[Shiv-Gauri] The Oldest Story... - 3 (END -p. 134) - Page 96

Chapter 114: Finale – Part 3

The story did not end at the questionably high-end establishment that valued privacy and discretion above all others. In fact, for the two lead couples of this long and rambling narrative, something less ostentatious and more cozy was preferred. And thus we find them in their respective abodes later that night…

First, onto Shiv and Gauri… the couple that started it all…

Shiv was convinced that the day of the witch's brew has returned to him – only this time, the victim was he, drunk and carried off to a shore of love and lust from watching his wife's barely concealed long legs, undulating hips and waist, the breasts that had become a somewhat dubious source of pride for her (he thought this was curious, given how studious and nerdy she really was… and teased her for it, which only lasted until she disrobed and the amusement vanished directly from his face as other, much stronger, sentiments took over)…

"What is taking so long?" He called to her from outside the bathroom when he thought that she had been allowed sufficient time to do whatever it was that she was doing in there.

"You better not be changing out of that outfit, Gauri. I mean to have my wicked way with a houri tonight."

She smiled to herself inside the bathroom, but did not answer him.

"Gauri! Come on baby! Don't torture me like this. Remember how kind I was to you when you were jumping out of your skin that night that you came in here with some scientific miracle running through your veins? By the way, have you told Akira that he owes us a part of his royalties?"

She smiled again now, his voice was slurring a bit from how much he had had to drink…

"How were you kind to me?" she asked him from still inside the bathroom.

"Eh?" she heard him come closer to the door. "Hooow?" he asked now, like he had never heard that word before.

She did not answer and chose to wait him out.

"What do you mean how? I was The Bestest husband in the whole world. I swear Gauri, you will never find someone better than me, I promise…" his voice trailed off and she could imagine him clutching his throat with three fingers in an imitation of this promise.

"Why? Is there no one better than you in character? In temperament? In manliness? In bed?"

"Of course there are!" She heard him beat his hand on the door for emphasis. "Well, except for maybe the last one…." She smiled to herself, yet again, as he continued, "But who cares about those things? Do you? I know you say you do, but really, if that was the case, why would you fall in love with me? You could choose any of the men that you saw earlier tonight at the bachelor party and they would all be better than me." He paused then and she leaned closer to the door to hear him.

"No baby, I am the bestest because I love you just the way you are. With your stubbornness and your caustic wit and your way of skinning a man alive with your sarcasm, with your microbe-obsessed brain and your long legs and your love for slapping me silly. Do you know how many times I have thought about how you cried that day when you found out that you were pregnant with my baby? I know I purposely misunderstood that as your distress, but I must have known that you were happy… how could I not? I always know when you are upset sweetheart. Always… even when you don't think I do… besides, most of the time you are upset, it's because of me…" she could almost see him smiling now as he paused. She slid down to the floor as she listened to him skipping from one thing to the other in a rambling fashion.

She rather thought that the EPTs would start again… with a vengeance…

"Don't you think I am the bestest husband?" She heard him ask suddenly, as if called back to reality.

"Stop saying bestest. That's not even a word!" she whispered back with intensity, not trusting herself to say anything else.

"Why?" he asked in a confused voice. "You know, I don't think you love me like I love you."

She smiled through the tears that had already started.

"Will you please open the door, Gauri? This paneling that I am looking at has nothing to recommend it."

She wiped her tears quickly and said, "It's open."

The door opened almost immediately and she stood up from her perch on the floor.

"You changed." He remarked, looking her up and down, but rather than being disappointed, she saw his eyes become more alert, driving off the stupor of the alcohol with force even if just for a moment, as he focused in on what she was wearing.

"It still fits you?" He asked in wonder. It was the same blue lehenga that she had worn that night ten years ago when he had unknowingly touched her in passion for the first time.

She shook her head looking down. "Mom had to do quite a bit of alteration around here…" she gestured vaguely over her breasts, which drew his gaze there. She had on a dupatta over it, but it didn't quite match.

"This is not the right dupatta." He said, pulling it off.

Before she could rescue her replacement dupatta, he had thrown it across the floor.

"I lost mine that night." She reminded him.

"Ah… yes, yes…the blue dupatta… hmm… let's see if we can find it… nothing is lost forever, you know."

He opened the door again and went back into their room and to their closet. She followed him, perplexed. She knew he was drunk, but she hadn't realized that he had lost his senses entirely.

"Promise you won't think I am totally strange and creepy, okay?" He turned around to ask her before opening the closet door.

When she looked at him in confusion, he said again, "Promise! Cross your heart and hope to die." He did a passable imitation of her own routine.

She obeyed with a smile, although to say that this was out of character for him would have been an understatement.

He opened the closet door and reached to the back of it, moving aside a few boxes until he found a small duffel bag.

He pulled it out and tried to open the zipper, but when it didn't open immediately, he looked at her in frustration and sat on the floor with it.

She sat down next to him and took the bag from him to open it herself.

"Oh come on, Gauri! That's private. You can't look inside. I will show you what I was going to show you." He reached for the bag, but she turned around to give him her back as she looked inside. Her heart started to skip its beats like it always did when he unwittingly blew her mind and her heart to pieces.

The bag held a few pieces of clothing and when she started pulling them out, she realized that they were mostly hers. The first one was the blouse that he had torn that night that Shashank had come back after his long disappearance… the same night that he had told her that he would not give her a divorce and then systematically refuted any reason for an annulment.

She looked back at him and he gave her a playful half-smile.

She turned back to the bag and found beneath the blouse her tank top that he had torn at the beginning of that long night when he had first possessed her body. She thought of the shirt that she had torn off of him that night and how it was folded up in her dresser. Many a time when he had stayed away from her bed, she had worn it to sleep... at times against her better judgment… even when he had hurt her the worst…

He looked over her shoulder impatiently now just as she pulled out the long blue dupatta from ten years ago.

The tears came so suddenly that she couldn't stop them running a track down her face. She kept her face averted so he wouldn't see and heard him say, "I knew it would come in handy some day." She wiped her eyes quickly and looked back at him to kiss his unsuspecting cheek. He winked and said, "I told you I am the bestest."

That earned him a quick kiss on the lips before she looked back inside the bag. There was one more piece of cloth left in there and just as she reached for it, he pulled the bag out of her grip. But she had managed to grab whatever it was and it came out of the bag as he pulled the bag to him. It unfolded in her hands and she saw that it was a long white kurta like the ones that men wore. At first she looked at it in confusion even as he tried to grab it from her. And then she saw it, there was a large part of the kurta that was more stiff than the rest, like something had dried into it… and there, right in the middle of it was a little dot of red, which she remembered as clearly as if it had all happened yesterday.

When she had thought that she could cry her body's weight in tears and her eyes still wouldn't dry and when she had wanted to fly off into the clouds after her suddenly departed mother, he had stood there in that pantry, stock still, an awkward boy-man not knowing what to do with such a distressed female, but remaining there nevertheless in that perfect stillness no matter how much she racked him with her tears. She had bit her lips in the force of her sobbing and a tiny blot of the fresh blood had absorbed into the kurta… starkly visible against its whiteness. She didn't know whether he had noticed, but she hadn't been able to bear to pull away from him, to give up how he had grounded her with his solid warmth. She had cried more, his kurta absorbing it all, while that tiny red had remained as it was… and it was still there after all these years..

She turned around to face him now.

"Gauri, that's just one of my kurtas. Give it here." He said quickly, reaching for it again.

"Why is it here?" she asked quietly.

"Oh, it must have just gotten mixed up with the other stuff." He gestured uneasily with his hands.

"Oh? It looks really old. Why don't I have it washed?" She asked as she turned to walk to their laundry hamper.

"NO!" he yelled out, coming after her to rip the kurta out of her hands.

She watched him stuff the kurta back into the duffel back along with her blouse and her tank-top and throw the bag back in the back of the closet.

And then it was as if it had not happened at all as he turned to her with a smile.

"We found your blue dupatta. Now let me see if I can recreate that night knowing that it is indeed you that I am holding in my arms..."

He was eager in his ardent attentions as he backed her against the wall.

She let it go… let him evade the issue entirely as he was doing… as she knew that the matter of the unwashed, long-saved white kurta that held the memory of the greatest sadness of her life was something private and vulnerable for him. Something that he wished to neither discuss nor take credit for…

As he enthusiastically recreated their night from ten years ago, touching her everywhere that he could reach, kissing her everywhere that he hadn't been able to that night, she had to fight to hold back her tears…

…that he had treated her grief with so much care….

She realized then that her husband could break her heart with not just hurt, but love as well…

And when he finally carried her to bed that night and made sweet love to her, she did give into her tears, holding him so tightly that she thought she would crush him…

She knew that he knew why she cried, and so she told him through her tears, "everytime I think that I love you more than you could ever love me, you surprise me."

He kissed her forehead, which she found all the more unbearably tender because it was he who did it.

"You know I live to prove you wrong." He whispered afterwards, while he moved down to kiss her belly.

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It can't get any better!

Shiv should add the "nightgown" to his collection that Gauri wore when they first both confessed their love ;) And speaking of love...from my point of view [as a reader =) ], I think Shiv loves her more! :D

Awwww..... That was so sweet! I just adore Shiv! I knew that he had all her stuff in his closet. But I didnt know he actually kept it safe in a seperate bag filled with it. I'm so happy that Gauri found it. Drunk Shiv is so cute. I agree with him, He is the "Bestest".

Awesome update! I'll miss SG so much when you are done with this FF. You've made them one of my favorite couples of all time.

Thanks for updating and writing this beautiful ff.

Beautiful update
D initial lines had dampened my spirits but as d update progressed I realised that a cozy and cute setting is indeed better.

I always wanted Gauri to find out abt d white kurta and d blue dupatta was a bonus.

Shiv is so cute. He is d bestest husband. I also think that Shiv loves more.

P.S. Devi I hope this is not d end. I want a ST part also.

P.P.S. I would apologise for not commenting on Eden owing to my poor health and upcoming exams.

To be honest, I thought I didn't care for this story anymore. Every time I think something silly, you prove me wrong. And surprisingly, I don't take offense to that. I bow to thee dear lady!!!!

wow! can men get any sweeter? am really going to miss this FF..the story has managed to revive the old iqbal-crazy girl in me..that trait had somehow taken a backseat due to the advent of a certain khurana..bt nw am back to where i was some 5 years ago..

a update like this surely makes my day. i felt so emotional reading it. love you for giving such a chracter like shiv