𝕊𝕆𝕃𝕀𝕍𝔸𝔾𝔸ℕ𝕋║[ᴅ. ᴡᴀʏɴᴇ]

ʟɪᴍᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ

Weeks later, Vin was laid up in his bed with a cold pack slapped onto his forehead and aches of all species invading his body.

Dieu, just impale him with a rusty trepan. It would be less painful.

"Nonna, I don't think all of this is necessary. It's just a small ick, nothing more." He struggled to talk with the thermometer shoved into his mouth. His accent was thickened to a near unintelligible level as his voice was hoarse and his nose stuffy.

"It is necessary if you want your muscles to remain where they are rather than melted off like ancestor Frederico's." Anna Bertinelli huffed and placed down another bed tray of egg and miso soup.

"I am seriously weighing the differences at this point," Vin muttered, only to choke when she forced another spoonful into his mouth. He crossed his bandaged arms and sulked at the comforter thrown over his lap. Moving too much would jostle the internal wound he earned last night. As his grandmother set to preparing his next army poundage of vitamins and pills, he looked around his room with lack of nothing else to do. His eyes caught on the Gotham Academy uniform hanging pristinely in his closet and grimaced. Damian didn't do well in AP Biology, what with both Bridgertons taking the class. And he still had to suffer Art with the both of them afterward. With Vin not attending, his seat next to Wayne would be fit for the taking as Professor Coquelicot didn't enforce assigned seating.

"It's going to be a shitshow over there." He sighed with the pain of 1,420.69 soldiers on the front line getting shot with lead-filled bullets.

"Guarda la tua lingua," His nonna chastised. "But, yes, it will indeed be one spettacolare fottuta shitshow."

Vin's confused, indignant face spoke an array of feeling through its noiseless disposition.

Damian was not having a good day, which turned into not having a good afternoon or a good evening.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day started when Pennyworth dropped him off at the front gate of Gotham Academy. He entered through the tall, iron-wrought gates and went over to the old apple tree he and Bertinelli had wordlessly agreed upon as a meeting spot.

Upon seeing the lack of the dark brunette-haired, tan male sipping a carton of apple juice, he wasn't too concerned in the beginning. Some days one of them arrived before the other, an imperfect pattern that ended in the same result, which was walking into school together and starting their treacherous classes. Dealing with dull classmates and trading sarcastic, inside jokes (subjects which varied from civilian to the nightlife variety). Jokes which made Damian smirk and Vincent chuckle quietly under his breath.

The bell rang, and a sea of royal blue and plaid filtered into the school. The space between Damian's brows furrowed, and, after a brief moment, he pushed off of the tree and followed.

So Bertinelli was late; it wasn't a big deal. His ridiculous father had probably slipped on another illicit puddle of something illegal or another. Honestly, how did that man manage to run a successful criminal syndicate for this long?

Vin was on the second chapter of Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Bennet had just started playing matchmaker for Bingley and Elizabeth, but it was hard to focus on the words when a bit of snot kept trying to dribble out of his nose and onto the pristine pages of Leo's book. The man would lock him in a room of pianos if Vin got even a speckle of something that wasn't a bookmark on his novel.

The boy soundlessly shuddered. Ugh, pianos. There were memories that he didn't need to relive while he was sick.

Other than wanting to yank his brain out like an ancient Egyptian death embalming ceremony, his day was pretty bland. And, in his life, that was something he was a-okay with. He yawned so hard that his eyes watered and hummed softly. His eyelids started to droop, and his grip on Pride and Prejudice gradually began to slip until it tumbled onto the blanket of his lap. With that, his amber eyes fell shut like steel to a magnet.