library spanned across an entire portion of the campus, various buildings built with the old gothic style that was a trademark of the campus. It was a central landmark of Ostania, told to hold books that was dated before the existence of the country itself. Hundreds of windows lined the outsides of the library, allowing beautiful sunlight into the library that made it a favorite of all students and teachers at Eden Academy.
But the aging structure always seemed to hold a soft spot for Damian, it’s quiet nooks and crannies perfect to hide him from the time he was just six years old. Time always stood still when he was within the comforting walls, surrounded by stacks of books that held more knowledge than he could ever learn in a lifetime.
It was his favorite place to run around, already living at the academy before the classes even started since his father got tired of hiring nannies to look after him. When he turned ten, the librarian bought him a marble chess kit just for him, since he played with the older set until the black and white paint flecked off. The looming bookshelves looked after him, watched him grow into the leader of his year, and the dusty smell of parchment shielded him.
He always felt that he was more a child of these books, that had taught him more wisdom than any person he’d met in his short life. They could never leave him, ignore him, belittle him. There wasn’t one book that had been untouched by Damian in some way, even if his hand just traced the spines or his eyes skimmed through a page.
Embarrassingly, he trusted these books more than anything else in the world. Unlike people, he could count on the words of these books to be constant, unwavering. They would always stay the same, no matter how many times he came back to read them.
So suffice to say, he didn’t take kindly to anyone that invaded that space. Namely, any pink haired, green eyed girls with a penchant for ruining his thoughts and putting him at risk for an early cardiac arrest.
Her eyes widened when they locked eyes, even though Damian avoided her gaze from the instant he sensed her presence. She sauntered up to him with a wide grin, a stack of textbooks haphazardly balanced on her arms, setting them down with a loud thump.
“Hey, Sy-on boy!” she sang his name, practically echoing off the walls, and there wasn’t a sweeter melody for his ears. The librarian, even with her soft spot for Damian, shot them a dirty look, but he paid it no mind, his mind too busy chanting Anya, Anya, Anya.
Anya was all soft clouds of beauty with her dazzling emerald eyes and pink clouds of wavy hair, but underneath lurked a spark, a fire unlike anything that Eden Academy had ever seen.
She was a wildfire, burning blindingly bright and moving at a pace that was hard for any human to comprehend. She waltzed in here, effortlessly charming in the way only Anya can, scorching everything she came near. Her presence billowed up like smoke until it covered the whole room, despite only being five foot six inches tall, a whole five inches shorter than him.
A library was the worst place for someone who burned like she did.
“Forger, I didn’t know you could read!” he teased, his voice startlingly even for the erratic beat of his heart. “Much less know where a library was.”
“Oh stuff it Sy-on boy, I proved just how good my reading comprehension on that classical language exam I just aced.” She stuck out her tongue like a six year old, but the confidence in her tone only made his heart flutter. There was a challenge in her voice that singed his skin, and for a second, Damian was sure she could burn him alive with the intensity of her gaze.
She slid into the seat in front of him with ease, as though it was common practice. Anya paused as she looked through her textbooks and notebooks, avoiding his questioning gaze as she searched through her pencil case.
“Who told you could sit there?” he mustered up his most entitled voice, despite every atom his body begging for her to stay in front of him. He lifted an eyebrow as her gaze met his, but her skin didn’t flush red like he wished.
“Oh, I’m sorry Lord Desmond, do you own this chair?” He could hear the smirk in her voice and it stirred him up, his whole being brought to an edge. She was sat only two feet away from him, but her presence was all consuming. It was hard to focus on anything else when she was this close, as his legs became aware of how her calves bumped into his, and her fingers grazing his knuckles as she gripped the edge of her textbook.
“You know I have enough money to own it if I wanted to,” his voice smug, even though he hadn’t talked to his father in almost two years. “Maybe I could even convince my father to buy it for me. That way I can ban you from entering the threshold of this library.”
Anya rolled her eyes. “Well, do let me know when you finalize the purchase,” Anya paused, her head moving a breath closer to him. “Until then, I’m sitting right here.”
Their gazes locked, emerald staring into hazel, and he could feel the time dilating as he noted every gold fleck in her peacock green eyes. His lungs burned, heaving as he breathed in her jasmine perfume, his eyes scanning her face methodically. Despite almost a foot of distance between them, he felt suffocated, his skin buzzing as though she was stood pressed against him rather than across the table.
In that moment, she lurched forward once more, shortening the distance as her fingers grazed his tentatively. As though she was about to solidly place her hand in his, firmly press her palm against his and Damian had to stop himself from gasping at the possibilities.
His mind was flooded with images of how warm her hands would feel, how well they would clasp in his large hand. How soft her palms would feel, how the skin on the top of her hands would feel as his fingers traced them.
Then, as though she was trying to give him a heart attack, her deft hands slipped onto the back of his hand, her soft hands tracing the hard back of his hand. Damian felt his heart stutter, his breath firmly lodged into his throat and suffocating him into a slow death. His face was definitely red, but it brought some comfort to see her soft cheeks turn red.
Her features were questioning him all of a sudden, as though asking him is this okay?
And he replied by twisting his hand around to grasp hers, to hold her fingers in his firmly, trying to tell her that I’d never let go if you gave me the chance.
Suddenly, there was a curious bout of frustration that sprung from his chest and traveled down to his fingers, every molecule in his body itching to reach across the table, to tug on her fingers until she tumbled into his chest. Despite his rational mind telling him about the dangers of his want, his body toyed with the idea of threading his hands into her hair and kissing her, fantasizing about how soft her lips would feel against his.
Damian’s mind wandered, imagining what it would feel like to press the pads of his fingers into her cheeks, to pull at her full bottom lip with his teeth, to trace the insides of her mouth with his tongue. The curiosity of how her lip gloss tasted, how hands would feel clutching at his hair, how her body would feel pressed against him, was swallowing him whole.
The air in the room felt thicker, clouding his judgement and hindering any of his practical senses until she was his only focus. The feeling of her skin of her hands touching his was already stronger than any alcohol he could ever drink, and it only made his mind hazier. The urge to just let her consume him devoured every inch of his body, the buzzing energy felt deep down into his bones.
Her cheeks flushed red now, rather than the splotchy pink, and contentment rose through his body, her flustered state feeling like his reward. Her eyes widened just a fraction, her mouth forming a small oh, and god, that did not help his current state.
It only pulled him deeper into his musings, wondering what it would take to hear one of those soft gasps. He wanted the knowledge to be etched into his body, to be able to make her produce all those sounds for him whenever he pleased.
But he wanted more than just that. For the first time, it seemed he found something that contained more stories than any book he could ever read within the comforting walls of this library. Every morning he wakes up to turn a new page, to learn something that he couldn’t derive or read or study.
He wanted to learn the sound of her laughter, to know exactly what it took for her to flash him one of her brilliant smiles. He yearned to know what side of the bed she preferred, how she took her coffee in the mornings, her favorite chair to sit on. He craved to understand her at a fundamental level, to transform into whatever she needed.
And he felt like shouting that need from the rooftops.
“Anya—” he started, his voice just a simple whisper.
Crash!
Anya’s textbook thudded onto the wooden floor and the moment broke as Damian blinked away from her magnetic gaze. The tension in the room was practically cut in half, and he could feel the rational annoying part of his mind take over.
She blinked once more, before looking down to her texts, pointedly ignoring him. He took it as a sign to do just the same, looking down at his open set of notes, but the ink blurred in front of him, his mind still on the girl.
There was a low sense of alarm that sounded through his mind, at the idea that he was so close to being truthful with Anya about his own feelings. That he was so close to being truthful with himself.
For a short moment, he forgot that Anya Forger was the most terrifying thing Damian had met in his life. Everything about her was a variable, too unpredictable and erratic for his poor soul. She kept unearthing things about himself that he didn’t know, faster than he could process it.
It was infuriating how quickly she could read him, know what he was feeling before he knew it. It was frightening to be seen and known, especially when he couldn’t even begin to understand himself let alone anyone else.
She was dynamic, changing on whims that couldn’t be worked out by any equation. Her every emotion was carefully curated, and with how transparent he seemed to her, it frustrated him that she was such an enigma.
Every day he woke up to be presented with a new equation, a new emotion, a new action of hers that he had to derive a formula for. And just when he thinks he’d solved it, the equation changes with no warning.
There was no pattern to seek out, no easy answer to give to her probing questions and behavior. Anya pulled him out of his shell that he liked hiding under, and forced him to be vulnerable on instinct, and it made him angry.
For sixteen years, he trained to hide underneath the hardcovers of his books, his knowledge, his rationality, only to be weak to a too earnest, too honest, too beautiful girl. And a commoner no less. If he was this weak after years of practice, with a girl that had only known him as a classmate for ten years, it stands to reason that he will be this vulnerable to his family. To his father.
Yet, he couldn’t help but embrace that side. Despite the cruelty and strictness he was brought up in, he couldn’t help to be warmed by the fact that a real, human side of him still existed. That his family and all the pressures of his life hadn’t chipped away at it.
Damian grit his teeth as he snuck another tentative glance at Anya, her head buried into her math textbook as she bit her lip.
Her hand twirled her pen in rounds, fidgeting out of habit, as her eyes traced the equations. But her other hand was still clasped in his, still not eased from the grasp, as though it was staying permanently.
The echos of their voices and the falling textbook washed away, with silence engulfing the library once more, as the towering bookshelf and the aging structure watched the child of books fall in love with a wildfire.