Chapter 13

Batool Imran

@nav_bat

"Khushi, take this tray to the room, if you need anything else get it from here.", Aparna Gupta said, handing over the tray to Khushi.

"But Maa, I have him seated at the dining table, and then we can eat together, I don't want you eating alone.", she said in a matter fact of tone, to which her mother looked at her gravely and shook her head, "No Khushi, he's your friend, go take him to your room, I wont be eating alone, I have to go to a friends house right now, I will be having lunch there.", Khushi still unconvinced stood adamant, but Mrs Gupta shoved her out of the kitchen and out in the living room where Arnav was sitting, looking around the living room.

"Maa says we can eat inside my room, come on." She said still holding the tray in her hands pushing the door open, as he shaking his head annoyed, followed her inside the room. Once inside she pulled the small side table, right next to the bed, and directed Arnav to sit back on the bed, taking her place next to him and serving him the delicious blue berry tarts and freshly baked shepherd pie. She poured some orange juice from the glass for both of them, and having done sat next to him, feeding on the exotic food before her.

As they were busy eating, the door creaked and stood Mrs.Gupta on the door watching them too eating hungrily. Khushi raised her eyes away from the food, and kept her fork and spoon down walking towards where here mother stood, while Arnav almost having finished his fill, kept the fork-spoon down and stood fixed on his place.

"Hello..I mean Namaste Aunty", he said joining two of his hands together, as Aparna Gupta greeted him back, in the same identical manner.

"Khushi I am going over to my friends, keep the dishes in the sink, if you need anything else it's in the kitchen. Have a good time guys.", she said giving a huge smile to both of them, as she kissed Khushi on the cheek, waved to Arnav, and exited out of the room, followed by Khushi, who escorted her to the main door, securing in the locks and walking back into the room, where Arnav was clearing up the dirty dishes.

"Leave them there, I will pick them up.", she told him, taking quick steps and gathered all the empty dishes, taking it back to the kitchen and placing them one on the top of the other neatly in the sink. Having done that, she made her way back to the room, seeing Arnav putting the table back to where he had seen her pick it up from. She had stopped seeing him do this, and smiled to herself, impressed with him all over again, he wasn't as rude as she thought he is.

Done that, he noticed her standing on the door smiling at him lost deep in thought, and waved his hand in front of her to get her attention. "Gupta, come back to reality, you can escape into Disney land after wards", he said cheekily, as she snapped out of her day thoughts to look at him, giving him an annoyed look, and walked in towards the corner of the room, opening a secretive store room, and looked inside it in baffled.

"Where is the ladder?", she mused to herself, making a disappointed look to herself, as Arnav walked stood next to her, waiting for her to explain her self.

"Are we going to start working, or did you call me here for eating and strolling?", he said curtly, being shot a irritating look from her. "The ladder is gone." She said still deep in thought, leaving a confused him staring into blank space.

"The supplies are right here, why do you need it?"

"The books. The Biology books, are up there.", she told him, pointing towards the top shelf of the built in cupboards.

Not waiting for him to respond, she picked up her phone from the side table where she had last left it, and punched in her moms number, asking her of the ladders whereabouts, clicking it off with an even more disgusted face. "Danm the neighbors! They took the ladder, what are we supposed to do now?" she shouted out aloud, bringing an instant look of deep disgrace over Arnav's face.

"You should be the one figuring that out.", he told her coldly, to which she still with a worried expression glanced at him, "You are not helping", she remarked, diverting her attention back to the top shelf.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute (she snapped her fingers, a smile all over face now) I cant alone reach that even standing on the chair, you cant either, but if we do it together, we might get to it." She said happily, jumping about as he continued to look confused, not drawing any logic out of her bizzard talk.

"You mind explaining me, what was all that nonsense?", he said with a note of exasperation evident in his voice.

"You pick me up, I'll open the door and drop the books on the bed, how's that?" she skipped about in her spot glad, ignoring all the sarcasm or rudeness he was putting in into his 'no good' words.

"Did you leave me with another option?", he stated in vexation, and walked towards her, as she shaking her head, positioned herself right underneath the layers of shelf, him standing behind her. He moved in closer and kept his hand on both her sides grasping them tightly, as tingling sensations rushed in both their veins. He pressed his body to the back of hers, sensing the way she was lightly shivering but chose to subside it for the time being. Taking in a deep breathe, he hoisted her up towards the shelf, as she stretched her arms to the fullest, still not letting go of the awkwardness that had seeped into her because of his touch on her.

"Higher", she said in a tone near to a whisper glad to have found her voice in a situation like this. He took in another supply of oxygen from the air, and pushed her body further, till it was now level with the top shelf.

From above, she looked at him gone all red with the pressure, and gave a thumbs up, quickly turning away as he with a maddened expression looked at her. Opening the door of the cupboard, she searched in through the piles of book, as he groaned dieing to relieve his arms of the pressure. Having found one of them, she threw it down at the bed, it only missing his head from a merry two centimeters.

He almost choked with the fear of being hit with heavy encyclopedias again, and pressed his fingers into her thigh even more, barking his head mad at her. "Gupta! What the hell! Were you destined to throw books at my head all the time?"

"Destiny or no destiny, it's always fun to have books falling on your head", she laughed out, as he hit his head on her back, making her escape in another fit of laughter.

"Your heads doing no harm to my sturdy back Raizada", she told him between fits of laughter, and scrambled her head back inside the cupboard, taking out more books, their edges continuously hitting Arnav on the side of his head as continued to throw it on the far end of the bed.

"Gupta, it's not funny alright, stop aiming those books blindfolded at me.", he now told in an inflamed voice, as she grinned madly to herself, and threw another book his way.

"Dare you do that again, and I will throw you down. *pause*, how long is this going to take anyway, are you planning to throw the whole shelf down?", telling her madly as he batted his eyes to get red of the beads of sweat trickling down his forehead and on his eyes, blurring his vision a bit.

"Just two more", she said in an impudent way, burying her head in the cupboard once more, and throwing another book down, it this time unintentionally hitting Arnav's head again.

"That's the last straw", he shouted from underneath, and loosed his grip on her thigh, withdrawing his hands, as she losing important support, fell back to the ground with a thud, holding his t-shirt, to stabilize herself, his knees giving in to the sudden weight, and both fell head on the bed behind them, her immediately spinning to have her chest collide with his, successfully avoiding the harmful clash of her head colliding in with his chin.

Her head was buried in the crook of his neck, refusing to look up, as her hair brushed all over him, blurring his sight, his hands tightly winded around her waist, holding her to himself like a lost toy of his. For a few minutes they lie like that, trying to catch their breathe, and finally having done, she lifted her head of his shoulder, and stared at the disheveled him, who with much difficulty opened his eyes, just to see her observing his well formed chiseled face. Shifting her weight on top of him, she rolled over to the other side of the bed, trying to get over the awkwardness the situation had to offer.

"Clumsy idiot", he muttered to himself, well audible enough for her to listen, as he got up from the bed, straightening him self, still trying to catch his breathe, as she made faces on his back, scorning to herself, and got up from the bed, straightening her clothes.

"You are no better knobby knees", she fired back at him, and gathered the books that lay tattered on the bed, and collected them, keeping them on the ground with all the other supplies.

"We could do the backdrop, tags and handouts today, and the practical working model at your home tomorrow" she said moodily, as he trying not to make any eye contact with her, silently nodded and sat next to her, as they divided the work in between them, and sat next to each other, making themselves comfortable working on the task assigned. They continued to work hard, color pencils here and there, passing paints and other acrylics to each other, pencils of varied tones, charcoal or sometimes of drawing HB, 2B pencils, shifting pages of the book for the correct diagram, scissors cutting in on pieces of white and colored paper, and the two shifting positions each other, taking momentarily peeks at each others works.

It was almost working of continuous 3 hours, when Khushi looked at her Winnie the Pooh clock showing 6:50. Pushing all her things aside, she got up from where she sat, jumping over a very indulgent Arnav who was busy drawing in the diagram of the human heart. It's commendable; she had to accept that, the diagram seemed spot on, and miraculously 3-D.

"Noodles or Ice-Cream?", she asked him politely standing over his head, he for a split second looked up at her leaning close to him, and then went back to concentrate on his drawing. "Nothing", he replied back.

"Noodles or Ice-Cream?", she repeated again impatiently, receiving the same disgraceful answer from him.

"You can shove aside, that 'I am not hungry' crap for heavens sake!", she said in a high pitched irritated tone, causing him to now look at her raising his eyebrows at her. He then shook his head violently, tagging her as insane, and muttered something that sounded like 'Ice-cream'.

Hearing that, she said something under her breathe, that was mean tot be a horrid remark directed at him, and trotted out of the room, returning back with two medium sized buckets of chocolate chip ice cream. He made a face seeing the flavor being chocolate as she handed it over to him, that look of his not going unnoticed by her.

"You don't like Chocolate?" she asked him practically amused, at the sheepish expression he was making it as she kept thrusting the bucket into his hand. Shyly, he shook his head, making her smile all the more on his cute antics, and took the bucket from his hand kept hers on the side table, and went outside to bring another flavor. Soon after she returned carrying a coffee and caramel, melting as she saw the huge smile that had drawn on his face seeing her bringing that. Though it was quickly removed, she now knew, that well he was definitely good looking, and looked absolutely adorable smiling. Interesting observation, she congratulated herself.

Taking it from her hand, he kept his pencils down and started digging his tea spoon inside the ice cream, unaware that she was watching him a peaceful smile playing on her lips. Checking the watch again she looked at in shock, 6:58, it was time for Super Natural to air. Putting her bucket of ice cream down on the side table, she dragged her violet beam bags in front of the LCD screen that was pitched on the wall in between the built in cupboards and her bed. Seeing him keeping his ice cream half eaten away, she dragged another beam bag this one black, next to her own violet one, for him, thinking that he deserved the rest as much as she did.

She switched on the screen, changing the channel to CW network, and sat on the couch hoping that he would come sit on his own, but rather she saw him back engrossed in work. Annoyed at his intense workaholic attitude, she went over to him, picked up his bucket kept it on the side table, snatched the pencil out of his hand kept it on the side, and grasped his rough hand into her own, pulling him up in his confused state, and dragged him along with her self towards the couch.

"There is no need to be such a workaholic Raizada, come, sit, Super Natural is on air", she said with a hint of vexation and excitement both filling in her tone.

"Just to remind you, I came here to work, not to eat pies, ice creams and watch Super Natural", he told her coldly looking at her directly in the eye, as she slightly flinched at his hard tone.

"True, but we need rest. We have been working continuous for non-stop three hours, and then we are almost done with the work too", she told him helplessly, occasionally glancing at the screen with Dean and Sam standing in Bobby's house discussing something about tricksters.

"Almost done, not DONE", he fired back at her, though now mentally making up his mind to agree with her next protest, as much as he denied he needed the rest, and she was right, what he was for here was almost done, they could always continue after a bit of rest.

"If that is what irks you, then alright, I'll do all the remaining work. Is that fine? But for now we need to rest, I don't want a no anymore", she said icly, not waiting for him to respond, and shoved him on the black beam bag, as he gave her an uneasy glare, but soon recovered and shifted his focus to the screen in front, her handing over his bucket of ice cream to him, and taking her own sat next to him on her violet one, her elbows curved towards him so that now their arms were rubbing with each other.

They had let go of the awkwardness, and for the moment were living into it, forgetting all the glitches they had against each other, anything that they felt, all lay far behind, as they laughed together, watching Sam and Dean in action trying to catch with the Tricksters pranks that were being played on them. She was high fiving him like he was long lost friend of hers, and for a minute he felt odd but it went away as soon as she started commenting on the two Winchesters, slapping him on his shoulder, and in no time a friendly discussion had triggered between them, in between the talks they knowing bits and bits of each other.

'Super Natural' had ended, and 'Desperate Housewives' was on air, but none of the two felt the need of leaving the beam bags and retreating back to work. They continued to watch together with increasing action, as the shadow women gave in an insight to the lives of the four housewives, struggling through life to join it together.

It had almost been fifteen minutes that it had aired, that Arnav felt something heavy on his shoulder and a hand clutching on to his arm. He craned his neck side ways to look at her delightful, white face resting peacefully on his shoulder, her hair that had been earlier tied into a bun falling apart, and brushing against the naked skin of his neck tickling him. Her right hand was intertwined into his left one, making a contrasting, wheatish-white series of circle. Her eyes were closed, breathing uniform, making it clear to him that she had drowsed off to sleep. For minutes he had not the will to look away from her angelic face, and kept scrutinizing her well formed features, fighting back the urge in him to caress her cheeks or touch them.

His eyes went to the wall clock, above which said 8:15. OMG! He remarked to himself, in their fun and rest time, they had become completely oblivious to the time, no wonder she had dozed off to sleep after a tiring day of non stop working. Carefully freeing himself from her grip, as to not disturb her, he removed the bucket of ice cream on her lap and kept it on the side table along with his own, freeing the spoon she was holding in her fingers of the hand that was earlier intertwined into his own.

Standing up, giving her a last look, he straightened her up having her head lay at the head rest, and then firmly picked her up in his arms, gazing at her delicate form softly. Shaking his head as to realizing his own actions, he bend towards the bed, and slowly placed her on that, covering her with the blanket, and moving the hair aside from her face which were threatening to mar its perfection. Done that he couldn't resist but stare a little longer at her, before looking back at the messy condition of the room, and not wanting to disturb her, quietly cleared up the mess, keeping them all as he had found them when he had first entered into the room. Precisely remembering the position of the things she had taken out from chests and drawers, he kept them their, and finding a sticky note pad on her study table, wrote a quick note to her, stuck it at the edge of it, and made his way out of the room, not before once again looking at her lost in her slumber.

Closing the door behind him, he stepped into the living room, went over to where he thought was the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and deposited the two half eaten ice cream buckets back in there. Done that, and realizing it was getting late, Arnav walked out of the house shutting the main door tightly behind him, and went off to his way back home.

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Anjali sat on her bed, reading the book she was reading earlier in the library remembering all the moments she had earlier with Shyam.

"What?",she lifted her gaze away from the book and turned around to face a handsome, boy of wheatish complexion, looking at her in a most non chalant manner, however not really saying anything out of common etiquettes.

"What is it? Why are you hovering around me like a bee?",she asked back annoyed, because of his untimely silence, and of course, the blank look on his face that did not seem to offer much.

"Well, its my seat you were sitting on.",the boy answered back causally, looking at her out of disinterest, more interested in the place that she had occupied.

"So? You left it, so I took it.", she told him back straightly, surprised at his calm but at the same time firm attitude towards his seat.

"You might have not noticed, but I did leave my things behind, which you pretty conveniently shoved away to the extreme side of the table", he stated back at her in a matter of fact tone, forcing her to look at the table which obviously true to his words, was marked by his things, in an orderly manner, which she in her haste of finding a place had failed to notice.

"Oh erm, I am sorry, I didn't know",she stammered, embarrassed at her rude behavior, as well as her ignorant attitude, and promptly collecting her things, turned to stand from her seat, but he hesitantly kept his finger on her shoulder, urging her to sit down.

"No, there is no need to get up, I was just standing here to fetch my things for my next class",he said conveniently, collecting his things and stuffing them inside his bag.

He was so sweet, she complimented him mentally, lost deep in thought of figuring out other ways, through which she could see more of him. They hardly shared any classes, and from the little she knew about him he seemed to be very moderate in his approach, shy and reserved, and certainly took her to be something really big, not worthy of being talked to of someone his standard. She had to eradicate that uneasiness from him, he was nice guy, she liked him and was looking forward to see more of him in future, well at least he was different and not like all those boys who tried hitting on her but always failed.

Outside her brother who was lazing away on the couch, it being a weekend for the next two days, was thinking about the same thing, but apparently with a different person. Well, Chotte is gone to Khushi's house today, and if it's a project maybe she'll come here too, I can probably catch up on her and get to know more of Payal then, he mused to himself over the prospect thinking it was the most perfect way without arousing any suspension and also remarkably shoving of the idea of asking Anjali's help. No. He sighed to himself, Anji would be of no help, not without having asked him a trillion questions regarding his intentions, and then, he growled to himself, she had even back bited on him, that too to Payal, no it was a bad idea going to her. Bad Idea.

As he was lost deep in his thoughts the door bell rang, and lazily, he sprung up from the couch, stretching his arms wide like an eagle with wings, and opened the door to a tired and dazed Arnav.

"Chotte, you took your time coming back home didn't you?", Aakash asked him back grinning, waiting for the 'Shut up Bhai' barking of his, but nothing of the sort came as Arnav walked over to his room quietly ignoring Aakash.

"Had fun?", Aakash tried again, to get in any inny winny bits of his brothers visit, this time 99% sure that he was in for a verbal bashing by his brother, but Arnav just turned back, and slightly smiled at him nodding, and then turned back around, walking to his room closing the door behind, leaving a baffled Aakash blinking his eyes, and pinching his arm to let differentiate between reality and dreams.

"Anji! Something's happened to Chotte!", he said bursting open the door of Anjali's room, and rushing over to her bed, as she gave him an annoyed look, a worried look all over his face.

"What?", Anjali asked him back exasperated, as he without replying grabbed her hand and dragged him to Arnav's room, creaking it open, as a sight of perfect surprise met their eyes, both their jaws dropping open hanging as low as the lock they were leaning on to.

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Regarding The Title

Acknowledged Presence- The title of this chapter took me a long time to be decided, but I finally agreed on the simplicity of these two words, and joined them together as the title of this Chapter. Basically, the logic behind this is very simple, in this Chapter you actually saw Arnav and Khushi being consciously aware of each others presence, knowing for sure that the other one did through covered up antics cared about them. You saw how Khushi kept insisting him to take rest, and how he even though resisted her at first, had obliged with her wishes, and did not be as rigid as he usually is. In the last though, you saw how he made it a point to reduce her burden, cleared up the mess, tucked her safely to bed, without taking advantage of the fact that the two of them were alone at home. The literal meaning of Acknowledge as per the Oxford Dictionary is, 'to admit' or 'to recognize formally'. You saw both of them taking note of each other's plus points and appreciating it to themselves, instead of trying to cover it up with some stupid reason. And for the first time now they were actually being good to each other, and enjoying each other's company. 'Presence' on the other hand has been implied to be 'the immediate vicinity of a person', so they can feel each other the touch of each other, does things to them, they have started to accept this as a fact and showed it openly that each other's presence does affect them.

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Events In The Chapter

I am hoping that a large population of this FF, will be loving this Chapter a lot. This is what laid the basic foundations of their chapters, from this point and further there is no returning back to square one, no turning back and revising all the past grievances, today they have discovered new horizons of each other's personality and will soon also realize later that together, they make a really good team. First team project together, and they have already stretched in the hand of compromising, not only for marks but for effective performance. Do you not consider that as a important development?

The Anjali-Aakash scene is not fillers, they hold their own significance, as with ArHi I am trying my best to concentrate on the two other love stories on hand, so its important to know at least, that how the presence of someone is effecting their thought processes.

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