For someone who had spent more than half his lifetime in college, Veritas’s dorm was less homely and more severe, the walls full of bookshelves and whiteboards– which were also crammed top to bottom with equations. He remembered when you had visited the first time. You’d asked if all his progress on a quantum physics problem was for homework and all he had done was shake his head, earning a mystified look from you.

He didn’t want to admit that your discouragement put him off from inviting you over for a long time (longer than he’d like), your seemingly blatant refusal of his interests a clear sign that he wasn’t welcome in your space. Your literary cocoon. Your dorm, piled high with manuscripts upon manuscripts of poetry. Perhaps he’d known that he would never be welcome to you the moment you had shown him a verse of something you’d written and asked him his thoughts.

Veritas, as smart as he was, had difficulty understanding subtlety. That was his truth. When you gave him your poem he had taken a longer time to respond, your flowery verse twining around the subtext and obscuring the emotion he was supposed to feel from his dulled eyes.

But today, you approached him with stacks of papers in your hand. Told him that it was homework for physics. A topic you couldn’t quite comprehend. And his eyes lit up almost immediately; it wasn’t every day the famed poet of Veritas Prime approached the leading scholar in the STEM field to ask for advice.

So now you were seated at his expansive desk, looking, to his utter perplexity, at his hands instead of the material he was teaching you. Because he didn’t have any other chairs he was forced to stand with the back of your chair digging into his chest, his arms wrapped loosely around your shoulders. Overall, it was a rather awkward position he’d disliked until you had tipped up your head to ask him a question and the point of his chin had rested gently on your head.

After that his attention wavered frequently in irregular intervals– first when your hand brushed his, then again when your heartbeat sped up in a way that had him concerned for a while. Now you were staring off to the side at his forearms and he was busy watching the way you fidgeted, the light glinting off the metal pocket clip of the mechanical pencil you had brought. Physics was only secondary to the bubble you had created around him, warm and alight with an emotion he had twice the difficulty even trying to fathom.

“You are not working,” he chastised after a minute of soft lighting and softer comfort, his hand moving to tap at your forehead. “Focus, please.”

Veritas was a hypocrite, a filthy liar, even. How could one person draw him in so intimately in a moment where almost no words were exchanged? How could one person pull the vertex of his attention so utterly that he was focusing on the feel of your soft skin under his finger? He couldn’t bear it, the thought that he could be so swept in something without even knowing what that was or could blossom into.

Then you spoke– he couldn’t discern what you said over the buzzing in his ears. And oh, when you moved your head again, pressing yourself closer to him, he finally broke. An almost imperceptible blush dusted across his cheeks before he composed himself, his demeanor crumbling in the face of your fascination.

“Perhaps… we should both take a break. Clearly physics is not suited for someone who pursues literacy as passionately as you do.”