Chapter Text
Chapter 2
For a long, perilous moment, the grand saga of Two Grown Men Attempting Tree Climbing had reached its lowest point: Ratio had slid down the trunk like a disgruntled owl, Aventurine had laughed so hard he nearly passed out, and the park’s remaining pigeons had absolutely judged them for it.
But while most people would accept defeat and go home, Veritas Ratio was not most people. He refused to be bested by gravity, bark, or a gambler’s smug grin.
“Clearly,” he muttered, “there is an error in my model.”
“And in your center of gravity,” Aventurine added, still hiccuping with laughter.
Ratio ignored him.
Equations were adjusted. Branch positions re-evaluated. He muttered under his breath about leverage, torque, and environmental variables.
Aventurine watched him for a few moments, the fondness under his amusement growing harder to hide. Then he clapped once.
“All right,” he declared, striding back to the trunk. “New tactic.”
Ratio glanced up.
“If it involves ‘just believing in yourself,’ I assure you—”
“No, no. I bet on faith, and gravity called my bluff.”
Aventurine smacked the bark with renewed determination.
“Time to play doubles, doc. We’re combining our strengths.”
Ratio narrowed his eyes.
“Define how.”
“I tackled the tree,” Aventurine said, voice gaining speed like all his worst ideas. “But I got stuck halfway. The issue isn’t my enthusiasm—it’s my lift. I need… a boost.”
Unease crept up Ratio’s spine.
“Define ‘boost.’”
Aventurine turned, flashing a grin that should have come with hazard tape.
“You push me up. From behind.”
He gestured vaguely at his own hips.
Ratio stared.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Just give me a shove and I’ll grab the branch.”
“That is—” Ratio struggled for words strong enough. “That is structurally unsound. And undignified. And—”
He clutched his tome to his chest like a Victorian maiden being scandalously instructed to show her ankle.
“—entirely inappropriate,” he finished stiffly.
Aventurine stared for one stunned beat… then burst into delighted laughter.
“Come on, doc.” He rocked on his heels. “Where’s your spirit of experiment? Science requires trial and error.”
He leaned in, voice dipping just enough to be dangerous.
“Unless…”
His smile curled.
“You only do theoretical work. Not the hands-on kind.”
Ratio’s eyes narrowed very slowly.
“That,” he said, “is not what we are discussing.”
“Mm. Shame.” Aventurine hummed. “Hands-on experiments tend to yield the most… interesting results.”
Ratio looked like he was debating whether to correct him, walk away, or throw his notebook at his face.
“I don’t recall a single reputable paper that involved—”
“Raaatio,” Aventurine sing-songed, leaning forward with shameless glee. “Just push my butt. No slapping—it’s already tender from my tragic fall.”
He winked like he absolutely deserved to be hit with the tome.
Ratio’s brain shorted out.
“That is not a sentence you should say in public.”
Aventurine’s ears went faintly pink, but he barrelled on.
“We’re doing this. Doctor’s orders. Or gambler’s request. Whichever gets you moving faster.”
Ratio closed his eyes, inhaled, counted to three.
He should walk away.
Instead, with the air of a man marching toward his own academic downfall, he stepped behind Aventurine and positioned his hands with stiff, mortified precision.
“Fine,” he said sharply, “but be advised that this entire situation is academically compromising.”
Aventurine wiggled his hips just to be evil.
Ratio inhaled through his teeth.
“Stop that,” he snapped, tone sliding into full teacher addressing a repeat offender.
“Your proximity is destabilizing this exercise. If you fall backward onto me, I will be documenting every vertebra you endanger.”
“Deal,” Aventurine said cheerfully, planting his hands on the bark. “Okay. Gentle push at first, then—”
Ratio placed his hands on Aventurine’s lower hips.
They both froze.
Aventurine’s breath hitched. Warmth registered belatedly under Ratio’s fingers—the curve of muscle, the narrow waist. Much less fragile than his dramatics suggested.
“Oh,” Aventurine said weakly. “You’re… very thorough.”
“You asked me to push you,” Ratio replied, annoyed at how steady his voice didn’t sound. “I’m just—”
“Wait, wait—don’t push my butt too hard!” Aventurine squawked suddenly. “Not directly!”
“You’re the one who—”
“Not like that! I wasn’t thinking—”
He twisted halfway around, face crimson.
“Just—shove me from higher up. Upper back. Anything that isn’t my actual cheek—”
Ratio interrupted.
“You’re awfully… heavy for someone so skinny.”
Aventurine choked.
“HEY.”
Ratio adjusted his grip.
“Your frame is lean, but your weight distribution is… unexpected.”
Aventurine gasped as if insulted in twelve dimensions.
“Lean? Lean?! I’ll have you know this body is premium-tier craftsmanship! I have muscle, I have tone, I have—”
He gestured dramatically.
“…structural assets! Backed by years of cardio and good genetics!”
He paused, cheeks reddening.
“…Also my butt is great, okay?”
Ratio tilted his head, clinically assessing him.
“Indeed,” he said after a beat, like confirming a chart note. “It demonstrates rather pronounced curvature.”
Silence.
Aventurine made a noise only dolphins could hear.
“R—Ratio,” he croaked. “You can’t just say that.”
“What?” Ratio blinked. “It’s accurate. If you’re that embarrassed, you can touch mine.”
Aventurine’s soul visibly left his body.
“I can?!”
Ratio stared.
“I was pulling your leg, Gambler.”
Aventurine’s brain blue-screened. His grip slipped.
“Right. Yes. Ha. Jokes. Love those.”
Ratio exhaled hard, repositioning with near-surgical precision.
“On three,” he said tightly. “One. Two—”
He pushed.
Just a firm, steady boost.
Unfortunately, Aventurine’s nervous system had already melted.
“Wait—!”
Shoes slipped.
Hands skidded.
Balance vanished.
Aventurine toppled backward—
Ratio reacted instantly.
One arm wrapped his waist.
The other cupped the back of his head.
He twisted his body to take the brunt of the fall—
They hit the grass in a tangle of limbs and dignity.
Aventurine landed squarely on top of him.
Breaths mingled.
Aventurine’s hair brushed his cheek.
Ratio’s hand still cradled his head.
Aventurine blinked down at him—
close.
Too close.
Kissably close.
“Uh… hi?” he whispered.
Ratio’s ears went crimson.
Trying to regain dignity while flat on his back was impossible.
“See?” he muttered. “Your plan of… butt-pushing was a complete failure.”
Aventurine winced, then laughed softly.
“All right, all right. I busted on that play.”
His face softened.
“…Are you okay?”
His hands moved instinctively—cupping Ratio’s cheek, checking his shoulder, brushing along his jawline in gentle panic.
“You didn’t hit your head, right? Glasses intact? Anything hurt? Tell me you’re not concussed—”
Heat surged up Ratio’s neck.
“I’m fine,” he said stiffly. “You did not crush anything important.”
Aventurine sagged in relief.
“For the record—your weight distribution did not cause significant damage,” Ratio added.
“I have endured heavier academic burdens.”
Aventurine blinked.
“That’s your way of saying I didn’t flatten you?”
“That is precisely what I said.”
Aventurine’s laugh came soft and breathless.
Then—
“Um… mister?”
They froze.
The Monkey Warriors had returned.
“Are you two… wrestling?”
The Monkey King blinked.
Ratio shut his eyes.
Aventurine wheezed.
They scrambled apart with the frantic gracelessness of men who knew exactly how bad it looked.
Aventurine straightened, grabbed his hat like a Michael Jackson routine, and tilted it low over his flaming face.
“Smooth,” he announced—
Then tripped on grass.
Ratio stared.
Aventurine coughed into his hat.
“Ahem—yes! Wrestling. Obviously. Right, Ratio?”
Ratio sighed.
“Yes. Wrestling. Because he refused to admit defeat.”
“I did not! I was winning!”
One of the girls planted her hands on her hips.
“You were both doing it wrong.”
Ratio felt peer-reviewed by someone who used unicorn stickers.
“We’re—sorry, what?”
“You’re doing it wrong,” she repeated, more slowly, as if speaking to particularly dim adults. “You don’t just jump at the tree. And you”—she pointed at Ratio—“don’t need to think that hard.”
Ratio bristled.
“I am not ‘thinking that hard.’ I am conducting a rational assessment of—”
“Yeah, that.”
The Monkey King, nodded solemnly.
“You’re supposed to feel where the branches are. Not, um… talk to them with numbers.”
Aventurine covered his mouth with his hand. Ratio suspected he was hiding a smirk.
“I wasn’t—talking to them,” he said faintly.
“And you,” Monkey Girl #2 chimed in, jabbing a finger at Aventurine, “you’re not supposed to headbutt the tree.”
“I did not—” Aventurine began, then remembered his earlier collision and wilted. “…Okay, maybe a little.”
The kids exchanged looks that said very clearly: These are helpless cases.
Monkey Girl #1 sighed, as if burdened with great responsibility.
“Do you want us to show you?” she asked.
Ratio blinked, “Show us?”
“How to do it.” She gestured at the trunk. “You looked like you wanted to try, but you’re… really bad at it.”
Aventurine made a wounded noise.
“Ouch, kid. Right in the pride.”
“Please, by all means,” Ratio said before he could stop himself. “Demonstrate your superior methodology.”
The King grinned and trotted over to the base of the tree.
“Okay, so,” he said, placing his hands on the bark. “You don’t stand too far. You hug it a bit. Then you look for the bumps and branches with your feet, not your eyes. If you stare too much, you get scared.”
He hopped up, feet finding purchase, hands moving with practiced ease. In seconds, he’d pulled himself to the first branch and swung onto it, legs dangling.
“See?” he called down. “Easy.”
Ratio muttered something dark about unhelpful demonstrations.
The girl rolled her eyes.
“He’s been doing that since he was little. But you don’t have to go that high,” she told them. “Just here—” she pointed to a lower, thicker knot in the trunk, “hands here, then step there, then push up. Like you’re climbing stairs, not jumping.”
“Climbing stairs, not jumping,” Aventurine repeated under his breath. “I can do stairs.”
“Also,” the younger girl added wisely, “don’t argue with the tree.”
Both adults stared at him.
“I wasn’t arguing with it,” Ratio said. “I was—”
“He was,” Aventurine interrupted, smile bright. “He absolutely was. With numbers.”
The kids nodded, satisfied.
“Okay,” the taller girl said briskly, clapping her hands. “Now you try. One of you at a time.”
There was no universe in which Ratio would back down from a lesson delivered by an eight-year-old.
He stepped forward.
“Very well,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Hands here, you said?”
“Yeah. Fingers spread, not stiff,” she instructed. “And don’t hug it like it’s going to judge you. Trees don’t care.”
“Debatable,” Ratio muttered, but he loosened his grip.
The bark was rough under his palms, but solid. He shifted his weight, feeling for the foothold the boy had indicated. It took a moment of awkward fumbling, but then his sandal found the groove.
He exhaled.
“Okay,” the youngest girl said. “Now, push up, and grab that low branch. Don’t think too much. Just… go.”
For someone whose entire life was built on thinking too much, it was surprisingly hard to obey.
But he tried.
He pushed. His leg straightened, his body lifted, his hand shot up—and his fingers closed, with a jolt of quiet triumph, around the lower branch.
A small chorus of cheers went up from below.
Ratio blinked down at them, a little breathless.
Aventurine had his hands cupped around his mouth.
“Look at you, doc! Outplaying gravity like it’s a rigged table!”
“That phrase doesn’t make sense,” Ratio called back, but his lips twitched.
He shifted again, finding another foothold, pulling himself just a little higher until his chest rested against the branch. It wasn’t graceful, but it was progress.
The bark scraped his palms, his muscles protested, yet there was a strange lightness in his chest that had nothing to do with altitude.
He glanced down.
Aventurine watched him with the dazzled awe of a man witnessing his husband perform a miracle. His grin was so wide it pushed into his cheekbones, eyes crinkling with genuine, unguarded pride—like Ratio had just single-handedly won a championship in his name.
Ratio looked away quickly and focused on not falling.
“All right, mister,” the girl called. “That’s enough for a first time. You can sit or come back down!”
Ratio chose to sit.
The branch was rough but stable beneath him, leaves whispering overhead like they approved of his survival.
From up here, the park looked different.
Smaller in scale, larger in heart.
Children darted in and out of the shade, parents chatted, hover-strollers drifted lazily… and Aventurine’s pale blond hair shone like a beacon in the crowd below.
Ratio allowed himself one quiet breath.
His heart was beating faster than the climb warranted.
He told himself it was merely the novelty of physical exertion.
Below, the girl cupped her hands and shouted, “Did you see our treasure?”
Ratio blinked, confused.
“Treasure…?”
The kids all pointed excitedly toward the horizon.
Ratio followed their gesture—
and then he saw it.
“Oh,” he murmured.
Because far beyond the holographic skyline, beyond the shimmering bio-lights and metallic architecture…
was blue.
Something in his chest loosened, warmth blooming quietly behind his ribs.
Below, the kids were grinning up at him, proud of having revealed their secret view.
Aventurine, meanwhile, looked utterly baffled.
“Hey—what’s going on up there?” he called, shading his eyes. “Why are you all smiling like you’re in on some conspiracy without me?”
Ratio shifted on the branch and leaned down slightly.
“Aventurine,” he said, voice unexpectedly gentle, “come see. It’s something I’m certain you haven’t seen anywhere else.”
That alone was enough to pull Aventurine’s curiosity taut as a wire.
The kids began shouting instructions.
“Hands here,” the boy said, adjusting Aventurine’s grip with the unquestioned authority of a small child. “Feet there. No, not there, that’s slippery. Yeah. There. Okay, now step up. Not too fast.”
Aventurine planted his designer shoes where instructed, then shot Ratio a look over his shoulder.
“If I die,” he said, “tell the IPC I went out doing something stupid and fun.”
“You’re not going to die,” Ratio replied. “You’ll merely experience mild risk of concussion.”
“Reassuring, doc.”
He pushed up.
For a moment it looked like he would repeat his earlier slide, but the boy reached up and gave his calf a helpful shove.
“Don’t lean back,” the child instructed. “You’re not posing for a photo.”
Aventurine snorted.
“Rude.”
But he leaned forward, muscles straining, and his hand finally caught the same branch Ratio was perched on.
“Ha!” he crowed, eyes bright. “Look at that.”
The kids cheered again. Someone on a nearby bench clapped. Aventurine grinned like a man who’d just won a high-stakes game.
“See?” the youngest girl said smugly. “Told you you were doing it wrong before.”
“Yes, yes,” Aventurine laughed, hauling himself up with an undignified scrabble, “The youth have spoken. We stand corrected.”
And with their chaotic coaching—and the very real desire to know what Ratio was seeing—Aventurine climbed.
Slowly.
Stubbornly.
Steadily.
Until, breathless and pink-cheeked, he hauled himself onto the branch beside Ratio.
“Sit corrected,” Ratio murmured.
He resisted the urge to reach out and steady him, even as Aventurine wobbled for a second before finding his balance.
“So what’s the treasure you guys were—”
The words died.
His eyes widened at what he saw.
A real, impossible blue.
An honest-to-stars ocean stretching across the horizon, its waves catching the sunlight in glittering shards. Artificial city, artificial parks, artificial everything—yet somehow, beyond all that, a real sea lived and breathed.
All the light in him shifted—softened—opened.
Because Aventurine, who grew up on a desert world of sand and starvation,
who knew storms and war and scarcity, had never seen the sea.
And Ratio, who loved water the way scholars loved truth, felt something inside him settle just watching Aventurine witness it.
“It’s…”
Aventurine whispered, voice barely holding together.
“That’s real?”
Ratio nodded once.
For a long moment, they both just looked.
Side by side.
Sharing the same impossible horizon.
His usual performative swagger had quieted. For once, he wasn’t filling the silence with jokes or provocation. He just sat there, looking up through the canopy, eyes half-lidded.
“This is…” he started, then trailed off.
Ratio studied him from the corner of his eye.
“Uncomfortable?”
A small huff of laughter.
“No. I mean, yes, my butt hurts. But that’s not what I…”
He gestured to the tree they’re sitting on.
“I think this might be the first time I’ve done something like this just because it looked fun.”
Ratio raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve done plenty of reckless things that looked ‘fun,’” he said mildly.
“That was work,” Aventurine said, eyes still on the leaves. “Performance. Survival dressed up as charades. This is just… stupid. Pointless. No profit. No scheme. Just us and a tree that probably thinks we’re idiots.”
“Trees don’t think,” Ratio said automatically.
“Tell that to the way it rejected me the first time.”
Aventurine nudged his shoulder lightly against Ratio’s.
“What about you?”
His voice softened, without losing its teasing shape.
“Ever did anything this pointless before?”
Ratio considered.
His life had been a steady sequence of goals. Exams, research, making sure fools get educated, not gatekeeping knowledge. Even his so-called leisure had been strategic—reading, study, carefully curated rest.
“No,” he said eventually. “I don’t believe I have.”
Aventurine turned his head, studying him.
There was something very open in his gaze in that moment. No mask. No glittering performance. Just a man who’d given so much of himself to other people’s games that he’d forgotten he was allowed to play his own.
“We’re not too old to start, you know,” Aventurine said quietly. “For things like this.”
Ratio’s lips twitched.
“Statistically speaking, it’s unusual to begin tree-climbing at our age.”
“Statistically speaking,” Aventurine echoed, leaning closer, “you’re a nerd, and I like you anyway.”
Heat crept up Ratio’s neck.
He looked away, pretending to inspect a nearby cluster of leaves. Below them, one of the kids shouted something about ice cream.
“What we did,” he said, voice low, “is physically insignificant. The height, the risk—minimal. The… importance of it is entirely constructed by your sentimentality.”
“Wow.” Aventurine smiled, slow and fond. “Thanks for saying ‘this matters to you’ in the most Ratio way possible.”
Ratio hesitated.
“…It matters to me as well,” he admitted, barely above a murmur.
Aventurine went very still.
Then he smiled, small and bright, like the kind of rare coin you only saw when the light hit just right.
“In that case,” he said, bumping their shoulders together again, “let’s steal more of these. Little things. Stupid things. All the stuff we missed the first time around. Since we saw the ocean, how about next we learn swimming?”
Ratio considered that.
“I already know how to swim.”
Then he smirked handsomely.
“It’ll be my pleasure to teach you how to swim, Gambler.”
Aventurine laughed, “Oh boy, what did I bet myself into now?”
Ratio chuckled but didn’t move away when Aventurine’s knee rested lightly against his.
Below, their tiny tutors had gotten bored waiting for the adults they adopted to come back down.
“Hey, mister!” the boy king called up suddenly. “You did good for a first time! Come on down, we’re going to get popsicles to celebrate!”
“Thank you,” Aventurine called back, “Let me treat all of us!”
“Yay!” the three cheered.
“We’ll wait for you at the ice cream shop!” shouted the tallest girl then they raced each other to their bikes.
“We should get down,” Ratio said after a while. “Before someone calls park security on us for.”
Aventurine sighed dramatically.
“Fine. But… How do we get down again, doc?”
“Same way, just backwards,” Ratio calmly explained simply.
==========
A moment later, Ratio dropped the short distance to the grass, knees bending on impact. Aventurine followed, landing with slightly less grace and immediately clutching his backside.
“Ow,” he groaned, straightening carefully. “Definitely going to feel that tomorrow.”
Ratio’s hands twitched, almost reaching out before he remembered they had an audience.
“You will survive,” he said instead. “I’ll… apply some ointment later.”
Aventurine’s eyes gleamed.
“Is that a promise?”
“It’s a medical intervention,” Ratio said crisply, and started walking.
Aventurine fell into step beside him, still grinning.
From a distant, the kids shouted at them to hurry as they’re impatient to have their ice cream.
Ahead of them, the path out of the park curved toward the street, back into the usual noise of their lives.
“Hey, doc,” Aventurine said after a few quiet steps.
“Yes?”
“Thanks,” he said simply. “For… indulging me.”
Ratio didn’t look at him, but his fingers brushed, just once, against Aventurine’s as they walked.
“It wasn’t an indulgence,” he said. “It was… an experiment.”
Aventurine’s lips quirked.
“And the results?”
Ratio thought of laughing on the grass, of notepaper smudged with dirt, of small hands pointing, of gold eyes up in the leaves, soft with something that looked like hope.
“Promising,” he said.
Aventurine’s smile turned radiant.
“In that case,” he said, “next time we find a park, I’m making you try the swings.”
Ratio exhaled, long-suffering, already imagining the equations he could derive from pendulum motion.
And the part of him that hadn’t learned to play as a child whispered, almost shyly:
Yes.
“Next time,” he said, “we’ll see. However I’m more interested to teach you how to swimat the beach first.”
Aventurine bumped their shoulders together again, warm and solid, as they stepped out of the shade of the trees and back into the sun.
“Alright, that’s a promise.”
The End