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They weren’t doing anything particularly interesting when it finally hit her, really.
One of their silly little arguments got too loud for the teacher's comfort, so they shoved the duty of cleaning a couple of the dusty classrooms on Damian and Anya as punishment. Nothing out of the ordinary, and way better than getting a Tonitrus Bolt just for bickering.
Damian took over cleaning the desks and she took over cleaning the floors, as they usually did. He had an odd sort of fondness towards the mundane repetitivity of desk-cleaning, while she enjoyed being able to bounce and hum along as she mopped, so those ended up being exactly the tasks they did. Simple, straightforward and does not require much pre-planning.
They got paired up like this often enough that they knew their weak and strong points when it came to domestic duties such as cooking and cleaning, to the point where Becky joked that if they ever got married, they wouldn’t even need to discuss such trivialities - a joke that always got Damian’s thoughts to turn to static, weirdly enough.
Anya was lightly humming the Spy Wars main theme as she swept the floors, her hair bobbing along in the low ponytail it was tied in. A slight echo of Damian’s thoughts told her that he found this very endearing, if slightly grating because of how 'tone deaf' she apparently was.
"Hey, sy-on boy," she said.
He turned towards her.
She stuck her tongue out at him with a loud 'bweh' to show him exactly how she felt about his snide little thoughts. He returned the gesture without batting an eye, with a loud"screw you too, Forger" resonating from the depths of his mind, and returned to his cleaning. Since he wasn't distracting her anymore, she started introspecting.
...Damian was oddly casual about her telepathy.
That was something Anya liked about him, she supposed. He took her powers in stride, turning them from something that could have been friendship-breaking into merely another way to bicker with her. And, as opposed to everything she was expecting, he didn’t even really try to silence his own mind when she approached him, outside of the few deeply personal thoughts he learned how to cover up so as not to worry her.
He could have tried, had he been more paranoid of her. He could have run away. Neither he nor Becky had to accept her weirdness, or her as a whole, but they did. Both of them trusted her, somehow, and it made her feel light and fuzzy inside.
Damian did learn to turn down the overall volume of his thinking, something she really appreciated. His voice was surprisingly quiet when he felt calm, but his thoughts had always been just a tad more unhinged than he allowed himself to be on the outside.
She'd be lying if she said she didn’t find it a bit cute.
“Anya, could you move our cloaks to a clean desk? I’m moving to this row now,” he spoke, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Noting her confused gaze, he put down his cleaning rag and pointed to their Imperial Scholar cloaks that they had randomly thrown on one of the middle desks - or, well. Hers was thrown; he had neatly folded his and placed it on top.
Anya sent him a quick “Okay!” with a finger gun attached and went to do exactly that...
And failed.
Because she slipped, the sole of her shoe letting out a pathetic little squeak.
She was about to fall down on the wet floors when an arm steadied her, and in her panic, she clung desperately to the front and back of her saviour, feeling the fabric bunch underneath her fingers. Now she was hovering with her heels not even touching the ground, so she looked up and-
...Was Damian always this cute or was she dying, somehow?
Anya blinked.
“Are you alright?” he hastily asked, causing her eyes to flutter down to his lips, which- again, have they always looked so soft? Was it the proximity?
All the sudden movement had to have messed with her head.
Damian's eyes were wide and his brows were furrowed in honest, open concern. She always felt special when he allowed himself to be open around her, but it had never affected her in this way before. The sun was hitting the back of his head, only gently tracing the edges of his face with bright, warm light, and she found herself also tracing those edges with her gaze as if she had never seen him before.
The feeling in her chest as her heart hammered away was nothing new, of course, as it had been slowly building up over the years with each of his soft smiles and gentle, personal grins. Anya was deeply familiar with ignoring it at this point, but it seemed like today was the day the feeling decided to make a statement - one so loud that for once she couldn’t even hear his thoughts, drowned out by her own.
He blinked, his eyelashes almost fluttering with the movement in a way that on any day would have been utterly hilarious to her. It felt as if time was moving in slow motion, like in one of Becky’s romantic dramas. Damian’s bangs had fallen in front, messy and out of place from all the desk cleaning he’d been doing, and they were framing his face in a way she wasn't used to, the opposite of the prim and proper Desmond he always fancied himself being. He was sweaty and dusty, and so was she, and she wasn’t supposed to care so much about how utterly pretty he was looking at a time like this, yet here she was-
Wait. Becky’s romantic dramas?
Becky’s romantic dramas...
Romantic...
...
Oh.
Oh?
Oh.
Her lips pulled into a tight line.
His hand on her back shifted ever so slightly along with her sense of balance - not that she was paying attention. Her head was flooded with a barrage of her own thoughts, so loud that she couldn’t even hear his, because-
Because his arm was clutching her back carefully but firmly so that she wouldn’t fall, and she was holding onto him for dear life, and they were both really sweaty and tired and gross, and by God, this was anything but a romantic situation yet here she was, having thoughts and realisations. She was starting to become aware of her own deathly grip on his shirt as her knuckles were tiring out, but his lower lashes were so long and pretty and his eyes were so gentle and concerned (for her) and the entirety of his face looked like it would be so soft to the touch, so how could she ever dare to move?
Out of all the times to realise she was in love with Damian Desmond, it had to be when she was seconds away from falling on her butt. Figures.
Anya saw more than heard his lips form words. Whatever those words were, she had no idea, but she liked the way he said them, quickly and sharply. He moved his unreasonably cute eyes away from her and brushed his bangs out of his adorably flushed face, and-
She was snapped out of her moment by the sudden coldness on her back as he unceremoniously removed his hand from it and cleared his throat, breaking the moment.
“I’ll- I’ll just.” He pointed to their Imperial Scholar cloaks. “Move those. Myself.”
And promptly absconded the situation.
Thus, Anya was harshly brought back to reality, watching Damian do exactly what he said he’d do while avoiding all eye contact with her. His brows were furrowed as they always were when he was furiously focusing on something, his hands just slightly shaking as they always did when he felt embarrassed, and he was grumbling about how he didn't want to help her anyway if she wasn’t even going to respond. His real thoughts were nothing but a low rumble that she was entirely too frazzled to pay much attention to.
She pressed the back of her hand to her cheeks, only now noticing how they burned. The classroom was mostly silent, save for the sound of his furious scrubbing and the distant laughter of younger students playing outside during their break.
Nothing was particularly out of the ordinary, yet everything felt a bit different to her, somehow.
Anya didn’t know how long she stood there watching him work, but her mouth was oddly dry as she spoke.
“How long was it?”
Damian abruptly halted his movements and turned towards her, visibly confused.
“How long was... what?”
She gestured into the empty air. “Y’know. The. The falling thing.”
He blinked. “Wha- like, 5 seconds or something? I asked if you were okay and you were just staring at me.”
Shocked, she checked the clock. She also checked the sky through the window, and sure enough, there was barely any change. The moment had lasted exactly as long as the definition of the word suggested.
...In a way, that made sense. Both because that’s how Becky always described it and also because Damian couldn’t possibly hold her steady with one arm for longer than half a minute at most.
“Seriously, are you okay?” he asked, making her spin back towards him, almost bumping into his chest. When did he get so close? “You’re only this quiet when something’s wrong.”
Anya flinched and took a small step back.
“Yeah, I’m fine! I really am," she reassured. "It’s just...”
He gazed at her expectantly. She looked down and started twiddling her fingers, voice just barely louder than a whisper.
“It just... it felt longer, somehow.”
There was a small silence as she waited for a response that never came. Afraid, she raised her eyes to meet his, and-
Well, she didn’t know what she was expecting but Damian was trying really hard to not laugh at her. Anya didn't know what she was hoping for, but it somehow wasn't this.
The unimpressed look on her face broke him. It was so rude, really, and she wanted to be mad at him, but his laughter was coming out in adorable snorts and giggles and after that particular realization, it was too much for her heart. She had to let it slide.
“Really, Anya,” he grinned, “out of all the times to space out-”
“Shut up,” she wailed, hiding her face behind her hands.
Peeking at him from behind her fingers, she realised that none of this was new, really. All these things, she had felt them all towards him many times at various points throughout their friendship - it wasn’t as if she hadn’t loved him until now. This just happened to be the first time they all happened at once, leaving her confused and breathless and grasping at empty air, wanting to hold his hand.
So inconvenient. So unfair.
Damian casually ruffled her hair, face tinged with pink, his thoughts entirely incoherent but just as loving as they've always been.
“Look, I’m sorry for laughing,” he said, a smile still ghosting his lips in a way that was so soft and personal and didn't help at all with her ever-beating heart.
How dare he.
“Oh, shut up,” Anya grumbled, lightly slapping his hand away from her hair. “Get back to cleaning, errand boy.”
Damian cackled and flicked her nose, skittering away before she could rightfully bust his kneecaps.
“Stop reminiscing and finish mopping the floors, Forger,” he declared, grabbing one of his rags and returning to the desks. His mind echoed a sentiment of relief that she was okay after all, sending heat into her face again.
Shaking her head, she grabbed her mop and started furiously cleaning the floors again, dutifully ignoring the frustrating warmth in her chest and face that she could finally properly identify.
It was funny, really. Damian may have saved her from falling on her butt, but he sure didn't manage to save her from falling for him.
Becky, as always, was right.
So inconvenient.