With the workload that Valdis generates, dropping everything to keep himself closer to home is not as easy as just dropping everything, and there's still work he can do. Can and must, for the sake of the people who rely on him - so his visits to the nexus lately have been primarily work-related and necessarily brief.

He doesn't come across Bruce until the tail end of one of these, leaving a meeting that he'd brought forward a day, and he very nearly keeps on walking. Not because he doesn't notice him - he does - but because a long day doesn't necessarily need to get any longer. Curiosity, though, will always get its cat (and he wonders what was being looked for, in the first place).

"Hello, again."