ArHi OS l Things That Go Bump In The Night l A Collab with ArchanaMH17

The loud ring of a phone startled Arnav Singh Raizada awake. He looked around taking a moment to reorient himself to his surroundings. He was looking out the floor to ceiling windows of his suite at The Plaza in New York. The sun had set & the skyline twinkled with the lights from the tall buildings. He searched for the source of the sound & found his phone wedged in the corner of the couch he was seated on. His wife's voice came through, irritation & panic obvious in it.

"What took you so long to answer the call! I had decided to call Aman if you hadn't answered now. I called you thrice, Arnav. You can't begin to imagine the worst case scenarios that had started playing out in my head!" she said, getting more worked up with each word.

"Khushi- Ouch." he clutched his neck in pain. Damn. He had dozed off in an awkward position.

"What happened now?" she asked, sounding even more panicked than before.

"I had dozed off." Arnav grumbled, placing the designs file he had been holding, on the glass topped coffee table.

"Why the ouch?" she asked sounding bewildered.

"Had a god awful nightmare about Sheetal. And, my neck is hurting." he said, as he tried to massage the knots out of the muscles of his neck.

"You dreamed about Sheetal!" Khushi asked, disbelief & exasperation, evident in her voice.

"I said, nightmare." he sighed.

"What happened in the nightmare?" she asked, slightly mollified, sounding reluctantly curious.

"Something. Doesn't matter. But we are never arguing about anyone while on different continents. I can't shut you up & the dreams that follow are awful." he said, groaning as he stretched his stiff legs.

"What happened in the nightmare?" Khushi pressed on.

Arnav sighed. Khushi was nothing if not persistent. And, curious, too. She wouldn't let it go.

"I am walking the ramp at the New York Fashion Week. I look at a woman in the front row. She is stunning. Has the most gorgeous pair of eyes I have ever seen." he said & chuckled at the sharp intake of breath on the other side. She was getting worked up.

"The eyes are hazel." he says & she lets out a relieved, sheepish laugh that does things to him. Ah, business trips were hell!
"So, I don't really know you but I almost trip & fall looking at your face among the audience at the fashion show." he said, blandly.

"That is amazingly flattering, Raizada. But I still don't see how
Sheetal figures in this & how this can be a nightmare." she said, delight ringing clear in her voice.

"Sheetal comes out of nowhere, keeps me from tripping on my own foot & falling." he said.

"I hate this story. I am supposed to be your knight in shining armour, so to say. The whole trip, fall, catch routine is ours!" said Khushi, huffing in mock outrage & making him smile.

"Well, it gets worse. She tells me she & I are married." he said &
then, waited for the volcano to erupt.

And, it didn't.

Arnav wondered if it had really gotten to her so bad that she had been stunned into silence. That seemed unlikely. Khushi had a penchant for hyperbole but she was reasonable. Mostly.
"Khushi?" he called her name & heard her exhale.

"Was that your wishful thinking at play?" she asked. And, surprisingly enough, she sounded only thoughtful, & not ready to rant at him. But her question itself was infuriatingly absurd & he told her as much.

"Don't be absurd. At least, not when I can't shake some sense into you. Throw the damned photo you found. Burn it. Flush it. I don't care. Just stop obsessing over people who don't matter." he snapped, his patience at an end.

Khushi had found a picture of his with Sheetal from their time in Harvard among his old belongings that she had been cleaning out for the renovation that Shantivan was supposed to have. And, she had been giving him hell for keeping it with him, ever since. He had been trying to explain to her that it had just slipped his mind & that the photo was one of the things that he didn't even really know was there from all the things he had brought back from the States after B-School. She hadn't really been in the mood to listen.

Well, he didn't say she was reasonable all the time. Moreover, Sheetal was a sore spot. Khushi was touchy about the subject still. And, Arnav had therefore, tried very hard to be patient. But he hated it when they fought. The bantering, when she would take his bait & give it back to him as good as she got, was fun. And, hot. It was their foreplay. But an actual fight was anything but.

"Hmmm. Ok." Khushi said. Arnav didn't know what to make of that subdued response that was so uncharacteristic of Khushi.

"That's it? We're done with the issue? Just like that?" he asked.

"Yeah. Just don't ask me what happened to the photo." she said. That made him smile.

And then, Khushi was back to talking nineteen to the dozen & Arnav fell back into their normalcy, forgetting the about turn she had made.

The next day, when the fashion show did happen, he walked the ramp, to a huge round of applause. And, it was a deja vu moment. There sat the woman who owned him, through & through, in the front row smiling up at him. And, he was lost in those hazel depths, until she winked at him & pointed at his feet, silently telling him to not miss a step & fall, face first. He knew then, what Khushi had meant by her query regarding his wishful thinking.

Arnav shook his head. Wishful thinking to an unsaid wish fulfilled. She had made the sweet professional success a tad bit
sweeter by just being there.

Ruchiii! <3 <3 I loved this story! Loved the chance to think about the first episode once again (and the excuse to start watching the show one more time, because once your start watching it, you HAVE to finish watching it ;))

1. Absolutely love the attention you pay to small details. For instance, when you described how Arnav saw Khushi's hazel eyes in the audience...bas that description just blew my mind!

2. That plot-twist! Why, why did you have to ruin my fantasy?! There I was, imagining Khushi in red and Arnav in black and that gentle gust of wind and Rabba Ve's and raised eyebrows...until in came Shit-al. WITH THE MATCHING CIRCLE OF STONES! What the! And then she says, biwi hoon tumhari, haq hai mera...not cool, Ruchi, not cool!

3. IT WAS A NIGHTMARE.

4. THANK YOU DEVI MAIYYA.

5. Arnav's sprained his neck, again! Made me think of that episode on the show when he had a sprained neck! He'd looked so cute with his head tilted to the side!

6. I really liked how Arnav tripped and almost fell! Made for a nice change lol. Also really like the idea of Khushi being his knight in shining armor! Why should boys have all the fun? Let Khushi catch Arnav for a change, and then tell him, na tumhari shakal dekhni hai, na tumse baat karni hai! XD

7. Awww such a cute ending!

Archana, I have read all your previous work...silently (yesss I am a terrible person)! And I am a huge fan of the cute stories you come up with, and your characterizations of Arnav and Khushi. It was so lovely reading the part you wrote here ...absolutely love your brisk and witty writing :)