say you wont let go (ii)
rambheem modern au that is also loosely based on magadheera cause why the hell not (also, this story is very character heavy so if yall want some action, probably not the best place. however, it does get a lot more plot heavy later on)
(part i)
In the modern perception of time, there is the reality that is real, the reality that is projected, and sometimes, there is the reality in-between. That was where Ram was.
When he woke up, fingers digging into his mattress, he couldn’t tell which reality he had emerged into. He felt a tremendous distance between himself and everything he considered real and the darkness enshrouding his room didn’t help either.
Slices of moonlight filtered through the curtains as he gingerly stumbled out of bed, blindly reaching for the table lamp. He was in his house, this was his house, he had to remind himself. Not some three-by-three dungeon underground.
He wasn’t sure why he was having this dream (correction: nightmare), it was a recurring one, and he despised his brain for conceiving it in the first place but he couldn’t understand why it unsettled him so much either. It left him feeling claustrophobic, that was for sure, but what surprised him most was how real it all felt. He could feel the weight of those brick walls closing in on him, the rough gravel pressing into his skin. The scarlet taste of iron in his mouth, an undistinguishable pain all over his body, scars down his back.
He knew that they weren’t there, but they were there.
Sighing, he walked out of his bedroom, slipping on an old shirt when he froze, eyes taking in the sight of Bheem sprawled over his couch.
The younger man was dead asleep, the kind of sleep Ram craved for but knew that his body and guilt would not allow. Hand folded beneath his head, faint flickers of lamplight danced across his face, and, for a second he wasn’t sure whether Bheem was real to begin with.
He paused for a moment, breathing the sight in, savoring the reality of it and simultaneously, the absence of the reality of it. There was a dream-like quality to him, as though he weren’t sprawled in Ram’s nightmare home but rather, a half-forgotten garden in the background of an old Venetian film.
Loose curls of his hair framed his face and Ram had to resist the urge to go over and collapse onto that couch with him, to allow himself the comfort of his presence next. He couldn’t cross that line again, he had to remind himself.
“God,” he sighed, half to himself and half to the Bheem he wasn’t sure was real, “How did we get here?”
—
Months earlier, Ram had first met Bheem beneath a crying rooftop.
He wasn’t sure what it was that he had seen when they first shook hands, glimpses of memories that did not belong to him yet felt like they had existed within him longer than he could have fathomed. The name Akhtar echoed in his head for days after that first encounter, something holy like a prayer but also cautionary like a midwife’s tale. He wasn’t sure how to process it at first but eventually, he learned to live with it.
In the present (or the past’s version of the present), their simple conversation had left him deeply intrigued. He knew immediately that Bheem was one of those people who carried their hearts on their sleeves, had a righteousness to him that shamed his own thinly diced morals, and probably valued people more than they deserved it. Like him.
He couldn’t help but laugh when Bheem told him why he was in court in the first place. Of course, his black and white morality had chosen to exact justice through violence. He was intrigued by how straightforward yet fair Bheem’s thought process was. That security guard had hurt those animals, and so, he too deserved to be hurt. Every action has a consequence, even ones that are unearthed in the aftermath of the storm and toed on morally gray grounds.
Ram would have otherwise scoffed at that line of thinking, his grayscale perspective a lifetime away from Bheem’s, but he couldn’t help but admire the resilience and passion with which he spoke. He made for an interesting companion, and he couldn’t but revel in the secret language of eye smiles and half-omitted laughter they communicated in.
Every Friday, Bheem would show up outside his office, both marveling and hating the corporate glass monstrosity that his law firm was. Conversely, Ram wasn’t particularly attached to the company and didn’t feel the passion for it that Bheem felt for his own non-profit. God, could the two of them be any more different?
They’d drive around the city, Bheem showing him hidden alcoves that Ram would never have discovered himself. A half-forgotten construction site with art blossoming within it like a welcome weed, an old tea store tucked into the back of a crowded street, and whatever natural fancy that he undertook that week.
“Have you ever experienced deja vu?”
“What-” Bheem turns to him, eyebrows scrunched while his brown eyes pooled with confusion, a sight that tugged at Ram’s heartstrings. God, his eyes were so so beautiful.
“Whenever I’m with you,” he continues, a rush of words from his mouth, “It feels so unfamiliar, I know I’ve not already lived this, yet, somehow, I simultaneously feel like I’ve already experienced all of this or at least some aspects of it, you know, and I just- I don’t know. It’s so confusing, and I’m not sure why or how you fit into all of this or whether I’m the only one who feels this-”
Silence.
Or rather, a silencing of everything save the pulse of their racing heart as Bheem moulds his lips against his.
It’s a rushed kiss, unexpected, clumsy, and uncertain but there was nothing deja vu about this kiss. He tastes like the sugarcane juice they’d had earlier, sudden saccharine sunbursts erupting in his mouth and he couldn’t help but melt into the embrace of their bodies fitting into one another like lost puzzle pieces. And, then, all of a sudden, there is space and a flash of memories.
Time flows differently when there is space suspended within a house of longing.
Akhtar and Ram had built a house of longing with space between the two of them that was forever evolving, it was the six feet between their chairs as they laughed in the living room, the distance of a friendly arm when they walked down the city streets, the three inches as they moved around the kitchen, the centimetres as Akhtar drove the motorbike.
It was space that was empty save for their longing.
“Anna, what are you thinking about?” Akhtar’s words are tentative, fingers instinctively reaching to brush out a loose strand of hair from Ram’s face but hovering mid-air, hesitating. His grip over Akhtar tightened for a second, almost as though he were afraid of letting go before briefly turning his head to glance back at him.
“It’s nothing, Akhtar,” Ram offers him a weak smile.
The two of them were returning from the party, blisters burnt into their feet and adrenaline ebbing from their veins. Bheem bit back on his words, briefly hating the fact that the older man was oblivious to his true name. He thought of the half-smile that reached Ram’s eyes when they danced, and the charming rhythm of his hands, the intensity of his eyes, and that space between his shoulder and neck that was designed to hold someone’s head. These were thoughts that made up the pillars and bones of their house of longing.
Ram, on the other hand, thought of Jenny and her jewelery-adorned neck, of her floral dresses and pastel chiffon gowns, of her dainty fingers and her snowglobe laugh. Now, that was someone he could see Akhtar falling in love with. A woman. She had the refined beauty of a poet’s muse, the kind of smile that you could evoke in art and his offer of a lifetime of conflict and scars paled in comparison to the life of beauty and grace that Jenny had constructed.
Their thoughts arrive at the cross-roads of reality when Jenny’s car came to a halt in front of them, the engine still humming with heat as she invited Akhtar to tea, to join her in her car.
Akhtar glances back at Ram, a question in his eyes, should I go?
And all he wants to do is say no. No, don’t go. Stay here with me, where you belong. This is the house you and I have built so don’t you dare abandon me in its verandah. However, Ram knows he can not say those words. Can not tell this man his truth for their house of longing is built on sand and if anyone should be able to escape it, it should be him. It should be Akhtar.
“Go,” he smiles, lightly squeezing Akhtar’s shoulder, “Go, have fun.”
His hands briefly brush against his, eyes drinking in the details on his face. While the gentle thrum of life continues to pulsate through their veins, it is undeniable that something between them dies that day, something irrevocably lost to that chasm of unspoken words.
Their house of longing was no longer a home, but rather, the graveyard housing their corpse.
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