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Hello folks! My first attempt at writing something for MeeVan. Hope you like it.
Dedicated to Chhaya, who's been like the awesomest buddy to me on this forum!! 🤗
~ Tanu
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Plot: Vivaan and Amaya go to the same cafe where Meera has gone for her college reunion and this is what happens.
Can I be completely honest with you for a minute, Vivaan Bhai?" Amaya asked as she sat down across from her brother at the cafe table.
Vivaan hadn't seen Amaya arrive at their table. He didn't even realize he had company until Amaya had spoken. Vivaan's attention was fixated too entirely on a point across the room. There was a chance that he wasn't aware of what he was agreeing to when he replied.
"Sure, Amaya."
Amaya leaned over the table and snapped her fingers directly in front of Vivaan's face. This finally broke him out of whatever trance he was in. Vivaan blinked and drew his brows together as he focused on Amaya.
"What?" Vivaan demanded.
"You're not fooling anyone," Amaya said.
Vivaan plucked a french fry off of Amaya's tray and dropped it in his mouth. "About what?"
"About what? You know exactly what I am talking about," Amaya said. When Vivaan reached for a second fry, she knocked the offending hand away. "No. You don't get any more of my fries if you're going to keep playing dumb. You can buy your own."
"I'm not-"
Amaya narrowed her eyes and kept her hand at the ready as Vivaan's hand began to creep back toward her lunch.
Vivaan pulled his hand back to his side of the table. "Fine, keep your fries. I'm not hungry anyway."
"Uh-huh," Amaya mumbled and started to dig into her food. With her mouth full of fries only half swallowed, she went on. "So, let's pretend you're not being a complete doofus, so we can have a mature conversation."
"You shouldn't start a mature conversation by talking with your mouth full," Vivaan replied with a grimace. "You're spitting potato."
Amaya wiped her mouth and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Mr. Manners. But let's try to stay on topic."
"What exactly is the topic?" Vivaan asked.
"You and your obsessive denial," Amaya said.
"Humor me," Vivaan tapped his fingers in rhythmic pattern on the table top. "What am I in denial about?"
Amaya's eyes wandered across the cafe until they landed on the spot Vivaan had been staring at earlier. Reflexively, Vivaan followed his sister's gaze and tried to maintain his neutral expression when he picked out what had been lined up in their sight. He turned back to the table and focused on an area where the paint on the table top had been scraped off. It was better than meeting Amaya's eyes, which were now boring into the top of his head. Amaya was not to be deterred though. A little resistance would not stop her. Amaya was a small yet powerful ball of fury when she was determined.
Amaya cleared her throat and Vivaan tried not to groan as he looked up again.
"You have feelings for Meera," Amaya said, and leveled a look at Vivaan that dared him to deny it again now that it had been said out loud. It was a look she had most likely learned from the aforementioned Punjabi spitfire.
Instead of trying to deny it or change the subject, Vivaan tried to evade it entirely by staying completely silent.
"I'm going to take your silence as tacit agreement," Amaya said, "and continue this conversation like we're both on the same page."
Vivaan continued to blink at her, giving not even the smallest facial tic to indicate what he was thinking behind his forced blank expression.
"Great, so here we go," Amaya clapped her hands once and rubbed them together like a genius. "You seem to think that pretty face of yours hides everything, but you've got tells, bro, loads of them. Anyone who looks closely enough can see it. You know, besides the fact that, before I came over here, you were literally staring at her for five straight minutes."
"I wasn't" Vivaan started.
There was that look again. It didn't look as good on Amaya. Vivaan actually preferred it on Meera, even though seeing it on her usually meant he was in real, deep trouble. There were a lot of things he liked better on Meera. The dress she was wearing that day, for instance. He had been staring at her long enough, while she chatted with her friends across the cafe, to notice that she was clothed entirely from Silky's closet. That meant there had probably been an impromptu sleepover the night before. It wasn't hard to figure out. This particular dress revealed so much of her shoulder that he hadn't been able to stop staring. Then she had laughed, tossing her head back, spilling all her masses of curls down her back. God's honest truth, he had been staring, but he wasn't the only one. Eyes from all over the room were attracted to her. He was far from Meera's only admirer. Of course, none of them had an Amaya breathing down their necks.
"Fine, I was staring," Vivaan admitted. "But that doesn't mean anything."
"Pfft," Amaya shook her head. "You always do this. You did this all through university with your crush, dancing around each her, but never admitting how you really felt, and ultimately missing your chance to be together."
"That was for the best, though," Vivaan said. "It wasn't meant to be. We weren't ready for anything real, and by the time we were, we were over each other."
"That's true," Amaya said. "But you had a crush on her. This thing with Meera, it's something different. It's something more."
"Look, Amaya"
"You've been doing this for almost three days now!" Amaya raised her voice so Vivaan couldn't interrupt her. "If the two of you keep skirting around each other like this, by the time her marriage rolls around, you'll have spun out of each other's orbit. You'll have missed your chance. And, bhai, I don't want to see that happen to two of my closest people."
"You're talking like all I have to do is walk up to her and tell her how I feel," Vivaan said. "You're forgetting that I could ask her and she could say no. She will say no. That's the whole reason I've never said anything. It's bad enough knowing that she doesn't feel the same. The last thing I need is to hear her say it out loud."
It had always been easier for Vivaan to deny his feelings for Meera: Deny, deny, deny was his mantra. Pretending he didn't like her hurt less than admitting that his feelings were unrequited. He didn't have to tell her how he felt to know it was one sided. Anyone with half a brain could tell that she didn't look at him as anything more than a friend. He only assumed that she didn't like him that way, because she obviously didn't. There would have been indicators if she did. Meera wouldn't have been able to hide it even if she wanted to. She wasn't built to keep those kinds of emotions to herself.
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