Kind of a sequel the OneShot Direct Approach ...but it can be a standalone OneShot as well :) I'll apologise in advance for any mistakes or inconsistencies...I wrote this in the car during a REALLY long journey, 50% of which was spent in a traffic jam :/ Please let me know if you think this needs tightening up!!
PS: Rae, I hope this is OK as a sequel :P
ArHi OneShot |Indirect Approach|
Her need for sleep made her eyelids ache, pinched and itchy with the need to drop shut, but Khushi could not afford to snooze. Her desk was cluttered with loose pages, open text-books ferociously underlined and highlighted in colours she had paired together to complement one another, a notebook lying open where she had been scrawling down bullet-points she planned to take with her for some last minute revision before her actual exam.
As a particularly jarring throb knocked at her temple, Khushi sighed heavily and let her pen slip out of her hold, pressing a palm against her eyes and rubbing a little. Even though she sat with her back to it, she could almost feel her bed beckoning to her. A brief image of it, made up in pale yellow sheets bedecked with dancing cartoon cats, covered with a decadently soft and plush duvet, flashed into her mind and Khushi groaned.
Seriously, where was Arnav?
He had already finished his exams, and had apparently thought it would be a good idea to come over to her house despite knowing she was yet to be done. Moral support, he had shrugged by way of explanation, before diving into her bed while she slaved away at her work.
But Khushi could not deny that having him in the room had somehow helped- if only by reminding her that her bed was occupied and therefore getting rid of any temptations to just give up and burrow herself beneath the covers and just sleep.
And then, at some point about half an hour ago, he had mumbled something and ambled out.
Khushi sagged back in her seat, staring unseeingly at the chaotic mess she had made of her desk. Around this time tomorrow, it would all be over. She could come home and reap vindictive pleasure sweeping everything into a cardboard box and pushing it underneath her bed, although the desire to burn everything in a bonfire was also appealing. But, as Arnav had pointed out when she had grumbled her wish aloud, she was too pedantic to do that- she had worked hard for this subject, and whether her experience was hellish or not, she would never stomach throwing it all away.
Speaking of Arnav...
She wondered whether he was in the kitchen now- knowing his camaraderie with her whole family, he might have sweet-talked her mother into cooking something special for him, or might be with her father watching a football match or something. After all, he could do that- he was free, and she still had another day of excruciating torture to go through. But even as she bristled with the unfairness of it all, she could not really muster anything above half-hearted irritability.
Arnav Singh Raizada might live in the biggest house of the neighbourhood, but Khushi also knew it to be the most lifeless. The veritable mansion housed just him and his father- everyone else belonged to a household staff, a band of stiff-collared, efficient employees Khushi often called an army of robots. Since they were both young, Arnav spent more time in her home than he did at his own, and she could not blame him for that. After the divorce his mother had moved away, and not a year later they received the news that she had remarried and settled down happily in some obscure town in Lucknow. His father had retained the custody of their child, determined to have the last word, determined to hold one over his ex-wife, but in spite of all that, he had never managed to give Arnav the affection and care that a child needed. Yes, he did hire the best caretakers and governesses money could buy, but Khushi dourly reasoned that it would never be enough to compensate for the love and nurturing of a parent who truly cared for him.
Perhaps that was why he would keep gravitating back to her family. They used to play as children along with the other neighbourhood kids and enrolled in the same school, and when they would come home from school together sometimes, his mother would fondly feed him, assiduously noting down his likes and his dislikes, and her father would play cricket or football with him when Khushi flat out refused. More often than not, he would stay for dinner, and neither he nor his father appeared to object to this arrangement- a car would dutifully arrive in the evening to pick him up, and stay as long as Arnav insisted unless it cut too close to his curfew.
It was like nuzzling her nose into a forgotten scarf buried beneath her clothes, inhaling in the memories clinging to the fabric and reliving them. Arnav was often standoffish, often distant and cold and crude, but she knew that these were just coping mechanisms he had developed over the years to deal with the fissures in his life, to keep at bay the disappointments he countered daily in his own home. If anything, she was glad that he could be so comfortable with her family, so open, and ever grateful to her parents for always taking him in as one of their own, for accepting him and giving him the love she and her sister were showered in with abundance. He needed it- needed to understand and feel that he belonged, that he was cared for.
And it had started to work. It had started to close those fissures, or at least, emboldened him to try and cross over them.
She had been so happy the day he had gruffly announced his decision to join the football team, and had almost jump tackled him into a hug when he had agreed to help her out with her volunteer work at the care-centre...
He might still be sullen, still difficult and downright obnoxious, but at least he had started to thaw. At least he did not regard the whole world with suspicion and hold himself away for fear of being hurt and forsaken again.
She was so proud of him.
The door flew open.
Jerking upright in her seat, it was only the raggedness of her breathing that alerted her to the fact that she had let her attention waver splendidly.
And if the grin wide across the face of the person framed by her door was anything to go by, he had realised it too.
"Daydreaming about me?" he asked cheekily, making his way into her bedroom as he always did, as though he owned the place. He had a mug grasped in one hand, and the unmistakeable scent of coffee drifted over to her, enticing and warm.
Khushi scowled at him, tiredness making her cranky, and keen not to let him know just how true his estimation had been. It was easy enough for him to fool around like that- he didn't have another textbook's worth of material to look through and cram into his head.
"Don't you have anything else to do?" she groused at him, her mood turning foul as she remembered just how much she still had to read.
"Nope," he quipped cheerfully back.
"Of course, you don't," Khushi muttered under her breath, cursing the idle people of the world to prevent herself from envying them.
The thud of something landing on her desk made her look up.
"What?" she demanded, peering into his face, annoyed. He merely arched a sardonic eyebrow at her, before tipping his head down. Khushi followed the line of his sight- and her eyes landed on the coffee-mug on her desk.
What with the dozens of facts and dates and complicated names crowding brain-space, it was a while before she realised what she was looking at.
"That has coffee-cream in it."
"Well done," Arnav responded wryly, shuffling back to her bed before collapsing backwards into it.
"But...you only drink black-coffee."
"I realise that," he was the image of relaxation, sprawled across her bed with an arm flung over his eyes. If Khushi were not otherwise distracted, she might have thrown a book at his head for flaunting his freedom in front of her.
"Did Amma make it for you then?" She suspected Amma was not aware of just how finicky Arnav could be about his coffee- he wouldn't touch it unless it was brewed precisely the way he liked it. In fact, that probably explained why he had dropped it next to her- at least that way the coffee would not be wasted and her mother's feelings would not be hurt. Contrary to her constant whinging that her mother was partial to Arnav and that he always got preferential treatment, she understood well how much of a maternal figure Amma had been in Arnav's life. He might be loathe to say the words, too proud to let any sentiment show, but he loved her mother just as much as she herself did.
Ah well, I need something to keep me up anyway, she figured, hooking a finger into the mug and taking a hearty sip. The tart warmth immediately shot down her throat to encase the rest of her body in its rejuvenating sharpness-
-but it was not that which caused her eyes to go round in surprise.
Even though Arnav's pose was as indolent as one could get, he was watching her intently.
"Well?" he mouthed flatly when she did not make a move to speak.
"This..." Khushi ran the tip of her tongue to the edge of her lip, tasting the residue of the coffee even as she felt Arnav narrow his stare at her, "This is the way I make coffee."
He nodded, evidently satisfied with her response, and then covered his eyes with his arm again.
But Khushi was still frowning at him, puzzling it over. "Did Amma send it up with you?" she hazarded.
"No," came the short reply.
"Did you...tell Amma to make this for me?" she guessed a bit more tentatively, her pulse suddenly twanging inside her chest. Her notes and books lay waiting for her, but for the life of her she could not let this minor mystery go until it had been resolved.
There was a longer pause before he answered, and when he did, it was so quiet it was almost a mumble.
"No."
Silence fell between them, but Khushi kept staring. The twanging in her chest had quickly escalated to a much louder crescendo, and heat, so potent the effect of the coffee could not compete, burst through her body as she formed the words of her next question on her tongue.
"Arnav..." she started slowly, nothing more significant or more relevant to her and to this time as the coffee-mug clasped between her hands and the person reposing on her bed, "Did you make this?"
If someone else had suggested it to her, she would have thought it was a preposterous idea- pernickety as he was about coffee, he would never make it, not even for himself. Khushi had admonished him for it several times before, blaming his lifestyle for letting him be spoon-fed all his life, and accusing him of being lazy, hypocritical and irritating, but he had always brushed off her accusations with a shrug and a grin, knowing that however much she complained she would wind up making it for him anyway.
He did not answer.
And Khushi rubbed at her eyes again, because she thought she might be imagining the dark flush spreading along his cheekbone.
Stunned, dazed, Khushi alternated between staring at him, and then staring at the drink in her hand. It absently occurred to her that the liquid must be getting cold, and with her revulsion for tepid coffee the only thing making sense at the current moment, she lifted the mug for another sip.
The flavour that caressed her tongue was familiar and comfortable- and just the way she liked it. Heaped spoonfuls of cream, and a teaspoon and a half of sugar, precisely. Not even her mother could emulate the way she preferred her caffeine but he-
"How did you know?" she murmured, not sure whether he was asleep or faking it, not sure whether he had even heard her question or if he would answer.
But he did.
He told her in, in clipped tones that belied the bob of his Adam's apple, something she secretly understood to mean he was embarrassed or awkward, "What's the big deal? I've seen you make it tons of times."
Yeah, Khushi thought dazedly, conscious of the smile beginning to curl up a corner of her mouth as she eyed him, managing to appear surly and obstinate even though he looked like he was sleeping, but I never thought you were paying attention.
And just like that, Khushi was happy.
Sure, she was sitting the hardest exam of the semester under the strictest of all her teachers. Sure, she was cowed by the fear that she was not prepared.
But the fondness that had surged through her and now nestled warmly against her heart drove back the black mood that had been beclouding her perspective, and she could literally hear the cream-covered, sugary cheerfulness in her voice as she chirped, "Thank you!"
He grunted.
Khushi grinned harder.
Spinning about in her revolving chair, Khushi pulled her books toward her once more, wide awake, alert, and raring to go.
After all, she had to make sure she got through her revision as soon as possible, so that she could reward her boyfriend for being so heartbreakingly sweet.
But of course, as indirectly as possible, to spare him any more embarrassment.
Thank you for reading! I'd really appreciate feedback :)
I reserve all rights over this work of fiction and request readers do not reproduce/copy/modify elsewhere and/or claim credit.
CID
Cricket
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