This is kind of like a random writing experiment gone wrong. I was trying to finish Castle of Glass, got stuck at a point, and wound up writing this. I actually asked a friend for a prompt - she said any scenario where Khushi gets cornered is good for her :P It's nothing special, but hopefully now that it's out of my system I can FINALLY finish Castle of Glass.
(And I'm so SO sorry for keeping you guys waiting so long- just finished exams only to be faced with a slew of assignment deadlines :( )
ArHi OneShot |Intoxicated|
It was just like last time.
True, they were in the kitchen instead of the poolside this time, and the clock was broaching afternoon instead of night.
But there she was, her spine melded flat against the hard surface of the wall, clutching at what had once been a white dupatta but was now dyed in several shades of the rainbow.
And there he was, advancing towards her, his steps slow, measured and so deliberate- his hooded gaze fixed and unwavering, and so magnetic she felt herself being misted away into steam and sucked straight into the eyes that refused to cease their intense appraisal.
Khushi gulped, the bubble of air scratching against her raw throat.
'Arnavji...' she croaked, apprehensive of the moment, of the choking dread that had thickened in the air like cigarette smoke, pungent and unsettling, '...What are you doing?'
Nervously, she eyed the brass tumbler he clasped carelessly in his right hand, and lamented not having tried to stop Nanheji's agenda of getting the ever-stoic Arnav Singh Raizada to 'loosen up.'
He's not in his right mind, a panicked voice whispered beneath the frantic thudding that was the beat of her heart, He doesn't know what he's doing.
He did not respond to her meek words though, save to consume more of the sparse distance separating them.
Panic gurgled to life and her fingers twitched erratically, limbs locked with the effort of restraining instinct- instinct that told her to bolt.
To run as fast as she could and not turn back.
Because she had been through this before. She had gone through this already, and she was certain she could not stand going through it again.
Letting her eyes flutter closed for the tiniest of moments, she drew in a deep breath, seeking to calm herself, glancing not-so-discreetly at the door over his shoulder as she mentally calculated her chances of dodging around him and making a run for freedom.
Unfortunately, in the quarter of a second she had let her guard down, he had managed to insinuate himself right inside her personal space.
They stood a metre apart, and a startled gasp tore at her lungs as she quickly dropped her gaze to their feet, her hands scrambling behind her in a hopeless attempt to anchor herself against the wall.
'Arnavji...I think you've had too much bhaang...you don't know what you're doing,' she managed to mumble out, and she was surprised when her heart plummeted abruptly downwards, like it had slipped and fallen hard, when she heard the words said aloud.
It was not that she did not know. It was not that she did not understand. She would be a fool to foster runaway dreams after all this time.
The wounds he had dished out to her on that Diwali night, and all the bruises he had left on her self on those shadowed days that had followed, during her short-lived engagement and his, had barely begun to heal. And if she bled now, with her sister happily married and settled into this house, with her family indebted to a greater or lesser extent to his...she was not sure she would be able to stem the flow. To heal again, without staining the fragile, newfound happiness they had been blessed with.
If she got hurt now, it would be no one's fault but her own.
He was half a foot from her when she gasped out, 'Stop.'
He did.
But then his arms reached out to either side of her, and his palms pressed flat into the wall, caging her in. Her traitorous heart hopped up and started pounding painfully at the base of her throat.
'Why?'
It was just one word, low and guttural, but it rolled over her like a heat wave, tingling and potent, and the air rushed out of her lungs. Her hands had protectively curled up before her, forming a flimsy barrier to keep him from getting any closer. She stared resolutely at her whitened knuckles, violently slashing down hopes before they could fly.
'You're drunk,' she told him, resenting the quivers beneath her words, the tears of futility beginning to ache behind her eyes, 'You don't know what you're doing. When you sober up...'
Her hushed, strained voice petered off, partly because her throat had seized up, and partly because she could not bear to finish that line of thought.
When you sober up, you're going to hate me again.
Even though everything had changed, it felt as though nothing had. He had relented on mocking her middle-class background and financial status, but she was sure that had to do more with the fact that he was indirectly tied to her family by marriage than from any form of consideration. Relations between the Guptas and the Raizadas had grown warm and cordial- but the relationship between them had been left suspended, dangling in mid-air, oscillating this way and that but never settling down long enough in one place for her to understand what they were to each other. What they ever had been.
And now, she was far too tired and far too scarred to try and find out.
Drowning, being steadily pulled under by the weight of her troubling thoughts, it was a while before she noticed something move toward her face out of the corner of her eye.
By the time she did notice, the back of his forefinger had brushed lightly down her jawline.
Her thoughts froze, spluttered, and died a speedy death.
Nervous tingles skittered down her body, and she had to fight with the urge to let her suddenly heavy eyelids drift shut.
It was like Diwali, all over again.
Everything she had tried to avoid, everything she was determined not to let happen again, was starting to become a very real possibility.
'Stop...what are you...'
'Purple isn't really your colour, Khushi.' The hot gusts of air puffing against her ear, carrying through silken-smooth words, made her entire body seize up, her drooping lashes flying open in shock to find that she was staring over his shoulder; he had stooped over her smaller frame, his face bent next to her ear, far too close for comfort.
'Wh-what?' she managed to stammer, surprised she was still capable of speaking, before a half-squeak left her as another deliberate brush of his fingertips grazed down her jaw.
He leant back an inch, away from her, and this time Khushi had no choice but to look straight into his eyes- fiery orbs of cinnamon, charring her weak defences.
'I'm saying that purple isn't your colour,' he murmured to her again, and then he flicked another deft swipe of his thumb against her cheek before showing her the purple-tinged pads of his fingers.
As though travelling over a great distance to reach her, deceptively faraway memories began to prick at the fringes of her frazzled consciousness.
'O-oh...' she tittered shakily, her own hand instinctively reaching for her skin, rubbing away at the powdery patches of colour playfully smeared there earlier as she had frolicked round the lawns of Shantivan, all but playing tag with Nanheji while Anjaliji and Jiji looked on in amusement, 'Nanheji-'
'Exactly.' Khushi flinched; even though the volume of his husked tone had not climbed any higher, there had been a definite bite of displeasure infused into that word. Uncertainty and apprehension constricted her lungs, and she all but tried to shrink into nonexistence.
His hand returned to its place beside her, trapping her between the enclosure of his arms; she could feel him studying her intently, but the feel of his warm breath tickling her skin and the acute awareness of his proximity left her too mortified to look up. There were two things she was convinced of: one, that Arnav Singh Raizada had lost grip of his reason, and there was no point trying to rationalise with him, and two, that she needed to get away. Get away before this situation could exacerbate further.
She did not want to imagine what would happen when he would come back to his senses and realise what he was doing.
Mustering all of her courage and all her strength, she pried the hands protectively curved before her apart to try and push at the barrier his arms had formed around her.
'Let me go,' she tried to sound angry, tried to snap at him, but the timorous ring to it ruined the effect she had been going for.
He did not even budge.
If anything, he seemed to come even closer, and Khushi sharply sucked in a mouthful of air that refused to find its way out again. As his chin bumped into the crown of her head, she quickly dipped her face, feeling heat blast over her cheeks and paint them deep crimson as she stared at the rolled-up sleeves of his white-cotton kurta, which Anjaliji had no doubt blackmailed him into wearing. And before she could find her voice to question what he thought he was doing, he was speaking to her again.
'I think I like yellow better,' came his murmur, close to the tip of her ear, 'Like the suit you wore during Akash's haldi.'
Her fingers, still pushing uselessly at the makeshift cage he'd formed around her, fell limp; her heart stilled for a millisecond, before it started galloping ahead at breakneck speed.
'But...but...how did you...' she heard herself whimper, daring to raise her stare only as far as a button only partially pushed through its hole, 'How did you know? You weren't even here when I-'
'So were you looking for me, Khushi?'
The words dried up and disappeared from her throat and she choked on nothing, spluttering to deny it. Deny that she had furtively, repeatedly, scanned the hall when she had arrived that afternoon with Jijaji's sherwani. Deny that it had taken a mental beating to remind herself of her pledge to avoid him at all costs.
Deny the regret-laced-disappointment that had stung her as she had taken a hurried, harried leave.
'And green looks good on you too,' the Laad Governor continued conversationally, but there was a drawling undertone to it that robbed it of any semblance of casualness, infusing it with all sorts of intent that made Khushi's stomach flip-flop, 'Emerald. Like that saree you wore during the sangeet. You should wear sarees more often.'
His murmurs were like sedatives, and she was powerless to resist- her brain was buzzing with protests, with clamours, clanging with warnings and omens, but they were being drowned out, drugged. And Khushi floundered, struggled- she could not succumb to it, she couldn't- she could not let herself fall for words that would disappear like dreams once the effect of alcohol wore off, once he recalled everything he had said and took measures to contradict it all, clawing and tearing at her in the process.
And it hurt. It hurt because what he was saying sounded like the truth, but a truth she could not belief, because she knew how adept he was at turning them into lies.
'But...you left...you left before I even got changed...you said it was too noisy...'
'That doesn't mean I wasn't watching you.'
A funny hitch escaped Khushi, like a nervous hiccup- she was starting to feel dangerously lightheaded now, the column of her throat aquiver with the effort of swallowing, her back beginning to slide down the wall as the strength in her knees started to give out.
'I don't know what you are-'
'But you didn't wear my favourite during the wedding at all, Khushi...'
She could not help herself. 'What?'
'I was looking forward to you wearing my favourite colour during the wedding, Khushi...I haven't seen you in it since Diwali...remember?'
Her head snapped up at the mention of the night she had been trying to push out of her stack of memories; clarity pierced through the haze of befuddlement he had been weaving round her, and with a sharp gasp that slit through her windpipe, their eyes met.
His stare was steady, his pupils dilated, but they were clear- so clear they were like the night sky, the specks of caramel and gold as clear as stars.
Khushi felt all her strength give way.
As she began to slump, defeated by him and his enigmatic words, almost slipping down the wall, his hands shifted to wrap firmly, and yet gently, about her upper arms. She could feel the warmth of his grasp through the thin material of her dupatta, and as it seeped through her pores and flushed down her body, she shivered.
He had bent down to her again, but this time his nose grazed against hers and Khushi's lids swiftly shuttered, knowing she would buckle under the weight of his gaze.
'Next time, make sure you wear red.'
And then his steady grasp disappeared, and the wall of heat encompassing her rushed back, like the warmth of a blanket snatched away on a cold, winter morning, something cool and smooth pressing into the palm of her hand.
Drawing ragged, shallow breaths, her lashes fluttered open in time to see him saunter out the kitchen doors, the very same doors she had been about to leave through when she had turned about to find him blocking her way.
And as confusion and the pained beginnings of disappointment began to set in and roil in her gut, she watched him pause at the threshold of the door, and glance at her over his shoulder.
And then he smirked.
'Oh, and Khushi?'
And Khushi's eyes widened and her breath caught for the umpteenth time, because she was utterly, completely familiar with that smirk and the wicked, deliberate intent behind it.
'I might not be as drunk as you think I am.'
And just as he disappeared through the door and out of sight, Khushi's disbelieving stare fell on the contents of the brass tumbler she had not even noticed being pressed into her hand.
Orange juice.
Please leave your thoughts! And thank you so much for reading :)
Also, if you'd like a PM for my future work, please let me know :) I'm really REALLY sorry if I missed anyone on the PM list- please feel free to let me know if I did, I won't make that mistake again, promise!
I'm working on both New Year's Resolutions and Castle of Glass...let me know if you'd like snippets!
Recent OneShot: Direct Approach
My other works can be found here : https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/fan-fictions/3403065/doe-eyes-aka-nafisas-index-updated-19-2
I reserve all rights over this work of fiction and request that readers do not reproduce/copy/modify it elsewhere and/or claim credit.
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