ArHi OS: In the Hole!

"I'm in a hole, come get me."

Khushi looked up, squinting against the rich golden of the late afternoon sun, to see Arnav silhouetted above her.

"Hello." she waved, somewhat feebly, the limpness of her wrist seeming to be in direct correlation to the pounding of her heart.

"You texted me 'I'm in a hole, come get me'." He repeated, his voice rising in disbelief and making her wriggle restlessly against the loose dirt at her back. "And you're actually in a hole."

She looked round at the low pit she'd fallen into, and then back up at him, nodding.

"Yeah, well..." she shrugged. "That's what I said."

"I thought you meant some sort of deep, metaphorical hole, like you were upset or something." He crouched down, tipping his truckers hat back and forth in agitation while she plucked awkwardly at the loose weeds that had accompanied her down when she fell.

"Oh, right, no. Just a fairly shallow, literal hole," she explained. "Sorry for the confusion."

"Seriously?" He blew an exaggerated sigh through his lips. "I drove for over an hour thinking you were in some kind of trouble."

"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was just, you know," she grabbed a handful each of dirt and let it sift through her fingers, "sitting in some kind of ditch thing?"

He considered this.

"No, I'd still have come," he said eventually and she buried her head down against her knees rather than let him see the stupid, goofy smile that took over her face.

"So," She heard his feet crunch against the grit at the lip of the hole and looked up to see that he'd leant forward and was holding a hand out to her, "coming out?"

Khushi considered the hand he'd extended; rough, tanned, strong, incredibly familiar. It was the hand that had been pressed, lightly, fleetingly against her cheek before he'd disappeared on her.

She couldn't touch that hand, even for the brief moment it would take him to haul her out of the hole, without doing something embarrassing so she suggested instead,

"Coming in?"

He eyed her current habitat."Yeah, alright," Arnav said after a moment, twisting sideways and then landing in the depression of earth beside her.

"Budge up, then." He gave her a light shove to make her shuffle over a bit so he had room.

And room he needed, she realised as he settled himself down beside her. It had only been a fortnight since she'd last seen him, but she didn't remember him being so...all encompassing.

"You're sitting in a hole!"He stated.

Khushi dug her heels into the soil, feeling her shoes snag against the thin roots in the ground, before pointing out, "So are you."

He made a rude noise and silence fell into their hole, then, not unlike how she had only a little over an hour ago when inattention and longing for her absent friend had sent her sprawling.

"It got weird, didn't it?" She broke the silence as the last burnt rays of the sun sent dark shadows yawning across the lawn around them.

"It did," he agreed.

She hung her head, heavy with a sadness of her own making. "I'm sorry."

He made a brief, dismissive noise with his tongue. "Not your fault."

Very kind of him to say so, but thoroughly inaccurate.

"Yes it was!" Khushi exclaimed, unimpressed with his attempt to give her such an easy out. "I was the one who kissed you."

"Yeah." He suddenly smiled, revealing that dear old crooked incisor. "Guess it is your fault, then."

"Okay, but you were the one who ran away." He had been avoiding her for two weeks, after all.

"I didn't run away," he objected.

"Sure, fine," She relented. "Why did you do such a manly sprint in the opposite direction to me, then?"

He shifted uneasily and picked up a pebble, tossing it back and forth between his hands.

"Because," he eventually managed to bring himself to grunt, "I knew it was going to get weird."

"Weirder than this?"

Khushi's voice was incredulous and they both took a moment to survey their current situation.

Yeah. They were sitting in a hole.

"Point taken."

"So didn't you want me to...? As in, didn't you like-?"

He laughed his way through a veritable rainbow of curses then, only stopping to tug a lock of my hair and ask,

"When did you get so thick?"

"So two weeks off from each other and you ignored me?" Her face flamed at his humour. "That doesn't seem fair."

"Hey, I know I dropped off the edge of the earth and I'm sorry about that. It's just I've been busy, work's been-"

"Weak," she interrupted him with a groan. "In two weeks you haven't found the time to check in? A quick 'hey, I'm still alive, your lip balm tastes awesome by the way' would've got me through alright."

"I didn't know what to say, but you could have come to me." he rebutted.

Okay, he had a point. She'd probably been avoiding him just as much as he had been with her.

"I didn't know what to say," She admitted, copying his excuse.

"I don't want it to be weird and awkward."

Khushi floundered for a moment, trying to find something noteworthy to say in response, but ending up just declaring, "Me either."

"I left a job early and drove in the opposite direction to home in peak hour just to sit in a hole with you," Arnav said, all in a rush then, staring fixedly out across the yard.

She felt herself curl up. "Sorry," she muttered making him look down at her in surprise.

"No" he said quickly, pun presumably unintended. "I meant that it's a good deal. I'd do it every day of my life if you asked me to. And that's, you know, that's something'"

It was. No denying that.

"So it's just the'ah'the kissing that you have a problem with?" she asked hesitantly.

"No, that's'yeah'that's not a problem."

"So what is?"

"I like sitting in a hole with you," he said gruffly. "And what if'you know'us wanting to kiss fills in the hole with awkwardness?"

"Oh God, I'm so in love with you."

The words were out before she could stop them, but, really, how could she not say them? He'd clumsily metaphor-ed her into admitting something she'd been trying to keep hidden for almost a year'

"So there you go!" She said curtly as he gaped at her. "The hole is already filled with weird. Your move."

"Oh." Arnav seemed to mull this over, the muscles in his neck leaping as thinking it through appeared to take an actual physical toll. "In that case'"

And then his hand was cupping her chin and he was tilting her face up to press his lips to hers; the touch feather-light, the reaction coursing through her body more like a sledgehammer.

She closed my eyes and leant into him'okay, more like fell, and he reached for her in return, lifting her up onto his lap with a surety that trumped any of his previous hesitation.

Their kiss deepened and she curled into him; tasting him, touching him, dragging him to her and binding them together until she was dizzy with the power of it all.

Or that may have been lack of oxygen.

They pulled back, gasping, and she realised that the sun had well and truly gone down and that they were now two people sitting in a hole'in the dark.

There was nowhere else she would rather have been.

"Hey," he muttered as she tucked her head down against his chest, drawing in deep gulps of air as she recovered from the kiss of a lifetime. "I'm still alive. Your lip balm tastes awesome, by the way."

***

Surprised? I know! This is a payback treat OS for being extremely late and you all waited patiently.

Love you all!

Bye

PS- Keep expecting such surprises.