#yes they are going to tell namo eventually. probably right after this even

[sollucets]

okay i’m finally here to give you a prompt HSKDKSDK first of all congrats on the milestone!!! secondly, i’m thinking akkayan + 24+25 for the touch prompts? i saw those ones and immediately thought of them hanging out with kanthua + namowat and a sensitive topic for one of them comes up?

hi liz ✨✨ im finally here to give you a fic! this was a lovely prompt thank u very much 💜

24 + 25 (whispering in their ear, lips touching the skin + stroking their arm soothingly); set somewhere in the back half of e12, probably; about 1.4k of group reflection

💜

“Did you all see Aunt Waree smiling today?” Namo asks into the silence.

Akk glances up from his book. Their entire group is sprawled across various surfaces in one of the common areas of Akk and Wat’s shared dorm building, exam prep supplies scattered all around them across the furniture and the generic patterned carpet. 

To Akk’s left, Aye is tucked into the corner of a moderately-comfortable couch, a notepad propped up against his legs and his laptop balanced precariously on the armrest. He’s changed out of his uniform and into a soft-looking, pale green t-shirt. Akk thinks his lips might be shinier than before, too, but he’s really trying not to check too much. It’s been happening more often recently, the lip gloss, and it makes Akk — well. Not study.

Across from them, Kan and Thua are sitting squished together on a loveseat, both out of their uniform jackets and excessively cuddly, and Namo and Wat take up another couch. Wat sits normally, but Namo is on his back and half-sprawled across the rest of the cushions, legs nearly in Wat’s lap. 

They’re the only ones in the room; if Akk’s tenuous reputation with the Suppalo populace combined with Wat and Kan’s overprotective posturing has done them any good, it’s that any space they take up on or even near campus usually gets given a wide berth. 

“Yeah, right,” Kan says dryly, not even bothering to look up. For the most part they’ve been surprisingly industrious given the group composition, but somebody has been interrupting at almost-clockwork fifteen-minute intervals the entire time. Himself and Thua aside, most of his friends don’t have the best attention span; Aye does, actually, but he seems to be perfectly fine with interruptions as long as he gets to pester Akk during them. 

“No, for real,” Namo insists, letting his book drop open onto his chest. Akk winces. He could at least use a bookmark. “When she came into class, she was all smiley, and she even said good morning to us before the head of cl— before class got called into session. I didn’t know she could do that.” 

His last-minute word swap is likely for the sake of Thua, who’d lost his position after his suspension. To Akk, it doesn’t seem like Thua really cares about that, but they’ve all been doing kind of a lot of sidestepping around each other’s issues in group settings. Some of them are better at it than others. 

Akk has talked, one-on-one, with most of his friends; he’s cried embarrassingly into Wat’s shoulder, let Kan hit him then hug him, let Thua say whatever he needed to despite Aye’s disapproval and came out of it with the same fire-forged understanding he’d had before. He isn’t sure if the others have done something close to the same, but when they’re all together there’s an unspoken agreement to leave it alone. A group delusion, maybe, pretending that they’re normal high schoolers for just a little longer. 

Finally, Wat looks up, casting Namo a sidelong glance. “No, he’s right, I saw it. It is pretty odd, but she’s just always been the kind of person who’s very careful about her image.” 

Akk, for his part, had not seen it. Before class started today Aye had kicked him under their shared desk, and when he’d reflexively kicked back he’d gotten an inexplicably softer one in return, and then again until he realized they were just nudging each other back and forth and Aye had a silly little smile on his face (and he had one too, probably, definitely). He was not paying attention. 

So that’s why he’s mildly offended when Aye chimes in. “I saw it too.” Their eyes meet briefly, and Akk doesn’t know how to object without admitting to being embarrassing, so he’s still just frowning aimlessly when Aye continues, “She’s really been a lot more relaxed lately. Maybe she feels freer.” He doesn’t sound happy about it.

Akk gets it, he thinks; he’s had enough practice on the other end of this particular Aye habit. It’s just him being all empathetic despite himself again. He still wants to be angry with her, and he’d deserve to be, after all the school’s teachers did to him, but he can’t help seeing it from her side even though he’d really rather not. 

Wat, apparently noticing the shift in mood, sounds more subdued when he says, “I mean, it really wasn’t always so bad. Our teachers are strict, it’s— the culture, but I think it got worse this year. With— everything.” 

Akk winces. Everyone is looking up now, Kan’s face set in those serious lines that suit him surprisingly well and Thua’s eyes unreadable under his lashes. 

Uncharacteristically, Namo’s half-smile goes more sincere. “You’re right,” he says honestly. “It was better when Teacher Dika was here.”

Thua’s eyes snap to Namo and Wat’s eyes snap to Aye and Kan’s mouth half-opens as they all simultaneously realize that there’s only one person in the room who wasn’t in a different room all that time ago. He doesn’t know. 

Before he can think about it, Akk is already reaching out to put a hand on Aye’s arm. He hasn’t moved, or said anything, but Akk finds him tense under his touch, staring at a fixed point in the distance that isn’t quite Namo. His hair is coming unstyled a little, a strand falling into his eyes. 

Namo doesn’t seem to notice the temperature dropping just yet. He genuinely looks thoughtful as he continues, “Even if he was a junior teacher, it sets an example. Like Teacher Sani now.”

Akk lets his fingers travel down Aye’s bicep, hoping to get any reaction at all. He’s rewarded with Aye turning to look up at him; after a moment, his eyes seem to focus back in from wherever he’d gone to look at Akk’s face. 

“Namo,” starts Wat, sounding uncertain, but he’s interrupted. 

Swallowing audibly, Aye looks across to Namo and asks, “How was it better?” 

“Oh, right, you wouldn't have been here,” Namo says cheerily. “He was an English teacher, but he worked in student welfare, too. Not that I was there all the time, of course,” he adds after a moment, in an immediately suspicious way. “But he was a really nice guy, even when he would’ve had every reason to scold people, and I think other staff saw that.” 

That sits there in the air for a moment, until, quietly, Thua says, “He always had these jokes on the whiteboard in his office, in English, that he’d explain all the parts of even if you didn’t ask.”

Aye laughs a little at that. It’s more breath than sound, and it looks like it startles him; Akk gives in to his own urge to comfort and puts his arm fully around his boyfriend, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. Instantly, Aye leans into it, soft against Akk’s side even as his notes slide haphazardly out of his lap.

Kan, having clearly seen them, starts loudly trying to remember one of Teacher Dika’s whiteboard jokes, exaggeratedly mispronouncing the words to make Thua giggle. Grateful, Akk takes the opportunity to dip his head and move even closer. His lips brush skin as he murmurs into Aye’s ear, “You’re alright?” 

In his hold, Aye wiggles a little, probably ticklish, and says, “I think so. Mostly.” It comes out wondering, like he hadn’t been sure, like he’d expected it to hurt more. “I— he did that at home, too. He had printed-out lists.”

That doesn’t surprise Akk. It makes sense, he thinks, for Teacher Dika to have tried to show as much of himself as he could have. And Namo’s right; they had seen that, for better and for worse. He wouldn’t blame Aye if he never forgave anyone for what they’d done with that, if he stood up right now and demanded they shut up about him, if he said it wasn’t like they had any right to his memory. Akk certainly doesn’t feel like he does, some days. 

Aye doesn’t do any of that. He just curls all the way into Akk, breathes intentionally even, and listens to them talk with a contemplative expression on his face. The others cast sidelong glances at him from time to time, worried, and then less, and then they’re moving on, eventually getting back to what they’re supposed to be here for. 

But Aye stays tucked comfortable and close, refusing to move when they have to arrange their notes again, even though it’s not like Akk was letting go. Their friends make fun of them, but only gently, the same way they’d do for anyone else, and that too is different now. 

[sosaidakshita]

The Final Goodbye

Dear (It doesn’t matter)

Its been almost a week since we ‘broke up’.

This  is not a rant for me to vent out frustration or make you feel small.  Not very long ago, all I had to was pick up the phone and call you. It feels very strange talking to you like this.  You can totally ignore this if you want to. Maybe its the writer in me who just has to put down my thoughts. It’s not been the easiest thing to do, but I just had to.  Maybe this is my own way of saying everything I thought I couldn’t, and probably gaining some sense of closure.

Lets start with the good. When you walked into my life 5 months ago, I had no idea that this would be such a whirlwind journey. Or that you would impact my life in more ways that I could ever imagine. I knew you were different from the time I met you. Ambitious,passionate yet reserved and humble. However, I can say that the third time (when you came to dinner)I met you, I knew you had come into my life for a reason. And falling for someone is something I would have never done with someone else probably. And as cheesy as this may sound, I lovedloved you from the time we started dating. And As I got to know you, weekend after weekend after weekend, my conviction in our relationship only increased, and even a realistic, practical girl like me started believing in happily ever afters. I had always thought that I would end up with someone like me, but you made me start believing in opposites attracting.

In the 3 months we spent together, I saw so many different facets of you. Your workaholic side. Your affectionate, caring side. The adventurous soul behind the otherwise reserved personality. Your happiness at finding good dessert. Your excitement when you’re wearing new socks. Your emotional side when you talk about your family.  And while I did get also get a sense of your weaknesses, and also understand that you were so different from me, I did start feeling that we could be together.

I had never ever thought things between us would go downhill like this, very ironically not because of any lapse on our part, but external circumstances. And that we will fall apart like this. I started feeling things being amiss ever since you landed in Calcutta. When on my birthday night you told me that i was overreacting and that you were still not sure about how you felt about us, you might as well have slapped me, because up until then I was under the impression that you wanted me to meet your family and were very serious about this.  When I walked into Vermilion that day, I had planned to talk about to you about how crucial the next 3-4 months were going to be for our relationship, and how I wanted to be strong for you particularly because of your brothers situation, and how I felt that we needed to stick by each other in these tough times. Little did I anticipate that you had actually planned something so different. While I could sense that there was tension in our relationship, I was very saddened by how you had just decided that this was practically the end, and just left me to face your decision, without even asking me how I felt about all of this. Right now, I still don’t know what the main issue is, whether you don’t think that fighting your family for me is worth it, or you believe in the astrology stuff, or whether you’re genuinely second thoughts about us.

If the astrology stuff is the issue, I'd have been willing to take on the stars and moons and planets, not out of some anger, but because I firmly believed that this is not fair. When two people want to be with each other, it's their mental and emotional compatibility that should matter primarily. You determine your future by actions of your present, not events of your past. There could have been a situation where there would have been people pointing fingers at us, telling us that they told us so. But there is equally a chance that we would've been fine, in which case we would probably have been an example for many people who let their future be decided by their past, rather than their own conviction in themselves. Maybe our story could have inspired people that tradition should be something that provides solid ground for you to fly, not a crutch to hold you down. And I was willing to take that chance. You weren’t . And thats fine. While we have a common connection, I think what caused this is the fact that we both come from different backgrounds and value systems. You, from one where there is respect for tradition, and family relationships. Mine, where there is freedom of thought and expression. And there’s no rule that we must share the same beliefs and outlooks.

Trust me I really, really wanted it to work. Even if it meant doubting my own instinct and trusting yours. Or not telling Rahul, which really made me feel bad. Or even considering the idea of adapting to a life, family and culture that was so different from mine. Somehow, because having you in the end, seemed all worth it. And because all of this was my decision, I don’t expect you to give me any explanation or justification.

Yes, some part of me feels very hurt, let down and sad. Angry at you for having believed and bought the proposition that my existence would be harmful for your well-being. Upset at having just taken the decision that we must separate, without even having discussed this with me once. i always thought of us a team, who would stand up for and by each other. For assuring me that I was overreacting about the horoscope issue, that it wouldn’t be such an important issue, and yet coming and telling me that only days later that it was. For being a Kellogg educated MBA, 21st century consultant and yet having believed some age-old theory, without having had faith in me or our relationship that we would make this work. I thought you were a fighter, yet giving up on me so easily. However, the other part of me can never forget all the happiness you brought to my life, which I didn’t originally ask for, for which I will forever be grateful and indebted to you. For every single happy memory of times spent with you. And having said that, I understand your situation. And your family’s position. And your responsibility. And for my own peace of mind, I’d like to believe that you tried everything to make this work. And maybe it isn’t you, it’s me. Maybe its the result of some bad karma on my side. Or that maybe my love wasn’t strong enough to make you stay against all odds. Or maybe your family didn’t like me as much as I had thought they did. I just wish things had been different.

It wasn’t easy for me to walk away from you. But I had to, more for the sake of my sanity. Also because I felt that it was better for you to not see me and have to justify what you did, because hurting you would give me no satisfaction, rather make me feel even worse. And I cannot say I don’t think of you at all. I think about more than I should be. I worry about how things are your end, particularly with your career and family pressure. I miss you and I cannot lie. And  I will continue to miss you. I know that for as long as I live, I will never be able to think of Chicago without thinking of you. I will miss Facetiming with you almost every single day, talking to you about how the day was. I will miss going to Eataly with you. I will miss hanging out at your apartment, in your room with the gorgeous view, talking about the randomest off stuff, one of which ironically, was discussing a future together. I will miss giving you all my silly suggestions, and texting you each time I stress about something and need someone to calm me down. But above all, I will miss the feeling I got each time I met you, almost as if I had come home, one of safety and security. I will miss the friend, critic, guide, companion and well-wisher I had found in you. Somebody so different from me, yet feeling so perfect when we’re together. And I will feel sad. But I know that I eventually will heal and move on, for I am my papa’s daughter, and if there is one thing Ive learned from him, it is to face every situation with dignity, respect and grace, even when you’re breaking inside, to treat every person with nothing but the highest level of respect, and be always grateful for even the smallest of things.

For my happiness, and peace of mind, I have to stop holding on to you. And let you go if you want to. Whatever be the reason, the crux of the situation remains that I can never stop you if you don’t want to stay. At this juncture, I really wish nothing but the best for you. I know you will work hard and fulfill every single dream. And I wish you get everything your heart has ever desired. I hope you do very well professionally. I wish you become Junior Partner. I wish you travel to all the places you wanted to (and have a gelato for me in Italy, and a drink for me in Corsica!). I wish you live your entrepreneurial dream. I wish you become a politician and give NaMo a run for his money. I wish you rub shoulders with Sachin someday. And above all, I hope you find someone who enhances, builds and brings you happiness in ways I never did. (I hope she makes better sushi than me and keeps your room neater than I did!) And maybe, just to give myself the satisfaction that this did happen for a reason. may her stars and planets always continue to act in your favor, rather than conflict, as mine were predicted to.

I don’t know what the story looks like from here. Maybe life will bring us back again, or that we will each go our separate paths. Somehow, you seemed a lot more prepared to move on, than I did, which in all honesty did unnerve me, since I hadn’t even considered this option. Maybe you won’t even remember me few years henceforth. Maybe you’ll live a life way better than the one you envisioned with me. And I sincerely hope you do. The one thing I however can guarantee is that at least in this lifetime, you’ll never find another Akshita. Not saying this in anger, but in cool confidence. For me this experience has been a great teacher, and I will always cherish the memories good and learnings from the bad. This might just be the last time I open my heart out to you like this. (Who knows, you’re probably on the verge of getting engaged as you read this). While I can’t guarantee that I can be friends with you, I will always respect you, and wish nothing but the best. Once again. thank you for everything.

Best wishes and good luck with everything,

Akshita