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The low, persistent hum of the IPC headquarters was a familiar lullaby, one that had sung Aventurine to the brink of exhaustion more nights than he could count. Outside his opulent office window, the city of Pier Point was a sprawling galaxy of muted lights, blurred by the ever-present coastal gloom. It was late. Obscenely late, especially considering the impending holiday weekend that had sent most of the building’s staff scurrying home hours ago.
Yet, here he was.
The golden light of his desk lamp pooled over stacks of data slates and flimsy printouts, his fingers still tracing lines of text and projections. He should go home. He knew he should. But the quiet of the empty office was a strange sort of comfort, a shield against the echoing silence of his own apartment. Besides, one more deal to finalize, one more variable to account for… the gambler’s itch was a hard one to ignore.
A sharp, decisive rap on his office door startled him from his reverie. Aventurine’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing in annoyance. Security? No, they knew better than to disturb him. He sighed, running a hand through his blond hair, the strands feeling heavy and limp. “It’s unlocked,” he called out, his voice laced with a weariness he hoped sounded more like irritation.
The door slid open to reveal a figure that was both irritatingly familiar and, if he were being honest with himself, secretly welcome. Dr. Veritas Ratio stood in the doorway, a monolith of academic disapproval, his tall frame seeming to fill the entire space. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his sharp amber eyes, the color of rich, warm honey, were narrowed in a look of profound annoyance that was his default expression when looking at… well, most people, but Aventurine often felt he was the recipient of a special vintage of that scorn.
"Still here, gambler?" Ratio's voice was a low baritone that cut through the silence of the office effortlessly. "Does the concept of a holiday escape your so-called brilliant mind?"
Aventurine let a slow, easy smile spread across his lips, the tension in his shoulders melting away as he leaned back, propping his feet up on the corner of his desk. "Doctor! To what do I owe the pleasure? Don't tell me the Intelligentsia Guild has finally run out of chalk and sent you on an errand."
"Hardly," Ratio scoffed, stepping fully into the office. The door slid shut behind him, encasing them in a bubble of shared quiet. "I was retrieving some research materials from a nearby archive. Your office was on the way."
Aventurine's smile widened. A blatant lie. The Guild's primary archives were on the other side of the city, a fact he knew with absolute certainty. The idea that Ratio would conjure such a flimsy excuse just to check on him sent a strange, warm flutter through his chest, a feeling he promptly buried under a layer of practiced nonchalance. "On the way? My, my, Doctor, your sense of direction is as convoluted as one of your lectures. But I'm touched you'd make such a detour for little old me."
Ratio's gaze swept over the cluttered desk, the half-empty cup of cold coffee, and the weary lines Aventurine knew were etched around his own eyes. The doctor's expression, for a fleeting moment, softened from academic superiority to something quieter, something that looked almost like concern. It was a look Aventurine had seen before, in the early hours of a mandatory joint-task meeting when Ratio would appear with two cups of coffee instead of one, placing the second on Aventurine's side of the table without a word. Or during a heated IPC debate when an executive tried to corner him, and Ratio would interject with a flawlessly articulated counter-argument that left the room silent. He never said anything. He just did.
"It's late, Aventurine," Ratio said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "The market fluctuations will still be there tomorrow. Go home."
The order was blunt, stripped of any pleasantry, yet underneath the academic condescension, there was a current of something else.
Aventurine swung his feet off the desk and stood, stretching with an exaggerated yawn. "Alright, alright, you win. You've successfully scolded me into submission. I suppose even a high-stakes player needs to rest sometimes." He began to gather his things, feigning a casualness he didn't quite feel. "I can always finish this from my apartment."
As he slung his coat and scarf over his shoulder, Ratio was already waiting by the door, his posture unyielding. "I'll walk with you."
The offer hung in the air between them, stark and unexpected. Aventurine’s expression flickered through a series of emotions—surprise, suspicion, and then, settling on a familiar, teasing glint. A low chuckle escaped his lips.
“Walk me home? Doctor, are you suggesting I’m incapable of navigating the city on my own?” He leaned against the doorframe, all languid grace and mockery. “I’m a Stoneheart of the IPC, not a lost child. I assure you, I can handle a few dark streets. Or are you perhaps worried some nefarious character will try to abscond with my dazzling personality? A valid concern, I admit.” He was joking, deflecting with the ease of a master illusionist, trying to wave away the strange, uncharacteristic earnestness in Ratio’s offer.
Ratio did not rise to the bait. He simply met Aventurine’s gaze, his own unwavering. “Your physical constitution is currently suboptimal. You’ve been awake for at least thirty-eight hours, subsisting on little more than caffeine and processed nutrients. Your reaction times will be diminished. It is a matter of simple efficiency and risk mitigation. My route passes yours. Therefore, I will accompany you.”
There was no room for argument in his tone. It wasn’t a request, nor was it a command. It was a statement of fact, an inevitability. He wasn’t worried about nefarious characters or worried about Aventurine getting lost on a route he had taken countless times before; he simply... wanted to walk with him.
Aventurine stared at him, his usual arsenal of witty retorts and charming deflections failing him. He had expected annoyance, a curt dismissal of his teasing. He had not expected this… quiet, unyielding sincerity. It was disarming. The earnestness in Ratio’s amber eyes was a force more potent than any of the gambler’s bluffs. He could feel his own carefully constructed walls beginning to crumble under that steady gaze.
A sigh, soft and genuine this time, escaped his lips. The smirk melted away, replaced by a look of weary resignation. “Fine,” he conceded, the word barely a whisper. “You win this round, Doctor.” He pushed himself off the doorframe, slipping on his coat and wrapping his scarf around his neck with a flourish he hoped would mask the flicker of vulnerability that crossed his face. “But only because it’s so rare to see you volunteer for anything that doesn’t involve a chalkboard.”
Ratio merely gave a curt nod, the faintest hint of satisfaction settling in his chest as he fell into step beside Aventurine, leaving the cold, artificial light of the IPC headquarters behind them.
***
The streets of Pier Point were eerily quiet, a stark contrast to their daytime bustle. The perpetual gloom of the seaside city was held at bay by the warm, golden glow of the street lamps, which cast long, distorted shadows that danced ahead of them. The only sounds were the distant clang of a buoy in the harbor and the rhythmic tap of their own footsteps on the damp pavement.
They walked in silence for a block, the air between them thick with the unspoken things that had transpired in the office. It was Aventurine, surprisingly, who broke it.
“You know,” he began, his voice softer than usual, stripped of its performative edge, “I once convinced an entire planetary council to sign over their mineral rights to the IPC based on a bluff involving a nonexistent fleet of war ships.”
Ratio glanced at him, his expression unreadable in the intermittent light. “An impressive, if ethically dubious, feat of rhetoric.”
“Isn’t it?” Aventurine’s laugh was a low, pleasant sound in the quiet night. “And yet, I couldn’t manage to talk my way out of a simple walk home with you.”
“That is because the council’s decision was based on emotion—fear. My decision was based on logic. You cannot bluff logic, gambler,” Ratio replied dryly, though the corner of his mouth twitching almost imperceptibly.
“Is that what it was? Logic?” Aventurine mused, tucking his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “It felt… different.”
Their conversation drifted, light and aimless. They spoke of trivial work matters, of a particularly obtuse department head, of the fluctuating market prices of rare earths. It was the kind of idle chatter they never engaged in, their usual interactions being a battle of wits and veiled barbs. But out here, away from the sterile confines of their professional lives, the sharp edges seemed to soften. With each step, with each shared observation, the walls they so carefully maintained around themselves seemed to lower, brick by painstaking brick.
A comfortable silence fell between them again, no longer heavy but filled with a quiet understanding. They passed under a particularly bright street lamp, and in that pool of golden light, Aventurine slowed his stride. He felt something. A tiny, impossibly cold, wet sensation right on the tip of his nose.
He stopped, blinking. He tilted his head back, his gaze rising past the warm glow of the street lamp above them. Another delicate, crystalline flake drifted down, then another, and another. They spiraled lazily in the lamplight, a silent, ethereal dance against the dark canvas of the night sky.
It was snowing.
Aventurine had seen snow before, of course. He'd navigated the brutal, unending blizzards of Jarilo-VI and witnessed the manufactured flurries on fancy resorts. But here, in Pier Point—a gloomy, seaside metropolis perpetually shrouded in mist and rain—it was a miracle. In all his years living in the city, he had never once seen it snow.
A laugh, pure and unbidden, escaped his lips. It was the laugh of a child, giddy and full of wonder. He turned in a slow circle, his arms slightly outstretched, his face tilted up to the heavens as the flakes kissed his skin. The city, usually so gray and oppressive, was being transformed into something magical, something soft and new. For a moment, he forgot the reports, the risks, the carefully constructed persona he wore like a second skin. He was just a man, watching a miracle unfold.
"Ratio, look," he said, his voice breathless with awe, turning to share the moment. "Can you believe this?"
But Ratio wasn't looking at the snow.
He was looking at Aventurine.
The doctor stood perfectly still under the street lamp's glow, his usual stern facade completely gone. His amber eyes, wide and unguarded, were fixed solely on Aventurine. There was no judgment in them, no intellectual assessment. There was only a look of such profound, undisguised awe it stole the breath from Aventurine's lungs. The cold had flushed Ratio's cheeks and the tip of his nose a delicate pink, and the falling snowflakes dusted his dark violet hair like tiny, scattered diamonds. He looked… soft. Enamored. And it was all directed at him.
The sight was more shocking than the snow itself. The playful energy vanished, replaced by a sudden, palpable tension that hummed in the air around them, thick and heavy. Aventurine just stared, his heart hammering against his ribs. He saw his own giddy, awestruck expression reflected in the warm depths of Ratio's eyes. The gambler, the strategist, the man who always had a plan, was completely adrift.
He had to do something. Break the spell. His gaze dropped to Ratio's neck, bare against the collar of his coat. An idea, born of a sudden, desperate need to bridge the remaining distance and a genuine pang of concern, surfaced.
"You're going to get cold, Doctor," Aventurine murmured, his voice barely a whisper. He began to unwind the designer scarf from his own neck—a swathe of soft, dark fabric. He stepped closer, into Ratio's space, the cold air between them instantly warming. Ratio remained perfectly still, his eyes tracking Aventurine's every movement as he reached up.
Aventurine looped the scarf around Ratio's neck, his fingers brushing against the surprisingly soft skin just below his jaw. The touch was electric, sending a jolt straight through him. He adjusted the fabric, his movements slow and deliberate, until it was settled. But he didn't let go. His hands remained, clutching the ends of the scarf, his knuckles resting against Ratio's chest. They were so close now he could see the intricate rings of magenta and cyan in his own eyes reflected in Ratio's wide pupils.
And then, as if pulled by an invisible string, he leaned in and closed the small distance that remained.
The kiss was impossibly soft, a tentative press of lips against lips, hesitant and questioning. It was over in a breath, a fleeting moment of warmth in the cold night air. They both pulled back slightly, eyes wide with a shared shock.
"I…" Ratio started, his voice rough. "My apologies."
Aventurine stared. The absurdity of it, of Ratio apologizing when Aventurine had been the one to initiate, to close that final inch, shattered the spell of tension. A real, genuine laugh bubbled up from Aventurine's chest. "What are you possibly apologizing for?"
Ratio blinked, seemingly just realizing he had spoken the words that had left his own mouth. “The breach in protocol, I suppose.”
“Oh, of course,” Aventurine teased, his voice fond as he tightened his grip on the scarf, pulling Ratio a fraction closer again.
A long, slow breath escaped Ratio's lips, a sound of fond exasperation. He looked down at Aventurine, a small, true smile finally gracing his features, chasing away the last of the confusion. "You're a menace, gambler."
"The biggest risk you'll ever take," Aventurine teased, his voice dropping to a murmur. And then, with no hesitation this time, he closed the distance again.
The second kiss was just as soft, just as tentative, but it was filled with intent. It was a confirmation, an acceptance of the unspoken thing that had been growing between them for so long. Ratio’s hand came up to gently cup Aventurine’s jaw, his thumb stroking his cheekbone, the other resting gently on his waist, holding him there, while Aventurine’s hands held fast to the scarf, anchoring himself to this perfect, impossible moment. It was a kiss of quiet discovery, of finding a safe harbor in the most unexpected of places, all while the miracle of Pier Point's first snow fell around them, blanketing the world in a quiet, pristine beauty.
When they finally, reluctantly, broke apart, the snow was falling more heavily, a swirling curtain of white that seemed to enclose them in their own private world. Ratio’s thumb continued its soothing motion on Aventurine’s cheek.
“We should continue home,” he murmured, his voice still thick. “Before the cold becomes a genuine health risk.”
Aventurine smiled, a slow, contented smile that reached every corner of his being. “A logical conclusion, Doctor.”
Ratio’s hand slipped from his jaw down to his, his long, warm fingers lacing through Aventurine’s gloved ones. The contact was solid, grounding. Without another word, they turned and continued their walk, hand in hand, their path illuminated by the golden glow of the lamps and the silent, beautiful descent of the snow.