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Veritas has never pretended to have normal habits. He had embraced his own eccentricities at a young age and only leaned into them as an adult; going to sleep when many of his peers would be sitting down for dinner, waking well before sunrise and (on the days he was forced to hold office hours on campus) spending an hour in a local 24 cafe reading emails and people-watching with earplugs in before his day officially started. He enjoys his solitude and had little intention of changing his routine. Until, of course, the morning that his favorite seat by the second story window had been taken.
The Astral Espresso cafe is a local specialty, with rich wood paneling, warm old-fashioned lighting and a second floor loft. It isn't terribly popular; their selection of tea eclipses their flavors for coffee, and very few people take them up on their free-to-read books that line the shelves on the east wall. To see a new face in there was always surprising, but at four in the morning felt like a targeted attack.
And, all right, perhaps Veritas had spent the better part of an hour sitting a table away glaring at the expensively-dressed blond man who was in his spot drinking a massive cup of black coffee while taking a business call in Mandarin, but all he did was arrive fifteen minutes earlier the following day to ensure he reclaimed his spot. Four days later, it had been stolen again, and the interloper had the audacity to wave his gloved fingers in greeting.
Two weeks of wordlessly stealing the coveted second-story window seat from each other passed until one day, a second chair was added to the window with a little table set between them. And after that, Veritas had a new routine; people-watching, drinking iced coffee and talking with the handsome young man who called himself Aventurine.
Today is a wet one, rain pattering against Veritas’ yellow umbrella and catching every possible light in the pre-down college town. He likes the rain, the clean smell it brings and the pleasant hum of white noise that smoothes out the distractions of life that plague Veritas so badly. He likes it more when he is not out walking in it and it's not threatening to splash onto his navy slacks, but the Astral Espresso is worth the effort.
It's the cheerful young female barista this morning, her soft pink hair still wet at the ends like she’d slept in and showered too close to the start of her shift. “Good morning! Your—” she interrupts herself with a yawn. “Oooh, sorry, your friend already got your drink.”
Veritas turns and peers up the stairs to his usual spot by the window to where Aventurine sits, head turned towards the window with his chin in one hand. He tucks his umbrella in the box by the door, hangs up his raincoat and on impulse, he buys a pair of pastries before ascending the open staircase.
Aventurine seems to shake himself awake at Veritas’ approach, blinking up at him. “Hey, Doc,” he says, a nickname he’d given Veritas when he learned how many degrees he had. “I grabbed your—”
“I heard.” His usual order is in two cups, the coffee in one and the ice in the other. A thoughtful gesture. It makes him immediately suspicious. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
Veritas takes his seat and hands over the cheese danish, keeping the pan au chocolat for himself. (Aventurine needs protein, but reminding him of basic bodily needs has not worked yet.) “What terrible decision have you made that prompted a preemptive apology this time?”
Aventurine’s laugh is as lovely as his pink-blue eyes, and it sounds as artificial as they look. “Nothing yet, I promise. It's my coworkers who have been making mistakes that I had to work a few hours of overtime to correct.”
He already doesn't get nearly enough sleep. Sometimes, Veritas suspects he only entertains the little self-destructive executive from some compulsive need to harass him into better choices. “Let me guess. You’re approaching forty hours without any sleep, correct?”
“I had a nap,” comes the vague rebuttal. “It didn't last, though.”
Veritas sips the meltwater out of his ice cup then adds his coffee, watching Aventurine watch the rain sluice down the windowpane. The barista had called him Veritas’ friend and she isn’t— wrong, per say, but it's not a label Veritas had himself applied to their situation. Aventurine has been a source of irritation, fascination, amusement and concern. Friends seems woefully simplistic.
“Y’know, before you got here, I was thinking about what would happen if I fell over the railing there and broke my wrist," Aventurine remarks airily. “If that’d force them to give me time off. But I think I could still move my fingers to type, so…”
Veritas scowls. “Bodily harm is not a solution for your horrible work-life balance. Eat your dinner.”
With a wry twist of his pretty mouth, Aventurine takes a bite of pastry.
Their usual routine is like this: banter, their own versions of small talk (Veritas despises how little the education system encourages independent thoughts, and Aventurine loves to tease him by bringing up his own status as a high-school dropout nepotism hire at his adopted mother's banking empire) and an eventual comfortable silence as each man slips into his own routine. Then Aventurine heads home to end his day while Veritas starts his own with his biweekly 6am lecture.
Today, however.
Aventurine is visibly worn out, threadbare and vulnerable in a way that Veritas has never seen on him before. He had thought that any change to Aventurine’s usual modus operandi (black coffee just before bed to soften the comedown from the cocktail of illegal stimulants he swallowed/snorted/shot up to sustain his usual 16-hour work days) would be a welcome one. He had neglected to consider that Aventurine might become worse.
“You’ve got a philosophy degree, right?” Aventurine asks, taking another bite and washing it down with a swig of coffee.
“That is one of them, yes.”
“How do you find meaning in your life?”
Veritas takes a sip of his own iced coffee to buy time. “That is less of a philosophical question and more suited for a therapist—”
“Humor me.” Aventurine turns away from the window and looks, actually looks, at Veritas for the first time this morning. There is a hunger there, a grief that Veritas has never seen on him before.
Veritas does not remember a life outside of an academic setting. Reading was his favorite activity, “why” was his favorite word, and his entire career hinges on his ability to recall past lessons and arguments and reshape them into forms that students of all backgrounds and abilities can understand. His confidence in his own capabilities is firmly entrenched in fact.
For the first time in almost a decade, he is terrified of saying the wrong thing.
Veritas looks down at the other pastry on the table and begins, carefully, to craft an argument.
“You asked me, once, why I continue to teach despite my hatred of mainstream academia. I stated that even though I found my efforts wasted on my students eighty-odd percent of the time, I stay for the twenty percent who might retain something useful from my classes. I did not, however, elaborate on why I despaired in the first place.”
Aventurine takes a sip of his coffee in silence, his expression guarded but intent.
“Education should be a means, not an end,” he continues. “The goal of both parties should be to hand the student the skills and tools to move through the world with a better grasp of what, and how, and why things work the way they do. Through the course of my career, I have watched the focus shift to metrics and test scores that leave many individuals floundering for understanding.”
“Searching for a meaning in life is like taking a class simply to pass a test. The journey, the methods, the day to day; that is the point.” Veritas taps the table between them. “You and I, here, on Tuesdays and Thursdays watching the world slowly come to life, learning a bit more about each other. This is what gives life meaning.”
Through the clouds and the gentle rain, a ray of golden dawn lands on both men in the window, lighting up the side of Aventurine’s face and illuminating the moment when Veritas’ words pierce him. He inhales, sharp, unsteady, then he seems to swallow down some instinctive response and looks away instead.
As any good teacher might, Veritas waits for Aventurine to digest the information given to him.
“Is something this small, this… mundane, is it really enough?” Aventurine asks, young and frightened like Veritas had been ten years ago, five years ago, last week.
“It is hard to say if it's sufficient or not; as I stated, too strict of a goal does more harm than good.”
He thinks back to the wall of portraits he passes several times a week, and the mire of rage and grief that nearly swallows him any time he thinks about his absence in their ranks.
“But for the vast majority of people, the mundane is all there is.”
Aventurine leans back in his seat again with a tiny nod, gaze drifting back to the window where the dawn is blooming, warm and soft, sneaking in through the cracks of the rain.
“I should be going, then,” Aventurine says quietly. “You're not— wrong about the sleep thing. I’ll see you next week, then.”
“It's still raining,” Veritas points out.
Aventurine stands anyway. “Drizzling,” he insists. “I don't mind.”
Veritas looks down at the empty cup on the table between them, where Aventurine had placed an order for him and ensured it didn't dilute itself into nothing while he waited for Veritas, and takes his own advice.
“Wait.”
Half into his sport coat that probably costs a month of Veritas’ salary, Aventurine pauses.
Veritas pulls a business card from his wallet and a pen from the next table over. “Take my umbrella,” he says as he writes his phone number on the back of the card, then a little more. His hands are a touch unsteady (from the caffeine, surely) when he offers it to the young man standing over him. “And this, so you can return it to me.”
Aventurine’s smile is quiet, small, but no less breathtaking. “I will. Thank you, Ratio.”
Veritas watches him descend the stairs, pluck the yellow umbrella from the stand by the doors, and step out into the wet morning; watches that little spot of color head down the streets until the mist and the distance erases it from his sight.
“If this is all there is,” he murmurs to himself, “then let us enjoy it while we can.”