Arhi FF |Mohabat Door Jaane Na De| *Complete!* #2 - Page 31

AAAH how good it feels to be back on this thread again!!! Exams finally over!! I'm freee :D :D

First off, really sorry that I've not updated this FF for nearly a month now :s But I had to focus on my exams- how I did in these A levels is gonna determine which uni I get into, so I hope you understand!

Plus, I'm a little bit unsure about the way I picked up here...it might appear inconsistent with chapter30, coz its been ages since I wrote it...plus I literally came home from my last exam today and typed this out. So I might edit it afterwards depending on feedback...

And in my excitement I completely forgot Anjali and Shyamu and...everyone except Arhi basically :P

Anyways, since it's been so very long...please leave feedback to let me know what you think?

Chapter Thirty One

"It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, that have need of love"- An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde

Arnav was exhausted.

As the bathroom door swung shut behind him, Arnav dabbed away at the remnants of water across his face with the towel slung about his shoulders. Heaving a sigh, he pressed the plush material against his closed eyelids, his body slowly beginning to acknowledge the telltale signs of fatigue he had been ignoring steadfastly since that morning. Along with what could easily have been an acute sense of dejection.

Arnav allowed his long, arduous day to catch up with him, the gloom seeping through to lace the exhaustion laying siege to his muscles. Despite his meticulous planning, he had ultimately ended up reaching home rather late- and without having accomplished the task he had set for himself. He had speculated that, leaving work at three in the afternoon and with around half an hour factored in for the time he would spend on the road, there would an entire, spacious hour for him to go about the special little project he had spent the whole of last night strategising in his head, the sole reason he had nearly worked himself down into the ground so he could clear his schedule and leave work early. He had been convinced that he would get home at a reasonable enough time, not too early to provoke even more corny comments from his wisecracking sister, and more importantly, not to arouse anyone's suspicions about what he was up to.

It had been a foolproof plan.

Or, at least, that was what he had thought until he had actually gotten round to making his pitstop before home. Where he had wound up spending nigh on two hours harassing an elderly man, terrorising his assistants and fuming with an unnecessarily foul mood.

Now that he thought about it, it made him a little guilty. A couple of months ago, Arnav would never have thought twice about threatening someone's job and livelihood to make sure that whatever it was he wanted done, would be done, and would be done right. But then again, a couple of months ago he would have questioned the sanity of anyone who told him that Arnav Singh Raizada would be taking such degrees of personal initiative for someone that wasn't his Di, leaving work early, spending two hours shouting at people he had met for the first time that day, rejecting all suggestions timidly presented for his approval while bombarding someone as old as Mamaji with fastidious details about exactly what he wanted done and how- or else.

But he managed to shrug off that guilt without too much trouble. Wherever Khushi was concerned, his attention would be nothing but fastidious, nothing but pernickety. And this was important. This was...crucial. He wanted his surprise for Khushi to be a perfect, concrete, identical manifestation of what he had visualised- there was no room for error. At least now, he thought to himself, a smile automatically blooming across his face, now he could console himself with the thought that every aspect of his surprise for Khushi, their first milestone in the road they were to traverse together, had been bestowed with his own touch, his own devoted attention. So what if he had to wait another twenty four hours for the result? It would be worth the wait.

And allowing himself to be consoled, Arnav had managed to drag his fatigued self further into the room when his senses suddenly shook off their sluggishness, abruptly alert. They tuned in, with undeniable precision, to the presence of the only person in the world that could bring every nerve in his body alive.

He hadn't seen her since that morning.

Arnav, in his hurry to close the distance between himself and the glass doors separating him from the poolside, where he knew without being told, without the witness of his eyes, his wife would be, did not notice the adrenaline that jetted through his veins, a thrill that was becoming increasingly familiar shaking the sleep out of his limbs. Anticipation curled up tightly into a ball in the pit of his stomach, slowly clenching and unclenching as he practically flung his towel carelessly towards his recliner without stopping to see if it reached his target.

Completely oblivious of the protesting jangle of the glass door as he thrust it aside, Arnav almost stumbled onto the poolside in his unthinking haste, the conscious half of his mind failing completely to keep up with the subconscious now pulling the strings controlling his limbs.

And there she was.

Arnav watched, the exhaustion, the moroseness, the distemper, the sudden instinctive impatience being crowded out by quiet, restful tranquillity that blanketed him gently, the slight figure wheeling about to face him, startled from his abrupt entry. Dressed in liquid-berry and glazed green, her cream white skin infused suddenly with just the right hint of rose to make his mouth water, her dewy lips parting in surprise her as her coffee black eyes flashed towards him.

Summer berries and clotted cream.

She looked almost edible.

Perhaps it was because he had spent so much time, so much energy, so much effort into keeping himself away from Khushi, distancing himself from her, pushing her back into the darkest corners of his subconscious in the past, that he had never truly allowed himself to look at her. He had seen her, yes, but always stopped short of allowing that entrancing spell surrounding her capturing him completely, except perhaps on that fateful Diwali night, when he had made possibly the most horrendous miscalculation he could have. And now, without any incentive to keep him from willingly surrendering to Khushi's undeniable allure, he could not get used to just how- breathtaking- how impossibly gorgeous she was.

Or perhaps it was just because he finally knew he was in love.

Whatever the case, it took Arnav a while before he realised that Khushi, colouring further under the unrelenting assail of his eyes, was clasping a rectangular plastic box with both hands before she cleared her throat, tentatively. Almost as though bobbing up above the surface of the water, Arnav felt some of the magic the scene was woven in dispel, his eyes focusing on the box that Khushi had lifted somewhat to catch his attention.

'I was thinking,' she mumbled, evidently embarrassed, 'that maybe we need to...uh...change y-your b-bandage.'

She didn't manage to meet his eyes, but the rose in her cheeks flared.

Just as something equally warm, equally overwhelming, equally forceful blazed alive within him, as though a geyser had suddenly exploded from within, swathing him in something invigorating, refreshing, something that could only be described as...pure, unadulterated- joy.

She had been thinking about him. About his cut. About his wellbeing.

Just like he had been thinking about her...all day.

She had been waiting here for him.

As he began to advance, his tiredness a near-forgotten memory, it occurred to Arnav how- wonderful- a feeling this was. How wonderful it felt when someone you cared for, worried about, loved with the very essence of your soul, cared for you, worried for you. Hope's wings spread wide as it circled about him in broader and broader arcs, the gust billowing about him from overenthusiastic flight. How incredible it truly felt when something as small as a gesture or a few soft spoken words could convey more meaning than volumes upon volumes of all fathomable words in the universe.

And as he advanced, he noticed that instead of the almost ritualistic stumbling backwards of Khushi that he was accustomed to, tonight, fighting to look at everything except him, the blush against her cheeks deepening with every passing second, shuffling nervously at the edge of the deckchair...she was standing her ground.

The dragonfly no longer wanted to fly away.

***

Khushi's heart seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her mouth as she struggled to fight the mad urge to run as Arnav neared her.

This was crazy.

If she had believed that there was no way she could be more aware of his presence around her than she already was, she was wrong. Something fundamental had once again changed between them, as though the wavelength of that mysterious connection that bound them together had changed frequencies once more. The air itself seemed to recompose itself, suddenly seeming to tingle with a vivacious spirit, more insistent than ever before, that had been lacking there before. And stranger still...

That stringent tug of war that forever lasted within her, a tussle between her mind and her heart thrusting her into the pits of confusion, that stretched her nerves to breaking point and rendered her helpless, befuddled, was at an end. Mind had lost its footing, and had gracefully accepted defeat, and stood now behind an exulting heart cheering and rejoicing at its victory, prepared to join in the festivities. This was a situation Khushi was not familiar with, and, watched almost suspiciously the strange amicable relations between two former nemeses, not knowing exactly how to deal with this new state of affairs.

Not that she had much chance to think about it, as Arnav had just seated himself at one end of the deckchair, looking up at her expectantly.

Gulping, Khushi controlled her shaking with difficulty as she followed suit, gingerly sitting down at the very edge of the deckchair, placing the first aid box she had been cradling as she had waited, her entire being possessed by an exhilaration that both terrified and thrilled her, for Arnav to come out, between them.

Ever since her conversation with Bauji that morning, ever since her heart had leapt down that brightly lit, welcomingly warm corridor towards the slowly opening door of her destiny, Khushi had been in a daze. It was an odd amalgamation of very potent, very poignant emotions that had encompassed her completely; that twisting and turning and heaving, like the gentle splashing of water against a rocky shore, that enveloped her whenever she thought about Arnavji, the curious way the slate of her mind would be wiped blank whenever she did, accompanied by a simultaneous hue and cry her heart would collapse into...all of these sensations she had known and felt and tried to decipher from a long time ago.

But all day today, after she had returned home in the afternoon, all through lunch, in the evening as she spent hours aimlessly traipsing up and down the empty passageways of the Raizaida House, Khushi had, for the first time, not tried to restrain herself. She had allowed herself to be inundated by these fresher, newer, exhilarating sensations more fully than ever before, not attempting to push the intractable locomotives of her mind to find the corresponding track to explain what it all meant. And all day, the one thought that her heart kept steering her back to was...When was he going to come home?

With the silent feud between her heart and her mind at an end, Khushi had no other way of denying that eagerness, that wistfulness which imbued her senses into a drugged high whenever it took that direction. She could no longer deny that strange, thrilling expectation, a mixture of trepidation and eagerness, with which she had unintentionally counted down the hours until he would come home, not understanding why, not bothering to.

Listen to your heart, Bauji had advised her...and her heart could not care less about the whys and the wherefores. All her heart knew was that it had grown used to his being around her, and now, without him there, she felt his absence so acutely it could easily have been a hole ripped into a part of herself and scooped out, empty. Once again, her candour disarmed her. Not to mention scandalising her to the point that a permanent blush painted her face all day, making her jittery and jumpy and nothing short of a nervous wreck.

Mustering all her courage, Khushi pried off the lid of the box and her fumbling fingers groped to unwind a fresh roll of gauge. Every particle of her body, every inch of her skin, seemed to be a lit candlewick, dancing and flickering, as she timidly reached out one hand for Arnavji's.

He complied silently. Willingly.

How could the silence say so much?

Khushi's fingers trembled as she, gently, undid the bandage she had wrapped carefully about his wound the previous evening. As the filmy material fell away, Khushi suddenly felt a pebble-sized lump grow in her throat, painfully wedging there, as a single cube of ice varnished in dread slid against the inner walls of her heart. She was not sure she was prepared to see that cut again. That gash across his skin had scarred her thoughts to the point of rending them apart, sending her scuttling for the first aid box in the first place...

'It doesn't hurt', the soft murmur startled her into looking up. To meet a pair of luminescent twin flames burning unwaveringly back at her.

Listen to your heart...

Her heart needed to reassurance. Her heart needed to know he was not in pain. Because if he was, that hurt that she was carrying about her was going to implode, and take her down with it. Unconsciously, Khushi's eyes sought that reassurance in his eyes, desperate.

'Seriously, Khushi', something firm and warm, something familiar, wrapped itself about her quivering, cold fingers, 'It doesn't hurt at all. I'd even forgotten all about it.' The warmth permeated through her skin, thawing the little ice cube chilling her from within, and captivated by the honesty burning through his honey-gold orbs to her, she nodded once slowly before carefully turning his hand over so that his palm faced her.

She breathed a sigh of relief. The wound had closed...still not completely dried, but half healed. It caused her a twinge regardless, but at least it expunged that haunting memory of his palm stained red with blood, a slash across his flesh...Dragging in a calming breath, Khushi set about cleaning the cut again with disinfectant, being as gentle as she could possibly be so it would not sting, before re-doing the bandage. Throughout the whole process, Arnav remained silent. But silence, which had a trick of being stifling, was doing the opposite tonight. The only sound was his regular, rhythmic breathing, and Khushi felt her frenzied, overwrought heartbeat fall into step with it.

Serenity settled. That instinctive, perhaps natural fear against the tumult of feelings so intense they threatened to combust, and take her with them, unlike anything she had ever experienced, or even thought herself capable of experiencing, ebbed away in the silence of the night. The stars overhead twinkled. The pinpricks of sapphires from the poolside frolicked against the walls. A cool breeze swept over them, Arnavji's plants swaying gently against it, whispering to one another.

Khushi was at peace with herself.

***

Arnav waited almost breathlessly, a tiny part of him expecting Khushi to bolt as soon as she was done bandaging his hand.

But a more insistent part confidently assured him that nothing like that would happen. It had latched onto that aura of...tranquillity, almost, that was radiating from Khushi. She seemed almost peaceful as she wrapped the last of the gauge about his palm, as though finally convinced that he wasn't in pain. He had been watching, almost hypnotised, fascinated, the play of emotions flitting across her face. She was so transparent, his Khushi- the shyness, the reservations, the sudden dread, the pain, the relief, all slid smoothly across her features, like the bursts of sunlight as clouds of thick-cotton wool lazily drifted across the sky.

Just like looking through fine crystal.

And all those emotions, all those pure feelings, were because of him. For him. His heart swelled with an unnamed gratitude, to her, to luck, to chance, to hope, to who knew what else...

His relationship with Khushi had undoubtedly come a long way in the space of just a few days. And despite the fact that he had wanted it, wanted it with a desperation that left him charred, bent, almost broken...now that he could see the fruit of his efforts, his genuine, sincere efforts, he might have keeled over under the onslaught of the sheer gladness that robbed all his faculties of their functions, as he watched the layers of defences Khushi had sewn about herself come easily undone, one by one, slowly, yet certainly, steadily...naturally, effortlessly...watched as she slowly allowed herself to be closer to him, slowly allowed him to be closer to her...

He swallowed hard.

'Arnavji?' a soft, timorous little whisper. Her beautiful, innocent face turned up towards him, luminescent like moonlight against a velvety black night sky, the sheen of her hair. Her eyes were wide, searching his face, inquisitive.

'What's wrong, Khushi?' Arnav inquired, his tone mirroring his curiosity. Why did she look so...concerned?

'You look- tired,' she observed, a slight frown marring her forehead. Her tone as almost accusatory, 'You've got dark shadows under your eyes.' She did not sound all too pleased, her brow furrowed as she continued to look up at him expectantly.

Almost as though she knew that she had a right for an explanation. Almost as though she knew she did not need to demand one.

The corner of Arnav's lips hitched upwards of its own accord as a comforting warmth coursed through him from head to toe.

***

He left early this morning, and I'm not even sure whether he had eaten his breakfast properly...and on top of that he came home so late...even Di was saying that when she called him in the morning he hung up quickly saying he had lots of work to do...I wonder if he ate lunch? Knowing this laad governor, I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to skip lunch for his beloved work. Honestly, look at how tired he looks! Bags under his eyes, his shoulders slumped...maybe I should go make some tea for him? Or should I ask him if he's hungry? But then, it's almost dinner time anyway...a snack maybe? Then maybe he should just go to bed immediately. Unless he opens up that laptop of his again. Seriously, he's in love with that thing. He should've gotten married to it instead of-

Somewhere along the lines of these thoughts, rattling down the train tracks of her mind like wildfire, it occurred to Khushi that she was staring intently, and very pointedly, into her husband's face, none too happy with how the haggardness was written clearly across it. And she didn't miss the smirk, that well-known smirk, alight upon his lips, stealing her breath once more.

Dhak dhak. Dhak dhak. Dhak dhak.

The lights in his eyes were dancing. Khushi forgot to be embarrassed, caught in the magic of those cavorting flames.

His eyes were laughing.

Khushi felt her windpipe begin to compress without warning, struggling and failing in the basic task of inhaling. Despite the sudden realisation that she was almost gaping at Arnav, she couldn't look away. Mind had humbly retreated to the background, courteously leaving the path open to heart, that strange electric current, singeing them both, blazing between them. Khushi could not blink.

The intensity of his eyes, the way they seemed to reach straight into the very depths of her being, the way they seemed to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling, without her ever having to verbalise it, always left her feeling defenceless, vulnerable. She could barely hold eye contact with him long enough. But for some reason, as his laughing eyes beckoned hers to join in their waltz, Khushi felt her heart take the initiative.

Listen to your heart...

Heart did not want to look away. Khushi was on the verge of suffocation, having completely forgotten how to breathe. All she could do was keep staring, the curtains of her eyes refusing to drop. His hair, normally strictly disciplined with liberal amounts of hair-gel, or else carefully combed away from his forehead, was a little damp from when he had been freshening up. A couple of strands hung over his forehead, almost reaching the bridge of his nose. For some strange, some insane reason, Khushi had this irresistible urge to reach up and run her fingers through his hair, brush away the cowlick...the almost roughish look it gave him was making her stomach knot uncomfortably. If she didn't regain the use of her lungs soon, she would pass out.

And that smirk...the way those lips would just twitch upwards in a lopsided smile, so very suggestive in their mischief Khushi could feel her blood catch fire as though a lit matchstick had been dropped into a trail of petrol. The way the muscles about his lean jaw flexed as he smirked...and now her hands were itching, burning with curiosity to know how his stubbled cheek would feel...coarse, bristly against her skin maybe...

'Khushi,' that mouth murmured quietly, breaking into her drugged thoughts, sending them scattering like the petals of an old rose caught by a sudden gust of wind, 'What are you thinking about?'

And while mind had given heart a free reign, it now smugly returned to the forefront to play for heart's benefit a detailed replay of what she had been thinking. The knot in her stomach tightened hard as air poured straight into her lungs in a whoosh, feeling the violent thudding of her heart pumping blood straight up into her face, feeling almost as though she would be boiled alive. She was scandalised, shocked, and very close to being downright traumatised.

Hai Devi Maiyya! What was that? What was I thinking? I- he- I- what- Breathe, Khushi, breathe...never...never before...

And just like petals of a rose in a gust of wind, the fragments of threadbare thought travelled in so many different directions that Khushi was left wide-eyed and frozen by the poolside, shocked, doused in disbelief at the way her own mind had uncovered other corridors that she had never even known had existed. And she didn't know how to feel about that.

'Well, Khushi? What are you thinking about?'

There was no mistaking the note of knowing laughter, pure mischief, in that question.

And Khushi said the first thing that came to her head.

'I was just wondering whether you broke the main tap in the guestroom bathroom?'

***

Whatever Arnav had expected, he had not expected that. He gawked at her, almost dumbfounded, for nearly a half a minute before registering what she had asked him.

And now she was looking up at him unabashedly, waiting for his answer. The eagerness flickering in the tempestuous brown black of her beautiful doe eyes.

How could he refuse anything to those eyes?

And trying hard to control the look of sheepishness that threatened to break loose across his expression, Arnav simply nodded once in the affirmative, stiffly.

Khushi stared at him for one long minute.

Before biting her lip.

But this was not the usual lip-biting that was a symptom of consternation or anxiety or nervousness around Khushi. Arnav watched, almost disbelievingly, as the corners of her lips twitched uncontrollably as she sucked in her lower lip, a new glow stealing into her pale cheeks...watched as her shoulders suddenly started to shake...before she turned away from him and gave up all attempts to control herself.

And burst out laughing.

She doubled over, her hair swinging forward to interfere with that breathtaking sight of Khushi, eyes shut, cheeks aglow, lips turned upwards in that bright, sunny smile that lit up his shadowy world in an instant. He watched, awe-struck, as she straightened again, throwing her head back, eyes opening briefly at the sky, glistening with mirth. The wind danced to the music of her laugh, his plants rustled in melodious accompaniment. The lights of the poolside bounced off the shimmering surface of the pool, capering about Khushi like a little fireflies gathered to hear that same sound that Arnav thirsted for.

He had made her laugh. She was laughing because of him. For him.

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The tenderness with which he had started to handle her made a lump grow painfully in her throat."

Wow. And the kiss. She didnt run away or attack him - verbally or otherwise! YAY! :)