Chapter 1

AngelTeen

@AngelTeen

Loving You

Part 1

He sat with a hunched back, the tension in his posture clear for all to see...all who would bother to anyway. And she was one of them - one of them who bothered. Maybe the one who bothered the most for the young man who sat on the stairs, his back bent with his muscled arms resting firm, even testily actually, on his thighs as his face was turned straight ahead, his eyes looking at something beyond the plain cream wall of the room.

She daintily, hesitantly made her way to him side stepping, as gently and subtly as she could, the hoards of people who approached her with the intention of sharing their two words of pleasantness with her but how would they know that each word they spoke with the intention of pleasing her, bringing her joy did the exact opposite and worse? That each word that they uttered drove a wedge through her heart - and his too. She knew that from the way his arms would twitch each time someone spoke, as if bunching up his fury in his tensely corded muscles, stopping them from unleashing on the unsuspecting well wishers.

And that drove the wedge even deeper into her already wounded heart but she was not surprised - his pain had always manifested itself in that now familiar ache of her heart and so as the dagger twisted and made it difficult for her to even breathe, she was not surprised, not in the least. She was worried instead. Worried for how much he was hurting, worried for how much he was suffering in silence and in that worry she even forgot how angry she had been with that very silence of his, one which had plagued him, had plagued them ever since...ever since he and she had become they.

But nothing of that anger pervaded her sensible mind, the lover's heart taking over all of her actions and thoughts, as she made her way towards him. The need to check on him, to comfort him with just her presence if that was all she could offer, if nothing else was possible took precedent over every other feeling.

And as she sat next to him on the wooden staircase of her house, she knew that he had felt her approach even if his eyes didn't turn her way once - they had always known whenever the other approached. They had made fun of it, lovingly as people who know they share something special do, when things had been better, when times had been better and a wry smile fought its way to her face only to fuse out remembering how that time had been in the past, how the present and the future were now very different.

But she quickly schooled her features, chiding herself for thinking astray when she knew that she that the time right now was for her to be strong because the man who pretended to be that was just doing that, had just been doing that - pretending. He was hurt yet he wouldn't show it and though he would not say a word, it would eat him up on the inside. She had known that about him since a time she couldn't even remember, maybe everyone knew that about him but like her they all said not a word knowing that in this pretence he was happy and that was enough.

So she sat next to him, her legs stretched out parallel to his, her body almost touching his but not quite. She sat as silent as him, she spoke no comforting words, she spoke nothing at all - letting her very breath speak of her turmoil, using the silence that had been thrust upon her in the most effective way - after all she and he had often spoken in silences, adept as they were in hearing what the other never said out loud.

She took her fill of him from the corner of her eyes, willing them to not fill up and hinder her vision of him as her gaze slanted across his creased forehead, narrowed eyes, long nose, the stubborn pout of his lips to the prominent jutting out chin and if she and he hadn't been feeling the way they did, she would have stretched across and playfully pinched that very chin, admonishing him lovingly for being so akad se bhara' but now she felt like sneaking closer to him and hiding in the safe cocoon of his arms, with her face buried in the wide expanse of his chest - the warmth shielding her from everything and everyone that sought to take her away from him.

But before she could even really dwell on these desires of her foolish heart, he shifted ever so slightly but even then he had her full attention and though he never turned his face towards her, she knew that he was now acknowledging her presence just by the way how a muscle twitched in his cheek and sure enough he addressed her, even though he never even looked her way.

"Congratulations."

And the wind was knocked out of her as that one single word tore through her heart like a poisoned arrow and had she not been sitting she would have staggered on her feet by the weight of that one greeting.

She tried hard to not to give a reaction to him, consoling her bruised self with tall promises of how it did not matter when it was all that did, but she could not stop herself from turning to look at him only to find him looking decidedly away, his face scrunched up - tense, waiting.

And that was when she realized that what he was waiting for.

He was waiting for her response, her reply, her take.

He was waiting for her to lose her cool and tear him down.

He was waiting for her reaction.

He was waiting for her to break her silence.

Because he couldn't.

Because he wouldn't.

And suddenly it was one too many times and where her heart had been filled with thoughts of comforting him, the previous anger, the previous contempt she had felt for his refusal to speak, to let others know his thoughts, his pains, his doubts, his desires came back full force and she knew that had he not gotten up at that exact moment and walked away from her, from them she would have lunged at him and slapped him multiple times across his face, scratched him and pulled at his hair for what he put her through with that one word, for what he was putting her through with his silence, for what he had always put her through because of that very same silence.

But he did. He stood up and climbed down the stairs, disappearing around the bend of the corridor that led to the back gardens with the green house which had seen many of their stolen moments of love and her eyes followed his every movement till he was out of her sight, leaving her smarting under his wish' to her.

He had congratulated her.

HE had congratulated HER for something he knew was killing her as it was killing him just to get the reaction that he wouldn't give out of her, to make sure that she said what he wouldn't and get them both out of their miseries but he wouldn't even say that out loud - even that she would have to infer.

And not caring about the multitudes of family members who had all descended to her house on the auspicious occasion of the announcement of her marriage, Khushi Gupta got up purposefully from her seat on the stairs and followed the path Arnav Singh Raizada had traced just a few minutes back, intent on talking it out with him even if it led to her own downfall because as far as she was concerned nothing could pull her any more down than what his one word had already done.

Because it was not anyone else who was taking her away from him, they did not need to when he himself kept pushing her so far out that she had to fight her way back in, each time more difficult than the last and even though she had been successful every time in the past, she knew that this one time she may not survive. That this one time he had pushed her almost too far away and though her heart was tired and her mind ablaze at his blatant disregard for her feelings in face of his comfort, she knew that she would never forgive herself if she did not go behind him and say to him all that she wanted to say. Tell him that she cared, yes, but she was done caring for the both of them.

If he wanted to congratulate her for a marriage which was killing them both, which would put an end to all that they had between them, then she reserved the right to call his bluff.

She reserved the right to make him look right into her eyes when she told him that she hated him for it, she hated him for not being there, hated him for not loving her the way she loved him.

"Everyone's filling me up with noise,

I don't know what they're talking about

You see, all I need's a whisper in a world that only shouts..."

_______________
*Not proof read

Lyrics - 'Whispers' by Passenger

So...what do you guys think? Interested in reading further? I got the idea for this story quite suddenly and because I have enough pending work, I decided to work it into a 3-4 part SS and am already working on the third part. :)

Part 2 - Below (Posted on 09.04.2014)

Part 3 - Below (Posted on 14.04.2014)

Part 4 - Below (Posted on 13.05.2014)

Thank You Note - Below (Posted on 13.05.2014)

For PMs, post a comment and I shall PM you when I update the next part :)

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