Arylie FF: I'm Happy Here With You

thirty-three ~ ishq tere lae dooba

har dafa wahi jaadu hota hai tu jo mile

sab sawaar jaata hai, yaara andar mere

aur phir aahista se, jab chhu ke tu nikle

teri aanch mein dil mera

dheeme dheeme pighle

... ... ...

After a long time, Imlie was singing while doing her morning aarti in the Rathore House. She started normally but soon the lyrics deviated. She didn't always follow the rule when speaking with her Sita Maiyaa. She smiled to herself when Ma and the staff joined her, she glanced sideways to check if Aryan was there. He wasn't.

It's been a couple of days since he'd opened up about his past to her, and cried his heart out in her embrace. He has been understandably very quiet since then. Imlie wasn't sure but sometimes she felt that he wanted to tell her something more but didn't know how to word it. Imlie didn't push.

She offered the aarti thaal to the others one by one, handing out prasad. She looked towards the staircase again, still no Aryan. She frowned. He'd been sleeping noticeably more, was this just normal exhaustion or something else?

"Ma, I'll wake ABP up. He should be up by now."

"Okay beta," Narmada nodded, taking the thaal from her. "I'll put this away for you."

"Thanks Ma."

As she climbed the stairs, skipping steps in her rush, Narmada frowned. She'd noticed Aryan's change of pattern too. She'd been noticing it for quite some time now. A fear darkened her heart. No, no, I am overthinking, perhaps, but I've to talk to him.

Imlie, unaware of Narmada's worries burst inside Aryan's room and jumped on the bed, shaking his shoulders and splashing his face with the end of her long, wet hair. "ABP, wake up!"

"What are you doing here in the middle of the night?" he mumbled, aiming to pull her down on top of him, angling his head to get more of her hair on his face.

"It's seven-thirty, not midnight, silly man," Imlie rested her head on top of his heart, letting her hair spread all over the place.

"What, for real?"

Aryan opened one eye, searching for his phone or watch on the bedside table. Imlie held his hand and brought it back to herself, looping it around her own body. Aryan wrapped his hands properly around her body, "Hmm, I could get used to this. Your hair smells nice."

"I know," Imlie hummed. She looked up, placing her chin on his chest so that she could stare at his face. She pinched his neck near his birthmarks and then used her index finger to smudge the kajal dot she'd placed there the previous day. She'd tentatively started this new ritual of putting a kala teeka on him with her kajal. She'd thought of doing it behind his ears as norm, but mischief won and she'd been putting it near the birthmarks.

"So that we can match, see it's like my chin tattoo. You had one dot missing."

"It's not my fault, you stole the other one, and hid it right here," he had traced his finger under her left breast.

"I've got a mark there?"

"You didn't know?"

"How would I know? Am I the one who spends all my time with my face buried there? It's your hobby!"