Climb Every Mountain, With You (Shubman Gill x Ishan Kishan)

No home

It was a clean sweep. 5-0.

Cricket and I, Shubman thought as he was give the trophy. Cricket and I. Next stop, IPL. Next stop, limited overs series against West Indies. Next stop, World Cup....

When he took it over to where his team was waiting, his first trophy as captain, he found his natural instinct was....as he had seen all his captains do...hand it over to the youngsters.

It felt nice to hand it over than having it handed over to him.

The youngsters fought over it, laughing. Shubman laughed, too.

It was a relief to know he could still laugh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the team got to the airport to fly to their respective homes, Shubman even felt tiny bits of excitement. Nisha, who had been out of town for a project, would be home. His sister, too. The break before the IPL wasn't a long one, but even two weeks with di and Nisha would be enough.

Maybe it would stop making his head explode all the time.

His phone rang with his sister calling.

"Hello, di-"

"Absolute disaster," Shahneel said. "Don't come home."

"What?" Shubman asked.

"Oh, I can't believe it. I can't believe them." Shahneel ground her teeth audibly. "Don't come home right now, stay away. I'll see what I can-YES, MOM, COMING! Talk to you later, Shubi."

Shubman stared at his phone blankly.

What kind of disaster had their parents...or whoever it was...cooked up that his sister told him to stay away?

Well, he wasn't going to underestimate it.

He wasn't even much interested in knowing what it was.

He told his team goodbye and walked back out into the streets of Kolkata.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kolkata comforted him.

It was the first city that had welcomed him with open arms, with bhalabasha, like they had learnt during the talk shows with KKR's media team, when he had been a child of eighteen playing IPL for the first time. He still missed that team sometimes. He guessed a person never truly stopped missing the first IPL team that put faith in them and got them taste success.

Ishan was sort of lucky, having stayed on in his first team-

No thinking about Ishan.

Jassi bhai was lucky, having stayed on in his first team forever, entering as a nobody and then going on to become captain and win titles. Shubman was captain and had won titles with GT too, but he wasn't a nobody when he went there. KKR and the Border Gavaskar trophy 2021 had already made him into a somebody.

Okay, that would not be fair on his father.

The first person who saw the vision of making him into a someday was his father. Fathers were superheroes. If your father asked you to choose between him and your love, anybody would choose their father.

Stop. It.

Shahneel called.

"Shubi-"

"I'm not coming home," Shubman said.

"Yeah, that wasn't a choice," said Shahneel. "They-"

"I don't want to know," said Shubman.

"Mom and Dad..."

"Di, I don't want to know, all right? Whatever they have done, just let them. Kindly let me know when I can return."

"Shubi, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that, it's just..."

"Di, I'm not offended with you," said Shubman, honestly. "If you tell me not to come home, I can't even imagine what the disaster is, and is it too much to ask if I don't want to know?"

"No," said his sister. "That's fine. Stay over at the hotel or something...."

"Yeah."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

National captain of the Indian cricket team.

And he didn't have a home.

When he closed his eyes and thought of the word home, he remembered two places. 

In one, two people were cooking up some disaster and the third was trying to prevent in. In the other, two people hated his guts and the third didn't want to talk to him. Maybe he also hated his guts. Who knew? 

Damn it, he didn't even want homes like that.

Kolkata was nice. Kolkata was comforting.

Kolkata was even the city of joy.

Where was all the joy in the world?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two days was all he could endure alone.

Then he realized he didn't care what disaster was cooking. He missed his father and his mother, he missed his sister and Nisha, and he would take the disaster in his stride.

But he was not going home out of curiosity.

He had no curiosity left in him anymore.

What could surprise him again, after the very thing he had accepted as his absolute truth turned out a falsehood?

"I love you, Shubi. I love you, Shubi. I love you, Shubi."