disclaimer- THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY!!! it will be explicit (bp uzair uk-) so be aware. and i have unintentionally made uzair a hindu balochi (due to some comedic dialogues). and its my first time writing ANY KIND OF FICTION so please bear with me. NOW GO AND ENJOY HEHE
Uzair Baloch couldn’t figure out which emotion to feel at that moment.
His heart was thumping with the proximity he was sharing with this kid (who really didn’t look like a kid anymore). the stretching eye contact with the light-green eyes, tinted with red now, was not helping his brain capability in the slightest.
His brain was struggling to form a coherent or simple logical response to the guy or even push him back.
It felt like he was on a chokehold by an invisible force emitting from Jassi, screaming inside his brain to simply fall on the boy, which was absurd because he quite literally saw the guy for the first time half an hour ago.
“What- what are you doing?” Uzair spoke after finally grasping his ability to form a sentence.
That broke the haze in the other man’s eyes.
His pupils were finally heading back to their normal shape and size and his hands started loosening on Uzair’s waist until they were completely off and the guy backed off a few paces.
Uzair finally let out a deep breath, still standing on support of the door.
“What the fuck was that, kid?”
“Jassi or Jaskirat”
“What?”
“I told you the name is Jassi or Jaskirat, for your kind information, I could be centuries older than you.” Jassi responded with less enthusiasm than before now.
Uzair couldn’t hold the flood of questions back “ok Mr. Centuries older Jassi ji, YOU still haven’t given me a good enough response on why are you in MY house? And why would I be in danger if you go? And why the fuck were you asking who the girl in my house is?”
Jaskirat finally figured out in his head that his human right here has zero knowledge about how he had summoned a demon on his name to earth.
‘Must have been Harleen’s another stupid idea’ he concluded in his mind while Uzair stood in front of him looking like a police commissioner interrogating a very notorious criminal.
“So, I didn’t know you’d be this clueless-” Uzair’s glare sharpened making Jassi’s voice go a little more meek “-but I’ll explain everything to you in brief later,…don’t you need to go cook for the other human right now ?”
“You overheard our conversation?”
“It was impossible not to; I was in the same room-”
“You could have covered your ears or something-”
“WHY IN THE WORLD would I do that?”
“it’s called BASIC ETTIQUETE. You could have at least done this LITTLE after BREAKING IN MY HOUSE AT 7 IN THE MORNING”
“FOR THE 10TH TIME, I-DIDN’T-BREAK-IN-YOUR-HOUSE”
“Then HOW-”
Their banter was interrupted by a call outside the door “Bhaiiiii I am done- “responding with a “coming” Uzair made Jassi put his finger on his lips and made a neck cutting gesture with his hands to warn the guy to shut up.
Uzair cooked the soup for Yalina and ensured she actually drank the whole bowl before making a few more excuses of why she shouldn’t stay over today.
Even if she still did not believe in his excuses, she got ready and bid farewell to Uzair after her father called her to come back for some urgent business.(Uzair made him call her but she doesn’t need to know everything people).
Finally, when the house was empty and the dishes were cleaned, Uzair went and stood near the staircase to call the strange creature down from his room.
Uzair yelled, “JASKIRAT GET DOWN NOW, I KNOW U OVERHEARD THE ENTIRE THING”
“I CAN’T HELP IT SIR.” Jassi argued while opening the door in a hurry to get out of the small space and sprinted downstairs.
“Woahhhh slow down boy” Uzair spoke with gesturing his hand for Jassi to calm down a little till the boy was final standing in front of him.
Uzair pushed Jaskirat to go and sit on the couch and went back in the kitchen to take off his apron and fetch a glass of water for the boy, thinking he must have been thirsty with all the moving around he did.
Putting the glass on the small table in front of Jassi, Uzair sat in front of him with an exhausted look and spoke in a tired voice, “so, let me be clear, you will answer all the questions I asked upstairs, you will not lie about a single answer and you will not invade my personal space UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES”
Jaskirat wanted to sulk about the absence of the long cloth thingy that Uzair wore over his t-shirt moments ago, he looked cute in that. But since he feared getting punched, he moved on from that piece of cloth.
Jassi drank the glass of water in 3 large sips and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his long sleeve and spoke in a happy-to-go-tone “bring the questions on, I will try my best to explain everything.”
Jassi sighed and answered “sir, for the nth time I did NOT break in your house, you were the one who brought me in last night”
Uzair furrowed his eyebrows, asking “how exactly?”
Jaskirat tried to form a response while the chain of the word ‘cute’ kept ringing in his head seeing the expression his human was making. He motivated himself in his head ‘focus Jaskirat focus’
He eventually spoke-
“Well, umm I don’t know exactly but did you bring something strange in last night, like a small book?”
Uzair’s brain went back into flashbacks, the dare, the tree, the cat and the book. As the thought of the book hit him as facepalmed so hard that his forehead buzzed with the impact.
Jassi immediately removed his hand from his forehead and rubbed the area in pain saying “you shouldn’t hurt yourself like this sir, I heard humans bruise easily.”
Even after all the strange happenings around him, Uzair’s brain couldn’t stop the flood of stupid questions- “what’s with the human talk, aren’t you a human too?”
“Umm, no?”
“WHAT are you then?”
“I am a demon”
An awkward Silence stretched between both of them for a small while.
Uzair tried to process the absurdity of the sentence he just heard while trying to keep the composure on his face intact. But looking at the other boy’s face, he had failed in the task immeasurably.
“Pinch me”
“HUH”
“I said, PINCH ME Jassi”
“it’s true what they say, humans are the weirdest species on this planet” Jaskirat mused before moving towards Uzair and pinching his cheeks.
Uzair smacked his hand away- “I meant on THE ARM you doofus”
Jaskirat who had already had the pleasure of finally touching those fluffy cheeks just grinned and moved back to sit.
Uzair glared at him and cleared his throat to speak in a serious tone
“So is the book like a black magic thing?”
“No, it’s not simply black magic, it is my SRB or supranatural records book.”
Uzair still dumbfounded spoke, “I don’t understand shit from what you are saying, you need to get better at your comprehension skills man.”
Jaskirat tried to explain once again, “don’t you guys have anything which clarifies from what place do you belong, which lineage you are from or even your past achievements?”
“Lineage? Achievements? I don’t know about those but we do have Aadhar cards-”
“What is an Aadhar card?”
“It is a type of identification card- WHY AM I EXPLAINING STUFF TO YOU?!
YOU SLY BASTARD-” Uzair stated while aggressively pointing his finger towards the boy-
Waving his hand in Panick, Jassi tried to explain “ARRE NO NO SIR I WAS JUST CURIOUS-”
Uzair tried to calm down a little and asked again “now tell me what’s this SRB.”
“So basically, a SRB is our personal ownership receipt, it looks like a ‘book’ as you humans refer to it, once we get a job locked down with another person, our SRB is locked in that person’s material belonging.”
“Demons work in a corporate business or something?”
“what’s corporate?”
“it’s working in any kind of business like the SRB ones you are talking about.”
“Oh, it’s a little like business work, we all have a boss and we get assigned work with humans, angels and devils alike.”
Uzair was still full of many doubts but he was slowly believing in the boy’s story because of the conviction he was explaining everything with.
He leaned back on the sofa and continued the discussion, “so how exactly did I summon you little demon?”
“You touched the book I was telling you about?”
“Yes? A cat motivated me.”
Uzair chuckled thinking he must be getting influenced from the craziness of the person sitting in front of him, making him speak absurdity as well.
Jaskirat was starstruck.
The sound that his human just generated kept repeating in his head like a prayer from raja Mahabali himself.
His human was beautiful. this realization didn’t help the blush forming on the Jaskirat’s cheeks at the moment and he kept staring, mouth agape, at uzair’s smile like he was the holy beacon of light himself.
Uzair noticed the boy’s sight on him and cleared his throat for him to stop. But that didn’t work out so he just tapped him lightly on head to wake the kid from his stupor.
That worked, and Jassi blinked his eyes multiple times while turning away from the human.
“So, the cat is your boss?”
“WHAT”
“The cat who gave me the book, is she you superior or something because she looked really happy to provide my drunk ass with your SRB”
“That must have been Harleen.”
“Now who is that?”
“My elder sister, I have been whining at her for ages since I didn’t get any job in a long time and was getting bored.
She must have seen you and formed this ridiculous plan to finally get rid of me.
I know it sounds strange but that’s what we are like- “
Uzair tried to stifle a smile at the implication of an annoyed sister handing out her whiny demon brother to Uzair of all people.
Jaskirat suddenly smiled brightly and spoke chirpily, “well, since she has already put you in this situation, unaware or not, we can make use of all the time we have till I go back there.”
Looking at the little demon’s smile, Uzair thought it wasn’t actually that bad of an idea.
he had already sent Yalina home and he was just going to rot on his couch watching a marathon of harry potter on this weekend anyway, so, spending the day with the boy could be better than the other available options. But still Uzair could not relent too easily or Jassi would think he has the upper hand.
“I have way more questions that you can imagine Jassi.
your idea of fun sounds great but I need to know more about the circumstances I m going to be under in hanging out with you.”
Jaskirat’s excitement dampened a little but it didn’t go away fully.
“Okay sir, we will do as you say but can we go get some Ice cream, the last time I had a devil as my host, he introduced me to this sweet and cold stuff created by human, I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HUMANS COULD CREATE SOMETHING AS TASTY AS THAT.”
The boy was endearing.
Uzair was a little frazzled after the sudden thought but let it slide thinking it was just an instantaneous study, nothing more than that.
“Drop the sir, you should not even try to be polite after seeing my hungover state in my bed at seven in the morning kid.
let’s go for a walk then, weather seems to be good and you can get your ice cream as well as I can get my answers.”
“You are the best si- uhm what should I call you then?”
“Uzair would be okay”
“Thank you Uzair” Jaskirat grinned, stood up and rushed towards the main door like the ice cream would run away from the convenience store if he didn’t walk fast enough.
Uzair slowly stood up and cracked his back before walking in steady steps towards Jassi.
“You really need to fix your problem of scurrying here and there, I am old Jaskirat, you need to walk slow for me to be able to keep up.”
Jaskirat just smiled and gestured Uzair to hurry up before opening the door for him.
Uzair could only sigh while getting out of the house.
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Uzair and Hamza practicing fighting to test how much Hamza knows- and Hamza being pinned down by Uzair, to not seem too threatening and Hamza liking being pinned down- feeling guilt that he liked it, feeling like he betrayed his country, scrubbing his skin raw
My favourite things - going out (even just for air), vegetarian food in general, nature, singing, creating art (wanted to add myself to this but five already filled up).
My least favourite things - Scents of any kind, dogs and cats (because I'm afraid of them), studying, medicines (only tablets not syrups), escalators.
disclaimer- THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY!!! it will be explicit (bp uzair uk-) so be aware. and i have unintentionally made uzair a hindu balochi (due to some comedic dialogues). and its my first time writing ANY KIND OF FICTION so please bear with me. NOW GO AND ENJOY HEHE
Morning crept up in the flat like it had personal vendettas against a very hungover uzair Baloch.
He woke up to the sound of his Personal favorite alarm, his Bhabhi maa’s ringtone
“Maa ka phone aaya, maa ka phone aaya~~~”. He sluggishly picked the device up and answered the call while still trying to catch some semblance of sleep by keeping his eyes closed.
“Yes Bhabhi, I am fully awake now, I will be ready in the next 20 minutes, I’ll shower with soap rather than bodywash, I will only let Yalina go after making her eat breakfast, I will not leave the house unlocked and I will close all the windows before going out. Good morning to Rehman bhai too, I’ll call you in the afternoon, love you too, bye-” Uzair ended the 1 minute morning call after completing his daily dose of assuring his always concerned sister-in-law.
*THUD* the world blurred in front of Uzair’s eyes as he opened them abruptly because of the bang he just heard.
Light green eyes clashed with dark brown ones as a boy wearing a striped red and white t-shirt with black pants, sitting beside his bed as if had fallen down suddenly, came into Uzair’s view.
Until Uzair’s cognitive functions finally came into work and reminded him to yell at the intruder, the boy had already sat up straight with an amused smile on his face. Uzair, who was now also sitting up, screamed at the boy
“WHO IN THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL ARE YOU? AND WHAT THE FUCKITY FOCKITY FOOK ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE?”.
The boy answered in a perfectly polite tone contradicting Uzair’s panicked one- “well they call me Jaskirat or Jassi here in the human world and… you…are the one who brought me to your house?”
Uzair’s already aching head could not understand what shit this guy was spewing in front of him in that moment, so his ‘raised in a gangster household’ honed instinct made him pick up his emergency gun from beneath his mattress to scare off the crazy thief boy.
“Is that a toy thingy u humans play with? It looks cool.” Jassi asked the question like a child who had just found his favorite candy and was now looking up at an adult to buy it for him, leaving Uzair dumbfounded with the gun still in his hand.
the guy suddenly contorted his face like a child while making puppy eyes even better than Faizal and asked Uzair- “can I touch the toy thingy once? It looks interesting........so, please? only for a minute?”
Uzair was now more concerned for the boy’s sanity rather than being angry with him.
Still, he did not let the puppy eyes crack his tough guy façade and told the man in a boring voice “I don’t care if u are Jassi or Jaskirat or if you haven’t seen a gun in your life or not. What I need you to do right now is leave me alone to battle with my deadass headache and get out of my house this instant before I put bullets in you damaged brain software-”
“-but you are the one who tethered me to you, if I leave right now you will be the one in danger sir.” The kid cut Uzair’s sentence in the middle to say this.
This situation was not helping Uzair’s headache at all, so he spewed whatever his last brain cell could conjure in front of the boy- “do whatever the hell you want but let me die in peace on my bed for at least 10 minutes more.”
“But-” Jassi tried to refuse.
“Shut up or I’ll shoot you and YES” Uzair pulled up his palm to stop the guy from interrupting him “I don’t care if I die in turn.” Uzair’s voice muffled into his bed as he laid back down his pillow face-first. That sentence shut Jassi up, and he slowly laid down beside Uzair’s bed, on his rugged carpet and waited for his human to come to his senses.
It took Uzair approximately 5 minutes and a distressed female voice outside his room to wake himself up from his self-made hangover therapy i.e., sleeping.
He moved to sit on the side of the bed which resulted in his feet touching something soft rather than the old ruff carpet-
“OUCH” Jassi exclaimed.
“YOU ARE STILL HERE?” Uzair’s eyes widened realizing that the man he saw five minutes ago was not actually a figment of imagination from his sleep addled brain. “SO, YOU WERE NOT A NIGHTMARE OR SOMETHING?”
“ok wow NIGHTMARE? Seriously…. not even a dream? I feel hurt sir-” the boy spoke in such a tiny hurt voice that it even melted exasperated Uzair’s heart a little.
A distant voice cut their conversation as Yalina started her hungover yap session “Uzair bhai I am having the worst headache of my life and I need you to cure this shit before I commit mass murder-” the voice was moving absurdly fast towards his room.
Jassi was still looking at Uzair with a wounded look when Uzair’s brain finally started acting up and he moved clumsily, banging into his side drawer while trying to move the human or whatever creature the boy was to hide him.
“Ok now you need to go hide in my wardrobe if you don’t want to be panickily punched by the woman who is about to enter this room.” Uzair explained to the confused boy while simultaneously pushing him towards his wardrobe-
“But-” Jassi tried to retaliate
“No buts if you want to make out of this situation uninjured, NOW MOVE IN AND CLOSE THE DOOR YOU IDIOT.” Uzair scolded the man.
He didn’t even know why he was hiding someone who looked like a golden retriever trapped in a large body and had seemingly broken in his house-
His thoughts were broken by the bang of his door as Yalina strode in the room clutching her head speaking in her *i-made-a-mistake-by-touching-3-bottles-of-vodka* language forcing uzair to move from near his wardrobe to comfort the girl.
“it’s ok Leena, today is a Sunday anyway so you don’t even need to go to work-” Uzair tried to console his unofficial child In a soft tone. “IT’S A SUNDAY?! Then you can cook some soup and I can just crash here-” Yalina tried to muse.
“NO NO NO I- I am going to host some of my subordinates in the evening to talk about A VERY IMPORTANT upcoming meeting, so you REALLY CAN’T STAY HERE Yalina.” Uzair picked the best excuse out of his very uncreative thinking process and tried to dress it up as plausible for the young girl to believe it.
“I’ll just be in the guest room you know-” Yalina tried to negotiate but Uzair was faster.
“some of them might stay overnight so you really can’t stay the night and Jamali uncle called me yesterday night too asking if you could be back today, he is your father Yalina we shouldn’t disagree with him-”
“-You never cared about disagreeing with him BHAI.
What are you trying to hiding?!” Yalina was now speaking in her prosecutor tone which made uzair sweat like a labor in hard sun whenever he was hiding something BUT today, he really couldn’t concede, so he continued lying-
“I am not hiding ANYTHING I just need to prepare for work, you know how busy trying to make a company function is Ms. Jamali. ” Uzair should be given a fucking Oscar for this shit-
“…I don’t believe you but okay….AND I WILL ONLY LEAVE AFTER SOME HANGOVER SOUP or else I am telling Ulfat Bhabhi.” Yalina threatened Uzair with a demanding look.
Uzair played along, “accha okay baba I will whip up some soup. You go get in a human state first, I will be down after freshening up myself.”
He pushed the pink frazzled kid out of the room and reminded her to brush her hair properly while pointing out how much it looked like bird’s nest- which earned him a well-deserved smack.
As soon as Uzair clicked the door shut, the wardrobe door burst open-
What’s with these young dudes banging doors, Uzair complained in his mind.
He turned around only to find out that the boy he was hiding a few minutes ago was now standing merely inches away from him, and Jassi was not looking amused or even hurt this time, it was rather a type of cold fury on his face.
He grabbed Uzair’s waist only hidden by a thoroughly used tee with his bare hands and trapped him between his own body and the door.
“Who was she?”
The tone that the kid used this time was not soft or smooth like the one he used beside Uzair’s bed in the morning.
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Summary: Uzair has spent years quietly wanting Jaskirat Singh Rangi from across the colony, which is embarrassing enough before Jaskirat becomes his maths tutor. Then one evening in Jaskirat’s bedroom, Uzair finds something he was never supposed to see, and suddenly his impossible crush starts looking a little less impossible.
Or
Uzair failing maths, thirsting over his friend’s older brother, and making one deeply stupid decision in the name of curiosity.
---
Author's Note: hey everyone! double whammy updates today, i guess, since i feel bad for not having salona sa sajan hai chapter 6 out on time. this part wraps up locha-e-ulfat, and i enjoyed writing it so much. thank you for all your sweet comments on part 1. they genuinely fueled me to churn this out. the title comes from a song of the same name from 2 States, and i feel like the lyrics make a lot of sense for part 1 of the story. the inspo for this story was my parents’ love story, since my mother tutored my dad in math in college. other than that, please let me know what you think in the comments down below :))
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2006, MHB Colony, Borivali, Mumbai, India
The magazine slipped out of Uzair’s hands before he could decide whether to drop it.
It hit the floor with a soft, ugly slap, the pages bending against the tile, and somehow the sound seemed louder than it had any right to be. Uzair rose from the edge of Jaskirat’s bed too quickly, his knees knocking against the wooden frame as one hand flew out uselessly, as if he could undo the last ten seconds by moving fast enough.
“I didn’t—” he started, but his voice came out wrong, cracked and thin, nothing like himself. “I wasn’t—Jaskirat, I swear, I just—”
The fear on Jaskirat’s face changed, though it did not disappear; that would have been easier. It stayed there, white and sharp under his skin, but something darker moved over it, something furious enough to make Uzair stop breathing for half a second. Jaskirat lifted one hand and pressed a finger to his own lips in a warning so clear that Uzair’s mouth shut before he even thought to obey.
One second, he was stammering, panic spilling out of him in pieces, and the next he had gone silent so completely that the only sound left in the room was the ceiling fan clicking above them. Jaskirat’s eyes did not leave his face, his finger still pressed to his lips, and Uzair, stupidly and terribly, noticed the shape of his mouth behind it. He noticed the tension in his jaw, and then, with a fresh twist of dread, noticed that Jaskirat’s hand was not steady.
Jaskirat leaned back out into the hallway, and for one terrible second, Uzair thought he was going to call his mother. Instead, Jaskirat only looked toward the kitchen, then toward the hall, toward all the ordinary noise of his family moving around beyond the room. Prabhneet Aunty was still somewhere outside, probably putting something away, probably completely unaware that in her son’s bedroom, something had cracked open so violently that neither boy knew what to do with the pieces. The television murmured from the living room, a pressure cooker hissed, and somewhere in the building corridor, someone laughed as life, rudely and impossibly, continued.
Jaskirat stepped back into the room and closed the door behind him, not loudly, which somehow made it worse. The click of the latch sounded final, and only then did he lower his hand from his mouth.
“Jaskirat,” Uzair whispered, because whispering felt safer even though nothing about the room felt safe anymore. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
Jaskirat crossed the distance between them so quickly that Uzair barely registered him moving until his hands were already fisted in Uzair’s collar, shoving him back hard enough that his shoulder blades hit the wall beside the bed. The impact knocked the breath out of him, and Uzair’s hands flew up on instinct, hovering at Jaskirat’s wrists without fully pushing him away or grabbing him back. For one wild second, he thought Jaskirat might hit him, and then, with a sick twist in his stomach, realized that being hit might not even be the worst thing happening.
Jaskirat was close in a way Uzair had spent years imagining but had never once been prepared to survive. He was close enough that Uzair could smell more than soap or the faint detergent clinging to his shirt; he could smell the heat of him, the clean sweat at his throat, and something sharper beneath it that might have been fear. Jaskirat’s breath touched his face in uneven bursts, and from this distance Uzair could see the tiny flecks around the green of his eyes, the redness gathering at the rims, and the furious tremor he was trying and failing to hold back.
His hands were strong at Uzair’s collar, because of course they were. Arjun Uncle had carved that strength into him through morning runs, push-ups, weights, and discipline, through all the hard, quiet expectations of a military father who had survived injury and built an entire home around control. Jaskirat’s grip was not careless, but it was held so tightly in check that it had become violent anyway. His knuckles pressed into Uzair’s throat through the fabric, his forearms were tense, and his shoulders crowded Uzair back into the wall until there was nowhere to look but at him.
Uzair was terrified in the plain, sensible way any person would be terrified when someone stronger had him pinned to a wall and looked as if his whole life had just been placed in danger. But the terror did not arrive alone, because Uzair was still Uzair, unfortunately, and his body had never understood timing or shame or self-preservation. Even now, with his heart punching at his ribs and Jaskirat’s hands twisted in his collar, some traitorous part of him noticed the warmth of Jaskirat’s chest so near his own, the shadow of stubble along his jaw, and the fact that those usually distant green eyes were no longer distant at all. They were full of things Uzair had never expected to see there: rage, betrayal, panic, and beneath all of it, a desperate, pleading fear.
The kind that said, please don’t ruin me.
Jaskirat leaned closer, his voice dropping into a whisper that did not sound like a whisper at all.
“What the fuck were you doing?”
It came out low and rough, dragged through his teeth with enough force to scrape. Uzair opened his mouth, but nothing came out, and for one impossible moment, all he could hear was the sound of both of them breathing too hard in a room that suddenly felt sealed off from the rest of the world. Borivali seemed to go quiet around them—the colony, the aunties, the boys shouting downstairs, the scooters coughing through the lane, the pressure cooker in the kitchen, the trains somewhere beyond the buildings—until there was only this bedroom, this wall against Uzair’s back, Jaskirat’s fists twisted in his collar, and the magazine lying open on the floor like a wound.
“I—” Uzair began, trying to sound level, steady, anything other than guilty, but Jaskirat’s grip tightened before he could get another word out.
“Shut the fuck up, idiot.”
Uzair shut up.
Jaskirat’s eyes flicked once toward the door before returning to him, sharp and frantic in a way that made Uzair’s stomach drop. “You are going to listen,” he said, still in that deadly, controlled whisper. “You are going to act like you saw nothing. You are going to say nothing about what you think you saw. You are not going to make a face, you are not going to ask questions, and you are not going to tell Jasleen, your family, any of your friends, or any bastard in this colony who will open his mouth for two seconds and destroy everything. Do you understand?”
Uzair nodded too fast, and Jaskirat’s jaw tightened at once.
“No,” Jaskirat said. “Don’t nod like a child.”
Uzair swallowed, suddenly aware of how tight his own collar felt beneath Jaskirat’s hands.
Jaskirat’s fingers were shaking now, not enough that anyone else might have noticed, but Uzair was close enough to feel the tremor where they gripped the fabric of his shirt. He was speaking like a person in control, like each word had been cut into shape before leaving his mouth, but his eyes were unsteady and his breath kept catching in small, uneven pulls. Rage had given him something to stand behind, but it was fear holding him upright.
“You will go home,” Jaskirat continued, each word low and precise. “You will not come back to this room. I will tell my mother I don’t have time to tutor you anymore because college work is too much. Your family can find someone else. You will keep your mouth shut, I will keep mine, and this never happened.”
Something in Uzair’s chest twisted painfully, and it was not only because of the tutoring, though the thought of never sitting at this desk again, never hearing Jaskirat call his steps tragic, never watching his ears go slightly red over a good mark, landed with a horrible, dull ache. It was the way Jaskirat said that last part, this never happened, as if he could bury it quickly enough to make it true. As if Uzair had not seen the fear on his face. As if Uzair did not know the shape of that fear from the inside.
“Do you understand?” Jaskirat asked.
Uzair nodded again before he could stop himself, and Jaskirat let out a sharp, humorless breath.
“Of course,” he said. “You speak at every wrong time, and now suddenly you’re silent when you’re supposed to answer.”
Uzair looked at him, his throat tight beneath the pressure of Jaskirat’s hands, while Jaskirat stared back with eyes that were hard on the surface and breaking apart underneath.
“I asked,” Jaskirat said, harsher now. “Do you understand?”
Uzair forced his voice to work. “Yes.”
Jaskirat did not move, so Uzair swallowed and said it again, more clearly this time. “Yes, I understand.”
“And?”
“And I won’t tell anyone.” The words came faster now because this, at least, he knew. This, at least, was true enough to hold on to. “I promise. No one will find out from me.”
Jaskirat stared at him without blinking, without trusting him, and Uzair could feel him searching his face for a lie, for disgust, for that tiny flicker of power people got when they realized they had something over someone else. It was so intense that, in some fucked-up way, it felt intimate. Not soft, not romantic, not anything like the stupid versions of this moment Uzair might have once let himself imagine, but intimate in the way fear stripped people down. Jaskirat was holding him against the wall, breathing hard, trying to decide whether Uzair was dangerous, and Uzair had never felt more seen by someone who still knew almost nothing about him.
Then Jaskirat huffed out a laugh, small and almost silent, threaded through with disbelief and no humor at all. He let go of Uzair’s collar, but Uzair stayed against the wall for another second even after he was free, as if his body had forgotten it could move without permission. His shirt hung twisted at the neck, and when he reached up to smooth it down, his fingers felt clumsy and slow.
Before either of them could speak, Prabhneet Aunty’s voice came from beyond the door.
“Jassi? Everything okay? What was that noise?”
Uzair’s entire body went cold, but Jaskirat changed in front of him so cleanly it was terrifying to watch. One second he was standing there with panic still bright in his eyes and his hands shaking slightly at his sides, and the next his face smoothed out, his shoulders lowered, and his voice returned to the easy, faintly irritated tone of a son answering his mother.
“Nothing, Ma,” he called back, louder now. “Uzair just needed the door closed to focus. Too much noise outside.”
Uzair stared at him as a pause stretched on the other side of the door. Then Prabhneet Aunty said something about not studying too late, her footsteps moved away, and the performance ended as quickly as it had begun.
Jaskirat’s face did not fall apart exactly, but it loosened, and somehow that was worse. He stepped back from Uzair, closed his eyes, and pressed the heel of his palm hard into one of them before dragging his hand down his face and pushing his hair away from his forehead. For the first time since Uzair had known him, Jaskirat Singh Rangi looked young. He looked twenty. He looked scared. He looked like someone who had been carrying a glass bowl filled with his whole life and had just watched Uzair knock into it.
Guilt rose so sharply in Uzair that it almost made him sick.
Jaskirat bent to snatch the magazine off the floor, shoved it onto the bed, and then pushed it under the pillow, which was such a terrible hiding place that it only made clearer how badly he was not thinking. He started pacing after that, three steps one way and three steps back, the room too small to contain the motion.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his voice low and rough.
Uzair opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“Fuck,” Jaskirat said again, quieter this time, more to himself than to Uzair. “How am I supposed to know you won’t croak? How am I supposed to know you won’t say something stupid by mistake?”
“I won’t—”
Jaskirat turned on him at once. “You were under my bed.”
Uzair flinched.
The anger in Jaskirat’s face twisted into something rawer, something that looked less like fury and more like fear wearing its clothes. “You were looking under my fucking bed, Uzair.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Jaskirat asked, his voice sharp enough to make the question feel like a slap. “Because from here, it looks like you don’t know anything.”
Uzair took the hit because he deserved it.
Jaskirat grabbed the steel water bottle from the desk and unscrewed the cap with too much force, spilling water over his hand as he drank. He swallowed once, twice, then lowered the bottle and stared at the floor like it had personally betrayed him, his breathing still too fast, too uneven, too caught in his chest. Uzair watched him helplessly, feeling the shape of the room tilt around the sound of it.
He did not know what to call what was happening. All he could think was that fear had gotten into Jaskirat’s body and was now moving it around from the inside, making him pace, making his hands shake, making his voice come out wrong. People had words for anger, for tension, for weakness, for drama. They had advice too: drink water, pray, sleep, study harder, stop being sensitive. None of those words fit this, and none of that advice would help.
So Uzair thought, simply and terribly, I did this.
He thought, I need to fix this.
But fixing it felt impossible because every sentence that came to mind was wrong. He could say he was sorry, but sorry had already proven too small for the room. He could say it was not a big deal, but that would be such an insulting lie that Jaskirat might actually hit him. He could say he did not care, but that was not true either, because he cared too much and in too many directions at once. He cared that Jaskirat was scared, that Jaskirat had been hiding, that this impossible private thing Uzair had carried alone for years might not be his alone after all. He cared so much it made him feel selfish and monstrous.
He could say he understood, but how would Jaskirat believe that?
How could he?
Uzair’s mind moved desperately through possibilities. He thought of Rehman, who solved most practical problems by becoming direct enough to make everyone else embarrassed, and of Ulfat, who would have softened her voice but not her spine, who would have told the truth and then become the human version of a warm blanket. None of that seemed useful here, not with Jaskirat pacing like the walls were closing in and not with the air between them still crowded by what Uzair had done.
The only thing Uzair knew, truly knew, was what might have brought him comfort if their positions were reversed. Not denial, not jokes, not promises floating loose in the air, but proof. A shared risk. A hand held out with the blade facing both ways.
He pushed himself away from the wall slowly, carefully.
Jaskirat noticed immediately, his eyes snapping up as Uzair moved toward him.
Uzair lifted both hands a little, palms open, careful not to come too close too quickly. “I’m not—just listen, okay?”
Jaskirat gave a laugh that had no humor in it. “You want me to listen?”
“Yes,” Uzair said, swallowing as he forced himself to keep walking until there were only a few feet between them. “I know that’s rich coming from me right now. I know I don’t deserve it, and I know I shouldn’t have looked. It was wrong. I was curious and stupid and—” He grimaced at himself, shame twisting hard in his stomach. “And perverted, probably. I don’t know. I don’t have a good explanation because there isn’t one. I just did it, and I’m sorry.”
Jaskirat said nothing, but his chest rose and fell too fast, his whole body held tight like he was waiting for something terrible to happen.
“But I won’t tell anyone,” Uzair said quietly. “I mean that.”
“How do you expect me to believe you?” Jaskirat snapped, his voice louder now, not quite a shout but sharp enough that Uzair glanced instinctively at the door.
Jaskirat noticed the look and lowered his voice, though it still shook. “How, Uzair? Tell me. How the fuck am I supposed to believe you?”
Uzair looked at him and felt the answer rise in his throat before he was ready for it. There was no careful way to say it, no clever line that would keep his pride intact, and no version of the truth that would not leave him standing there with his own skin peeled back. His fear came up old and familiar, not as sudden as Jaskirat’s but deeper, worn smooth from years of jokes his friends had made without knowing, warnings buried in adult conversations, pages closed too quickly before someone entered the room, and every time he had stood among boys talking about girls while feeling like a liar wearing his own face.
He drew in a breath. “I’d never tell anyone,” he said, his voice low, “because I’m like you too.”
Jaskirat went still, and the words seemed to settle into every corner of the room, no longer trapped safely behind Uzair’s teeth but out in the open, belonging now to the air, to Jaskirat’s ears, to this bedroom with its cricket posters, Preity Zinta, the whiteboard, and all the hidden things neither of them were supposed to have.
Jaskirat stared at him. “What?”
Uzair’s throat tightened, but he kept going because stopping now would be worse. “I’m like you too. Okay? We share the same secret, or close enough to it. Maybe it’s not exactly the same, and maybe I don’t know what words you use for yourself, but I know what it is to hide it. I know what it is to be scared someone will find out. I would never want anyone to find out about me, so I get it, and I won’t tell anyone about you.”
Jaskirat did not blink, and Uzair rushed on because the fear had turned into momentum now, dragging everything out before he could lose his nerve. “And I don’t want you to stop tutoring me. Not because—okay, not only because of maths, even though you are actually good at teaching, which is very annoying. But I like coming here. I like these sessions, even though you’re rude and maths is a disease. I like—” He caught himself just before the sentence could become too honest, but restraint had already abandoned him enough that he added, softer, “I just like them. And I’m sorry. Really. I know I shouldn’t have been snooping, and I know I crossed a line. I don’t have any excuse.”
Jaskirat made a small motion with one hand, not harshly, but enough to make Uzair stop.
The silence that followed was still heavy and awkward, full of things neither of them knew how to hold, but it no longer felt like the room was about to split open. Jaskirat’s breathing slowed by degrees, and his shoulders, which had been braced as if expecting impact, lowered just a little as he looked at Uzair for a long time.
Uzair let him look. There was nowhere else to go now.
After a moment, Jaskirat stepped closer, not rushing this time and not shoving, just closing the distance one careful step at a time until they were nearly face to face again. There were only inches between them, and Uzair’s body, traitorous as always, noticed the nearness before his mind could tell it not to.
Jaskirat’s eyes moved over his face, searching for something Uzair did not know how to prove except by standing there and letting himself be seen.
“You’re like me,” Jaskirat said finally, and it was not really a question.
Uzair nodded once. “Yes.”
Jaskirat’s mouth tightened. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“I don’t know,” Uzair said honestly. “But it’s true.”
Jaskirat’s eyes dropped briefly before coming back up, and for some reason, that tiny movement broke something in Uzair.
Maybe it was the fear still lingering between them, or the relief of having finally said it aloud. Maybe it was years of wanting piled so high inside him that one more second of Jaskirat standing this close was enough to tip all of it over. Or maybe it was just that Uzair was eighteen and stupid, and he had already ruined the evening so thoroughly that his brain decided one more reckless choice could not possibly make it worse.
He leaned in.
The kiss was barely a kiss, just a quick, chaste press of his mouth to Jaskirat’s. It was so soft it might have been nothing if Uzair’s whole body had not lit up with it, every nerve catching at once.
Jaskirat did not kiss him back, but he did not push him away either. He stayed perfectly still, mouth warm beneath Uzair’s for one suspended second, and then Uzair stepped back before he could be shoved, slapped, or destroyed by his own courage.
His heart was beating so fast he felt faint. “See?” he said, voice rough. “Same secret.”
Jaskirat stared at him, and for one terrifying moment, Uzair thought he had miscalculated so badly that even God would be embarrassed for him. Then Jaskirat closed his eyes, breathed in through his nose, slow and uneven, and pinched the bridge of it like Uzair had given him a headache.
“Okay,” he said.
Uzair blinked. “Okay?”
Jaskirat opened his eyes, looking exhausted now in a way that made him seem older and younger at once. “Go home for now, Uzair.”
The use of his name did something awful to Uzair’s chest. “I—”
“I need some time to myself.”
That was fair. More than fair, really, even if it still made Uzair feel like something inside him had dropped through the floor. He nodded and packed his books with hands that were not steady, shoving his notebook, textbook, and pencil box into his bag without looking too closely at anything. He did not look at the bed, or the pillow, or Jaskirat’s mouth, though some doomed part of him wanted to confirm that the kiss had actually happened and had not been invented by stress.
Jaskirat opened the door first and checked the hallway. When no one was there, Uzair slipped out without saying goodbye to Prabhneet Aunty, though she called something from the kitchen that might have been his name. He did not stop for Jasleen either, who was sprawled on the sofa and looked up only long enough to say, “Done already?”
He walked home with his bag knocking against his hip and cursed himself the entire way, each step dragging the same words through his head until they started to lose shape. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He had been curious like a dog sniffing under a gate, selfish enough to pull at something hidden just because he wanted to know. He had risked Jaskirat’s safety for what? A glimpse? A possibility? The answer to a question he had no right asking?
And then, because apparently one invasion of privacy was not enough, he kissed him.
He had kissed Jaskirat, and Jaskirat had not kissed him back.
That thought followed him up the stairs, into the flat, and all the way to the dinner table, where it sat with him while Ulfat asked why he was so quiet and Rehman squinted at him over his dal like silence was a mechanical fault he could repair if he found the right tool.
“Oh ho, Uzair was tuition tough?” Ulfat said, her mouth curving like she had already decided to be amused by him no matter what answer he gave.
Rehman looked up from his plate with quieter approval. “Heard you did well on your midterm. Good job.”
Uzair managed a weak smile, the kind that felt like it had to be dragged onto his face by force. “Thanks.”
Naieem, who had rice stuck to his cheek and no understanding of the tension sitting under Uzair’s skin, offered him a soggy piece of papad with great seriousness. Uzair took it because refusing a two-year-old felt cruel, even when said two-year-old had clearly been holding the papad in his fist for too long.
That night, he lay awake for hours, staring into the dark while the ceiling fan pushed warm air around the room. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Jaskirat in the doorway, then Jaskirat’s hands fisted in his collar, then Jaskirat’s face after Uzair had said, I’m like you too. After that came the kiss, replaying so many times that by morning it felt both enormous and pathetic, like something that had lasted forever and ended before it could become anything at all.
It had been nothing, and it had been everything.
The next week moved like wet cloth, slow and heavy and impossible to shake off. Uzair went to classes, took notes, answered when teachers called on him, and ate lunch with the guys while laughing in all the right places. He let one of them copy his accountancy homework and pretended not to hear when another made some stupid comment about a girl from the next class, because pretending was easier than reacting, and reacting required a version of himself he did not know how to be in public.
Jasleen cornered him in accounting on Thursday, sliding into the bench beside him with suspicion already written across her face. “You left without saying anything on Tuesday.”
Uzair kept his eyes on his notebook. “I wasn’t feeling well.”
“You looked fine when you came.”
“Then I became unwell.”
“Was it the maths?”
“Yes.”
“That’s believable,” she admitted, though her eyes narrowed a second later. “But Jassi bhaiya was also weird.”
Uzair’s pen stopped for only half a second before he forced it to move again. “Your brother is always weird.”
“True, but this was a different weird.”
“Maybe his engineering coursework finally poisoned his brain.”
“Maybe.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice as if she were about to uncover some grand conspiracy instead of ruining Uzair’s already fragile peace. “Did you guys argue?”
Uzair looked at her too sharply, and Jasleen’s eyebrows rose at once. He forced himself to roll his eyes, hoping the gesture looked casual instead of panicked. “Over what? Derivatives?”
“With both of you, yes, that’s possible.”
“No.”
She stared at him for another second, long enough for Uzair to feel his own heartbeat in his throat, before she seemed to decide either that he was telling the truth or that he was not worth interrogating before the teacher arrived. “You’re both annoying.”
“Family trait for you.”
She kicked his shoe under the desk.
By Friday, Ulfat noticed something was wrong because of course she did. Ulfat noticed everything. If Uzair breathed wrong, she wanted to know whether it was a cold, stress, poor diet, or some new form of teenage idiocy. That evening, she watched him move food around his plate and frowned at him across the table.
“Are you worried about the next test?”
“No.”
“Then why are you making that face?”
“What face?”
“The face you make when you are trying not to make a face.”
Rehman laughed into his glass of water, and Uzair turned his glare on him because it was easier than looking at Ulfat for too long. “Very helpful.”
“Woh meri jaan hai,” Rehman said, setting the glass down. “I cannot help you against her.”
“Correct,” Ulfat said. “No one can.”
Naieem banged a spoon against the table and shouted something that might have been agreement, which at least gave Uzair somewhere else to look. He tried to be normal for the rest of dinner, but normal had begun to feel like a shirt that no longer fit properly, tight in the shoulders and awkward at the throat.
By Sunday, Rehman had noticed too, though he handled it differently. He took Uzair to the shop for inventory, which was usually punishment disguised as bonding, and they spent the afternoon counting switches, wires, small boxes of screws, and tube lights stacked in cardboard sleeves. The shop smelled of dust, metal, plastic, and hot tea from the stall nearby, and for a while the work was repetitive enough to let Uzair pretend his mind was quiet.
After an hour, Rehman said, “Did someone say something to you?”
Uzair froze with a box of plug tops in his hand. “No.”
“Don’t answer too fast.”
He set the box down carefully, buying himself a second he did not know how to use. “No one said anything.”
Rehman looked at him for a moment, then nodded as if he were accepting the answer without believing it. “If it is studies, say studies. If it is friends, say friends. If it is something else, say something else.”
Uzair’s throat tightened around the words he could not say.
Something else.
There was no category for this. There was no clean name he could place in Rehman’s hands, no version of the truth that would not turn the air between them into something dangerous. He wanted, suddenly and painfully, to be ten again with a broken pencil box and no secrets worse than grief.
“No,” he said again, quieter this time. “I’m fine.”
Rehman sighed, but he did not push, and that was one of the things Uzair loved most about him, though he almost never said it. Rehman pushed when pushing was needed, but he also knew when to stand near the door and leave it open.
“Fine,” Rehman said. “Then count properly. You missed one row.”
Uzair looked down and realized he had.
By Tuesday, Uzair had convinced himself of at least twelve different outcomes, all of them bad. Jaskirat would refuse to tutor him and send a message through Jasleen. Jaskirat would act like nothing had happened, which might somehow be worse. He would tell Uzair never to come again, or he would tell him the kiss had been disgusting, or he would insist that Uzair had misunderstood everything: the magazine meant nothing, the panic meant nothing, the kiss meant nothing, and Uzair was sick for thinking otherwise.
Or maybe Jaskirat would say nothing at all, and Uzair would have to sit in that room with his own shame pressing down on him until maths became the least painful thing there.
By the time Uzair came home from classes, his stomach felt hollow and sour.
Ulfat was in the kitchen, still in her school sari, her hair loosened from its clip as she moved between the stove and the counter. Naieem sat on the floor with a steel bowl and two plastic cars, making engine noises into the bowl for reasons known only to him.
“You’re early,” Ulfat said.
“Teacher was absent last period.”
“Good. Eat something before tuition.”
Uzair stayed near the doorway with his bag still on his shoulder, and the word tuition hit him like a stone thrown straight into his chest. He did not know if he should go. Jaskirat had said he needed time, but he had not said how much. He had not sent word, had not called through Jasleen, had not appeared at the door with borrowed curd or kheer or some other normal excuse that would let them pretend nothing had happened. Maybe silence was the answer. Maybe Uzair showing up would be another violation, another stupid insistence on entering a room he had no right to enter again.
“I feel sick,” Uzair said.
Ulfat turned immediately. “What kind of sick?”
“Just headache. Stomach also.”
She studied him for a moment, and Uzair braced himself for suspicion because Ulfat could sniff out fake illness like a police dog. Instead, her expression softened. Maybe it was because, for weeks now, he had gone to tutoring without any real complaint. Well, with complaint, but he had still gone. He had studied, improved, and not missed a single day, not even when it rained so badly the street outside looked like a gutter trying to become a river.
“All right,” she said. “Lie down. I’ll tell your brother not to shout about it.”
“He wouldn’t shout.”
“He would make a face. Same thing.”
Uzair managed a faint smile before going to the room, changing out of his college clothes, and curling onto the bed with a book he had no intention of reading. It was some novel from the library, the kind he usually finished in two evenings, but the lines blurred in front of him. His eyes moved over the page while his mind stayed in Jaskirat’s room, caught on the door, the magazine, the hands at his collar, the kiss.
Same secret.
He pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead and whispered, “Idiot.”
He tried to read, failed, and then tried again only to fail worse. Somewhere outside, evening settled over the colony, the light changing first as it went gold and dusty through the window grille and caught on the edges of the buildings opposite. Children shouted downstairs, a pressure cooker whistled in someone else’s flat, and a vendor called out something stretched and musical. In the distance, the local train sounded faintly, metal on tracks, the city carrying on with its usual lack of concern for private disasters.
Then the doorbell rang.
Uzair ignored it, but Naieem shouted, “Bell!” from the hall.
“Yes, I heard,” Ulfat said, and a moment later, the front door opened.
Uzair turned a page without reading a word, only to freeze when he heard Jaskirat’s voice. It was not clear at first, just the low, familiar shape of it at the entrance as he spoke politely to Ulfat, but it was enough to make Uzair’s entire body go still, the book open and forgotten in his hands.
No way.
“Uzair!” Ulfat called. “Come here. Someone is here for you.”
His heart began doing something unreasonable as he sat up too quickly, the book sliding off his lap and landing beside him. For a second, he only stood there, staring at the door of the room as though he could prepare himself by looking at it hard enough. Then he ran a hand through his hair, realized that had probably made it worse, and walked out anyway.
Jaskirat was standing near the entrance, and the first thing Uzair noticed was that he looked calmer. Not fine, exactly, because Uzair was beginning to understand that fine on Jaskirat could mean many things, most of them fake, but calmer. His face was composed, his hair neatly pushed back, and his dark blue T-shirt sat well across his shoulders, paired with jeans slightly faded at the knees. He had one hand in his pocket and the other wrapped around his bike keys, his thumb moving restlessly over the metal ring.
He was attractive in all the usual, unfair ways, and Uzair hated that, even after everything, his first full thought was still, Oh.
Jaskirat looked at him, his expression giving nothing away. “You want to go for a walk?”
Ulfat glanced between them with interest.
Uzair’s mouth went dry. “Walk?”
“Only if you’re not feeling too sick,” Jaskirat said, and there was something in his voice that was not teasing and not quite gentle, but an opening.
Uzair nodded before he could overthink it. “I can walk.”
Ulfat crossed her arms. “You can walk, but not study?”
Uzair winced, and Jaskirat, traitor that he was, looked mildly amused.
“I’ll make him study later, bhabi,” he said. “Fresh air first.”
Like every adult in the colony, Ulfat trusted Jaskirat Singh Rangi more than he deserved, so her expression softened after only a second.
“Fine,” she said. “Not too late.”
Uzair grabbed his sandals, and they went downstairs without speaking.
The silence should have been horrible, but somehow, it was not. Not immediately. It was thick, yes, and Uzair’s stomach was twisting itself into knots so complicated even Jaskirat could not have solved them, but walking made it bearable. Their shoulders did not touch, and they kept enough distance between them to look normal: two boys from the same colony walking together in the evening, with nothing strange or dangerous about it.
The colony was alive around them. A group of boys played cricket near the gate with a plastic bat taped at the handle, while two aunties stood near the parked scooters, discussing someone’s daughter-in-law with the seriousness of a national inquiry. A scooter started, coughed, died, then started again. Somewhere above them, a pressure cooker released steam from an open kitchen window, and a little girl in two plaits ran past carrying a packet of Parle-G like treasure.
Uzair kicked a small stone along the path, watching it skitter over the uneven concrete before it hit the side of a drain cover and bounced away. He wished Jaskirat would speak, and at the same time, he wished Jaskirat would never speak, because both options felt equally capable of ruining him. The stone rolled ahead again, and when Uzair kicked it too hard, it disappeared under a parked motorcycle.
Great. Even the stone had left him.
They walked past the building where the ground-floor uncle kept too many potted plants and complained if children so much as looked at them wrong, then past the back lane where damp moss grew along the walls during monsoon. They passed the spot where younger kids sometimes played seven tiles until someone’s mother called them home for dinner, and only then did Jaskirat finally let out a breath.
“Going through my stuff was not okay, Uzair.”
Uzair’s head whipped up. Jaskirat was looking ahead, but there was a small smile at the corner of his mouth, not a happy one exactly, and not fully forgiving either, but present enough to soften the words and let Uzair breathe properly for the first time in a week.
“I know,” Uzair said at once, relief and sincerity tripping over each other in his voice. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
Jaskirat glanced at him, and Uzair hurried on before he could lose his nerve.
“I mean it,” he said. “It was horrible, and I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me.”
“You were being a pervert.”
Uzair winced. “Yes.”
“And an idiot.”
“Yes.”
“And your curiosity is going to get you murdered one day.”
“Probably by you.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Uzair almost laughed, though the sound came out shaky. Jaskirat’s smile faded after that, but not cruelly; it only settled back into something quieter, something more careful.
Uzair did not know if fine was the right word, but he was not stupid enough to argue with it.
“And yes,” Jaskirat added, “I’ll still tutor you.”
The relief hit so hard that Uzair nearly stopped walking, though he forced himself to keep moving and tried to arrange his face into something calm. Judging by the way Jaskirat looked at him, he probably failed.
“Okay,” Uzair said.
Jaskirat raised an eyebrow. “Just okay?”
“What do you want, a dance?”
“No. I’ve seen you dance at weddings. No one wants that.”
Uzair gasped. “I was twelve.”
“Your elbows everywhere.”
“I grew into them.”
“Barely.”
Uzair shoved his hands into his pockets so Jaskirat would not see them curling with stupid happiness. The pit in his stomach had not disappeared completely, and the kiss still sat between them, unmentioned and hot, but something had eased. Something had finally unclenched.
They kept walking as the colony road curved behind the third building, where the noise thinned and the shadows stretched longer between parked scooters and uneven patches of grass. For a few minutes, conversation came in small, cautious pieces. Jaskirat asked about Uzair’s homework, Uzair accused him of being unable to go ten minutes without discussing maths, and Jaskirat, entirely unbothered, said maths had saved Uzair from academic death. Uzair told him math was still the villain in this story, which made Jaskirat’s mouth twitch like he was trying not to smile.
For a moment, it almost felt normal.
Then Jaskirat said, “You know I’m not gay, right?”
Uzair stopped walking so abruptly that Jaskirat took two more steps before noticing. When he turned back, his expression was far too calm for someone who had just thrown the most ridiculous sentence possible into the evening.
“What?” Uzair asked, because apparently that was the only word his brain had decided to keep.
“I’m not gay,” Jaskirat said again.
Uzair stared at him as the last week of his life flashed before his eyes in a deeply unhelpful montage: the magazine, Jaskirat’s panic, his hands fisted in Uzair’s collar, Uzair saying, I’m like you too, Uzair kissing him, and Jaskirat very notably not moving away.
“What?” he repeated, this time with more accusation than confusion.
Jaskirat’s mouth twitched again before he looked away and laughed softly, almost to himself. “I’m not gay,” he said. “I’m bisexual.”
Uzair blinked at him.
“That means liking girls and guys,” Jaskirat added, because apparently he had decided to be helpful in the most annoying way possible.
“I know what bisexual means,” Uzair said, offended on instinct.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Your face didn’t.”
“My face was reacting to you saying something insane after everything that happened.”
“It’s not insane if it’s true.”
Uzair opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, unable to decide which part of that sentence to attack first. “So you actually like women?”
“Yes.”
“And men?”
Jaskirat gave him a dry look. “That is what I just said.”
Uzair stared at him for another moment before starting to walk again, mostly because standing still made him feel too exposed. Jaskirat fell into step beside him, quiet enough that Uzair could hear the faint scrape of their sandals against the pavement.
That made sense, he supposed. It made sense of the Preity Zinta poster, maybe, and the magazine, and the fact that Jaskirat could like girls and still have looked so terrified when Uzair found what he found. It made sense in a simple way that Uzair should have been able to accept immediately, but instead it opened a different kind of mess inside him.
Because Uzair did not think he was bisexual.
He had tried, in quiet and desperate ways, to see if he could be. He had looked at girls the way his friends did, or at least the way they claimed to. He had listened when boys talked about actresses, schoolgirls, and cousins’ friends at weddings. He could tell when a girl was pretty; he was not blind. But the feeling never went where it was supposed to go. It never caught fire or made him stupid.
Boys did.
Jaskirat did.
For some reason, standing beside Jaskirat while he calmly explained that his own wanting was wider, less singular, and more possible in one acceptable direction at least, made Uzair feel both understood and strangely alone. He hated that too.
“So,” Jaskirat said carefully, “you’re…”
“Gay,” Uzair said, quieter than he meant to. He kept his eyes on the pavement as the word settled between them. “I think. I mean, yes. I know.”
Jaskirat did not respond immediately, and although the silence was not cruel, Uzair still hated it. Then Jaskirat said, “Okay.”
Uzair looked at him. “Okay?”
Jaskirat shrugged, almost awkwardly. “What else should I say?”
Uzair did not know. Maybe nothing. Maybe, for once, okay was enough.
They walked until they reached the small shaded area behind two of the colony buildings, the kind of place people rarely came to unless they were looking for a shortcut or somewhere to smoke. A few trees grew there, their roots pushing up through the cracked pavement, and the wall of one building rose beside them without balconies or windows, only blank concrete stained darker from years of rain. It made the space feel hidden, not private exactly, because nothing in the colony was ever truly private, but private enough.
Jaskirat stopped near the wall, and Uzair leaned back against it, trying to look casual even though he probably looked like someone waiting to be interrogated. For a moment, Jaskirat only watched him, his expression unreadable in a way that made Uzair’s skin feel too tight.
Then he asked, “Was that your first time kissing a guy?”
Uzair’s entire body went hot. He had prepared himself for plenty of possible questions, but not that one, not something so direct and humiliatingly specific. He could have lied, and maybe he should have. He could have said something casual, something that made him sound experienced and mysterious instead of like an eighteen-year-old who had spent most of his romantic life staring out windows and being mentally ill about Jasleen’s older brother.
But Jaskirat was watching him too closely for that.
Uzair nodded with as much composure as he could gather. “Yeah.”
Something shifted in Jaskirat’s expression, though it was not mockery. It was quieter than that, like he was taking the answer in and deciding what to do with it.
Uzair, because he apparently enjoyed pain, asked, “Was it the first time a guy has kissed you?”
Jaskirat shook his head, and Uzair’s stomach sank before he could stop it.
“There was a senior at my college,” Jaskirat said after a moment. “That’s how I found out. Or more like confirmed it, maybe.”
He did not offer more than that. There was no name, no details, nothing about whether he had liked him, whether they still spoke, whether the senior was the boy from the magazine’s shadow in Uzair’s imagination, whether Jaskirat had kissed him back or touched him or wanted him. Uzair hated himself for wanting to know any of it.
He nodded like a normal person, or at least like someone attempting a convincing impression of one. “Oh.”
Jaskirat leaned one shoulder against the opposite wall and crossed his arms. “Oh?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
Uzair looked at him, irritation rising mostly because it was easier than letting anything else show. “Congratulations on your senior?”
Jaskirat gave him a look, and Uzair looked away first, pretending to be deeply interested in a crack running through the pavement near his shoe.
God, this whole thing felt like a humiliation ritual, some secret society of shame where the entrance exam was kissing your crush badly and then finding out he had already had a college senior. Uzair had spent four years turning Jaskirat into this impossible figure in his head, only to realize that Jaskirat had been out in the world having experiences while Uzair was at home staring over books and trying not to think about his own hands.
He leaned harder against the building, trying to look cool and unaffected, though he was fairly sure he only looked constipated.
Jaskirat stayed quiet for a while, long enough that Uzair started to think the conversation had finally died a merciful death. Then he said, “When did you know?”
Uzair frowned. “Know what?”
“That you liked me.”
Uzair’s head snapped up. “Who said I liked you?”
Jaskirat stared at him, and Uzair stared back with as much dignity as a person could manage after everything that had happened between them. It lasted all of three seconds before Jaskirat’s eyebrows rose, and Uzair, defeated by the sheer obviousness of his own face, looked away.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“So?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“You already kissed me.”
“As a demonstration.”
“A demonstration.”
“Yes,” Uzair said, lifting his chin slightly. “Of our same secret.”
Jaskirat’s mouth twitched. “Very academic.”
“I’m good in theory subjects.”
“Then explain.”
Uzair groaned and tipped his head back against the wall, staring up at the building like the concrete itself might take pity on him. “Why are you like this?”
“Curious.”
“That word has caused enough damage between us.”
“True,” Jaskirat said, and for one terrible second Uzair thought he might let it go. Then he added, “Still.”
Uzair wanted to refuse. He should have refused, if only to preserve whatever scraps of pride he had left after the kissing, the panicking, and the general collapse of his personality. But Jaskirat was standing there with that almost-smile on his face, no longer terrified, no longer furious, and still close enough that the evening seemed to arrange itself around him. Uzair did not have the mental strength to fight him on anything right now.
He exhaled, slow and reluctant. “Do you remember that time you were playing cricket in the gully and the ball came through our window?”
Jaskirat blinked, and Uzair watched him search his memory with the immediate, sinking certainty that this had been a sacred foundational event for exactly one of them.
“It was raining,” Uzair added. “You came upstairs to get it, but by the time you reached, it had started pouring properly. Bhabi made you stay for a bit because she said you’d get sick if you left.”
Jaskirat frowned in concentration.
“You were drenched,” Uzair said, then regretted it the moment the words left his mouth. “I mean, because of the rain. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“And she gave you a towel,” Uzair continued, looking away before his face could betray him any more than it already had. “And papaya.”
Jaskirat’s expression shifted as recognition arrived slowly, then all at once. “Oh,” he said. “That day.”
Uzair looked down at the ground. “Yeah. That day.”
“You were sitting with a book.”
His chest tightened. “You remember that?”
“Now I do.”
Uzair swallowed, unsure what to do with the fact that Jaskirat remembered even that much. The silence that followed was worse than all the others, not because there was fear in it, but because there wasn’t. It was only memory now, humiliatingly bare and impossible to take back.
Jaskirat’s voice was softer when he spoke again. “Since back then?”
Uzair nodded. “Yes.”
“All the way back then?”
A bitter little laugh escaped him before he could stop it. “Yes, Jaskirat. All the way back then. Congratulations. You have been ruining my life since approximately 2002.”
Jaskirat did not laugh as much as Uzair expected. He only looked at him, surprised and almost careful, which somehow made the whole thing worse.
Uzair’s face burned.
There it was. Too much. He had said too much, and now Jaskirat was going to make fun of him. Not cruelly, maybe, not after everything, but still. He would tuck it away somewhere, this ridiculous fact that Uzair had been nursing a crush since a rainy afternoon with papaya and a cricket ball. He would think it was childish, pathetic, funny.
Uzair pushed himself off the wall, forcing his shoulders loose even though everything inside him had gone tight and bruised.
“You know what, I’m going to head back,” he said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere much closer to injured. “I’ll see you next Tuesday.”
He had only taken one step when Jaskirat caught his wrist.
Uzair stopped so abruptly that his breath caught too. Jaskirat’s fingers closed around him firmly, not rough like before, but warm and certain in a way that made Uzair’s thoughts scatter before he could gather them into anything useful.
“So soon?” Jaskirat asked.
Uzair looked back at him, wary despite the stupid, helpless leap his heart made at being touched again.
Jaskirat tugged once, not hard enough to force him, only enough to turn him back around. “Without asking me when I started liking you?”
For a second, Uzair did not understand the sentence at all. It entered his head, rearranged everything inside it, and still refused to make sense.
“When you…” he started, but the rest of the words failed him.
Jaskirat stood there with one eyebrow raised and the beginning of a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth, looking far too pleased for someone who had just said something impossible. Then, all at once, Uzair understood.
His heart kicked so hard it was almost painful.
“What?”
Jaskirat’s smirk grew, and Uzair stared at him while every careful attempt at nonchalance slipped through the cracks of his face. He could feel it happening: the stupid hope, the disbelief, the bright and reckless excitement rising in him before he had given it permission.
“Are you serious?” he asked.
Jaskirat rolled his eyes, but his ears had gone a little red. “Yes, idiot. I thought you were supposed to be good at all this feelings shit as an Arts kid.”
“I ended up in Commerce,” Uzair corrected automatically, because apparently even now, when the boy he had wanted for years was admitting to wanting him back, his mouth still had academic grievances to settle.
“You wanted to be in Arts.”
“That is not the point.”
“It is a little bit the point.”
Uzair stepped closer without meaning to, drawn in by the warmth of Jaskirat’s hand and the unbearable smugness on his face. “Tell me.”
Jaskirat looked far too pleased with himself. “Tell you what?”
“When.”
“When what?”
“Jaskirat.”
Jaskirat laughed under his breath, and Uzair hated how badly he wanted to keep that sound somewhere safe, folded away with every other small, stupid thing he had collected over the years. Jaskirat pulled lightly on his wrist again, bringing him closer until they were almost standing toe to toe beneath the trees, hidden behind two ordinary buildings in the middle of their ordinary colony, saying things that should have been impossible.
“Do you remember two years ago,” Jaskirat said, “during Ramzan?”
Uzair blinked. “That is a whole month.”
“Very smart. Let me finish.”
“Fine.”
“You were fasting,” Jaskirat said. “It was right around iftar. My mom sent me to your flat with kheer.”
Uzair frowned, trying to pull the memory into focus. Ramzan blurred together in his mind as a month of heat, hunger, late evenings, and Ulfat’s voice calling from the kitchen while Rehman checked the time like he could make the sun set faster by glaring at the clock. There were dates set out in a small plate, the smell of pakoras frying in oil, Rooh Afza turning milk pink, and the whole flat feeling softer in those few minutes before iftar, as if even the walls were holding their breath.
Jaskirat watched him with visible amusement, clearly enjoying the fact that Uzair had not immediately remembered a moment that had apparently ruined his life.
“You opened the door,” he continued, “and you looked like you were going to bite someone if food didn’t appear in the next ten seconds.”
“That sounds like me.”
“You already had a date in your hand. I think your bhabi shouted from inside that it was time, and you just took one bite of the date before grabbing the bowl from me and drinking the kheer straight.”
The memory returned in pieces then, each one small and ordinary until Jaskirat’s voice made it enormous. The doorway. The humid evening pressing against the corridor. The smell of fried onions and cardamom from the kitchen. Ulfat calling his name from inside, telling him the azaan had started, telling him to stop hovering and eat properly. Naieem had not been born yet, so the flat had been quieter, just Rehman moving plates around and Ulfat pretending she did not need help while clearly needing help.
And Jaskirat had been at the door with a covered steel bowl in his hands.
Kheer.
Prabhneet Aunty’s kheer, thick and sweet and fragrant with cardamom, the kind she sent every year because she was like that, because their colony survived on borrowed sugar, returned dabbas, and neighbors remembering each other’s festivals even when they pretended not to be sentimental about it.
Uzair groaned as the rest of it came back. “Oh my god.”
Jaskirat’s smile widened.
“I must have looked like a fool.”
“Maybe a little.”
“Great.”
“But,” Jaskirat said, and his voice changed just enough that Uzair stopped cringing and looked at him properly, “I was mostly distracted.”
Uzair’s mouth went dry. “By what?”
Jaskirat’s thumb moved once against the inside of Uzair’s wrist, so small a touch it should not have meant anything, and yet Uzair felt it everywhere.
“You,” Jaskirat said simply. “Your stupid lanky limbs. Your hair all messed up. The way you grabbed the kheer from me like I had personally been starving you.”
“I was hungry.”
“I could tell.”
“Shut up.”
“And your hands,” Jaskirat added.
Uzair stopped breathing properly.
Jaskirat looked down at their wrists, then back at him. “Our hands didn’t touch. I remember that very clearly. You took the bowl, and our hands didn’t touch, but I spent all night thinking about how I wanted them to.”
The echo of it moved through Uzair slowly.
Four years ago, there had been a cricket ball and a sudden sheet of monsoon rain. Jaskirat stood in his doorway with wet hair and a towel over his shoulders while Uzair pretended to read from behind a book, feeling doomed every time those green eyes flicked toward him. Their fingers had not touched then either, not when Uzair handed the ball back, and Uzair had remembered the absence of it like a wound.
Two years ago, there was a bowl of kheer at iftar. Their hands had not touched then, either. Uzair had been hungry and impatient, probably graceless, probably sharp with everyone in that way, fasting made him before the first bite softened him back into a human being. He had not known Jaskirat was standing in the doorway quietly ruining himself over the same almost-touch Uzair had been mourning for years.
Then Uzair remembered something else, something so small that it had never meant anything until that moment.
After that year, Prabhneet Aunty had sent kheer every Ramzan. Every year, without fail, a steel bowl arrived at their door before or after iftar, covered with a plate and wrapped in a cloth so it would stay warm. Sometimes Jaskirat brought it. Sometimes Jasleen came with it, complaining about the stairs. Sometimes a passing neighbor carried it over because the colony had its own postal system made entirely of aunties and children with instructions. Uzair had always thought of it as kindness, as the easy generosity of people who had lived too close to each other for too long not to become tangled.
But that first time was Jaskirat.
Jaskirat had remembered it too.
Uzair stared at him, the realization settling low and warm in his chest. “You’re so stupid,” he said, though his voice came out faint.
Jaskirat laughed. “Me?”
“Yes, you. All this time?”
“You’re the one who liked me since the papaya incident.”
Uzair’s face heated immediately. “Do not call it that.”
“What should I call it? The great monsoon awakening?”
“I will actually leave.”
“You won’t.”
The worst part was that Jaskirat was right. Uzair had no intention of leaving, not when Jaskirat was looking at him like that, eyes bright and mouth curved, his fingers still wrapped around Uzair’s wrist like he had finally decided not to let the moment slip away from them. For a while, they only looked at each other, both of them standing too close and smiling like fools as the absurdity of it settled over them in warm, disbelieving waves.
Years of glances. Years of not touching. Years of thinking themselves alone in it.
Uzair had been watching Jaskirat through windows, over books, across the colony courtyard, from behind the safe cover of jokes and insults and other people’s expectations. Jaskirat had been remembering bowls of kheer, missed touches, and the shape of Uzair’s hands around steel. They had both been so careful, so terrified, so certain that the wanting was one-sided that neither of them had noticed the other doing the same thing back.
Uzair huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “We’re idiots.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“You hid a dirty magazine under your bed while keeping Oscar Wilde on your shelf.”
Jaskirat’s eyes widened. “You noticed the book?”
“I notice many things.”
“Clearly. Even the undersides of beds don’t escape your notice.”
Uzair winced. “Deserved.”
Jaskirat smiled, but the teasing softened into something quieter as his gaze dropped briefly to Uzair’s mouth. The movement was quick, barely more than a flicker, but Uzair saw it because of course he saw it. He had spent years noticing things he was not supposed to notice.
His own gaze fell too, helpless and obvious, to Jaskirat’s lips.
This time, there was no panic sitting between them. No desperate proof, no magazine heavy with accusation, no bedroom walls closing in around a secret neither of them had known how to hold. There was only the evening air, warm and damp against Uzair’s skin, the hidden strip of wall behind the buildings, Jaskirat’s hand sliding from his wrist to his fingers, and the terrifying, impossible knowledge that wanting him had never been a punishment meant only for Uzair to carry.
Jaskirat’s smile faded into something softer.
Uzair leaned in first, or maybe Jaskirat did; even later, when he tried to remember it properly, the moment would refuse to separate itself into who moved and who followed. It felt more like both of them finally giving in to the same pull, closing the small distance they had spent years pretending not to measure.
The kiss was careful at first.
Not because Uzair did not want him. God, that was not the problem. He wanted him so badly his whole body felt lit from the inside, but wanting and doing were different things, and some frightened, obedient part of him still expected the world to punish them for even this much. His mouth touched Jaskirat’s lightly, uncertain with the newness of it, and for one suspended second, neither of them seemed to know what to do with the fact that the impossible had become warm and real between them.
Then Jaskirat kissed him back.
Tentative at first, almost questioning, and then with a little more certainty, his fingers tightening around Uzair’s as if he was finally correcting the mistake of every moment they had not touched before. Uzair felt the breath Jaskirat let out against his mouth more than he heard it, and the sound, small as it was, undid him completely. He stepped closer, not enough to be reckless, not enough for anyone passing by to immediately understand, but enough that their shoulders nearly brushed and the world narrowed to Jaskirat’s mouth, Jaskirat’s hand, Jaskirat’s warmth in the fading evening.
It lasted only a few seconds.
Long enough.
Too short.
When they pulled apart, both of them were smiling with a stunned, private happiness of two boys who had found something impossible behind the backs of everyone who would never understand it. The colony carried on around them as if nothing had happened. Somewhere, a pressure cooker whistled. A scooter started near the gate. Someone’s mother shouted from a balcony for a child to come upstairs. The ordinary sounds wrapped around them, almost protective in their indifference.
Jaskirat looked at him, eyes bright with something that made Uzair’s chest ache.
“Tuesday, then?” he asked.
Uzair laughed softly. “For tutoring?”
“For tutoring,” Jaskirat said, and then, with that annoying little smirk returning, “You still need help.”
Uzair rolled his eyes, but he did not move his hand away.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling despite himself. “I know.”
---
Part 1
tags: @chaotickittydreamer @aneshb25 @sunxister21 @aan-4-u @sanpiece @hyade @lakshana-ke-lakshan @harrystyleskiwi9 @miraclejin1204 @savagedrama @layinglowkey @darkdemonriddle666 @noxiusthe0bnoxious --- apologies for any unwanted tags!!
The departure day arrived without fanfare, and it was far more easy-going than Hamza had imagined. While he stayed busy double checking everything, Uzair was mentally steeling himself for the days ahead.
Uzair hugged his Bhai, Bhabhi, and the kids, they promised to come watch a few of his matches soon. Rehman’s security team whom Rizwan had nicknamed the elite goon squad gave him a goodbye filled with humour, teasing, and heartfelt wishes.
Hamza turned to Rizwan.
“Will my backup be here soon?”
“Yes, they are sending Saurabh.”
“He’s good.”
“Yeah, but he’s not you.”
“No one is.”
“Wow… how do you even walk around with a head that big?”
After one final pep talk and a quick bro hug, Hamza got into the vehicle with Uzair. They reached the training ground, where the players changed into their club-branded travel gear before boarding the bus to the airport.
Hamza had been cleared by the club and given access to most player and staff areas during travel, enough to stay close to Uzair without interfering with team operations. The moment he stepped onto the bus, instinct took over. He picked a seat with the clearest view of both exits and settled into silent observation for the rest of the ride.
The team was a boisterous bunch. In typical Premier League fashion, it was a mix of local and foreign players. In the days Hamza had spent observing the team and reading the files they had on each player, he had come to one conclusion: this was a professional football team made up of exceptional athletes powered entirely by talent, ambition, passion for football and questionable levels of maturity.
Their captain, Vitor Carvalho, the centre-back and defensive wall of the team, ran the squad less like the powerhouse player he was and more like an exhausted father of eight. This was made significantly more difficult by Sameer Nair, their defensive midfielder, who treated every serious conversation like open mic night. Arjun Menon, the central midfielder and tactical backbone of the side, was the only functioning adult in midfield, while wingers Rahul Bedi and Karan Sethi appeared to share a single brain cell dedicated entirely to hairstyles, shoes, and football.
Mateo Costa, the attacking left-back, believed defending was not optional both on and off the field, Dani Reyes, the attacking midfielder, communicated exclusively through dramatic hand gestures and aggressively offended Spanish, and Kwame Mensah, their powerhouse goalkeeper, attempted to solve every conflict with food and hugs.
And in the middle of all this stood Uzair Jan Baloch; the team’s centre-forward, wholesale dealer of chaos, and Hamza’s very own professional menace.
Somehow, against all odds, they played beautiful football together. Off the field, however, Hamza was convinced that given enough freedom, they would immediately devolve into schoolboys fuelled by energy drinks and adult money.
The airport and subsequent travel were largely uneventful, except for Hamza and the team having to wait longer than expected for security clearance. Once they landed, Hamza made sure his room was assigned right next to Uzair’s.
With only two days left before their first match against Goa, a formidable side, the boys were buzzing with energy. They were wired, restless, and desperately needed to be kept in line. Their coach, who reminded Hamza of his instructors back at the NDA, handled it expertly by putting the fear of God into them. No, scratch that, he put the fear of coach in them. Hamza had attended enough of their practice matches by now to understand their dynamics. He had seen them play, seen them fool around, seen them fight and recover together. This was a solid team.
Too bad Hamza preferred the Punjab team. Well, what did they expect? The man’s name is Jaskirat Singh Rangi. You couldn’t exactly take the Punjab out of him.
He couldn’t wait for Uzair to find that one out!
The day of the first match with Goa Titans arrived quickly. Goa has a passionate football audience, and the stadium was packed. The home crowd looked ready to celebrate a victory for their state.
Goa pressed aggressively, forcing Kerala deep into their own half and leaving Uzair isolated up front. Kerala finally settled after halftime. Arjun took control in midfield, Sameer began disrupting attacks, and the game slowly opened up. By the final minutes, the score sat at 2–2.
Then Goa made one final move which Vitor crushed with a massive clearance toward midfield, and Uzair exploded forward instantly slipping past two defender and burying the ball into the bottom corner.
3–2.
The stadium fell into stunned silence before erupting into scattered noise. The small pocket of Kerala supporters cheered as loudly as they possibly could. Kerala’s bench emptied onto the pitch while screaming teammates piled on Uzair before he could even process the winning goal.
And yet, even from under the chaos, his eyes immediately searched the side-lines for Hamza.
Did you see me?
Hamza gave a small nod, the faintest smile touching his face.
I never took my eyes off you
The atmosphere in the dressing room was electric. Music blasted from the speaker while water bottles and towels flew in every direction. Rahul and Karan were dancing terribly on a bench, Kwame was trying to hug everyone in sight. Even Vitor, despite repeatedly yelling for everyone to calm down, couldn’t fully hide the grin on his face. Uzair sat in the middle of it all, drenched in sweat and triumph.
The post-match interviews were far calmer. Coach Almeida shut down any talk of statements immediately. “It is one match, three points, nothing more,” he said firmly. “We celebrate for one night, then we focus on recovery and the next game.” Beside him, captain Vitor Carvalho spoke with the composure of a man used to carrying responsibility.
By the next morning, the high of victory had already begun fading beneath ice baths, sore muscles, and Coach Almeida’s sharp reminders that the league table did not care about dramatic winners. The boys still carried the energy of the Goa victory, but professional football moved too quickly to let anyone hold on to anything. Another match, another flight, another stadium already waited for them.
Hyderabad was a whole different ball game, both literally and figuratively. The team had a lot to prove. Namely, that their first victory wasn’t just chance or last-minute luck. They needed to show consistency, form, and cohesion. Which, admittedly, wasn’t a problem on the field. On the field, they were a force of nature. Off the field, however, was an entirely different story.
Because that day, on the day of their match with Hyderabad, Rahul and Karan, whom Hamza had privately started referring to as Tweedledee and Tweedledumb, had discovered the “Sexy Hairy Daddy” edits on Instagram. Naturally, they had shared them in the team group chat with all the delight and maturity of children discovering explosives. Uzair, traitor that he was, had proceeded to contribute an alarming personal collection of reels to the cause.
The prospect of mass murder had never looked this tempting to Hamza.
It was breakfast time when he walked up to Uzair, who was completely engrossed in his phone.
“Enjoying yourself?” Hamza asked with barely concealed irritation.
Uzair looked up with absolutely no remorse. “Ahhh… not nearly enough. Did you know there’s an entire fan page dedicated to you?”
“…”
Sameer appeared beside Hamza and casually threw an arm around his shoulders. “Bhai, did you know people are asking you for hair care tips?”
“You gotta share them with us,” Karan added from somewhere nearby while aggressively destroying his breakfast.
“He doesn’t have hair tips,” Uzair scoffed. “He probably glares his hair into submission.”
Hamza leaned closer to him so only Uzair could hear, his deep, gruff voice dropping lower as he spoke.
“And what exactly would you know about submission?”
Hamza knew he was playing a dangerous game, but Uzair had baited him into it and the opportunity had been far too perfect to ignore.
Uzair promptly felt his face heat up
“Well, people are comparing him to Thor,” Rahul said while gulping down his breakfast.
“More like Thor from Chor Bazaar,” Uzair muttered immediately, his face still suspiciously red.
Hamza tilted his head slightly. “Thor from Chor Bazaar?”
Uzair looked immensely pleased with himself. “Yes. Very accurate, actually.”
Hamza considered that for a moment before giving a slow nod. “Sounds like you shop there often.”
Hamza walked away with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had once again won a verbal spar he technically never started while Uzair pouted.
Hyderabad should have felt like momentum. Instead, by the end of the match, Uzair felt exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with football.
The game had been ugly from start to finish. Hyderabad Storm was a team that hunted him relentlessly, turned every move into a wrestling match, and gave him barely a second on the ball all night. By the second half, frustration had already started creeping into his game. Passes went astray and every failed chance only made him push harder.
Kerala still managed to grind out a narrow 1–0 victory thanks to Vitor, but the dressing room afterward lacked the chaos and excitement of Goa. Everyone looked drained and they knew why.
Coach Almeida certainly didn’t sound drained, he sounded mad.
“You were on the field for 95 minutes and you played like idiots for all of those 95 minutes,” he said flatly before walking out.
None of the players had any defence against that. Once they were back in their hotel rooms, Uzair sent a text to Hamza.
“Going outside for a bit, in the garden”.
The message appeared on Hamza’s screen seconds later. Hamza followed him out but did not approach him, simply monitored him from afar where he could still see him. He understood the difference between watching over someone and crowding them and right now Uzair needed space.
About fifteen minutes later, Hamza stepped outside himself. He found Uzair near the back of the hotel grounds, sitting alone on a bench in the empty garden. A cigarette burned lazily between his fingers, the orange glow briefly lighting his face every time he took a drag.
Uzair glanced sideways as Hamza approached.
“You took your time.”
“You looked like you wanted to be alone.”
“That never stopped you before.”
Hamza hummed softly as he sat beside him instead of speaking further.
Uzair took another slow drag before exhaling toward the night sky.
“I played badly today.”
“You were frustrated.”
“That doesn’t help anyone win.”
Hamza didn’t argue with that.
“I hate matches like this,” he admitted eventually. “Everything feels heavy. Every touch, every decision feels questionable… meanwhile everyone expects you to pull something magical out of nowhere.”
Hamza understood exactly what he meant. One good performance and suddenly people stopped seeing the player. They only saw the moments, and when brilliance isn’t repeated, their talent, performance and form is called into question.
Hamza bumped his shoulder lightly against Uzair’s.
“You will play better next match.”
“You sound very sure for someone who watched whatever that was today.”
“I have seen you do worse.”
“That’s your motivational speech? Please keep your day job of being Big Bossy Grumpzilla,” Uzair muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching despite himself.
Silence settled again after that, but unlike earlier, it no longer felt heavy.
Uzair had always preferred being alone when his thoughts became too loud. Most people filled silence with questions, advice, or reassurances. Hamza did not do that, he simply stood there beside him, quiet and steady, sharing the night without demanding anything from it or anything from him.
And strangely enough, Uzair realized he didn’t mind that at all.
The next match was in Mumbai. For Hamza, it was home. Not the home he had been born into, not the fields and mountains of Pathankot, but the one he had built for himself over the years. Mumbai was where he worked, where he lived, where he had learned the city’s moods and rhythms until he became a part of it. The chaotic energy that unnerved him before now offered familiarity and comfort.
For Uzair, though, Mumbai was what he saw through the glamour of after match events and romanticism of Bollywood. Yet he knew there was something about the city that spoke directly to his soul while refusing to let him experience any of it properly.
“I never get to do anything fun here,” Uzair complained as they rode to hotel from the airport. “Every time we come here it’s for a match followed by sponsorship this, media that and some ridiculous luxury party afterward.”
“Bougie,” Arjun commented from the seat ahead.
“Whatever,” Uzair muttered dismissively. “I just want to sit at Marine Drive and smoke in peace. Is that really too much to ask?”
“Yes,” Hamza deadpanned instantly. “Because it will get your ass fined and land you in another scandal.”
Uzair huffed but turned toward the window anyway, watching Mumbai blur past outside in streaks of headlights and endless movement.
The match in Mumbai turned out to be exactly the kind of night Kerala Warriors needed.
After the exhausting grind of Hyderabad, this match felt alive again. Mumbai Strikers had a strong side and an even stronger crowd. Their supporters were loud from the first whistle, relentless in the way only Mumbai crowds could be, turning every attack into noise and every foul into outrage. But unlike Hyderabad’s suffocating physicality, this game opened up beautifully.
Fast counters, reckless tackles, strong blocks the match was unpredictable and for the first time since Hyderabad, Uzair looked like himself again. He thrived in chaos when it was football chaos instead of mental noise.
By halftime, the score sat at 1–1 and by the seventieth minute, it was somehow 3–2. Kerala eventually sealed the game with a dramatic late goal from Dani Reyes ending the game at 4–2.
The Hyderabad frustration vanished almost instantly beneath adrenaline, exhaustion, and pure relief. The team sprinted across the pitch screaming incoherently, Uzair looked breathless and alive again.
The sponsor event after the Mumbai match was exactly the kind of thing professional athletes secretly hated while pretending to enjoy. It was hosted on the rooftop of some obscenely expensive hotel overlooking the glittering stretch of Mumbai at night. Music drifted through the air, cameras flashed every few seconds, and people in designer clothes wandered around pretending to network while looking for gossip and drama.
The team, meanwhile, were threatened coached into good behavior before being released into a luxury event. They said the right things, shook the right hands, and posed as demanded.
Uzair, however, became instantly distracted the moment he spotted someone near the bar.
“No way,” he breathed.
Hamza glanced over briefly before returning to scanning the room. Uzair looked genuinely excited for the first time all evening.
“Tanisha!” he nearly shouted.
Before Hamza could respond, Uzair was already walking toward her. The woman in question turned just in time to see him approaching and immediately broke into a grin.
“Uzair?” she laughed. “You look like someone dragged you through the whole football field.”
Uzair replied with mock offense, “What are you talking about? I look gorgeous.”
“I am willing to debate that,” she said with a smile as she hugged him.
Tanisha Kapoor was an actress whose work Uzair had followed for years, even before her transition, back when she had still been acting under her dead name. He had always admired how she remained unapologetically herself despite the industry trying to tear her apart every few months for being a trans woman. They had met at an industry event a while back and unexpectedly gotten along well, staying close ever since.
While they talked, Tanisha’s gaze drifted past him toward the other end of the rooftop.
Then she suddenly gasped.
“Oh my God.”
Before he could even react, Tanisha was already moving past him at alarming speed… toward Hamza.
Uzair stared in horror as she reached him and immediately grabbed his face dramatically, and Hamza was smiling. Not the polite, perfunctory smile he wore for appearances, but the honest kind that carried real warmth and affection.
“You are so in trouble,” she declared. “You vanished again.”
Hamza looked entirely unrepentant. “I was working.”
“For six months? You don’t even text back.”
“Sorry, you know how my job gets.”
“That is not normal behavior.”
“It is for me.”
Tanisha rolled her eyes before hugging him tightly anyway while Hamza rested a hand against her back with easy familiarity.
Uzair suddenly felt like someone had dropped a bunch of bricks on his head. Apparently, this man had emotions, but they were locked down like military secrets. Naturally, Uzair said absolutely nothing, mostly because he was stunned.
—
Later that night, as Hamza walked Uzair to his room, Uzair questioned him as soon as they had a moment alone.
“So,” he began carefully. “How do you know Tanisha Kapoor?”
Hamza answered casually. “We dated for a short time.”
Uzair’s soul briefly left his body while his brain rebooted unsuccessfully in the background.
“You dated—an actress … you dated Tanisha Kapoor?”
“Yes, it was a while ago.”
Uzair blinked several times. Now, to his credit, he genuinely was trying to phrase this diplomatically and with sensitivity.
“So… your ex-girlfriend…” he began slowly.
“Yes,” Hamza answered before he could finish.
Uzair hesitated anyway.
“You knew about her transition?”
“I don’t really care about gender,” Hamza said casually. “My girlfriends, boyfriends, their sexual orientation and gender identities… none of that matters as much as the connection I have with them.”
Uzair’s last two functioning brain cells made a desperate run for survival, abandoning him completely as he tried to process Hamza’s answers. Every excuse he made, every wall he built to keep his attraction to hamza at bay was now crumbling fast. Because Hamza was apparently not straight.
Hamza, meanwhile, simply walked away with the composure of a man who had launched a grenade into someone’s carefully constructed reality and felt no regret whatsoever.
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Ok the its time for football and freefall! I have tried my best to do justice to football matches. I don't generally pay attention to matches fully, I prefer highlights and summaries .. I totally blame my ADHD for this. Please let me know in the comments what you guys think about this chapter!
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‘-did not survive contact with-’ Hamza pressed his face into the pillow, burrowing into it as well as he could manage. Waheguru had almost spilled past his lips, caught only by the amount of training to bury any Sikh-isms, Punjabi-isms, or Indian-isms in him he had been subjected to. Training that had worked so well that he had since lost faith in there being any such god up there at all. Faith was something for dead men like Jaskirat. A quote Bansal sir often said, an English quote, lingered at the edge of his memory.
Hamza found that his thoughts had suddenly become like flowing sand; he could not gather them up, compartmentalise and recalibrate. He could only fight the twitching of his own hips. His ears registered idly the loud squelching of their sexes, and Uzair’s moans behind him, shameless and rendered stupid by rut-brain. He would laugh at him, the so-called second in command of the Baloch boys, reduced to another knot headed baran if his thighs were not quaking and and his cervix not so battered that he was half convinced it was going to open. He was drowning in the scent of sandalwood- he was sure that he and the dingy room above Aalam Bhai's juice shop reeked so badly of the baran's lust that even someone standing outside on the stairway could tell.
Lyari was a land where Murphy’s Law was something to be taken into account even when doing something so minor as taking a piss. In the past twenty four hours he had done many questionable things; yet the mission was one of the last things on his mind. In fact, if he was using Bansal Sir’s terminology, his rational thinking was highly compromised. For a moment, he wondered again, how exactly he’d wound up in this position. Then Uzair nosed at his neck, whining, calling his name.
The spoiled, useless baran begging for a kiss (-please Hamze, your face….need it.. dying…) took up his remaining brain capacity. He did not hear the key turn in the lock.
.....
Jaskirat presented on one particularly muggy, horrible afternoon in September. They had been doing combat training throughout the morning, and had a lecture on basic cryptography immediately after, which was a bad enough combination on its own. But Jaskirat was a man who was going to die soon, and such men lost both the right and the willpower to complain. He had been rather miserable since he woke up that morning, so miserable that he hadn't noticed the strange scent he was emitting. The scent patches he applied in the shower contained it afterwards. What he could not ignore, was the throbbing ache in his temple and his stomach that began to build midway through taking notes. He pursed his lips and tried to squash it down. His neck, which had developed in itch at its base during stretches that had not subsided since, had begun to smart in the same location. He reached his hand to scratch it, not looking away from the board.
When his nails scraped against his skin, a strange mixture of pain and another confusing sensation shot down his spine. The area was swollen and raised and abnormally sensitive. Suddenly, he felt absolutely horrible. A noise, miserable and low began in his throat. And then the entire room of fellow trainee agents and the instructor all turned to look at him. His face went pink. "Rangi," said the instructor, "Are you alright?" He tried open his mouth to say something, but found that he was suddenly unable to summon words. Mehdi, who had been sitting behind him, his friend, reached out his hand. "Jaskirat? You smell like a wet dog, is something wrong?"
Somehow, that made made tears well up in his eyes, to his extreme embarrassment. The instructor, a beta woman in her late fifties, was looking at him in increasing concern. Mehdi got up, but he could not make out what being said around him anymore. A hand was placed on his shoulders, which reduced the severity of the growing pit in his chest, but not by very much. There was a bit of a commotion, after that. People were debating something, speculating what was wrong with him. He heard himself sob in a detached way, as though he was no longer in control of his own body. Mehdi took his hand and him and another man took him to the infirmary.
The infirmary had smelled horribly sanitised and clean. Too clean. The lights were too bright and the bed he was sat down upon too scratchy. The doctor, a female baran with dark eyes and not a hint of warmth in her gaze, informed them that he was just presenting. Abnormally late, but not too abnormal. He wanted to explain that couldn't be be true, that he was a beta, and that he absolutely did not feel like a alpha. Presenting for alphas meant insane horniness and and a bad temper, not this misery that made him want to curl up in a hole and die.
They took a swab of his scent, which made him cry more, because people he did not know were poking at him somewhere that he didn't want to expose to them. Their grip was could and clinical and everything was too rigid and calculative that he wanted to run away. The nurses ignored his broken sobbing. Tears, a river of them that had sprung from his eyes, floodgates that he had no ability to close were beginning to drown him. His scent filled with more and more discontent but nobody moved to help him. He began to scratch his own arms from the abject sadness in his chest, but none of the people in white coats did anything. He just wanted to be scented.
He just wanted to be scented, that was all. But he was far from home; home no longer existed. He wanted his sisters, he wanted his mother, he wanted his father, he wanted to leave. His elder sister was dead, his Papa was dead, they were all gone, he had no pack anymore, no home, nothing. Not a soul left on this Earth loved him, or even cared about him enough to scent him. He was alone, in a white room with scratchy blankets and nowhere to hide. His nails began to draw blood, but the pain hardly registered. It was all his fault. He was alone, a wretched, cursed, reviled being.
All these people must have hated him, he had thought. But they did not hate him enough to kill him, though he wished they did. He wanted to go home. They tried to give him food. But what was food for a creature that had nothing but death in its veins? He was poisonous, maybe. Or diseased, or ill, something similar. He must have been some sort of aberration. That was why he had been left all alone, that was why he'd been abandoned here in this strange place.
He ached. Jaskirat's insides were made of lava. He burned. His scent was thick in the air, cloying, but nobody came to him. He wished someone would. His body tried to get someone to come, anyone, pumping out more and more of his scent, till his glands were swollen and leaking oil, but his scent must have been so repulsive that not even one person wanted to come near him. His body was doing everything it could to be tempting, to be good, so that someone would want him, but it was of no use.
He was going to die- this was it. He would be so happy if someone came to save him, but nobody was going to. He already knew that. How had he forgotten?
-"You are his friend, yes?"
It had been an eternity. He was alone, and was growing used to his loneliness. His eyes barely worked anymore. It was all a glowing white blur. Maybe he was already dead. His hands that had been carving bloody lines into themselves, were now wrapped around himself. He stroked them up and down. He wished they were longer, so that they would come around his back, so that he could at least fool himself into thinking he was being held in his last moments. Everything hurt.
It seemed that heavens had given him one final mercy. His hand really must have grown longer, because the suddenly he could feel a palm placed against his back. A heady mix of chemicals shot up his brain, his spine, his everything. All the oxytocin, serotonin and other neurotransmitters he needed to finally go loopy and warm and stop thinking were suddenly there. And then, his heart leapt with joy because there, above him, around him, cradling him, was his older sister.
Harleen was here.
His eyes widened, disbelieving. He smiled, incredulous. "Harleen? Didi?" Her hand cupped his cheek. "Oh, Jassi.."
It was okay. Everything was okay. His sister had come. He was safe. He felt the tears start again, but this time he was not afraid or embarrassed. "Didi," he murmured, burying his face into her kameez. Her hand was stroking through his hair. He purred. "Didi, can we go home? So many things happened... you were gone."
She kissed the top of Jaskirat's head. "Oh, Jassi, it was all just a dream, okay? A bad dream."
A bad dream.
.....
If only that was all it had been. A bad dream. Some omegas, he learned, tended to get depressive during their heats. He had that to an extreme. Estrus Dysphoric Disorder, the doctor had called it. All he had heard was defective. The cover they had constructed for him was one of a sahil. They were not going to change that. For the sake of his own mental stability, the doctors themselves had advised Sanyal sir to have him put on heavy duty supressants. The definitely illegal, cycle-destroying, near sterilizing long term kind. He had apparently been so inconsolable that two of the newer nurses that had tried to help him had shed their own tears. The nurses had to go to his regiment and ask around for who amongst them were his closest friends, as close as trainees could really afford to be. Mehdi had been excused from the day's remaining programs, and had to hold him in his arms for hours until the doctors were confident that it was safe to sedate him. Mehdi had laughed it off, and apologized for comparing his scent to that of a dog.
Jaskirat rolled his eyes at him, but internally it didn't help much. Ultimately, it didn't matter much. Him being an omega was of little operational relevance. He was still functionally a beta. It did not matter whether his scent was pleasing or not. He was basically a beta anyways. Letting someone close enough for them to be feeling him up behind his balls was not a part of the mission.
(Lies, lies, lies...)
He continued with his life like nothing had happened, like a good asset. All that changed was that he had to pop a pill every other morning. All in all, he felt like a miserable, tired puppy that someone had tied to the railway tracks, but that was par for the course. Sanyal Sir wanted him to be his Sher, and Jaskirat did his best to live like that was enough. He was not long for this world anyhow. Jaskirat Singh Rangi was soon to begin the process of dying. Soon, that part of him would really be with his sister and father again, waiting, peaceful, happy and safe. His sister and mother would be cared for. It had to be enough.
It began, really, when Mehdi died. He was not informed of that timeline, but one morning Mehdi was gone and a man with no name was standing in his place. The man who used to be his friend hugged him, and scented him with his wrist, and Jaskirat realized that it was Mehdi's way of saying goodbye from beyond the grave. Him and his fellow agent saw little of each other. Soon, he had gone, having entered the jungle. His turn to enter the stage, he realized, was coming soon.
.....
One day, Jaskirat was taken aside. He was led to a call command room in the Delhi facility. Bansal Sir and Sanyal Sir were present in person. Bansal Sir called his house's landline. Jasleen picked up. Hearing her voice, the smooth, soft cadence of it, made a whine bubble low in his throat that he had to swallow down. He was satisfied that neither of his superiors seemed to notice it. With that, assured that his remaining family would be cared for, he was supposed to die without any regrets.
Jaskirat, as he went to sleep for the last time that night, found that he still had many.
.....
The man called Hamza Ali Mazari was born facing the wrong side of the bed. His mood was frankly horrible, but he was not in a position to complain. He got out of bed and dressed with efficiency. He did not comb his hair. He recollected everything his file contained. He went rechecked his 'gear'. His suppressants, the diary, his mental filing cabinet. Everything was in order. He waited for his debrief. Paid attention to his debrief. Got into a taxi to the Delhi Airport.
Delhi was a city in eternal motion. Everyone, from the chai-wala to the kothi bangle-wala had somewhere to be urgently at all hours of the day. The air was filled with the scent of money, poverty, cigarettes and fresh flowers. The taxi had no functional AC. He kept the window rolled down. He saw a man in a well made suit argue with a auto driver over his fare. A woman in a faded saree buying flowers, smiling. Dogs barking, children laughing. Then tall buildings, hotels with grand walkways, huge bungalows and foreign shops. He took it in passively. This was possibly the last he would ever see of India. The land he had once been ready to die for, that Jaskirat had died for. India, the land of contradiction, of joy and sorrow, of love and hatred, of unity and apathy. The land where a boy you grew up with could find it in himself to rape your sister. The land where great men, much greater than him, shed blood sweat and tears for freedom. The Delhi air was humid. Perhaps it was getting to him.
Chennai... Heathrow... Kabul. He boarded from Terminal 4, Gate 3. He was seated next to an old Afghani man his grandson. Their conversation bored him. He closed his eyes, and settled into an aware, non-sleep. Two hours later, he found himself in a new city, with a new name, and a crucial mission.
.....
Jaskirat Singh Rangi's last rites took place in an insignificant hotel room in Kabul. The sounds of the city were unfamiliar. Pathankot had been a quiet town. It had taken him a long time to get used to the sounds of Delhi, but he knew the heartbeat of that city now. He could recognise it, breathe with it. Kabul was new, terrifying, grating, but also freeing. Here, the phantom of Jaskirat and his many tragedies could not touch him so easily. Hamza pulled out his old passport and the picture of his khandan from his coat pocket, and gave them one last long look. The boy in the picture was smiling- his life had not yet been devastated. His Papa and his Ma, his Jasleen and his Harleen. They were suspended in time forever, captured in the picture, frozen. They existed only in the past. He took his lighter and set his past self aflame, and tossed his burning remains into the trashcan.
Jaskirat Singh Rangi was truly gone. He was all that was left. The next morning, he would catch a ride with some truck drivers. He would hitchhike through the desert, and finally cross the border with a fake CNIC card that currently sat heavy in another pocket.
But right now, he would do none of that. He would do nothing at all. Hamza Ali Mazari was meant to observe first. He took off his sunglasses, set them on the nightstand and lay down, listening to gears of Kabul's engine turn.
I got some inspo for all the authors here who wish to write Uzair on Eid, especially at the Baloch Haveli.
Found this interview from March, where Danish talks about how he celebrates Eid and reminisces about celebrating the festival in his childhood.
Please enlarge the image to read the full interview.
Also pulled the photo of him separately because he looks adorably cheeky and handsome here!
This is a behind-the-scenes prep video of the Eid Dawat scene at the Haveli. A fascinating look at how they prepare for the scenes, a closer look at the haveli's interiors, and a glimpse of what a typical daawat spread at the haveli looks like.
Peek at Uzair looking tiny at the daawat table, looking around like a cutiepie. He and Faisal the only men at the table. I wonder why Rehman and Jamali are missing from the shot. Did they shoot their parts separately or do they arrive later once they are ready to shoot?
Also, I am a great lover of behind the scenes footage and am obsessed with decor details.
I love the very old-school 90s detail of the important dishes being served in the mehengi waali Milton/Cello bright red casserole hotpots. A core memory for us, growing up. Very nice touch. I suppose the Balochs might be rich but still hold on to certain middle-class quirks. The Milton Casserole was the Le Creuset for us, haha. I love looking at the crockery and cutlery on the table too.
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6. What is your favourite gender? not your gender. your favourite.
7. What is your least favourite colour?
@incognitostunner @woman-offical @stagefrightbaxter @callofwinter @holymolyitssam @tagging-officals-offical @archangel-gabriel-offical @eric-cartman-offical and open tags. ok? answer my questions. DO IT.
2. Crashed at 21:30, but i woke up multiple times during the night
3. 4:10 am and i started doing homework
4. NO
5. ofc i do i have one big teddy, then one small teddy, then my first plushie ever which should be a dragon but looks more like a donkey so we called it "ciucciodrago" (ciuccio is dialect for asino which is donkey) then an autism creature i made, two kitties i made, harethur Lester which i also made and then a hermit crab my mother gifted to me
I DON'T KNOW maybe like... 12:45-1:00... I was tired
ooughh like. 9:00 (eight full hours of sleep !!!!! this is so rare for me)
YES ::(
YEAH I have three on my bed rn 🥰 duck (matching with my best friend), corgi Thing (qlsooo from her) and this freaky long cat thing from my other friend, her name is Debby
dunnoo if they have specific names for specific sets of neopronouns but ? neopromouns usersss ooo... I rememeber seeing big long comprehensive lists of neopronouns and thinking they were so epic
y'know the color of those butter or snot flavored jellybeans. ickkyy color and icky candy I do not like
@hauntieannes @entity-system @howardisawkwardlyexisting @jadealaide anndd anyone else I am not great at remebering usernames
Well there’s: Willoughby the Buffalo, Mimikyu, A white cat with pink wings that @featured-the-creature gave me, a plush dog that looks like and is named after my childhood dog: Stryker, Luffy and two Laboons (one big and one small) that mom crocheted, and a couple of others I can’t remember rn
I quite enjoy the people who looked at gender and said: “No thanks” like Agender, Nonbinary, Voidgender, etc.
Uhhhhh I’m not sure I actually quite like most colours… But if I had to pick then like the colour of cat puke, yk? That dull greenish-yellowish shit.
@thetravelingfrogwizard, @featured-the-creature, @ramdomassaccountname, @blinddetective, @churchedcannibal, @urfriendlyneighborhoodbiderman + the ones who scroll now past this post (open tags)
honestly cloudgender and colourgender. But the thing is im genderfluid so sometimes those are mine. There are no genders that are not occasionally mine.
orange. I quite emphatically dislike orange
@myphycopharmacologist @ink-stained-ambition @hyyl18 + open tags!
A Mexican pizza from taco bell…don’t judge me, I’m broke.
went to sleep at 2:00 am.
woke up at 12:00 (again, don’t judge m…
Yeah, decently often, actually.
Yeah, I still have most of my childhood stuffed animals.
Um? Is this something I’m supposed to know? Is this something people think about? Do people have a favorite gender that isn’t their own? Huh… well, I like being a woman (y’know, apart from the oppression and misogyny) and generally think women are pretty cool. And nonbinary and agender seem pretty cool. I’m pretty androgynous myself so I can vibe with people who looked at gender and said ‘nah’ (of course nb and agender people can look very binary, but I just mean I vibe with that aspect of it).
I really tend to dislike blue. But it’s, like, everyone I know’s favorite color. I don’t care for it. I think it’s mediocre.
2) Probably 00:00 listening to The Mentalist on my phone (again)
3) 8:00 my dad was making bacon otherwise would have slept more
4) Depends. 90% of the time you’ll be lucky if I say a thing. If you’re non threatening in the slightest or info-dumping me I may say a couple sentences. If i’m tired or forgot my adhd pills then no I do not shut up
5) I love the hugging, I can without, but a hugging-size body pillow with emotional value is great (no does not work with a man I tried you can’t fucking move and they us you like a pillow, forget their place too easy)
6) green. I get a feeling Men official wants some specific answer here, tho I believe answering men sounds kinda weird, and I definitely don’t prefer men for so many reasons, not sorry guys, except for torture as ocs, and I do love the ladies, but going for the hottest cool mix of both options: shrek- ok equal with the ladies ladies are cool
7) Any bright colour but especially orange
@learningtoliveanddream11 @paperrobins @drag0ns-in-cyb3rspac3 @daturas-are-pretty @alexthecr0w @1-key @ani-is-my-username @niks-does-art @nebulae-astros-official and everyone who wants in!
thanks for the tag loviieee 💗 @hamzair-is-my-otp
for the answers-
1- mango ice cream hehe
2- ummm i think at 4 am? trying to sleep after lying down for 2 hours-
3- at 8 30 cuz i had to go out or else i usually wake up around 11
4- no
5- i sleep hugging a human so no-
6- bisexuals- by god they r so indecisive-
7- hmmmmmmmmmmmm green?
now this is THE TOUGHEST PART-
for the tags- @hyade @immortalconfluxmuse @harrystyleskiwi9 @yalinasinghrangi @darkdemonriddle666
