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“Tell me, Doctor– do they host funerals at the University of Veritas Prime?”
“No,” Ratio replies, carefully looking down at the rim of his glass instead of meeting Aventurine’s eyes. They cut everything they see down to size, and Ratio's afraid that one day they'll strip him back so completely that there won't be anything left.
So he hides from them by watching his drink. There's a perfectly spherical ice cube in it, a bit of cocktail work which he understands the logic of but can't be bothered to copy when he's drinking on his own time. When he holds his glass up to the light, dim and amber as is currently the fashion in the upscale bars Aventurine frequents, it glows golden.
“Really? Well, do they make exceptions? Ask them to name their price and I'll pay it.”
“As much as I'm loathe to admit it, I imagine they do. They always want funding, but–”
“But they'd probably do yours for free,” Aventurine finishes with a smile.
He's drinking wine tonight, a red grown in volcanic ash, which he's heard fosters a better product– plants in poor soil have to struggle, and struggling grapes make richer wine. Ratio thinks it's a miracle that it doesn't stain his teeth, and realizes that despite his best efforts he's been drawn in by those eyes again.
“I can't see them turning down the opportunity,” Aventurine continues. “You're their foremost alumnus– their biggest celebrity, to put it in terms they don't use– and I can't imagine that they won't stop using you for marketing after something so small as your death.”
“You're terribly crass, gambler,” Ratio replies, but he doesn't deny it. Ratio would have to thoroughly drag his reputation through the mud for his Alma Mater to stop using his name.
He takes a sip of his drink. Being seen getting drunk at a bar with a Stoneheart wouldn't be anything at all close to enough. He could be seen doing this every night, even be seen walking out of Aventurine's apartment sloppily dressed well after the trains stop running, and the administration would simply not mention any of it in meetings with sponsors where they detail every other part of his life.
He takes another sip of his drink.
“I'm not wrong,” Aventurine says.
“No,” Ratio admits. He's not one to argue that they shouldn't host his funeral, either. If it brings in funding, he wouldn't mind letting them do as they please. Research, for all disciplines, is a subject worth putting credits towards.
“You don't seem excited, Doctor. Why not? I hear that the beauty of the architecture there is only matched by that of the scenery. It'd look lovely draped in black, I'm sure.”
“And what about you?” Ratio asks, leaning in to slide Aventurine's drink out of reach before he can grab it himself. Aventurine smirks, and leans across the table to meet him. Neither of them leans back.
“You're always betting your life. I wouldn't be surprised if you've planned your own funeral already– now that I think of it, please don't tell me you only invited me here to ask me to make arrangements with Veritas Prime on your behalf.”
“I bet you'd do it.”
“Nonsense,” Ratio replies, knowing that he would. Aventurine doesn't smile, or frown, or react at all, and so Ratio knows he knows.
“I hate to say that your answer doesn't matter, because to surprise you I have not,” Aventurine says smoothly. “Veritas Prime would probably be lovely, though. I wouldn't complain if you made the arrangements.”
He reaches for his wineglass and deftly plucks it back from Ratio’s hand before taking a long drag. At this distance, Ratio can see how the red of it does actually color his lips for a brief moment before it disappears between them.
“You probably should make plans. If you want the more opulent vendors to provide anything, you have to call in advance.”
“What makes you think I want opulence, doctor?”
“You're drinking a vintage wine from two amber eras ago at a VIP table with a 50,000 credit minimum,” Ratio says.
Aventurine laughs, nearly spilling his wine. In his laughter, he falls back into his seat, and regretfully Ratio does the same.
“I prefer to live while I'm still alive to enjoy it. I don't care what happens to me after I die.”
“I don't believe you,” says Ratio.
“You never believe me,” Aventurine replies.
“I admit it's difficult to when half the things you say are to further an agenda.”
“If you really do think that, then why did you agree to meet me here?”
“We had business to discuss.”
“And why haven't you left?” Asks Aventurine, gesturing to the stack of files at his side which Ratio had given him almost immediately after exchanging their hellos. In theory, this so-called meeting should have ended the moment they were in his hands.
“I haven't finished my drink,” Ratio says. He hasn't taken a sip of it in a while, and the ice has melted some since he last looked. It's taken on a slightly lighter color, even closer to desert sand. He knows, however, that it's only a trick of the light.
“You–”
“You're dodging the subject,” Ratio interjects. “If not opulent, how would you like your funeral?”
“Does the genius Doctor Veritas Ratio not know the opposite of opulent? My, it seems we have a scandal on our hands. I'll have to tell the University of Veritas Prime– you'd be lucky if they still want to host your funeral after this.”
“I am well aware that a simple funeral is the opposite of an opulent one. I was simply curious to hear the specifics of your funeral, gambler.”
Aventurine thinks for a moment, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. Ratio can hear his watch tick, and realizes that though it'd been sold as a rare collector's piece it has the same cheap mechanism that mass produced watches do.
“Let's play a game,” he says. “I want you to guess.”
“Guess what you want for your funeral?”
“Precisely.”
Ratio takes a long sip of his drink, and finds when he's done that half the ice is floating outside of it. The bottom still glows, golden and radiant, but the top is cold and dead.
“What do I get if I win?”
“You get to plan my funeral,” Aventurine says in a teasing tone even though they both know that he means it, and that it can never be. Aventurine’s funeral will be a tightly controlled IPC affair.
“Very well,” he says. He takes a sip of his drink. “This is a game I cannot win.”
Aventurine blinks, surprised, and then his face morphs into a smirk. Ratio continues.
“You do not want a funeral. You want to be cremated in the cheapest box available. You don't care what happens to your ashes, so long as they don't become an asset for the IPC, but you do hope that at least one person cries for you.”
Aventurine smiles, his face earnest and lopsided as he rests his head in his right hand. The left is free, tucked below the table, but he does not reach for his wine.
“You lost,” he says. “I want my ashes scattered.”
“On Sigonia, I assume.”
“Probably. Wherever I won't be alone.”
Ratio downs the rest of his glass. The ice is very well melted by now, to such a point that it is no longer special. He doesn't promise Aventurine that he'll see to it that his ashes are scattered but they both know that he will. Briefly, he wonders if they shouldn't be more honest with each other, but all too soon he remembers who they both are.
Aventurine checks the time, smiles, and reaches for the decanter. He refills his own glass, watching the wine as it snakes its way past the decanter’s rounded curves, and fills Ratio's yet unused wineglass seemingly just to empty the decanter. Ratio does not tell him to stop.
Personally, he thinks decanting wine is something of a waste. It's never tasted any different to him from wine poured directly out of the bottle, but Aventurine always insists upon one. Wine, he claims, only tastes its best when it's been given the chance to breathe.
“I've indulged you long enough,” he says. “You ought to answer my question now– why don't you want your funeral to be held at Veritas Prime?”
He doesn't have a good reason, which is why he'd avoided the question as well as why he'd be fine with it, but he knows that Aventurine wouldn't accept a reason that halfhearted. Aventurine, he thinks, is probably right to insist on something more.
“Let's play another round of your game,” he proposes impulsively. “You guess what I want for my funeral, and I'll tell you if you're right.”
“I never thought I'd hear you say that,” Aventurine teases. “I've been longing for the day you finally agree to play along with one of my little games.”
I always play along with your games, he thinks.
“Don't patronize me, Gambler,” he says.
“I wouldn't dare,” replies Aventurine, laughing. He reaches for his wine and swirls it in the glass for a moment before finally taking a sip. It can't need more air, not after it's sat in the decanter for so long, but perhaps Aventurine for once wanted to double check that something was done right. More likely, he wanted something to do with his hands.
He swallows, settles, and clears his throat. He looks right at him, and Ratio tries to hide his unease. He'd asked for this, and he knows what Aventurine's goal is, but he has still seen those eyes break whole planets down to their monetary value and fears that they'll do the same to him. He does not ever want to be reduced to something replaceable, and especially not to Aventurine.
“You, dear doctor,” Aventurine says after a moment, leaning in and whispering like he's revealing some great secret, “want just about the same thing as I do. If you must have a funeral, you'd prefer it to be a small one filled only with those who actually care about you. You hope they remember you as a good person before they remember you as a genius, and that they shed tears in your name.”
Ratio reaches for his wine, his empty cocktail glass abandoned on the edge of the table alongside the bottle and decanter. It has a strong, robust body, and is easily the best wine he's ever tasted.
“Would you come?” He asks. Asking a question that direct would be breaking the unwritten rules between the two of them if he wasn't so sure that Aventurine treats conversations as a game. Most questions are to him not to be answered but to be danced around. If, by some miracle, he does answer honestly, it will not be because he feels put on the spot.
“Of course I would,” he answers easily, almost too quickly, “though I would be very upset with you if you died before me.”
“Vice versa, gambler. Would you really deny my funeral of your company?”
Aventurine shrugs, clearly of the opinion that there's no chance Ratio will die before him. After all, Ratio is not prone to gambling with his life.
“One of us has to die first, and–”
“You've made a leap of logic. One of us does not have to die first.”
Aventurine blinks.
“Imagine the IPC activates the imaginary implosion cannon again after all these years, and the two of us are caught in the crossfire. Maybe we're on a mission. Maybe we're doing something quite like this. It doesn't really matter, and it doesn't have to be the cannon, but my point is that the two of us could die together.”
“Imagine that,” Aventurine says quietly, his face soft in the dim bar light. The very corners of his mouth are ever so slightly tilted upwards. “Imagine our ship catches fire, and our ashes get mixed together, floating about in space for the rest of time.”
A part of him wants to reply with all the reasons why that isn't scientifically possible, but then he looks at the way Aventurine is looking at him and decides to indulge in the fantasy.
“That wouldn't be so terrible,” he says.