GUESS WHOS BACK, BACK AGAIN?
DIPPYS BACK, TELL A FRIEND!!!
Hullo loves, i am back, this time with a two-shot 🤣
Its actually long for once [=)]
1720 words to be precise :)
The same amount is going to be in da next part.
SO GET READY FOR MY SHIT SISTAHS!!! (And any bruddas)
BTW, I didn't know that Muslims cant smoke, so I'm sorry, but I couldn't be f**ked to change the cig to a drink bottle or something, so I'm sorry if I offend you in any way.
This is like, sorta AU, so like' yeah.
Figure the rest yourself.
And don't mind the spelling errors, please, i just woke up, even tho I've been writing this thing for like a week 🤣 :)
Oh, and Akram isn't as much of a bas***d in this story. Stressing on as much.
The Grand Scheme of Things.
Part 1.
In the grand scheme of things, Asad would probably be a lake. Zoya - Zoya would be a river, clear and fast like the ones in movies, tumbling onto the rocks.
Asad knows water. When he was little, once, his mother, Dilshad told him, "there are things you cant have," and he nodded. He understood, even then.
(He doesn't look at the photos from back then. He doesn't like his own eyes looking straight back at him saying you will never change, would you? And boringboringboring.)
The things he can have are enough, most of the time. (Look, he says to himself, and he glances at tinkling laugh that escapes from Najmas mouth, and Ayaan's mouth, ferocious and greasy. Its more that he thought he would ever get, to be honest.) Asad is not one asking for more, not like Akram. Zoya is the exception.
Asad doesn't know what it is with Zoya that makes him ache in ways he didn't know he could, that makes him yearn and ask (a mouthful of moremoremore). He could've fallen in love with Humeira - everything would have been easier, because everyone is in love with Humeira, it isn't unusual or outlandish like falling in love with Zoya is. Ayaan is probably a little in love with Humeira too.
Out of the corner of his eye, Asad sees Akram tug Zoya out of the mushy beanbag, grinning from ear to ear. He begins to whisper something in her ear, and Zoya throws her head back laughing. Asad watches.
He watches them leave. He wants to spring up on his feet, say, "don't, you'll get hurt," but he stays firmly rooted to the ground. He's a lake. He can't move. (He's probably a tree too, an oak tree with a sturdy trunk and nerved leaves that the raindrops can't break.)
And there's a second where they twirl around, and Asad catches the mixed colors of their eyes, Zoya's transparent golden brown and Akram's iridescent ochre. It feels like melted gemstones burning his fingers, unable to stay still long enough to form a necklace. A weight settles heavily at the pit of his stomach, this messy treasure tumbling into the lake to drown besides the sunken ships.
In the grand scheme of things, Akram would probably be a flying fish, he thinks: sparkling and dangerous, always leaping out of reach from the water that runs behind him, trying to catch him.
***
She's close. Close is never too close for Asad, but this is, Zoya's radiating heat next to him, a scarecrow of hay that a stray sunray could set afire. (Akram is a pyromaniac, of course - the lurking angel with the box of matches clinking in his pocket.)
"Do you love me?"
Asad wants to hold her and teach her the right questions to ask. (Come here.) He won't answer. This feels like a mugging, secrets being forced out of his mouth, jaw held ajar with iron fingers. (Go away.)
"I do," he says with a sigh. Maybe if he pretends to be aggravated, it won't feel so raw, so true, he tells himself. It doesn't work, of course.
"Love me more," Zoya whines, in this nonsensical way she has. It's meant as a joke (it must be, but the things Zoya says always hover on the edge of truth, especially when she laughs like that, teeth bared.) but Asad takes it square in the plexus, a punch that lands right between his lungs and knocks the air out of him.
(It's always like that with Zoya. It's always more and closer and louder and Asad is not that person, he can't turn up the volume and sing until his throat aches and not hear himself over the noise. He can't love like they do, so big that there isn't anything else, stifling and smothering. It just doesn't happen for him. Asad is the low thrum, the silence that crackles on the surface of the water, wrapping the stones in soft wool.)
No, he thinks with his eyes closed, no, no, no, and its not something he says, just like he doesn't lie, but Zoya makes him everything he isn't, jealous and bitter and angry and someone who says no with a clenched jaw and grinding teeth one second away from being dust.
But he does.
He loves her more and more, and it's like a bloodstain spreading on his chest, like and illness growing beneath his skin and threatening to break free. So Asad does what he does best, he ignores it and pushed it all the way down to the pit of his stomach, making bile rise in his throat.
That's better, he thinks, because he's always been and optimist, but its not better at all.
***
Asad remembers a time -
It wasn't so long ago, now that he thinks of it. Akram was already there (Akram is always there), lurking in the background, and easy arm thrown around Zoya's shoulders, but nothing was quite as burning, quite as easy to wreck. Now - Asad doesn't want to think about it (a flick of the wrists, now - that's all it takes to make the sand castle crash on its pillars).
"You remember this time - " Humeira was saying behind him, reclining on Ayaan's arm. Ayaan laughed preemptively. Who would've thought those two look good together, huh?
And suddenly there was Zoya plopping herself down in his lap, long legs stretched before him, and Akram laughing behind them like he was giving them his blessing, do whatever you want, children, I'll have my turn when it's time.
And he remembers this time so clearly, so vividly, the green sea surrounding them, the white flank of the boat and the golden brown of Zoya's eyes, Akram shining golden behind them, and Asad is a lake, but maybe at this moment he let himself believe, and he laid a hand on Zoya's stomach, fingers cleanly separated, sun-kissed skin peeking from between his knuckles.
"You smell good," Zoya said, sniffing his hair like she does. The others laughed, maybe at them, maybe at something else.
Asad's never been a believer, but even today it's hard to let go of the thought that there was something holy there, in the easy press of Zoya's head between his collarbones, their tangled hands, the soft companionship of the others. Sue Asad if he didn't think this can never last but bless.
Bless.
Asad let his knuckles brush Zoya's stomach; he delighted in the shiver it elicited, and in the crumbling heat that they all shared, a group of forever friends in the middle of an ocean, each one a bead of their rosary.
***
Ayaan had started Anna Karenina. He was reading in the back - the ashes from his cigarette fell on the pages, but he didn't seem to care.
Asad had been sleeping, but it seemed like such a long time ago now, because then there had Zoya tugging on his hand, saying "Let's go to the store" and Asad asking "What do you want to buy?" and Zoya shrugging and answering, "Let's just buy something", and Asad followed and then there was something with the bodyguards of the store and Zoya running between the aisles, and laughing, laughing until his stomach hurt, not a phantom hurt, real cramps contracting his bowels, and then it was all Zoya, Zoya, Zoya
"You never say no," Ayaan said without looking up from his book.
It isn't true, Asad thought. He says no all the time. Everyone always complains about it - he says no all the time.
"Not to her."
Asad wondered what Anna Karenina was about. He thought about Zoya's lips, slick and tasting of fog.
"Give me a drag?" he asked, holding out a hand.
Ayaan shrugged and passed the cigarette along, burning tip first.
"Don't do that, Bhai," he said. His voice was dark, caring.
Asad knew - knows - what to say. He doesn't know what to do, but he always knows what to say, that's never a problem. He took a drag and coughed, the smoke sour and acrid in his throat.
"I won't," he rasped, and maybe he meant it at the time, but when he thinks back to it (and he does - the shadows drawing tattoos on Ayaan's skin, deep dark mystic ink, and a sun ray flashing to bounce on the garbage cans).
Ayaan didn't say anything. He shifted closer - had you looked at it like everyone looks at them, from the outside, you could have believed it was cold, from the way they pressed their flanks and breathed in each other's neck, like a peace offering or a declaration of war.
***
Asad's first kiss with Zoya was in an elevator.
It shouldn't be surprising - what better place for it to happen than this cage of moving metal, bobbing up and down, torn between regularity and chaos? But it was. Surprising.
It was surprising.
Asad's first kiss with Zoya was in an elevator. Zoya wasn't drunk.
He was looking in the mirror (why are there always mirrors in elevators? Asad had never asked himself the question before - it's not the type of question he asks himself - but Zoya's proximity was making him twitchy). Asad wondered who looked back at him.
He turned around. Cocked his head. Devil, Asad thought, but he couldn't help the undercurrent of admiration, the desire and love, sliding its rope around his neck and squeezing.
"You like me, Asad?"
(Akram - air and fire - would never have pretended not to know. He would've smiled, said something - and maybe it would've been a lie, but he never would've pretended not to know. Asad doesn't know how to lie.)
"What do you mean?"
Zoya stepped closer. She looked beautiful, Asad thought, even under the lurid, yellow light. She made a funny face. It wasn't funny.
"You love me, right, Asad?"
No, Asad thought.
He didn't answer.
What happened after that (Zoya leaning in as the elevator screeched to a halt, their noses bumping, Zoya kissing his cheek, the sting, the rest) Asad should've maybe expected. He didn't.
So that was his first kiss with Zoya - in an elevator, and Zoya wasn't drunk, and her smooth lips on Asad's tasted like all the promises to himself that Asad had made and broken.
Dun du duuun
🤣
If you still shocked that I wrote so much, its cos I've had writers block for like ten years, and I decided ill just write the randomest shit I can think of.
This is what I ended up with 🤣
if yall like it, imma post part 2 (its done and dusted), if not, ill just go hide somewhere.
please comment and tell me how ah-mazing this OS is 🤣
or how completely truly f**ked up it is 🤣
ps. i think i have f**king nits.
<33
xx
part 2
(i put it on the same page so you can just read them parts together and understand the shit.)
f**kING 2364 WORDS SISTAHS (and any Bruddas)
Ok, so this the last part and I have nothing else to say apart from the fact that I ACTUAL WROTE SOMETHING THAT IS LONG.
AS IN LONG.
OMG.
And that this is an unrequited type two-shot.
No one loves back.
Hope ya'll like it <33
Also, its angst.
Asad sees it happening in increments, each time eroding him a little more. He doesn't do anything to keep her.
He's not the type of person who keeps, either.
"Zoe, come snuggle!" Akram's voice, laughter, and the contented purr at the back of Zoya's throat as she does, curling against Akram's chest.
They couldn't be closer, Asad thinks.
Zoya and Akram were always something else, and if Asad looks at it with clear eyes, it's evident that he was never going to win. He's not good at these kinds of games. From the first minute, Akram jumping into Zoya's arm and Zoya staggering on the wet gravel, her arms tight around Akram's middles, the rest was sure to follow.
And this something they have is the stuff of fairytales and nightmares, it's the destinies that are frowned upon and dreamed of, the elusive true love that burns too high not to hurt. Liam can't stand in the way. It's a dance, and he's not a dancer, he's the guy that stands back and tries to catch stars.
He watches Akram's fingers trail up Zoya's neck, Akram humming a complicated waltz under his breath. Najma is sitting next to him, a hot presence against his flank, but as Asad watches, he thinks of Tanveer and Zoya and the dips and nooks of Zoya's body that he'll never learn by heart.
"I'll go get some air," he says. His words fall flat, no one is listening and he slips outside with a sigh, his feet padding silently on the lino. His stomach feels heavy and liquid, nausea climbing upstream in his blood to reach his lungs.
He breathes and breathes until he feels full of air, like if someone stuck a needle in his arm he'd just burst and deflate, silent wind spilled into nothingness.
***
Their love tastes like fire, Zoya says to Asad once she's drunk off of the many cans of coke, the easy excuse slurring his words and making them almost gentle, lips sticky and shiny with sugar ' and ours felt like smoke.
"it was love, then?" Asad asks. Its just a question amongst so many others he could've asked (why the past tense and is it an oil fire and aren't you afraid to get burnt and do you love me still), but for some reason he feels like he only gets one.
Zoya shrugs. "Eh."
(Smoke, she explains after, it's like they'd already had the fire but it had burned out and even the ashes were gone, scattered away by the wind, the embers heavy chunks of black coal. And she goes on ' but we never had this kind of love, did we, Bond? We never loved a love that tasted like fire?
Asad wants to say, I did, but then it dies on his tongue, quietly fizzling as it sinks into the water, tangling with the weeds.)
Zoya watches Ayaan dancing with a girl that'll leave cat scratches on his forearms and Akram half hidden in the dark, hands around a bottle of juice. She sighs.
She looks content, Asad thinks, with his cat eyes and his ever-moving body so close to stillness. Asad feels like he can finally see her now that she's stopped running, and it's like a punch in the gut.
"We're still friends, though?" Zoya says, voice like smoke.
"How could we ever not be friends," Asad answers.
"Yeah," Zoya says, sleep weighing on her eyelids. "Yeah, you're right."
She probably thinks it's a good thing, Asad muses, the music beating heavy on his eardrums, red-blue-green-black.
Asad's not so sure.
He watches till the thumping dies down, and he ushered them home like children, tucking them into bed, one by on, Najma first, giggly and delirious, then Akram, talking about Zoya and clinging onto her shoulder, and Ayaan, already asleep.
He isn't tired, and he doesn't want to watch Akram and Zoya sleep, curled up around each other like nothing else matters in the world but them, so he goes into the kitchen, makes black tea and reads Oscar Wilde, trying to understand.
***
Najma falls in love in the middle of all that, easy like breathing. The guy is called Arif and he's not like her at all - He's tall and he laughs like the stars have fell upon him, and sometimes he even hugs her in the middle of the bustling plaza, as though to say not keep away but look how beautiful mine.
Akram and Zoya kiss in a coffee shop, falling into each other as they do, forgetting about the noise and the shiny lights and their lives, Akram's fingertips pressing at the dip of Zoya's spine. They manage to pass it up as a joke, and everyone buys it because they don't want to see.
They're at Humeira's house. They can't sleep, so they're all huddled in the covers, shins and arms bumping as they adjust, Akram and Zoya wrapped around each other at the head of the bed, Asad sitting crossed legged in the middle, Ayaan legs slung carelessly on top of his own, and Najmas ankle brushing Humeira's shoulder.
The air drifts in from the open window, smelling of oranges and gas oil. They banter and fall asleep one after the other, Asad feels empty and quiet, his fingers still stained with parcels of Zoya. The worst thing about this, he starts to think, but then he looks over at them, the tangle of their limbs and Zoya's fingers grazing the skin of Akram's throat, and he chokes on the thought. Everything is the worst.
Najma is the only one who is still awake. Her eyes shine like caramel moons in the darkness.
"Love isn't supposed to hurt, you know," she says, his face devoid of contours.
Asad looks at her (was it love), her love that makes her glow, her tall boyfriend with her muscled biceps and bright smile.
"Yeah," he says. "I know."
It does though; he thinks when they're all asleep. His hand stroking Najmas hair looks like its buried in dry, black waves of water.
***
Asad needs a moment.
He needs a moment alone to close his eyes and retch and let the waves of pain overwhelm him ' he needs a moment to do diagrams and tell himself that its not bad and he's still young and all that plenty more fish in the sea bullshit.
He needs a moment, just a moment, its not like he's asking for the moon, to stop being sensible, the perfect poster-child of acceptance and grace and whatever the f**k the others decided he should be, needs a moment to be delusional and hiss don't you dare write me out at a wall, to believe that if he wanted maybe he still could.
(He cant, of course. Its Akram and Zoya, Akram and Zoya and they've always been together, Asad cant think of a world where they would be apart, the two of them needy and glorious and f**ked up. Asad wants to hit himself for getting into that mess.
He's angry at Zoya for letting it happen, too, for letting him fall into the trap of maybe and what ifs when it was clear from the beginning that there was only endgame possible and he wasn't in it. He thinks its cowardice and fear and if he were a better person he would maybe understand but he just feels betrayed and used, dirty like a rag Zoya used to soak up her courage before she went to war.)
He doesn't get his moment. His life is a whirlwind and he cant stop, there's no button to press pause and the group is always with him, not a moment without Ayaan's hand hot on his shoulder or the silent rise and fall of Najmas breathing, the raucous, tangled laughter of Akram and Zoya, the weary eyes of Humeira.
So Asad takes it all in stride; he takes his heartache and shoves it down his pocket with tight fists, the nasty black blood dripping between his knuckles. As long as no one sees, he thinks, because its what the Asad they created would think, because he cant think let me leave and f**k f**k f**k.
He as no air left in his lungs to breathe, so he breathes with something else, the texts his mother sends and the books Ayaan forgets on the kitchen table, pages dog-eared, Najmas insults when she's tired and the smile on Humeiras face when she sees Nikhat on Skype at first, before she starts to annoy her. He doesn't love them because he has a choice, and Zoya, of course, Zoya and her laughter and her teeth and the way she bites own on an apple and the f**king hole in Asad's heart that's shaped like her -, not anymore; he loves them because it's the only thing that keeps him running, the f**king oil in his f**king tank.
He hates feeling like this.
But its not like he has a choice, so he sucks it up and tries not to wine when its sour, he keeps his shoulders straight and he tells himself that someone would have told him if heartache lasted forever.
***
Sometimes Asad wishes he didn't remember how he fell in love with Zoya. He thinks about his life before her, orderly and clean-cut with a smiling Tanveer and his friends on the front page of every family photo album he owned, and he thinks, why couldn't that be enough.
It didn't happen at once, either, you know, - and maybe that the worst of it, the torturous, drawn-out falling, arms and limbs flailing to try and catch something before hitting the ground. Its noticing the in the wisps of hair at the back of Zoya's nape, and not thinking her hair is too long and its wanting to kiss her when she mouths something funny at Akram.
Akram ' Asad hates himself for not being able to hate him. Everything could be easier if he could hate him, someone, but he cant, he can only hate himself for being so f**king stupid and thinking he had a shot at something so big, so beyond his understanding.
And Akram's the perfect candidate for self-destruction, of course. Its enough to look at his skin to know, the purpling bloom of his bruises, the pale white surface begging to be broken. He has it all ' the willowy bones and the slow drawl, the way he always takes everything for granted and then messes everything up, his near-misses and almost-theres and his eyes when he watches Zoya and he thinks no one is looking, soft, and almost tender, full of the hurricanes that their love cant go without.
Asad doesn't jump when Akram passes him the joint, too close to his face, almost close enough to burn.
"Its not easy, is it?" he says, smoke slipping out of his lips like foam.
Liar, Asad thinks.
"Its easy for you," he says, emboldened by the fumes twirling in the air, hiding Akram's eyes in a careful fog.
Akram laughs sharply. Asad hates the way they've fallen in love with each other and the way it f**king hurts, wishes he could've stopped it before it came to that point.
"No," he says simply.
It's the nights Asad is too tired that he passes out on Akram's lap and wakes up at three in the morning with a pounding headache, Akram breathing in his shoulder and love's a right bitch still sunning on a loop in his head.
***
It's the red night bleeding into day, one coke too many in their blood, and the red smear of someone's lipstick on Akram's lips. He'll never stop being who he is, it's evident, and Asad would like to tell Zoya, stay away, stay away and maybe even come back, but he doesn't. He's mute, Asad. He's a lake ' strong, silent, unmoving. Zoya is looking at him with the arrow sticking neatly from her chest, red dripping on her knuckles.
Akram slings a hand around her shoulders and kisses her. He doesn't care about the lookers. All the damage control is for him, Mr Asad Ahmed Khan, damage control even though he hasn't even fixed his own damages and f**k, f**k he feels like spitting blood and being mean.
"You taste good," Akram says, and he makes a low, mewling noise before pulling away and latching onto Zoya's neck, giving her a mouthful of hair to choke on.
Asad stands there, frozen, looking. He feels like a voyeur, but he can't help thinking, that used to be mine, and look how you ruin it. Look how you ruin it. He wonders what the ruins of Zoya will look like, red marble still smoking ashes and silver and the slashing onyx.
"You wanna join?" Akram laughs. He knows, he's seen, he was there, he just doesn't care, and that more than anything is what lights the last match and sets fire to the altar in Asad's ribcage.
"f**k you," he snarls, still reeling. "f**k you, f**k you, f**k you."
There are tears peeking from behind the flesh, the lake overwhelmed by the monsoon, a flood overtaking the shores. Asad is ashamed, and there's nothing more for him here. He didn't sign up for that, he didn't sign up for any of this.
"I'm leaving," he says. The words feels alien in his mouth, because he was never the one that left.
But here it is. He's leaving. It feels like a revelation, that he can leave, that he doesn't have to stay and watch this, watch them fall apart and pretend like he sees nothing. He's never meant anything more, he realizes.
"I'm leaving," he repeats.
He knows that they're watching, that they're waiting for him to turn on his heels, but he doesn't, he doesn't look back, he leaves, veins on fire, feeling blind.
(He comes back.
He looks at them from afar, every press of Akram's fingers on Zoya's body that inks a cigarette burn in her skin, and every kiss that makes Zoya shudder. He looks at them, wavering like a teeter-totter, never balanced, and wonders who will tip and fall first.)
Excuse any errors meh loves <3
I swear, eminems rain man needs to get outta mah head ASAP.
I'm running around saying:
"Cause I aint got no legs.
OR no brain.
Nice to meet you.
Hi my name is' I FORGOT MY NAME."
He was so f**ked when he was on drugs man.
Well, I hope you like mah two shot, and please leave a comment.
PWEASE.
Toodle doo <33
xx
Cricket
Arjun
Jhanak
Tum Se Tum Tak
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