#ayush

DJ yesterday was bullshit up until like the last 15 mins of my time there. The guy was an amazing singer but GODDAMIT PEOPLE ARE HERE TO DANCE ON MERA NAAM MERY HAIN AND SHEILA KI JAWANI, not some roadside mellow english song T_T.

sooo, I was very confident yesterday I looked fabulous for the first time in forever, i had a red lip and fishnets and a pretty short dress(WHICH KEPT RIDING UP OMG I THINK I WAS BUSY PULLING DOWN MY DRESS MORE THAN I WAS DANCING).

So was like *deeeeeeeeeeeeep brethes* i'm gonna ask out a girl today(I had asked her out earlier and she'd said yes for a date but for reasons we couldn't meet up and it kinda just fizzled out after that), so I took her aside when the music wasn't too loud or important, and I basically rambled "My father, ever the wingman, gave me courage, and btw you don't have to answer me or anything, and if you say no this changes nothing we are still best friend and ily platonically<3, but you maybe wanna go on a date on me, ik im asking for the second time haha lmao, oh wait, i forgot to ask, are you even single, you're probably not haha"

And she looked so sympathetic, she was like "The guy who has been standing beside me the entire time is actually my boyfriend, I'm so sorry, I swear this Changes nothing I still luv you bestie mwah"(kissed my cheek).

And qe were hugging like for sure dw bout it, just shooting my shot, if you even break up, call me up jk haha lmao.

Okay, but to be fair, I had a GINORMOUS crush on her in 2023, and then throughout 24, it kind of just died down a little. I still really like her, but she's not occupying my every thought like before. I'm still disappointed, and I would absolutely jump at the opportunity if she's single again, but it's fine. I'm not crying over it; I'm just a little sad.

but BRO her bf is like a fucking tank, I noticed later that guy was standing and looking us over the entire time, Not in a creepy way he wasn't listening in, and she prob won't tell him but more of, i swear if something happens to my gf i will rip you to shreds kinda guy.

“—when really if you look at the make up of the Senate—”

He must be sick. People don’t just carry tissues to a party unless they need them. Oh Christ, oh poor Caliph, oh god how he wants… to do… something, he—

“What do you think, Ayush?” someone asks.

I think the election is over and you should all shut the fuck up about it and please fuck off and don’t talk to me right now.

“Totally,” he says, hoping this to be a passable response but honestly not giving too much of a shit either way. 

Ayush had greeted Caliph and Naveen when they’d arrived, directed them to where they could set down the beer they came with, but it was over in a flash and any signs of illness must have escaped his notice. He finds himself suddenly despondent about being stuck anywhere besides a dozen paces to the right.

Every time he thinks the conversation is dwindling to a place where it wouldn’t be rude to leave, someone needs something or someone who just arrived greets him and he’s forced to exchange how are yous and compliment haircuts and ask people if they’re still with whoever it was they were with before. What’s the same, what’s different, oh cool oh good for you oh that’s too bad oh that sounds interesting. 

There are several times over the course of several similar conversations that Ayush has to stop himself from blurting out something to the tune of Yeah yeah, we all want to drop out of our grad programs. For far too long he’s not even able to get any closer than the same twenty-ish feet away from Caliph, who every ten or so minutes is devolving into another desperate display—of course he would be one of those rare people who actually sneezes a ton when they have a cold—and Ayush is stuck in a revolving door of dull and repetitive but increasingly spirited conversation as the night comes of age and its suitors grow steadily drunker.

He laughs at a joke and wishes a private curse on whoever just joined the circle talking to Naveen and Caliph and effectively blocking him from Ayush’s view for a particularly emphatic fit of four. He feels like a bratty child throwing a tantrum as he stares longingly at a favorite confiscated toy sitting on the refrigerator, out of reach. Why must he have other friends? Why did they invite so fucking many of them here?

In the alembic of his lust and blood alcohol content he becomes impatient, increasingly desperate, easily annoyed by people he likes, borderline rude to people he doesn’t really like, ​​tense and agitated by his secret watchfulness and the physical inability to look in two directions at once. He says mildly unhinged things like, of the president-elect, “I do worry about the country running out of bulletproof glass,” and, of a cute picture of someone’s newborn triplet nieces, “I’m just saying overpopulation is a thing,” and, of law school, “If I ever change my mind and decide to go, please do me a favor and end my life.”

It is a throbbing ache. It is an itch spreading under his skin. Not once but twice he makes the mistake of answering yes when someone on their way to get another drink asks if he wants one, and thus forgoes a perfect excuse to excuse himself and he has half a mind to fully chug the second bottle he’s handed. A few extensive swigs into it, Ayush’s attention is caught again by a particularly sharp opening note.

“SZIISSHH!!” Rushed and ridiculous, sounding something like the startled bark of a dog in the night. Naveen’s laughter rings out, which may or may not be related. 

Caliph takes a few steps backwards from the group he’s with, probably for the sake of courtesy, and in his spatial aloneness takes the opportunity to more bodily give himself over to an exclaimed continuation.

“HUZZIISHH’hu! HUH’ZYYIISSHHhoo!”

God fucking bless you, Caliph.

It’s followed by excessive wiping with the sorry excuse for what is probably the same tissue, and when the magnetic force that continues to tug Ayush’s head in that general direction finally results in him and Caliph catching eyes from across the yard he feels his face flush.

Well now he has to go talk to him.

He leaves ungracefully mid-conversation with a disingenuous promise to be right back, and dodges several other friends on the way, more easily brushed off when he’s walking like he’s on a mission. He’s asked by a group of people he does not know if they can use the kitchen table for beer pong, and though he technically does not live here he says it’s fine by him. 

“Ayooosh!!” Caliph says, fixing him with an excited but slightly unfocused gaze when Ayush reaches him and Naveen by the porch.

Ayush grins to match, reaches a hand to Caliph’s arm. “Can I get you some tissues, bhai? What is that, a sad little wadded up piece of toilet paper?”

Caliph has to laugh for a moment before he speaks. “It is exactly that. I would be incredibly grateful for tissues.”

Up close the redness about his nose is obvious. Either Ayush missed it before or it’s been worsening throughout the night, which, considering how much he’s been sneezing, seems very possible. The flushing, when combined with his dark skin and warm complexion, has created something like an angry almost-coral, glowing around his nostrils and where the soft, rounded edges of his nose meet his upper lip. The color suits him. 

When Ayush returns with a tissue box it’s welcomed by a look of undying gratitude that undoes him so entirely he almost trips down the porch stairs. 

“Ahhh bhaiya,” Caliph almost moans, “you’re too good to me. I came underprepared.” He asks Naveen to hold his beer and proceeds to take a few handfuls of tissues to stuff into his pockets.

He looks like the final frame of a cold medicine commercial, appropriately dosed and relaxed but still clearly ill, a mussed lock of silken black hair that would normally be swept back with a little more promptness spilling lazily over his forehead. When had he begun graying, this twenty-two year old?

“You can just take the box if you want.”

“Oh this should be good I think. It’s not quite that dire,” he says, still with that beamish smile slightly too big for his face. 

“You sure about that?” Ayush asks, because it honestly almost looks like—

“You know what actually…” Caliph suddenly shakes his head, tugs another tissue from the proffered box, pants twice in breathy inhale-exhale combos as he brings the tissue to his nose, turns sideways and immediately sneezes into it, a panicked, “huh-hh, hhH-HH! HYYESHHHhue!” which, thanks to the physics of a quick stream of air and the imperfect seal of his cupped hands, puffs enough of his exhale back into his own face to wind-ruffle his hair.

Since both Naveen and Caliph, once he’s able, are laughing, Ayush joins in weakly, in the pale imitation of a normal human response.

Naveen says, “Amazing timing, bhai.”

“Thank you,” Caliph snuffles, taking three more tissues, as the events of the past few seconds clearly warranted reassessment.

It occurs to Ayush just a moment too late that he could have touched him very casually just then, when he was within arm’s reach, could have placed a hand on his arm or his shoulder afterward. Perfectly casual. Maybe a little sweet but in a plausibly platonic way. Casual hetero bro affection.

Ayush is finding it impossible to keep his eyes from drifting down to Caliph’s nostrils and the low glimmer of wetness that clings to them, and he’s been staring from afar for so long that it’s a bit of an adjustment to not continue doing so.

He says, “Um. Bummer to be sick over break.”

“Well I have very few responsibilities at the moment so it’s actually a great time to be ill, snhff! comparatively speaking.”

Ayush laughs probably too loudly as he sets the tissue box down nearby.

“We’ve been talking to some of your college friends.”

“Oh I like fully hate sixty percent of the people here,” Ayush deadpans immediately and Naveen and Caliph both laugh so hard that it’s almost worth every unbearable moment Ayush endured in order to create such a successful sentence.

“I was actually about to say they seem really cool,” Naveen says at last.

“Pfft. Well who have you been talking to?”

“Richie was over here for a while.”

“Oh. Okay yeah Richie actually is cool,” he admits, and he’s about to go on when he notices Caliph’s mouth become quietly unlatched and fall open.

“Hold on a second,” he says, tilting his face to the night sky like asking a god for help. Like he needs a purer breath. Ayush doesn’t know what it is that brings people to do that but he certainly doesn’t mind it.

Caliph’s eyebrows zigzag into a furrow as he grabs the collar of his jacket, brings it over his nose and ducks down into it with a sound issued almost in slow motion. 

“HURRIISSHH! Huh! URRIIZSSHH!hyue!”

He straightens up only long enough to briefly open his eyes before they’re forced shut again, lurching back into his lapel for another shoulder-shuddering performance of a sneeze that really does need to be seen from the front row to be properly appreciated. 

“URRRZSSHH-shyiuu!”

An insisted final syllable that itself sounds dizzied. 

“Bless you,” Ayush says, struggling to keep the carnal hunger from it.

“’Scuse me, thank you.” Afterwards he swipes away a tear that’s already made it halfway down his cheek. The sheer force of it always seems to make his eyes water.

Utter ridiculousness. Stupid. Adorable.

“Oh my god, I must have sneezed a hundred times today,” he says, snuffling.

Ayush makes a noise by mistake and disguises it with a throat clear.

“Probably more than that, bhai. You’ve sneezed like ten times in the last ten minutes alone,” Naveen says, because apparently Naveen can just say things like this.

“Well this has been a particularly sneezy past ten minutes, it may not be representative of my entire day,” he says. “But I’m pretty sure it’s driving my father up a wall, snff! He’s been turning up the History Channel real loud.”

“Oh yeah, how is ol’ Rajesh Uncle?”

“He’s… good, I think? Hard to tell.”

Rajesh had always slightly frightened Ayush. He was a perpetually angry person, which Ayush kinda figured was why Caliph didn’t seem to have an angry bone in his body. It was like he was deeply familiar with what happens when you indulge in anger and wanted no part in it. Like an alcoholic’s kid who has no interest in ever having a single sip to begin with. 

Caliph’s sweetness was all Priyanka.

Ayush finds it hard to think about Priyanka Auntie. She is not his to grieve and that makes the grieving easier the same way as it ensures it will never happen. Priyanka Auntie’s non-existence exists in an impossible liminal space. So it’s okay. Pesky for a moment on occasion, if anything, but nothing more. 

It was seeing Caliph like that, the way he was right after. Before it was buried beneath too many months. That’s what Ayush finds difficult to deal with. The thing that chafes. Because he still has to see it sometimes in little glimpses. Still has to be reminded that Caliph is motherless when “How are your parents?” needs to be amended to “How is Rajesh uncle?” and worse still when he has to say it like that it feels like less of a routine check in, the words ‘how are you doing,’ and more a targeted probe with an unspoken, tacked-on, ‘in the wake of the whole unfathomable tragedy thing?’ Like a handholding and a hollow ‘I know it must be hard,’ as if he could do anything, as if anyone could do anything, to make it softer.

Inevitably Ayush is asked about his parents then in return. Inquires about Naveen’s parents (they’re good too). They ask how Shravya is (fine but dating a humanities major). He asks how Naveen’s brother Vijay is (starting a promising career in data science but arguably spending more time playing FIFA than anything else). 

He’s asking the same questions he’s volleyed around all night but suddenly actually caring to hear the answers when he isn’t only half present in the conversation, when he’s standing where he wanted to be for the past hour. Though he’s still paying more attention to Caliph’s symptoms than anything else, tongue feeling too big for his mouth for a moment every time Caliph addresses him from over the top of a tissue as he gradually goes through a couple of them, his nose insisting on both of their attention and often receiving it.

They all talk of academic burnout, because with finals coming up it’s certainly the time for it. While Ayush doesn’t like to hear that his friends are struggling, it’s kind of comforting to know he’s not the only one of them questioning everything lately, especially considering Caliph and Naveen are two of the most accomplished people he knows and truth be told he’s always felt like the underachiever of the three of them.

Maybe that’s how it spills from his loosened lips, The Shameful Thing, a topic Ayush hadn’t intended on getting into with them tonight. 

Still he doesn’t look at them when he says it, preoccupied with his usual unconscious drunken fidget tactic of peeling at a cold, dewy beer label until his fingertips find purchase on the sticky glue residue beneath. Rubbing at it until it’s reduced to pulp. “I haven’t done any of my assignments all semester. I can’t bring myself to. I’m on campus fucking around but I’m not going to class. I’m basically just trying to figure out what the fuck I want to do instead of this.”

It’s quiet for a moment. He looks up to see sympathy.

“Honestly bhaiya, good for you,” Naveen says, tilting the neck of his beer in Ayush’s direction.

“I totally agree,” Caliph says. “It takes a lot of insight to figure that out, especially when you have parents like ours—snhff!—who can kind of unintentionally blind you with pressure.”

“They might actually murder me when I drop out of this program,” Ayush says, raking idly through his hair. “I’m gonna have to fuckin move back in with them.”

“I’m sure they’ll be glad to have you though.”

“Oh they’ll be ecstatic to have me, that’s not the problem,” he says, and Caliph’s chuckle spawns coughing. Not a wet cough, not yet, just something ticklish and irritated that makes his chest stutter in little spasms, but he’s having trouble wrestling his breath away from it. 

Naveen pats his back. “You sound so healthy, bhai.”

Caliph smiles wryly from behind his fist, coughs the words, “I know-ho.”

“Better to bunk with your parents now than when you’re thirty-five, na?” Naveen says, and Ayush takes an exceptionally long second to turn his thoughts back to the conversation he started and away from how sniffly Caliph is in the wake of the coughing, the way he keeps fussing at his face with a crumpled ball of tissue, quick little upward swipes and pinches of his nostrils. 

“Um… I guess so. Honestly I should just drop now before the last day to withdraw with a ‘W’ or whatever, but I don’t want to move back home now, I wanna stay on campus. Suckle at the tit while my parents brag to their friends about things I’m not doing for a little bit longer. I think if I told them now they’d tell me to finish out the semester anyway.”

“Fair enough, bhaiya,” Caliph says.

“You think?” he asks, not meaning for the question to sound so needy.

“Yeah absolutely. Give yourself time to get a couple months closer to a new game plan before your parents know.”

“Or a couple months more certain that you definitely don’t want to go into law,” Naveen says.

“Oh that is definitely not the issue, like I’d honestly rather die.”

“Yeah that’s how I felt about medicine, snf! I changed my mind and started over too and I’m really glad I did,” Caliph says.

“But I mean, you graduated at the same time you would have anyway.”

“So that’s… factually accurate but I wouldn’t hold what I did up as some shining example, snff! As I think you may have noticed I also lost touch with everyone I ever cared about for a couple years.”

Ayush nods, somewhat absently. “Sometimes I have this dream that I’m back in high school—this is so specific—I’m back in high school and I’m in calculus but I haven’t done any of the homework for three weeks and I have one weekend to finish it all.”

“Bhaiya oh my god I have the same fucking dream,” Naveen says. 

“No you don’t,” Ayush grins.

“Not exactly the same but similar nightmares about academic underpreparedness. But you had no idea what the realities of this would look like and now you do and you know it doesn’t fit you and that’s a good thing.”

Ayush nods again, wanting to believe them.

“Hey,” Caliph says, prompting his eye contact. “I know it feels like you’re farther away from knowing where you’re going. But knowing that what you’ve been doing isn’t it? That’s you getting way closer.”

A smile comes over Ayush, entirely involuntary. “So does wisdom come free with these gray hairs or what?” 

Caliph laughs. “Yeah I’m earning my stripes.”

“Yo, I said some wise things too thank you very much,” Naveen pouts.

Caliph explains on Ayush’s behalf; “Yeah but you’re not going prematurely gray.”

They really do make Ayush feel better, and the response is so supportive that he ponders—from that sober place that can only be accessed at a certain level of drunk—why it is he’s been dragging his feet on coming out to them.

Somehow it was so much easier to tell college friends than it would be to come out to people he had known for so long. The natural implications people sometimes came to. Ayush has to wonder now whether it doesn’t have more than a little to do with the fact that ‘Don’t worry I was never into you, dude,’ was not… universally applicable.

Naveen is saying something when Caliph holds up a finger with an unhurried, “Excuse me a second,” but his nose is not quite so patient, and before he can extract a new tissue from his pocket he can’t fight it any longer, a sneeze he directs hastily into a lifted elbow. Usually Caliph’s sound is nothing if not compliant but this one is anything but. Constrained. Consonant-heavy. Clipped in his throat and giving the distinct, guttural impression of being more miserable for it.

“Hiiigk-KH’SSHHhuue!” It ends in an almost-sigh of an exhale that seems a direct reaction to the sneeze itself.

He has given up on the tissue and instead wraps the other arm around himself too, like these in particular need to be doubly contained, huddled and straining under the weight of them.

“HUH’RIISSHH! Hh-! HYYIIZSHH’u! Oh my guh-HH-! HUHYYIISSHHzhue! Oh my god, snfffh!”

An overwhelmed Ayush wishes he could offer more than “Bless you.” It doesn’t feel like acknowledgment enough.

Caliph thanks him and stumbles sideways into Naveen, who appraises him with a worried, “Caliph, baby.” He says baby the way he says it to Barkya. The way Ayush’s own parents say it to him. Beh-beee. “Are you okay?”

“Hoo. I gotta stop doing that,” he snuffles.

“Doing what, sneezing?” 

He nods, wipes at his eyes and says, “s’making me woozy.”

“Awww Caliph, you’re really struggling,” Ayush says, alcohol blooming through his blood, reaching out a hand and briefly squeezing Caliph’s shoulder in a way that feels natural enough for all it sends electricity through him like a tripped wire. 

Caliph gives him a wholehearted half-smile and says, “I am kind of.” 

It’s barely any words at all; really it’s two and a qualifier to lessen them, but it speaks volumes. Caliph’s drunkenness has segued into sleepiness, evident in languid movements, heavy-lidded eyes, the third heartbreaking yawn in less than a minute. He’s dressed appropriately for the weather but looks cold even so, arms folded tightly and sleeves clasped in fingers like clothespins so they stay put.  

You poor sweet thing you should be in bed.

“You probably shouldn’t be outside like this.”

“That’s what I keep telling him.”

Ayush is about to say, “We could also talk inside,” but he isn’t fast enough. 

“I’m starting to think I should maybe go home,” Caliph says, with a forceful sniffle and a swallow that’s even more so.

Later Ayush will wonder if he inadvertently pushed Caliph to leave. It is not the intention, but really he just looks so sweet and pitiful like this that Ayush could never dream of doing anything but encouraging it.

“Yeah that’s probably a good call. You’re only gonna get drunker and sicker if you stay.”

“Solid points, Ayush, solid points.”

He and Naveen will leave together because Naveen drove. He promises he’s good to drive, he had a single beer and he didn’t actually finish it because it’s bitter as hell. Ayush accuses him of having the taste palate of a toddler, and thanks them for coming.

“Oh I probably shouldn’t hug you since I’m sick,” Caliph cautions at the last minute.

“I don’t give a shit imma hug you.”

“Aww!” he laughs, accepting the embrace, running a quick hand up and down Ayush’s back, issuing a sniffle during that brief stretch of time they’re pressed together closely enough that when Caliph’s chest jumps with the quick intake of breath Ayush can feel the pulse of it in his own chest, like they’re sharing a heartbeat.

He wants him. He’s not really sure in what context he means, it’s just a feeling. A Lack Of. He’s not even sure what he wants to do with him. What he would do if he had him. It is directionless Want, unspecific but no less excruciating for it.