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lazysusanspinner · 5 days ago

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ACCIDENTALLY IN LOVE

veritas ratio x gn! reader. SYNOPSIS: your strange, slightly unconventional relationship with the eccentric dr. ratio needs no name of its own. this is a study in quiet admiration. AUTHOR'S NOTE : i'm sorry this took longer than expected, @mixxdpunch, i got wrapped up in college apps and all. i'll be writing more hsr fics if people request them!! my askbox is open for requests right now. enjoy <3 read on ao3!!

i. night in the library

Sitting at his ten o'clock, it had become something of a tradition for you and Veritas to sit down late at night, working together on your own tasks. He insists for you to be there with him despite your work having nothing to do with his, much to your confusion. Eccentric as he is, you knew still that he kept an almost calculated distance from other people, especially those that he deemed as idiots. Ignorance is a plague, they say. Veritas takes it literally.

Perhaps then, the fact that he seeks you out every night to do nothing in particular, should just be taken for granted, without further question. Especially since you did not mind either, quite the opposite. Books on philosophy and literary analysis were sprawled on the table, along with notes on astrophysics and various star maps of galaxies you will never see. Your fingers trail the constellation of the swan— Cygnus. You remember he told you about the ones listed on this map a few weeks before. He tells you of a lot of things; faraway planets and star systems with strange people and even stranger philosophies they lived by.

In a way, he became your telescope, the glass through which you see the wide universe. He, in turn, would bring you souvenirs each time. Educational journals, pieces of curated art and occasionally interesting literature from the planets he visited, along with details of his own experiences there. He knew of your interests, claiming that it was what set you apart from those other fools who were too entrenched in their own hubris and conceit to see the world 'as it were and has been'. You doubted it, for it truly seemed like such a mundane thing. Wasn't it prerogative for a student to atleast be curious?

Despite the fact that you both were learning entirely different topics, it's not as if Veritas could help himself but to tell you about everything he had seen.

Not when you hang onto every word he says as if it were the very essence of truth. He doesn't have any shame in admitting that the only solace of his recently dull days is a conversation with you. After all, even without being his intellectual equal, your earnestness drew him near, and perhaps over time he could almost call you a friend. The other students and professors, or atleast those who liked to spend their useless efforts gossiping, called it favoritism. Dr. Ratio always scoffed at the suggestion. As if someone like him would ever indulge in that!!

It's only that it's hard to find someone so pleasant to talk to, so naturally he seeks out your company the most. But he never minds the moments spent in silence, either. Veritas is most at peace when the only sounds in the room are that of pen scraping paper, flipping pages and coffee cups hitting the table.

Your notebooks were shut and your cup was on its last dregs. From his peripheral vision, he observed your half lidded gaze with quick, discreet glances; not lingering too long, but just enough to give him the silent assurance that you wouldn't pass out. He could see the late night's tiredness on your face, and yet you don't bother asking him to leave with you.

Once your soft gaze becomes all that there is on the forefront of his mind, he shuts the essay journal he was reading, looking at you.

"If you are tired, then we should go home. There's no use pushing yourself."

"Hm? I know. I just don't feel like going home yet."

"You have classes in the morning, don't you?"

"Well, I always do. Doesn't matter to me, I want to stay."

Veritas feels strangely glad at that answer, though he doesn't know why. He'd never ask you to stay, but he always wonders if you will. Still, this sort of senseless stubbornness is why he finds himself far too concerned for you.

If only he knew the true nature of this seemingly unearned admiration was something far more sentimental than merely academic. You don't follow him room to room with no attention and stay late nights in the library simply because you're bored, after all.

If only he ever caught on. For a genius, he was remarkably oblivious.

Or perhaps he already knew, but simply did not wish to acknowledge it.

"My work here is finished. Let's go home."

He always said it as though home meant the same place for the two of you, as if the both of you were heading in the same direction at the end of the day. It wasn't the case, but even that illusion was something you found special.

Looking at the loose leaf papers below, his half written sentence where the ink was still drying, you knew he wasn't done and that he wasn't tired. When he was, it always showed on his face and to some extent, his temperament— an already low tolerance for trivial annoyances diminishing to almost nothing.

It was for your sake, that was obvious, but you never knew how to tell him that you'd rather stretch the night hours into infinity than have to greet the loneliness that waited for you behind your bedroom door.

Still, with a sigh, you gathered up your books and the star maps, placing them in the bag and walking out into that inky night with him. Just a touch too close, but not enough.

ii. unseen muses

You looked at the sculpture in front of you, a bust with a name engraved in gold letters on it's pedestal: Antinuos Mondragone. While you had little idea of who this referred to, that deified boy of the mythologies from one of those distant, far flung galaxies—the piece in front of you was masterfully made. Sculptures always held a strange sort of irony; the attempt to make a rigid, unfeeling stone into the likeness of a person. The metamorphosis of an object into something alive, yet too cold to touch; the eye socket was empty, but the deep set of the brow held a melancholy too tender for stone.

You wonder how the sculptor must have felt, chiseling out every soft curl. What their painstaking devotion must have felt like. You wonder if you'd ever be capable of the same.

Your notepad remained pressed in your hands, quick pen sketches of the various arts in the museum having filled it's pages.

It was a study in light and shadow, although crude sketches would fail to capture the full essences of the pieces you had seen in the dim, sun-drenched hallways of the museum. The warm light that diffuses across the cheek, coruscating around the hard edges and made to blur with a sculptor's patient touch— the coarse penstrokes failed there. Mere likeness, lacking of all the dreamy subtlety.

You looked down at your sketch, and then at the bust, but you weren't entirely unaware of the footsteps sounding behind you.

"Ah, I didn't expect to see you here."

Veritas stood next to you, head tilted slightly as he leaned to observe your sketch, then the bust.

"It's a good study in light, and your approach isn't too bad. A few corrections will naturally improve it, but… Oh?"

His eyes, clear and brilliant in the light, caught the slight marks of rouge on the side of the sculpture's lip. You did not catch it at first, but now that you had noticed it, the smudge became impossible to ignore. He seemed, for a moment, slightly mortified at it's implications, but nonetheless cleared his throat.

"I suppose the curator might have overlooked it. It creates an artistic statement of it's own, but… really?" He sounded slightly baffled by the idea that anyone would kiss a statue. It is one thing to be transfixed by beauty and artistry, to admire it, but entirely different to act on such admirations.

However, as you looked at him—glowing in the fading sunlight, perfect as though touched by divinity—you found it no wonder that someone could possibly have had fancied themselves Pygmalion, or perhaps Hadrian, captivated and needing to touch. After all, how could anyone not feel the need to press their lips to something unreachable yet beautiful in all holy reverence?

As Veritas fixed the sketch, smudging out the crosshatching with his fingers, you could understand.

iii. surrender to slow days

Veritas was immune to love until it had fully sunk it's claws deep in his skin.

Perhaps that is why people say that cupid shoots arrows. Such a distressing feeling could easily be likened to a wound. If asked, he could have pinpointed it's location. Several inches deep, stabbed through his back and into the centre of his chest.

But he could not have figured out it's true nature, not a moment before that evening.

It seemed as if all the eaves in the city had somehow conveniently disappeared that day in late July when Doctor Ratio had set out to personally hand over some papers for peer review to a colleague. Of course, it was only a formality, as a digital copy already existed, but there is something of a security in handing over physical writing.

Well, it didn't matter if he had brought those papers or not, as presently his bag was thoroughly waterlogged, and any document in it was likely beyond salvation. It was a good thing he hadn't brought his codex, ruining it would've just made him give up on the day entirely.

The sky seemed clear in the morning, yet just as he stepped out of his home, grey clouds were suddenly overcast and it began pouring. If he wasn't rational by nature, he'd almost consider it a personal slight against him by the gods.

There was something slightly pathetic about standing under a short overhang that dripped water over him every five seconds or so, hair sticking to his forehead and clothes heavy. He picked the collar of his shirt from his neck where it was stuck, and the sensation made his skin crawl.

The only salvation of that evening had been the subtle perfume of petrichor, and of course…

"Doctor Ratio?"

The little droplets of water had suddenly stopped, a blue umbrella awkwardly lodged between his head and the overhang. A voice so familiar he could've known it anywhere, and considering how his day had gone so far, he was glad for this small mercy.

You looked at him with slightly wide eyes, clearly not having expected him to be hanging out under a random alley's eave like some sort of abandoned cat.

"I'd rather you call me by my first name."

"…Huh? Didn't you say you disliked being referred to as Veritas?"

You gently gripped his sleeve, taking him out of the shade of the building and into that of the umbrella.

"I said I disliked being touched as well, but that hasn't exactly stopped you. You might as well call me Veritas too, you've more than had the right, haven't you."

You seemed slightly mortified at that moment, and he realized how his words could sound more than sarcastic. He was a bit slower than he usual on the uptake, but he blamed it on his stressful day. The way his heartbeat had sped up slightly was simply a side effect.

"Sorry, I didn't realize."

When you tried to take your hand away from the cuffs of his sleeve, he didn't stop you, only sighed.

"…That wasn't to say you had to let go."

"So, may I?"

The answer came far too eager than he would have preferred.

"Of course you can."

Soon after, he cleared his throat, muttering a quiet word under his breath. Something along the lines of 'I meant to say, only if you want to,' but the full sentence didn't reach your ears. Once you grasped his hand again, he took the umbrella from you, holding it over both of your heads for convenience.

Conversation was lost in between the sounds of rain hitting glass and quiet murmurs. Your gaze shone like dew drops on the leaves not too far away, and he observed the glint quietly while watching you talk. Somewhere along the way, he had deliberately slowed his pace just to draw out the conversation longer. In this way, in the absence of people and quiet stillness of a world frozen in raindrops; that day his thoughts were particularly consumed by you.

By nightfall, his routine returned to normal, intertwined with yours. The same two seats in the library, two coffee cups and two journals. But something had shifted fundamentally then; a different perspective. A simple, long overdue realization.

At first, he merely considered it a panacea of sorts; it was a matter of simple solace. It went without saying that someone like him was no lacking of such a thing, or so he had thought, but there was strange comfort in sharing his time with you. You slotted in effortlessly in his days and nights, between lectures and sculpting sessions—your presence became a second skin. Like a tattoo without ink, like the splotches of paint on his hands that wouldn't come off.

Weeks passed in this way, and in times when he'd absentmindedly sketch on a loose page of paper, the strokes began to take the shape of your face almost naturally. Only in the late night, turning that piece of paper in his hands, he snapped out of his trance. All he could do was place his head in his hands, sighing quietly to himself.

"Ah, what an idiot I've been…"

Even for all his intellect, it couldn't carry the burden of an affection such as this. The burden of that cherubic arrow, leaden in that open wound.

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