It was a quarter past eight, and Damien was sitting in the back of his first period Calculus class, bored out of his skull and half delirious from lack of sleep. He'd been up deep into the night putting the finishing touches on the last chapter of one of his fanfics, and by the time he'd finished editing and getting it posted to Tumblr and Archive of Our Own, it was nearly three in the morning.
He groaned. How was he expected to get through a block Math class with Mrs. Craft? Arguably the foulest and somehow still the most boring teacher in all of Westlake Prep. It seemed an impossible feat to be simultaneously a nasty, mean spirited teacher and a boring one, but in all the time Damien had been in Westlake, she had always been the worst. Even when she hadn't even been his teacher she had been awful. Always yelling at students in the halls, or otherwise getting them in trouble every chance she could.
Damien scrolled through his Tumblr dashboard on his phone, in search of something, anything, that might help him stay awake, but it seemed that most of his fellow fandom members were just getting to bed themselves. He would have to stay awake on his own then and try to pretend as though he gave a shit about whatever nonsensical mathematical problem Mrs. Craft was posing this year. It was, after all, only the first day of the new year, yet in true Craft fashion, she was already assigning them actual work, rather than going over the syllabus as the rest of the teachers no doubt would. She'd probably give them a quiz too.
Damien tried to remind himself that after this year he would no longer have to deal with Mrs. Craft, or anyone else at Westlake for that matter. After graduation he would finally be able to go anywhere he wanted. So long as where he wanted was Oxford, to follow in his father's footsteps. Damien tried not to think too hard on that. His life had been meticulously planned out since birth. Even his conception had been perfectly timed so that Damien would be born in the Fall, just after the Summer galas, but before the Winter season. His education had been meticulously planned— as had his future. There was no room for deviation. Damien had known this since childhood. It was expected he would carry on the family name and legacy. He would get married to a respectable girl of respectable upbringing and they would give birth to Damien Alexandre Carmichael IV. Anything else simply wasn't an option. He knew his place and didn't bother to argue that fact. It was easier not to.
Damien sighed, pushing his long blond hair out of his eyes. He had been growing it out since last year, one of the few things he had any control over anymore, especially since he was no longer playing lacrosse. His father had said his long hair made him look like his mother, and he wasn't wrong. The two shared similar features, their pale complexions, white-blond hair, and a well-defined jawline. About the only things he had gotten from his father, beyond his name, were his nose and his blue-green eyes with flecks of gold.
He had spent the better part of the last twenty minutes tapping his pencil indignantly against his notebook, trying to will a new story into existence but his mind was decidedly blank. A first for him. He didn't like this feeling. He had always been able to jump from one story to the next without much thought. Halfway through most ideas, he was already working on, he'd have some sort of note for the next project, if not fully writing several scenes or pieces of dialogue for any given story. So he couldn't help but wonder why he was suddenly at a loss for how to bloody write? He'd been writing in the Wisher fandom for two years, and he'd been reading the trilogy since he was small. He knew the stories and the characters by heart, or at least his own incarnation of them. So why did everything suddenly feel so difficult?
The door to Mrs. Craft's classroom burst open in the middle of her droning lecture; all eyes turned to the newcomer, who looked somewhat sheepish with everyone staring at him. Damien swallowed, examining the boy currently standing awkwardly in the doorframe. He had the sudden and very strange thought that he would later recount onto his Tumblr that very same day: Have you ever seen someone so unbelievably attractive and thought, wow, I'm gay.
He had thick auburn hair, piercing dark brown eyes, and soft brown skin. He was wearing, not the uniform like the rest of the students, but instead, a pair of torn jeans and a garish red flannel shirt, layered with a leather jacket, and he was sporting the crisp beginnings of what looked to be a beard.
Damien wasn't even certain he was meant to be a student until Mrs. Craft looked over at him and said, clearly exasperated, "Mr. Martin I presume?" in that shrill, nasal tone of hers that never failed to leave Damien with a migraine. The boy nodded. Mrs. Craft pointed him to the single empty desk left in the classroom, right at the front. The boy crumpled into it, looking as exhausted as Damien felt, and dragging with him a backpack that looked as though it might contain his entire life.
"Is it just me or does he look familiar?" a girl asked from beside him. Damien turned towards the girl, eyebrow raised. Carrie Benson. He wouldn't say he knew Carrie particularly well. They weren't even really friends. They shared a number of classes together, and technically she was his former best friend's sister. She had always been friendly enough to him, and he felt sort of bad keeping her at a distance simply because of her brother.
"Does he?" he asked.
"You can't tell me he doesn't look exactly like Adam Spellock," she said.
"Who?" Damien asked, giving her a bored look.
Carrie's eyes lowered, and she shook her head, turning exasperatedly back to her own desk and her own notes. Damien worried his lower lip. He knew exactly who she was talking about, how could he not? Adam was the main character of the Wisher trilogy. One of the biggest and most well-known book series of all time. Everyone knew Adam Spellock.
Only, their new classmate didn't look anything like Adam, at least, not how he was described in the books. A shy, skinny brunette with no discernibly interesting features, aside from his dark almost black eyes and poor fashion choices. No, he looked more like a bronzed, muscled Adonis, the likes of which could only be truly found in fanfiction. Often Damien's fanfiction.
Damien didn't pay much attention in class after that. He couldn't stop staring at the new boy. Carrie was right. He did look like Adam Spellock, and once Damien had seen it, it was suddenly all he could think about. Jotting down notes in his notebook, Damien began to formulate a new story as he waited for class to be over.
The bell rang, faster than he would have liked, and Damien found himself rushing out of the classroom towards the staircase. The math department was located on the fourth floor of the main building of Westlake, affectionately known as the Castle, while the lockers were all the way down on the first floor near the Dining Hall.
He wasn't usually this careless.
As a general rule, Damien made a point of grabbing the first half of the books he needed on any given day before the day even started. Once more, his lack of sleep had betrayed him.
"Why don't you talk to me?" Carrie demanded, appearing at his locker only seconds after he had, slamming his locker door shut for him, and barely missing his fingers in the process. It had taken everything in him not to scream.
"What?" Damien asked, shaking his hand for good measure, as he turned to face her. She was a pretty girl he supposed if you were into girls. She was tall, with deep brown skin and tight curly brown hair. She had brilliant brown eyes, and a nose piercing and often could be found wearing either bright fuchsia lipstick or pitch-black lipstick depending on her mood. Currently, it was fuchsia, though with the camo button-down she was wearing over her uniform top, and black combat boots, she managed to look as punk as ever.
"I always try to talk to you, and you just ignore me, and I just wanted to know what I did to offend you," she said.
"Nothing," Damien replied. He didn't particularly want to be having this conversation right now. He didn't know what to say, but something told him it would not go in his favor.
Carrie gave him a look, a look which said, 'I don't believe you for a second, Damien Carmichael' and folded her arms across her chest, looking at him expectantly. Damien sighed. He supposed he would have to tell her the truth. "Look, it's nothing personal, but given your brother's and my history..."
"Tyler's a jackass," Carrie said, cutting him off. Damien couldn't argue with her there. "He may be my 'brother' but we're not exactly close." Carrie punctuated the word 'brother' with air quotes. Technically, Tyler was adopted. Mr. and Mrs. Benson had been trying to conceive a second child for years, but between both of their busy schedules and a multitude of other factors, after Carrie, the couple had been unsuccessful. And so they had simply adopted Tyler at the age of two.
Damien dropped his government book into his backpack and turned towards the large spiral staircase that lead back up to the classrooms. Westlake was made up of two main buildings, the Castle, a fourteen story, brownstone, and the Library, a four story brick building that had been added on several decades after the main building had been built. A bridge had been added between them on the top-most floor of the library shortly thereafter. Then there was the Compound, which consisted of the quad, the surrounding Westlake forest, and Westlake lake, and on the far side of the Compound, the gym and locker rooms.
Damien looked up at the staircase with the sigh. The history department was all the way on the ninth floor. Carrie turned, ready to follow him to his next class. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and turned to her then. "Are you sure you're not that close?" he asked, still not quite convinced.
"Positive," she said with a smile. "Trust me, I hate his guts almost as much as our parents do." Damien frowned a little at that. Perhaps it was because they had once been friends, or perhaps it was just the thought of someone's parents hating them, but Damien couldn't help but be disappointed in the sentiment. "Not because he's gay or anything," she added. "He's just such an asshole." Damien held back a chuckle, but only just. She was right, of course. "Look, he and I have very little in common, beyond our last name, and the fact that we're both technically a part of the LGBT community. Though honestly, I say we take his gay card away for being such a dick bag."
Damien chuckled then, barely noticing as a blur came barreling towards them, nearly knocking them over in their haste to get down the stairs. Damien wobbled, grateful he had only made it up three steps when he turned to see the mysterious newcomer running towards their locker. It was the new boy.
"Adam strikes again," Carrie said with a smirk.
Damien turned towards her, in an effort to pull his eyes away from the boy as he struggled to open his locker. "I doubt that's actually his name," he said.
"You really don't know what I'm talking about do you?" she asked.
Damien merely shrugged. He had plenty of practice playing both straight and dumb over the last two years, and he had gotten mostly good at it. Carrie sighed, shaking her head, and made her way up the stairs towards her second period class. Damien hesitated on the first step, giving one last glance to the boy as he finally managed to get his locker open, before running up the stairs himself. A warning bell rang out just as he reached the sixth floor. Damien groaned. He was going to be late.