Chapter Text
Veritas Ratio watched Aventurine throw back his third dirty martini of the evening. The effects of the drinks were beginning to become clear - Aventurine’s eyes were distant, his posture was relaxed, and his face was flushed. Veritas found it endearing how Aventurine’s cheeks were dusted with pink and how his hair was tousled.
After a particularly long day at the office, Aventurine had invited Veritas out for drinks. It was Friday, Aventurine had insisted. The bar was elegant, with wooden walls, plush seats, and velvet curtains. A jazz band was setting up in the corner, preparing to play later.
Though not a heavy drinker, Veritas found himself indulging, letting Aventurine buy him drink after drink. His tolerance was strong, but he was beginning to feel hazy and light as well.
“You should slow down, gambler,” Veritas cautioned. “Don’t you have a gala to attend tomorrow?”
“In the evening, yes.” Aventurine shrugged. “I’ll recover.”
The two continued to chat and laugh about menial things. Veritas was relieved that they’d become so close after their rocky start. He’d expected Aventurine to be vapid like the other IPC workers he’d had the misfortune of working with, but Aventurine was phenomenal company - though Veritas would never admit that part aloud.
“Will I see you at the gala tomorrow, doctor? It’s a fundraiser for my department - you should have received an invite.”
“No, thank you, Aventurine.” Veritas shook his head. “I’d rather not pander to fools for several hours.”
In truth, Veritas would have gone if Aventurine had pushed him to. He would do anything to spend time with Aventurine, but he knew he would likely be a nuisance or an obstruction to Aventurine’s work.
“I understand.” Aventurine sighed and set down his now empty glass. “I’ll see you soon, then?”
“Where are you going?” Veritas was vaguely aware of how pathetic the question sounded, but he knew Aventurine was too drunk to think much of it.
“My date wants me, I’m sorry. He’s been trying to wave me over for a few minutes…”
Aventurine trailed off as the man in question walked towards them - a tall, dark haired IPC soldier with a physique Veritas found himself oddly jealous of. The clacking sound of boots against the bar’s marble floor announced his arrival. He must have been someone important to have such a tailored uniform, yet Veritas had no idea who he was.
“What’s taking you so long, director?”
Aventurine laughed, but his gaze was averted. Veritas could clearly tell that he was uncomfortable. “Oh, nothing. Just catching up with a friend.”
“A friend?”
“A friend, nothing more.” Aventurine offered the soldier a reassuring smile before standing up and stumbling slightly. “Shall we go, now?”
“Yes, let’s go.”
The soldier put an arm around Aventurine, who was laughing and flirting with the man, but Veritas doubted the sincerity of it all. Aventurine flinched when the man touched him - it was subtle, but for reasons he refused to admit to himself, Veritas was deeply in tune with Aventurine’s reactions in a way he’d never been with anyone else’s.
“See you, doctor!” Aventurine gave a drunken wave before turning to face the man again, whose hand had traveled from Aventurine’s shoulders to his waist. When it dared to go lower, Veritas had to turn away, pretending his drink was the most fascinating thing in the cosmos.
“Stood up?”
Veritas looked up at the bartender, who gave him a sympathetic gaze.
“No, no. Not stood up.” Did it really appear that way? Veritas shook his head. “Just catching up with a friend is all.”
The bartender nodded as he began to wipe the spot where Aventurine had been sitting. “That’s Aventurine, isn’t it?”
Veritas nodded.
“He’s always coming and going with some guy or another. He likes to go for soldiers, I think.”
Veritas gave a curt nod before sliding his empty glass across the bar.
“Another, if you wouldn’t mind. Start a new tab.”
He knew Aventurine had a penchant for hookups and was often spotted around Pier Point with one or more handsome men at his side, though Veritas didn’t enjoy being reminded of this. In confidence, Aventurine complained that these hookups always turned out boring. As for why he continued to indulge in them, Veritas didn’t dare ask, but he wondered in private what Aventurine sought to gain from them. Perhaps intel? They did often appear to be important people.
He knew he was a fool for even thinking this way, but the men Aventurine went out with left him feeling oddly insecure - not that he had a chance with Aventurie to begin with. He was hopelessly inexperienced and boring, likely too timid for the sort of things Aventurine would want in bed.
He tried desperately to push the thoughts of Aventurine spending the night with another man out of his mind, but they persisted. He felt perverted for picturing such things, but he couldn’t help but worry if Aventurine was safe or not. Was he enjoying himself, or was he miserable? Was the guy terrible in bed or would Aventurine go out with him again? The thought of him seeing that brute a second time made Veritas’ hands tremble. The unspoken thought of ‘I could treat him better’ hovered on Veritas’ tongue.
It wasn’t as if he’d never imagined such things. On nights when he couldn’t sleep and he was swamped with work, he’d done humiliating things to take his mind off of it all, things that Aventurine would tease him for if he wasn’t first disgusted by them.
When he looked up, his drink was ready, thank the Aeons. The sharp, fruity flavor of mango purged his mind of all misery, if only temporarily - Veritas was a sad drunk who often fell into despair at the end of a night out.
He laughed to himself bitterly as he took his first sip of the drink. The first time he and Aventurine had gone drinking together, he’d been made insecure over his choice of drink.
“I never took you as the type to enjoy such fruity drinks.”
“I grew up on a winery, gambler.”
“Ah, so you have refined tastes!”
“I simply despise the aftertaste of shitty alcohol.”
Even something as simple as his alcohol preferences left Veritas insecure when Aventurine entered the picture. Nothing he ever did was up to the stoneheart’s standards. He was doomed to be teased by him forever, never truly being seen as an equal.
Despite the fact that the bar was becoming Veritas’ personal sensory hell as the band began to play - loud music, overlapping voices, and the smell of too much perfume - he stayed seated, determined to get as drunk as possible if it would spare him from his thoughts of Aventurine and the other man.
.
Aventurine leaned on the railing of his balcony as he smoked, watching the city buzz around him. He lived on the hundredth floor of his building in a glamorous penthouse apartment. He was at the perfect level to watch spaceships depart from their landing pads on the roofs of buildings, while also having a perfect view of the vast metropolis that was Pier Point.
There were skyscrapers as far as the eye could see, some of them even taller than Aventurine’s own. Tonight, a mist had rolled in over the river in the center of the city, partially obscuring the furthest buildings. The megastructures loomed within the fog like giants watching over the city. Advertisements were holographically projected onto the sides of buildings, painting the city in a blanket of neon - Aventurine saw his own face in the distance, modeling a brand of jewelry the average person would never be able to afford. He looked edited and perfect, such a sharp contrast to his current disheveled appearance. On the whole, the skyline was beautiful but soulless.
He wrapped his robe around himself tighter. It was chilly tonight. Winter was on its way to Pier Point, and he’d sobered up hours ago, no longer warmed by the alcohol.
Thankfully, the man he’d brought home had left shortly after they’d slept together. He’d been decent, Aventurine supposed, but not what he really wanted. He’d been too rough, leaving Aventurine sore and disoriented. He’d asked for round two, and Aventurine had tried to decline politely, his body exhausted. When the man refused to listen and reached for more regardless, Aventurine had threatened to call his security, keeping his tone playful despite his terror.
Though he was in control of who he slept with now, this had not always been the case. On occasion, his mind would go elsewhere when he was sleeping with someone, leaving his body to act on its own while he fought off memories of being shoved down, beaten, and worse. He chased the fuzzy feeling this gave him, though he knew, on some level, he shouldn’t. At least it emptied his head for a time until he came back to reality and was overcome with shame. The neurons in his mind had been hopelessly twisted beyond repair, and now he mistook pain for pleasure and sex for shame.
He would never have actually called his security, and that thought disturbed him deeply. He would have let the man have more had he not backed off after the threat. Perhaps he was comfortable with the idea of being used in such a way, as much as the idea disgusted him. His body was his only real asset, after all, so it made sense to share it, even if it meant he was worthless and used up by age twenty-four.
He had no other basis for what sex was meant to be like - even now, he offered himself up to his hookups for their pleasure, never taking the initiative, letting them use him and brag about how they’d fucked Aventurine of Strategems. He performed for them, teased them, and made them feel good about themselves all while wishing he’d never brought them home.
It was nice to feel wanted by someone, at least, even if the person he truly wanted would never think of him that way.
What had the rest of Ratio’s evening been like? Had he stayed at the bar? Had he gone home? Likely the second. Ratio was married to his work and wasn’t one for partying. He’d likely been relieved that Aventurine had left - yes, that was likely. He hadn’t even said a proper goodbye to Ratio, wholly focused on appeasing his date. What a terrible friend he was.
Were they friends?
Aventurine finished his cigarette - the last of five - and returned inside. He had to clean the bedsheets and rid the room of the filth of what had happened, despite the fact that he would likely do the same thing next weekend. He stripped the bed of the soiled sheets and wrinkled his nose at the smell. He’d already bathed, thank Aeons.
He lacked the energy to make up his bed for sleep, so he supposed tonight would be a ‘sleep on the sofa’ night.
After he put the sheets to wash, he sat on the sofa with his catcakes. He’d only received them as a gift from Ratio two weeks ago, yet the odd creatures were already dear to him. He’d polled his social media following when deciding what to name them, and his fans had landed on Spade, Heart, and Clover.
Spade was the mischievous one of the bunch, often starting fights with his siblings and knocking Aventurine’s trinkets from their shelves. He’d spent an afternoon rearranging his apartment to be more cat friendly upon realizing what a little menace Spade was, though he looked awfully sweet in Aventurine’s lap, purring and flicking his tail.
He checked his phone - it was two in the morning. No text from Ratio.
Why would Ratio have texted him? He felt like an idiot for even wondering such a thing.
In a moment of poor judgement, Aventurine sent a text to Ratio, deliberating for several minutes on how to phrase it.
Sorry for leaving without a goodbye - see you soon :)
Filled with sudden remorse, he slammed his phone down onto the sofa. Texting Ratio at two in the morning? What sort of codependent behavior was that? Ratio likely already saw him as little more than an annoying hedonist who stayed up all night to fuck strangers. Why was he fueling that perception of himself?
Just as his eyes began to flutter shut, his phone buzzed. Frantic, he grabbed it, checking his messages. It was from Ratio. The glee of seeing Ratio’s name on the notification hit stronger than the nicotine he’d used earlier.
It’s alright gambler. Get some rest.
Aventurine’s head spun with questions? Why was Ratio awake? Had he stayed at the bar after all? Was he absorbed in work? Was he taking care of himself? Ratio shouldn’t stay up so late - Aventurine deliberately ignored the fact that he himself rarely slept properly.
Had Ratio also spent the night with someone?
Suddenly nauseous, Aventurine blinked tears from his eyes and tried to swallow the lump in his throat. The lack of sleep was making him delirious. What did it matter if Ratio had decided to go home with someone? Why did he care so much? Why was it suddenly so hard to breathe?
His obsession with Ratio made him deranged, and he’d done things to satiate his desire that he deeply regretted. He’d pictured Ratio holding him and whispering sweet nothings as they acted like lovers. Aventurine knew he was unworthy of such a thing, but on the nights when he refused to bring someone home, he buried himself in his bedsheets and got off to the idea of the doctor treating him with compassion - such a disgusting, depraved thing to do. Ratio would surely abandon him if he ever found out.
He audibly gasped as he thought that. If Ratio abandoned him, what would he do? If they were never able to see one another again, Aventurine thought that he would kill himself, that death would be preferable to the aching loneliness of knowing he’d driven the doctor away - had he really just thought that? Aeons, he would do anything for Ratio to be near him, let alone love him, if that was even possible.
Even the men he did bring home were Ratio clones - fit, tall, and dark haired - but they were stupid. None of them entertained him in the way that the doctor did. Without fail, by the end of the night, he wanted them to leave and never come back.
He was crying. He wasn’t sure when the crying had begun, but he sobbed as he stared at Ratio’s text, yearning for more so badly that it hurt. He would have leaped from his balcony if it meant Ratio would text him again.
Aventurine fell asleep scrolling through their old messages, disgusted with himself for wanting more.
.
Veritas methodically took the sheets off of his bed, trying and failing to ease the regret which gnawed at his heart. He’d changed into clean pajamas and showered, but he still felt vile in a way he could not articulate.
As he put clean sheets onto his bed and put the old ones to wash, he thought of Aventurine. He thought about the man Aventurine had gone home with, and how his hand had wandered when Aventurine so clearly did not want his touch. Why invite him over? Why sleep with him? He would never understand.
If Aventurine wanted sex more than anything else, that was his choice to make, but it left Veritas feeling as if he would never be able to satisfy Aventurine let alone have any chance at a relationship. Veritas hated himself for it, but he wanted something personal, not just someone to sleep with. If he was to love Aventurine he would do so completely and with his whole heart - but if Aventurine didn’t want such a thing, who was he to force it upon him?
As Veritas relaxed into the fresh bedsheets, he pulled out his phone and began to scroll mindlessly - he despised social media and did everything in his power to stay off of it, but he was slightly delirious with exhaustion and not thinking clearly. All he knew was that he needed more of Aventurine.
He settled for scrolling through compilations of Aventurine content. It wasn’t a habit he was proud of, but it helped him sleep to laugh at the persona he knew was so fake yet flustered him regardless. He watched as Aventurine performed on a dating show with several women. It was known that Aventurine was into men, yet publicity stunts were part of his job description. He flirted with the women so seamlessly that it was almost believable, though by Aventurine’s own admission, the entire show had been staged.
Veritas cringed at the way he blushed when Aventurine blew a kiss to the camera.
“No one like me could ever find love like that in real life,” Aventurine had said, laughing as if he hadn’t just broken Veritas’ heart.
A notification interrupted Veritas’ viewing experience, and he realized with horror that it was a message from Aventurine himself.
Sorry for leaving without a goodbye - see you soon :)
Veritas couldn’t help but smile at the message. Truthfully, he hadn’t blamed Aventurine for leaving in such a hurry. The man had seemed pushy. That goddamned man who Aventurine had clearly hated.
He thought briefly about his response before sending one.
It's alright gambler. Get some rest.
He put his phone down, deciding that he’d had enough of Aventurine for one night. His chest ached as if his heart was collapsing. It was fascinating how the line between mental and physical pain so often blurred.
He would do anything for Aventurine, he realized before falling asleep. His hopeless devotion would be his downfall.
.
Aventurine woke up, not to his alarm, but to the feeling of paws kneading at his chest. Sunlight was already streaming into his apartment. He’d overslept terribly, he was certain.
The next few minutes were a blur of regret, yet somehow, Aventurine had ended up at his bathroom mirror. The tile was cold against his bare feet. He looked at himself in the mirror, disgusted with what he saw. His hair was a disaster and his face was gaunt from years of undereating. His undereyes were so dark they were nearly purple, and he was so pale that veins were visible across his cheeks. His collarbones were prominent, and his pajamas barely clung to him - funny, they’d fit perfectly only a few months ago. Had he lost weight?
His body was thin and scarred, though he had some visible muscle around his abs and arms. He did his best to stay physically attractive for the times he took on modeling gigs. Color could be added to his cheeks, and his scars could be photoshopped away. His fans and hookups loved his body, that was for certain, and he lapped up the praise like a man dying of thirst every time. It disgusted him how desperate he was for compliments, desperate enough to starve himself to meet the expectations of his fanbase and the men who he brought home.
He had nothing to do until the gala that afternoon, so he cycled his laundry and curled back up on the sofa, ignoring the gnawing hunger in his gut. He would eat at the gala. The IPC events he attended always had finger sandwiches and petit-fours, which Aventurine enjoyed. It wasn’t like he had anything in his fridge, anyway. He was horrible when it came to remembering to shop for himself, not to mention that he was a terribly picky eater. Shopping overwhelmed him, and even if he were to send someone to do it for him, he wouldn’t know what to tell them to buy.
He checked his phone, remembering with shame how he’d fallen asleep. No new messages from Ratio. That was to be expected. Ratio was busy, he was certain. He imagined Ratio in his kitchen with another man, cooking, laughing, and sharing domestic bliss. The thought made tears bead at the corners of Aventurine’s eyes.
Just as he began to berate himself, his phone buzzed. He nearly dropped it trying to swipe open the notification, his heart buzzing with glee. Was it Ratio?
Did you have a good evening?
Aventurine laughed at the awkwardness of the message. He knew Ratio had good intentions, but it was funny nonetheless to see him message so formally about a one night stand. In his reply, he carefully left out the more morbid details of the evening - how the man had tried to force himself on Aventurine and the chainsmoking that had followed. Surely the doctor would lecture him about that.
It was alright. He wasn’t anything special haha. How about you?
Why had he asked that? Aventurine was terrified of the answer he would receive, all of the elation he had previously felt turning into fear. What if it confirmed his suspicions? What if Ratio had in fact seen someone else?
I stayed and listened to the band. Not bad.
Oh, that’s nice! I hope you got enough sleep.
Not nearly enough. Have a good time at your gala.
Have a good day doc!
Aventurine set down his phone and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Ratio had been out late listening to music, thank Aeons, not with someone else.
As the rest of the morning passed, Aventurine decided to work in bed, unable to keep his hands off of his computer for even a day. He would be drowning in emails if he took the day off, so what choice did he have, really?
As he filtered through his emails, one stood out to him. It was from Jade, who regularly emailed him complex progress reports and files to sort through, but this email was different - almost ominous in how short it was.
The subject line read: Penacony.
Visit me this week, order from Diamond. Planet of Festivities.
.
“Aventurine, are you listening to me?”
Aventurine was doing anything but listening. He was staring at the carpet flooring as if it were fascinating. He’d lost track of where he was, only able to focus on one thing at a time. His mind felt slow and sluggish, similar to a viscous substance trying to flow out of a jar - perhaps like honey.
The doctor’s voice swam around Aventurine as if he were underwater. He could hear the cadence but it was muffled, almost as if he couldn’t understand the language. Dark spots crept into the corners of his vision, as they so often did ever since his time with the Nihility. He felt as if he were back in that endless pool of shallow water, tempting him to shove his face under and drown. Had it not been for the doctor’s note, he would have tried.
He could barely feel his body. His limbs weren’t exactly numb - that would require some sort of sensation. No, Aventurine felt nothing at all, almost as if he were floating from place to place. The texture of the chair he sat on felt diluted, somehow. Even his clothes felt textureless against his skin. Food had no taste, nor did his morning coffee which he’d considered somewhat of a ritual before Penacony. Even something as simple as that no longer held meaning.
It had been one month since he’d awoken from the Nihility, and his chaos doctor had promised him that his sensation would return eventually. “It will take time,” he’d said, “to return, but it will.”
Aventurine was unsure if he believed him. His time in the Nihility had felt like months, and every day since he’d awoke felt like agony.
“Yes, I’m listening.” He looked up and gave the doctor a smile, hoping it was convincing. From the way he frowned, Aventurine knew he had failed.
His mask had shattered the moment Acheron had slashed through his body - he bore the scar from her blade, red and massive, cutting across his entire torso. Let the editors try to photoshop that one away.
He was no longer able to smile and joke at work, which he’d only recently been allowed back to. His subordinates all saw through the tattered remains of his mask and they looked at him with concern, or worse, pity. He had declined all interview requests ever since Penacony, citing his need for bedrest as the reason. In reality, he doubted his ability to be professional on set. The last thing he needed was for the entire cosmos to see him for what he was - an empty, hollow, shell of a person who no longer felt anything at all.
Sadness was too weak of a word, as was depression. These words did little to convey the fact that Aventurine now felt nothing at all. Where his heart used to ache when he was sad, he now felt a hollow that he feared would never be replaced. In situations where he would have cried before Penacony, he now stared blankly, unable to see the world around him for what it was, instead seeing the endless expanse of IX.
As the doctor continued to speak to him, he began to hear Ratio, so he turned around, convinced he was there, but he saw only the wall behind him.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m alright, I just-”
Aventurine’s words died in his throat as he looked back towards his chaos doctor. Instead of the kind yet dry elderly man he’d come to know, he now saw Ratio, sitting across from him with a chastising expression.
“You’re having an episode again, Aventurine. Tell him.”
Aventurine shook his head frantically, heart rate increasing every second.
“Tell him.”
Aventurine looked around to find that he was no longer in the doctor’s office but instead in the endless ocean of the Nihility. Ratio stood across from him, arms crossed in disappointment.
“Why do you insist upon lying to your doctor?”
“You aren’t real.” Aventurine tried the tactic of asserting reality that his chaos doctor had taught him, but it failed to make the Nihility melt away.
“You aren’t real.”
Aventurine felt tears well in his eyes, and he tried to blink them away. When his vision refocused, he was back in the doctor’s office, standing up. How or why he’d stood up, he couldn’t remember.
“You had an episode again. Sit.”
Aventurine sighed and sat back down, knowing he could do little to lie to his doctor. He was going to be in the doctor’s office all day.
.
“Have you eaten dinner?” Ratio’s voice echoed through the phone speaker.
“Yes, doc. I have.”
Aventurine had not, in fact, eaten anything that day. He had nothing in the fridge and the idea of interacting with a delivery worker exhausted him. He’d laid in bed all day, scrolling on his phone and answering emails instead of taking the bedrest his doctor had ordered for him. He had shows to watch and art projects to work on - he wanted to make a new pair of earrings - but none of it seemed appealing any longer. In fact, nothing much seemed possible except sleeping during the day and spending the night in misery.
“Have you showered?”
Aventurine was becoming angry. Why was Ratio treating him like a baby? He could handle himself. He didn’t need to be monitored like this. Ratio always micromanaged him, and it drove him insane.
“No, admittedly, I haven’t, but I will.” His tone was clipped and aggravated.
“Good. Text me when you head to bed.”
“I will, Ratio, trust me.”
He ended the phone call and slumped back into bed, melting into his pillows. He needed to change his sheets, but even that seemed tiring. He would give it thirty minutes and text Ratio that he was sleeping, even though he knew full and well he would be awake staring at the ceiling for hours.
.
Ever since Penacony, Aventurine’s professional persona had crumbled. He’d abandoned his work for the most part, choosing instead to drink his days away despite the fact that alcohol was now tasteless to him. At night, he went to Pier Point’s flashiest clubs and bought pills from strangers, hoping that they would make him feel something, anything at all, not caring if they were laced with anything.
He continued to sleep with strangers. He knew they weren’t Ratio, but they were as close as he would ever get. The real Ratio thought he was a mess who couldn’t be saved, and he was right.
One night, in a dark hotel room, Aventurine found himself pinned against the bed by a stranger whose face swam and melted before him. He’d gained terrible facial blindness ever since Penacony and struggled to recognize even the people he was sleeping with. He whimpered weakly as the stranger - hardly a stranger, just a body - fucked him so hard it hurt yet showed no signs of stopping.
After the fact, when he was laying in bed with this stranger, he looked over and swore he saw Ratio. Too gone for words and motivated by the giddy delirium in his heart, Aventurine leaned in and attempted to kiss the man he believed to be the doctor.
“No, no. We agreed not to do that.”
The man shoved him away, breaking the illusion, and Aventurine nodded, accepting whatever the stranger said as fact as tears began to silently stream down his face. He didn’t remember making such an agreement, but he must have at some point if the man said so.
He was left alone in the room after that, sobbing into his pillow so hard that he nearly asphyxiated. He wished that he’d had the courage to choke.
He had texts from Ratio that he was ignoring. It wasn’t like they mattered. Nothing mattered. Ratio would stop texting eventually, when he realized that Aventurine was beyond saving.
As much as he denied it, he knew that Ratio cared for him, but it wasn’t enough. He was rotten and greedy down to his core and was unsatisfied with what Ratio gave him. It wasn’t what he wanted - to be loved incorrectly was almost worse than to not be loved at all.
It made Aventurine angry beyond belief - at least that was a sensation. Why did Ratio waste so much time on him if he didn’t love him? It made him even angrier that he wanted Ratio to care for him at all.
The truth was that he wanted Ratio just as badly as he had before Penacony, and the fact that the doctor had waited at his bedside for three days and nights during his coma only made Aventurine ache with self-loathing. Ratio had wasted so much time on him over the past year that it was sickening. Why? Why waste time on such a lost cause? Why try to cure a man who had been sick from the moment he was born?
One night, Aventurine found himself in a club that he hated - green strobe lights danced across his blurred vision and the music sounded as if he were underwater. He felt someone’s hand on his thigh and heard laughter. He had no idea who he was sitting with, but they seemed happy to be sitting with him, so he smiled.
“Here, you want some?” One of the strangers offered him a pill. “You look sad.”
“I’m not sad.” He took the pill anyway, and when he bit down, he felt the world spin around him, unsure which way was up and which way was down. The sensation of floating was better than feeling numb, so he laughed. Everything was funny all of a sudden.
He took a sip from his drink - how many had he had? - and felt the dizziness grow worse. Was his drink spiked? He couldn’t understand the words that were being spoken around him, though he was vaguely aware that the people he was with were talking about him. He heard his name and little else.
What did it matter if the drink was spiked? It wasn’t like anyone would care if something happened to him. He took another sip, suddenly feeling rage inside of him. No one would care if he vanished. No one would care if he died. Certainly not Ratio.
Perhaps it was best if he died.
Aventurine realized with horror that he felt paralyzed. He couldn’t move his body no matter how strongly he willed it to move. He was slumped against a couch in a bar he couldn’t remember the name of, and he felt hands on his body. Someone turned his head towards themselves and kissed him roughly. He felt nauseous and wanted to scramble away but was frozen in place by the drugs and by fear. Another hand was on his back, sliding under his shirt.
Breaking out of his daze, much to the disappointment of those who were touching him, he grabbed his phone and texted the only person he could think of at the moment.
Attini Peacock.
This was the secret code they’d developed in their first week of working together - Aventurine would text Attini Peacock and Ratio would text Little Owl if they needed urgent help.
He realized with horror that he had taken too much. His chest ached and his breathing was labored. His head spun and he could barely keep himself upright. He settled for leaning on the person next to him, who laughed and shoved his head into their lap.
He was crossfaded and alone, and he was going to die.