repent // sahir-centric os

Set right after the hospital visit.

It's all about--perspective.

A basic rule of sketching is this: you don't see your design as your design. You see it as a dress, finished and on the racks, see it as something someone might buy. Assess it, review it. Think,will this cut be flattering? Is this design going to be too much, or too little? Is this unique? Or is it too different, too outlandish?Your design is not a drawing, and not something beautiful to be looked at from afar. It's something someone is going to wear, something they're going to think about a thousand times.

Perspective is something Sahir has never needed to worry about. To notice things, to pay attention, that's his job. To know the smallest of changes atSaiyaara; that's what he's good at. He's never thought this, this attentionto detail, would be his ultimate downfall.

More importantly, he hadn't thought it would be...her. But then, Sahir had never paid attention to her.

And why should he? Fine, she'sAmmi's friend's daughter, an intern atSaiyaara. ButAmmihas many friends (granted she'd never before taken in the daughter of any of her friends like this. What makes Nausheen Khan so special?What makes Arzoo so special?) (He already knows.) and Saiyaara has dozens of interns. This one should have been nothing more than a guest, an employee. He had no reason to take notice of a small-town girl who pretended to vomit so she could have the window seat on a plane, who got herself trapped into glass cases with priceless dresses hundreds of years old, who threw mobile phones at his head and called herself a design-baaz. (Well"not like this.) And he hadn't. She threw her phone at his head and spent a night in jail with Zaki and accused Anam of stealing her design and wrote him a resignation letter full of insults;he didn't care. She may be big-headed for such a small, insignificant girl with no idea about the world;it didn't matter. She didn't matter.

Until suddenly " she did. She does. And suddenly it's as though he can't stop noticing her.

It was the forest. Everything about that night.Her fault. (But then, what isn't? Recently everything seems to boiling down to that. Her, or her fault.) The forest is a place where everything seems closer; the trees press in on you, the leaves seem to be almost brushing you even from afar, and everything feels warped. Their flight from those goons, their... closeness, her hand pulling his closer in her sleep.

(It's become all he can think about. He dreamed of it, of her pressed against him like that, of her eyes; they'd been wide in fear that night, but in his dreams it wasn't fear that he saw in them -- of her mouth, and his hand on it, and how it would feel to have his own on it. Of holding her again, but not in a forest, not while they were hiding. Of her, asleep beside him, and allowing himself to put his hand on her waist. He hasn't dreamed of anything like this in years.)

Her hands digging into his shoulders were hooks, pulling him in; when she pulled him to her, keeping him in place, his own personal demon, beckoning. And then -- after, when it was just them. She was asleep, thank God, but he'd been overcome. Her holding his hand that way, as though she wanted -- as though she could ever possibly want --

What he shouldn't.

His hand hurts where the splinters from that axe had pierced skin; his back is sore from his self-inflicted lashes (lashes he needed, lashes he deservedfor waking up half hard and Arzoo on his mind) and the cool water of his pool seems to burn him everywhere.

But even now, all he can feel is her, sobbing into his shoulder, and his arms around her as though they were made to be there.