(a series of ArSha one-shots)
summary: nothing is ever as it seems; nor is it otherwise.
disclaimer: These series of one-shots are based on Kunwar Amarjeet Singh and Shakti Mohan and how I imagine their relationship to be. Please note that this is a fictionalised account of their lives based mainly on my imagination and borrows very rarely from their interviews and IVs. It doesn't follow nor truly depicts their real life. I don't know them, nor do I claim to know them and most likely they will never know of my existence either. Also, this isn't written to criticize, bash or insult them. Here, in this series, I treat them as people, not idols. People who are damaged, flawed, and very human. I hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks. :)
She doesn't tell him she's leaving.
Not until he confronts her after he has already gotten into one too many arguments and is convinced everyone is playing a prank on him that's gone too far. She skirts the issue, avoids his eyes and then him altogether.
When the official announcement is being made, he remembers sitting across from her in the briefing room. She's the one wearing white that day but he's the one blank as a canvas. He looks at the sunglasses on her face and feels cold all over. That's one of her own pet peeves.
The room is unnaturally quiet and he's tempted to look up and make sure they're not left alone. He has never known the team to be this quiet unless they're shooting. The air feels suffocated with the weight of unspoken words and he can taste the tension that hangs in the air. Smell the fear, the trepidation. When he takes a deep breath, it feels like charred ashes choking his lungs.
The news spreads like fire within hours and his phone lays silent and broken on the floor.
--
People tell him he's lucky. It still makes him uncomfortable after all these years. He wonders if he should take that as a compliment or offense, every single time he hears it. He still remembers the nights he had spent training, the days working odd jobs. And then the endless hours he has clocked in for D3 since. But it's only when he steps out of the studios, goes out to dance events that he realises that he is - lucky. That's when he knows for sure. Knows he's only lucky until he makes the wrong decision, the wrong choice. One wrong move and it will all come crumbling down. Everything he has works so hard to achieve.
It had almost come undone once. Almost. And it wasn't because of him.
--
They had started this journey together. The next step, the big leap. When he had been offered the role initially, he hadn't been sure. Him as an actor? In a dance based fiction show? He couldn't comprehend it. It sounded too good to be true and a part of him had whispered that it probably was. He had seen champions and winners fresh off a win, who'd succumbed to the enticement of fame, got blinded by the flashy lights of showbiz. He had grown up with stars in his eyes and dance in his blood. He was sure he could live with his vision rendered blind but not if he was bled dry.
He still remembers those initial days right after DID. How he used to wake up in the middle of the night with a start. Afraid he would end up being a had-been, the boy who could have been - the fear of disappointments weighing heavier than the thrill of dreams. What if this show was a sugar-coated iron fist and he was too intoxicated by the first taste of success to tell the difference? What if he said yes, blazed for a bit before losing steam and faded out?
He had thought to talk to her about being offered a chance to act, his big break. See what she thought about the opportunity, about doing a fiction show. He had even picked up the phone, dialed her number - but then remembered they were just dance partners on a reality show and she owed him nothing. Before he could disconnect however, she had answered and he was caught completely off guard. So instead, he had joked around about her constant instructions from their DID days, about how her voice still nagged in his ears sometimes and how his back feels so much better now that he doesn't have to lift her all the time.
By the time he had hung up, his stomach hurt from laughing so hard and he remembers feeling a little breathless.
--
The next time he heard her voice, he was convinced (for a whole five minutes) that he had imagined it.
It was his first day on the sets of D3. He had entered the studios tentatively, the nervousness of feeling like he was about to step into the biggest gamble of his career weighing down his steps. Preoccupied, he had walked in the direction he got pointed, towards the group of people he would have to see everyday for as long as this stint lasted. And there she'd been. And just like that, right in the middle of all his worries and self doubt, surrounded by dozens of new faces, he felt immediately at ease.
Even as his shock subsided into surprise and then realisation, he found his feet carrying him towards her. She sat there deep in conversation with one of the girls with that same look of absolute concentration on her face that he had come to associate with her. He felt a sudden bout of pity for the girl she was talking to. He remembers feeling that gaze on him and knows that facing the full extent of that tightly bound, concentrated energy is no easy feat.
He had welts in his palm for days from tightening his hands into fists at the sudden urge he had felt to go and hug her. Breathing deeply he had tried to calm his heartbeats and had forced himself to relax and shake her hand instead. He doesn't remember a more disappointing handshake in his life. Cold and stoic, made rigid by past memories and unvoiced expectations.
--
She had never told him she was joining the show either, but somehow that had never felt like betrayal.
Whenever he's memorising the script during those first few weeks after The Date, that's the only thought that keeps bouncing around in his head.
Sometimes, he forgets where Rey ends and Kunwar begins.
--
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