Guysssss I can finally legally drink! :P (waise isse pehle maine kabhi daaru piya nahi hai ok? Kaisi baatein kar rahe ho aap, chee chee!!! ;) ) 🍷

Enjoy the series of updates! <3

𓆩𓆪

It was only when Alia rejected the fifth consecutive ring, which flashed the same person's name, that Cabir decided it was appropriate to breach some invisible boundaries that were established between the two coworkers.

"Are we ever going to talk about it... or?"

They had somehow managed to ply the same cab to the airstrip, from where a private jet whisked them to Mangalore within an hour's time. It was just after eight in the night when they boarded a black Mercedes and Cabir had taken the wheel; the whole journey until then had been suffocatingly silent, each of them lost in their own thoughts.

Alia shrugged beside him, as she put her iPhone on 'silent' mode and slipped it into her handbag. "It's just a wrong number."

"Wrong number, or wrong timing?" Cabir asked with an arched brow, and was met with a conflicted gaze. "Because as far as I can tell, it's not one-sided."

She had no idea what prompted Cabir say such things. As far as she knew, she had not confided in anyone about it and Dhruv himself was notably distant, which meant he must have not opened his mouth regarding the matter either.

"It's – it's nothing like that."

Rolling his eyes, Cabir stated the obvious, "Come on, you have been anxiously clicking your phone every few seconds to see if he sent you a message, and he... he's gotten Aryamann hospitalised because that guy made a move on you. I'm nearly dipping into my savings this month because of the two of you, so don't pretend with me that there's nothing going on."

Alia turned to her partner, vexed yet surprised. "That was you?"

Cabir prided himself on the matter, "Who else do you think would come up with such genius matchmaking plans?"

Somewhat flustered by the new information, she nervously quipped, "Who else knows?"

"I haven't told anyone," Cabir reassured, "And nobody's come to me with this gossip, so it's just between us. For as long as you want it to be."

She sighed, falling back into her seat with a palm pressed over her forehead. "I'm not sure what is, or what to make of any of it really."

"Maybe you could start by telling me how it began, and I could offer you my love-guru services?" He mused in an attempt to lighten the situation.

In as little detail as possible, Alia managed to brief Cabir on everything between them. How simple gestures from him meant a lot, and how he had confidently reciprocated in the beginning, only to back off when things seemed to get serious. She conveniently skipped over the part where Harshad was involved, and her complex equation with her brother.

"So you suspect he and Rose..." She nodded while he frowned. "But then Madhyam and you..."

"I know... I know how it looks. And that is why I don't want to assume what happened with him. It's complicated."

"It doesn't look that way to me. There's a spark between you two that can lead to something, I'm saying it because I felt it when I saw it." Cabir confessed. "It might be love, it might not be as well, but if you want to find that answer... you need to stop finding reasons to fight it and each other." It pulled Alia into a deep state of contemplation.

"Hey, I get it, okay? I truly do. This whole Harshad mission has gotten everyone on edge, Manik, you, Dhruv, Mukti... none of us are completely okay, but we can't give him a reason or power to win over us."

Alia shook her head sideways. "But I don't want to go all in if I'm not receiving that in return. I've been through that once, not again."

"That's a risk you have to take if you want love. You have to give yourself, and him, a chance. Don't you think you owe that to yourself, to be happy?" Her lack of a response got Cabir adding to his monologue, "Tell me one thing, keep aside this mission and think about life without it, can you still see Dhruv in it?"

"Yes," she said without a second thought.

"Say he and Rose did sleep together, would you be able to live with that and look past that? You don't have to tell me now, but think about it carefully. Not having an answer is an answer in itself."

Lost in the glow of Mangalore's subdued city-lights, Alia mulled over her thoughts. Then she turned to Cabir, taking in his stoic appearance while wondering how he had been so wise in matters concerning love.

Her first contact with the clan happened a handful of years ago when she was still in college, and her ADHD boyfriend was tempted to illegally procure a higher dosage prescription to experiment with his boundaries. He had sent her in as bait, for college-going women were far less likely to be caught with substances on them than young males. The pleasantly professional transaction with the Professor, as he was known, quickly transcended into a middle-man negotiation where she bought from the Professor and sold to her boyfriend, making a copious profit that she lived off lavishly spending on junk she did not need.

At that point, there were rumours amongst customers that the Professor had, in his custody, an abused minor who had run away from home. Apparently groomed under the Professor's wing, Cabir had the opportunity to fully bloom into the identity of a gay man in a secure space, which turned into a relationship after Cabir was of legal age. Stockholm Syndrome, they called it in psychological terms – the emotional attachment one feels in a coercive environment for the more powerful or dominant partner.

"If Harshad and Raghav slept together, would you take him back?" She asked, breaking her chain of thoughts.

He craned his neck at her, taken aback by her question that chilled his insides. For months, the thought of being so easily replaceable ebbed at him but he never had confronted it head-on, as he was being asked to do that night.

"Do you... want an honest answer?"

Alia's lips curved into a smile while she chuckled dryly, "I think I deserve that, after what I've just spilled."

"I know I shouldn't, but my heart says yes." He said with a deep sigh.

"Why's that?" Would that not be betrayal, the very thing the clan vouched to never sin to?

"If he has chosen to keep me in his life, despite exploring other options, part of me feels like it's destiny – that maybe we're star-crossed lovers." He paused, his throat drying with every ticking second. "I guess it's a little fucked up, knowing how strongly I believe in monogamy but I fear that for him – and just for him, I could bend those rules."

Glistening with a mild reflection of her own limits, and the extents she could go to for her brother – the only family she had left in the world – she pondered with deep sorrow at the pitiful state Harshad had subjugated her to. If only he had asked, she would have burned the world down. Just for her brother. "I know exactly what you mean," she confessed.

A combination of two men had crippled her whole existence, and the only mistake she had made was to trust them.

He shrugged, dismissing the worrisome thought just as quickly as it arrived. "Anyways, those are issues I have to resolve if it ever comes to that. I hope it never does." He said with an outward smile that masked his anxiety and distress under thick impermeable sheaths.

𓆩𓆪

You know the drill ;) Please do vote, comment and share if you liked it :")

I can't believe we've surpassed 15k reads *please I'm about to cry* So so so much love to you guys!