Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: First words

Damian Wayne is 16 years old when he enters his freshmen year of high school in the prestigious Gotham Academy which was funded by his very own father. At this point in his short life, Damian has already lead a team of young superheroes, put multiple criminals behind bars, died and come back to life approximately once and stared at the face of death multiple times after that. Simply put, in his opinion anyway, this was beneath him. It was, in all honesty, a solid waste of his time. There was nothing this so-called "institute of learning" could teach him at this point in time, really he could probably teach college lectures far more advanced than the one he would be attending. But, as hard as it is for him to admit, it is a necessary facade that he would have to endure- whether he liked it or not- to keep up his pretence of being simply Bruce Wayne's son, the future heir of Wayne Enterprises. Nothing more, nothing less. 

And so, it is with a feeling of absolute disdain that he begins his life as a high school student. 

Your first day of attending Gotham Academy is the most nerve-wracking moment of your life. Worse than the first time you had ever performed on a stage, worse than that first time you had ever tried to tell a guy you liked him, hell it was even worse than waiting to see if you got the scholarship for the damn school in the first place! Every nerve in your body feels like it's on edge, your hands are practically shaking as you run your hands over a phantom wrinkle on your brand new blazer and dust none existent dirt of your freshly pressed skirt. This nervousness stems from a multitude of reasons. The main one being that you are astutely aware that you do not share the same background as any of your fellow classmates. It's not that you're ashamed of how you got in, far from it. They only gave out one, one, of these scholarships a year and out of all the people in this goddamn city you were the one to get it. 

No, It was definitely not shame, but,... as you step out of your mother's second-hand car and stare up at the grand iron gates of Gotham Academy, you witness the other students languidly  step out of cars that were worth your scholarship without so much as a glance at the grand, elegant building. Vaguely you wonder if their summer houses looked like the school. When it came down to it people that grew up in this type of environment tended to treat people like you..well... different. And you did not need that type of burden on you if you were to achieve your goal. Not at all. You needed to get through these 3 years without so much as a hitch in your grades and you pray to whatever God is listening that you are able to have a quiet high school experience

There were 3 things you'd learned after a month of attending the prestigious private school; 

1. Most rich people didn't give a damn about you if you weren't rich yourself. This surprisingly enough was a good thing. It meant that you had lived your life in reasonable silence for the past month or so. The worst reaction you'd gotten upon discover of your scholarship status was a slight rise of a haughty eyebrow a single ''huh I didn't know they did those anymore'' and an immediate end to any possible acquaintanceship. Of course, there were the odd whispers here and there, a few odd giggles and you made sure to have all your supplies with you in order to avoid having to (god forbid) borrow anything from anyone, but it was nothing you couldn't handle really. You didn't really need friends per say and most of the students were pretty civil with you, some you suspected you might even be able to befriend by senior year. All in all, it was nothing like the blatant bullying you had feared upon starting school. Rich kids had better things to do ( you hoped they never got bored at some point though )
2. Damian Wayne was a possible God among men, smart, athletic, tall, dark and honest to God fucking beautiful. It was no wonder that most if not all of the freshman year and- you suspected even some upperclassmen- had a major crush on him. The guy walked into class and you could hear the collective dreamy sighs that the girls and some guys took. He never seemed to notice them though.
3. Damian Wayne could be  was really fucking annoying, some would say insufferable. 

You seem to be the only one who notices at first. 

Once your initial infatuation with his rich green eyes, model physic ( you wondered regularly if the uniform was supposed to look that good) and perfect bone structure wore off a little, you began to notice that the guy was..well kind of a dick. 

He walked everywhere with the air of someone who owned the place, with his last name he either did or would in the future. But it didn't just end there. There was a constant look of disdain on his face as though he felt like he didn't need to be there, again, with his last name he probably didn't. It didn't help that he was absolutely perfect at everything as well which probably contributed to his feelings of disdain. The thing that truly set you off though, what really got you riled up was that the guy was a sore loser. 

Damian Wayne did not like losing to anyone. 

you had discovered this upon your first couple of tests because at it so happened, you shared almost all the same classes with him. And in every one of them, he excelled. He got 100% on every test, without fail and you were the only one right behind him. 99% had never bothered you before until you had seen the flippant way he'd taken back his test, almost seeming to say there was no need for you to study your but off every night to get these scores. You felt him sometimes look at you when the teacher would call your name and grade out and you would quickly divert your eyes, almost seeing the smug smile that was probably plastered on his face. 

Then one day, in an English Lit class you got your first 100 and he got his first 99. Your eyes immediately widened in shook and before you could stop yourself you were looking at him and he was looking at you and he looked...well...pissed. Shocked and pissed to be exact. The look had been so intense that you had quickly looked away, staring at your desk till class ended. Then the guy had come up to you, smug as ever and said his first words to you; 

''That will not happen again. That's a promise.''

Needless to say, you had quickly disliked him after that and had taken to studying extra hard to get more 100s simply to piss him off. You never bothered looking at him anymore, the theory being that someone like him probably couldn't handle being ignored

You'd thought your life at G.A. had been interesting so far, what with your unspoken rivalry that had been going on with Damian for a whole semester now. It was definitely a very good motivator and it had actually started getting you some street cred with some of the students (only the ones who had come to the same conclusion about him as you, he still had quite a lot of fangirls). Still no friends though, but all in all things were going well for you. Better than you had hoped really. 

Then one day your life gets a bit more complicated. 

It's your first AP science class of the new semester and it is the day you will be getting your lab partners. There was no way for you to possibly predict what would happen next. 

''Y/N you can stay at that table and could you please join her Mr Wayne''. There's a slow murmur of envy by the girls who wish that were them.

Your heart sinks. It's almost as though you are having an out of body experience as your eyes track his moment, elegant as always(you could swear sometimes that he was gliding in air), from the far side of the room till he reaches your table. He pauses for a second before he pulls out the chair to sit in it without so much as a word or glance in your direction. 

Your mouth feels dry like you hadn't had a glass of water to drink in weeks. The room fills with chatter as people celebrate or mourn their partners. You sit in silence and Damian's presence feels like a brick wall of stoic hostility next to you. 

You swallow and lick your lips, trying to muster up something, anything to do or say in this situation besides stare pointedly at your desk. You had a 4.5 GPA and at this very moment that meant jack shit. 

It's not until the bell has rang and the class has ended that you realized that you'd sat through the entire lecture without so much as a glance in his direction and that was just too rude for you to do so you steel your nerves, straighten your back and take a deep breath before you turn to him, the best smile you could muster plastered on your face.

It falters immediately when you see that he's already looking at you, intensely. Way too intensely and his eyes are such a deep colour of green, and so..so pretty... and how had you never noticed how long his eyelashes were ....and what deity let his lips look so...

''Hi-my- my name is Y/F/N'' you say your first words to Damian Wayne before you physically drool over him instead because that was actually a possibility now that you had seen him up close, and you had thought he was hot before. 

Damian looked down at your outstretched hand, looked back up at you, got up from his seat without a word and left. 

Your hand hung in the air and for the first time since you started school, you thought you might actually be in over your head. 

Teaser for next chapter: 

Damian rarely ever doubted his decisions, they were always calculated and very rarely failed him. But right there, right then, he wasn't completely sure he had done the right thing... But..What else could he have done?  That was a completely unprecedented position he had been put in and he had simply reacted the way he had been taught. Which was what he always did. But he was starting to think that assassination training may not be applicable to school life.