He didn’t knock. He never did when he was like this.

The door to your office creaked open quietly, and in stepped Dr. Ratio, expression tight, shoulders tense, eyes sharp yet weary. You looked up from your desk just in time to see him close the door behind him with more care than usual. Not anger, exhaustion.

He walked straight to you without a word. You didn’t need one. You barely had time to turn your chair before he wrapped his arms around you from behind, pressing his forehead gently against your shoulder and breathing in your scent like it grounded him, because it did.

Ratio wasn’t one to show weakness easily, but the noise of his students, the ever-growing pile of research, the endless meetings with dull minds too slow to keep up, all of it could crash down on him like a wave. And when it did, it always led him here. To you.

You had become his quiet place, the only part of the Intelligentsia Guild not demanding a theory, an answer, a miracle.

You didn’t speak. You simply brought your hand up to pat his head gently. He leaned into the touch like an owl accepting the comfort of a familiar perch, a soft sigh escaping him as his shoulders slowly relaxed.

You still didn’t know exactly when this bond between you formed. Somewhere between early morning lectures and late-night debates, he had stopped seeing you as just a colleague. And you had stopped needing a reason to be there for him.

Let the world call him difficult, unapproachable, intense. You knew better. You knew the heart that beat beneath the logic and brilliance. And for now, that heart just needed rest.