Very short OneShot, written in the wee hours of the morning because I needed a distraction before I lose my mind. Should warn you guys now...this OneShot probably lacks a plot, and a lot of other things. I haven't read over it and I hope you can forgive any leaps of logic or grammatical errors. Kind of AU. Can be interpreted at will :)
ArHi OneShot |In Between the Lines|
Khushi paced restlessly, her limbs letting her know through leaden, stiff aches at the joints that they needed a break. But she was far too jumpy to sit down, an endeavour she had tried and failed miserably at several times in the past two hours.
She glanced at the cell-phone gripped in her hand, and even though she knew there was still another half-hour to go, her stomach did a nervous flip in part-anticipation, part-longing.
This routine was beginning to tire her down.
Letting out a small, lamenting groan, Khushi plodded heavily to the bed, and as had become an unconscious habit over the past six days, she dropped herself down on his side, hauling her legs up and leaning back into his pillow.
The pillow she had taken to sleeping on ever since that first night she had had to spend on her own.
And somehow, the room that had grown to be theirs from just his, with its steely-blue morphing in her eyes to be as warm and welcoming as a cloudless summer sky, every fixture and facet as familiar as a friendly smile, had never seemed so big.
So empty.
She had not been able to sleep that night. A knot of unease had clutched and clawed at her heart, and she had felt so cold and so lonely as she tossed and turned about in the massive bed, sprawled and spread-eagled over the mattress in an attempt to end her own misery and drift off. And though she never did succeed in falling asleep, it was only when she plucked up her courage, possible only because no one was watching, and rolled over to his side, soaking in the residues of his scent and his presence, that she managed to tame her frazzled nerves.
And it had been like this ever since.
There was only one more day left until he came back from his out-of-town business trip, but she missed him just as terribly as she had from the moment he had stepped out through the front-doors a week ago.
The shrill ringing of her phone shattered the tenuous silence of the room and Khushi started so violently the phone flew out of her grasp and landed on the mattress with a thump.
Clawing it up, heart pounding against her eardrums, Khushi snatched it up to her ear without bothering to check the caller ID.
"Khushi."
All the tension, the pent-up angst, bled out of her at the sound of her name in his voice. The timbre was low, barely even there, existing like a calming touch that anchored her fluttering nerves back to safe ground, and as it had for these last few days, Khushi found peace for the first time in her whole day.
"Arnavji!" she piped up, the brightness in her voice belying that unsettling sense of something missing, something hollow, that she had been dwelling in as all the happiness of the moment infused itself into her tone, "How are you? How was your day? Did everything go well?"
"Yes, the meeting went well- we finalised the deal."
"That's great! Have you had dinner yet?"
"Yes, grabbed something with our clients during the meeting."
"Good...and your medicine?"
"Yes."
It always went like that- Khushi holding an impromptu interrogation session, he replying with as few words as possible. But she was used to his taciturn ways, used to him phrasing his responses using words as practically and strategically as he did almost everything in his life.
Sometimes, she envied him that.
Envied how he could be so level-headed and rational about these things whilst she would agonise for hours and days over something that was normal and natural.
Like this. Like his trip. Di, Nani, everyone in the family went about as though there was nothing out of the ordinary, but it was him- his unruffled, steady tenor in their nightly talks over the phone, that made Khushi even more conscious of her reactions and her feelings, and of how it diverged from everyone else's.
"Um, Di went for her doctor's appointment today...I went with her, and the doctor says everything is alright and the medicine is helping...and Nani taught me how to make that dish you liked having when you would visit her before..."
She was aware she was prattling, aware she was going off on a tangent of unrelated, superfluous detail that was probably at odds with her husband's own precise, direct line of thoughts- but she could not help it. In some childish way, it was as though the longer she spoke to him, the longer she could maintain that flimsy connection that linked them over the miles in between.
As though the more she told him about her day, the closer she could bring him to her.
It was childish, it was infantile- especially because, no matter what she garbled on and on about, it did not change the fact that she could not bring herself to give voice to all the sentiments she had kept packed tightly within her since he had left.
They made her feel as though she were acting difficult, acting like a sulky child over something everyone else took in their stride.
Made her feel inadequate.
"Amma also called today, to say that Bauji actually spoke a whole sentence without pausing! I was so excited! So was Jiji...oh, and Jiji and Jeeju went to the gynaecologist too yesterday, did I tell you? I did, didn't I? I couldn't have forgotten something that important..."
In truth, these words were mere covers; decoys. In truth, she did not want him to find out- to learn how she secretly inhaled the lingering fragrance left upon his clothes, to learn that she had actually used his shampoo instead of hers so some part of him at least would cling to her during the day, that she had taken to watering and pruning his plants and gorged on jalebis every single day in her efforts to stave off the gnawing, debilitating awareness of how much she missed him. How much she needed him. To try and fill the absence he had left behind with some measure of his presence.
She did not know what he would think of her if he ever found out.
Probably that she was a hopeless sentimentalist.
Probably that she was too juvenile and impractical.
Probably that she was silly and stupid.
Her inhibitions were like thorns wrapped round roses, and no matter how much she longed for the flowers she was far too afraid to reach out and touch them.
"They decided not to find out the gender of the baby...they want it to be a surprise...everyone was trying to think of baby names earlier today...I think I like Aryan' for a boy, and Anya' for a girl...what do you think?"
He did not speak up for a beat, and Khushi fretted feverishly over whether she had been blabbering too much.
And then-
"Khushi...next time I have a meeting out of town..."
There was another pause.
"You're coming with me."
Her breath left her in a rush, as though she had just received a blow to her stomach. Her mind ticked furiously to process what he had just said; but from the wholesome, resounding thuds in her rib-cage she thought her heart had already figured it out.
"Arnavji?"
"I think I...need you with me."
She heard the exhaustion coating over his words, and concern shone brightest through the plethora of other confusing, conflicting emotions duelling for prominence within her.
"Arnavji! You sound exhausted! How long have you been working? Don't tell me that meeting of yours dragged on for the whole day? Didn't you take breaks in between?"
A weary sigh followed, and Khushi found herself physically leaning forward with the phone pressed close to her ear, obeying the impulse to be near him- to touch, to soothe.
"I did but...I haven't been able to sleep these last few days."
Leave your thoughts please?
I reserve all rights over this work of fiction and request readers do not reproduce/copy/modify elsewhere and/or claim credit.
*EDIT* After re-reading this, I think I'm going to add another part from Arnav's POV- maybe as a sequel, maybe by making this a two-shot...not sure yet
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