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Aventurine couldn't help but stare, transfixed by the sight before his eyes.
It could be due to how the rays of the setting sun bathed Veritas in a shimmering golden glow, like a deity better suited to the careful setting of a master painting.
Or perhaps a statue more than a painting, carved with the veneration reserved for idols and other muses of long-dead artists. A pale marble figure, polished by the passage of time and the pensive caresses of passers-by's fingers, enticed by its sculptural beauty. A statue, tired of its immobility and destinationless goal, having abandoned a pedestal of self-imposed expectations and responsibilities, to wander among the common mortals as one of them.
Or maybe it was in the careful tilt of Veritas' head, the way his chin barely rested on the bony knuckles of his large hand, curled into a loose fist. The steep, cutting relief of his clavicle, its bone as delicate as a bird's wing allowing its outline to be guessed from beneath the pale flesh. In the roundness of his relaxed shoulders, maybe, freed from an Atlas' weight, devouring stress made of expectations greater than himself. In the pale expanse of his bare pectoral, rising gently with each of the man's breaths.
Or it could be in Aventurine's heart, hidden in the erratic beating of that treacherous little organ and the longing, pleading litany echoing in its every beat.
Aventurine swallowed with a tremor, left trembling by an emotion as devouring as it was inexplicable.
Something proud and pitiful all at once, bright and bubbling, seizing him by the throat. His saliva was thick on his numb tongue, syrupy and sweet as forbidden ambrosia, thickened with that unspeakable thing that had only grown more nuanced over the time Aventurine had spent with the other. It tasted like a summer day, of liquid sunshine and honeyed nectar, of a cool breeze and the ferrous ozone of a refreshing thunderstorm.
Aventurine could feel its warmth seeping into his very being, pooling in the pit of his stomach, nestling in his marrow, weaving itself in the fibers of his muscles in radiant orichalcum threads.
Inhale.
Sitting on the ground, his hands soiled with fresh, loose earth, the scent of lush plant life cradling him like a mother's embrace, Aventurine allowed himself to feel.
Allowed himself to be overcome by this unmistakable and illogical realization, in all the reasoned sense that it made.
He let the echoes of his heartbeat whisper its lament, longingly, pleadingly, lovingly.
Exhale.
It was a slow and yet instantaneous realization, held and let free in an exhalation, encased in the faint sound of a swallow, entrapped in the fleeting darkness of an eyelid flutter.
A suspended moment, enterwined with the quiet psithurism of life around them, the quiet gurgling of the fountain and its decorative fish, the sparrows' chirrups and the rustling of Ratio's toga fluttering in the breeze.
Ratio hadn't looked up since he had found a comfortable seating position on the parapet, irises of pink dust and tarnished gold enraptured by what he was reading, his mouth left ajar where he had previously let his index finger rest on the kissable plushness of his lower lip. His large wings were still spread out in all their downy glory, broken-shell white feathers adorned with indigo-purplish markings, seeming so temptingly soft to the touch. Bathed in the golden glow of the dying sun, hues almost more cream than ivory, almost more crow's wing than belladonna.
Soft, gentle and welcoming rather than distant, haughty and cutting.
He looks at home here, Aventurine found himself thinking, comfortable and free from all worries. His trembling fingers tightened spasmodically around the root network he was supposed to untangle, the task abandoned for long minutes now as he gorged himself on the sight before him. He's sitting in my garden, with me, Aventurine mused, gently replacing the sapling back into the hole he'd pulled it from, and he looks like he belongs.
His throat tightens around the weight of a myriad of unspoken words, almost all too heavy to be whispered in the quietness of this stolen moment.
(I want him to stay, to belong. I want him to carve a place for himself in my home as he carved a place for himself in my heart. I want him to belong to me, for me to belong to him, for us to belong to each other.)
The trembling sigh that escaped him seemed almost too loud in its indelicacy, impolite in the roughness of that almost spat-out exhalation. Veritas' feather tufts, more decorative than truly functional, fluttered atop his head at the sound, drawing the scholar from his reading. Aventurine soon found himself subjected to Ratio's piercing gaze, the doctor taking the time to blink softly once before turning the entirety of his unwavering focus on Aventurine's curled up form, slumped a few feet away from him.
"Is something the matter, dear gambler ?"
Aventurine couldn't help his chuckle, soft and surprised, laced with mirth and a disbelief so fond it tasted almost sickeningly sweet.
“No, Veritas, nothing to worry about,” he replied, the syllables rolling off his tongue with the round sweetness of those aniseed candies that Ratio enjoyed nibbling. “Just realized something.”
He watched as Ratio's wings folded gracefully in the softest, most discreet flutter, until they disappeared almost completely behind his back. They had to be dry by now, free of the residual moisture from the bath, in which his favorite doctor had spent long hours getting rid of the grime accumulated during their last joint mission. Without another glance at the page whose number Ratio had undoubtedly already memorized, the Stoneheart watched as he closed the book and carefully put it away, placed aside so the scholar could offer Aventurine the full weight of his attention.
He did this often, consciously or not. Stopping his own work, interrupting his own train of thought to accommodate Aventurine's precarious existence, leaving plenty of room for the Stoneheart to be heard and listened to.
To be seen.
"And what would that be ?" Veritas wondered, tilting his head to the side, in that way that made Aventurine's heart tighten with irrepressible affection. "This realization of yours ?"
Aventurine looked at him, this man with such an impossibly perfect existence, who had intertwined his life with Aventurine's as if they were two puzzle pieces just waiting to be joined.
He looked at him and felt the corner of his lips turn up in a smile so wide it was almost painful, revealing the pearly whiteness of his teeth behind his chapped lips. The air smelled like the freshness of cared-for greenery, the moisture of a nearby fountain, and the headiness of wildflowers domesticated into colorful beds. There was dirt under Aventurine's fingernails, staining his hands all the way to his forever-too-thin wrists and maybe even on his face, where he'd thoughtlessly wiped away his sweat.
He was undoubtedly disheveled, untidy, and probably more Kakavasha than Aventurine had ever been.
Truer than any lie could ever be.
"That I'm in love with you."
The words tasted sweet on his tongue, like ambrosia and nectar and honey, bubbling like luck and hope and the desire for something more. Light as fluttering feathers, as a toga's fabric dancing in the breeze, as the delicate blush adorning the scholar's cheeks.
"I love you, Veritas Ratio," Kakavasha reiterated, mirthful and bright and truthful.
The doctor remained frozen for the briefest of moments, mouth ajar with surprise and cheeks bathed in the sweetest rosy hues of dusk.
Then he surged forward, a silent beat of his imposing wings throwing him against Kakavasha. Heedless of the dirt staining his pale garment as his knees hit the soft ground, or the sweat that had pooled in the Stoneheart's neck as his arms snaked around the smaller man's shoulders, to pull him closer against his broad chest. Veritas' wings, those beautiful, mesmerizing wings Aventurine had always wanted to touch but could never bring himself to ask, wrapped around their intertwined forms, like a protective cocoon of the most delicate softness. It smelled faintly like sunshine, animal musk and the hyssop bath salts Pearl had given him for his last birthday.
Ratio's hand was large against the curve of his nape, his palm a comforting weight against his heated skin as his fingers curled into Kakavasha's sweat-damp locks. His head was carefully tilted at just the right angle so that Veritas could slot their mouths together.
Softly, with intent and care, like something that was to be savored rather than seized.
Slowly, silently, lovingly.