ICT ONE-SHOTS (FRIENDSHIP)

Our decade ('Us')

On New Year's eve, 2020, Jaddu barged into his spin twin's room without preamble.

"Ashley?"

"Sorry, wrong room," said Ash without looking up from the magazine he was flipping through. "There's no Ashley here."

"I can see at least one Ashley on the bed," drawled Jaddu, undeterred.

"What do you want, Jad?"

"D'you remember the Border Gavaskar series of 2013?"

Ash had to look up at that.

"Well, yes, I do, of course," he said. "Why?"

"It was the first series the two of us won for India," said Jaddu with a slightly maniacal grin.

Of course, maniacal grins were perfectly normal for Sir Ravindra Jadeja, but his dialogue was on the sentimental side, so Ash put down the magazine and beckoned him over, asking, "Are you drunk?"

"You always ask me if I'm drunk," complained Jaddu, who was not drunk.

"Well, isn't that justified, because you only get emotional when you get drunk?" said Ash defensively. "Look at that long Instagram post you gave the other day about 50 Test matches, I knew you were drunk while writing it, and I was right."

Jaddu's grin got slightly more maniacal before it slid away under Ash's deadpan expression.

"I was thinking, Ashley, don't you think this decade was our decade?"

"Our decade?" repeated Ash doubtfully.

"Belonging to us," special emphasis on us. "'Cause of the way we dominated the whole world for eight years out of the ten."

Ash paused in the act of rolling his eyes (that was just a reflex action of his when Jaddu was speaking) and pondered over his word instead.

"I hadn't thought of it like that, but you're right," he admitted grudgingly. "This was our decade."

"Our decade is going to end in one hour," said Jaddu, glancing at the clock, almost wistfully. "Maybe we can stretch it for a couple more years, don't you reckon?"

Ash was quiet.

Jaddu looked at him and demanded, "Why're you looking at me like that?"

Ash shook himself and reached out for his phone, grumbling, "I wasn't. Looking at you like anything, I mean. Go call them...I'm getting the others on the call."

Jaddu knew, without Ash having to mention, that he meant Jinks and Ro—and just Jinks and Ro, no one else. Also that he was going to put just Virat, Shikh and Bhuvi on the call, no one else.

**********

"He's sleeping, Jad," said Jinks, when Jaddu had collected him and declared his intention of going to look for Rohit.

"That's a whole decade of his sleeping we've endured," retorted Jaddu, and turning a deaf ear to Jinks' vague protests (could Jinks stop being so overly considerate for a single moment?) and pulled a half-asleep Rohit bodily out of his bed and dragged him to Ash's room.

"Hello, Jad, Jinksy, Ro," cried Virat as the three of them came into the frame. "Happy ending to our decade!"

"Nice concept, that one," said Bhuvi. "Did Jaddu really come up with it on his own?"

"I did," said Jaddu defensively, before the others explained the concept to a bewildered Jinks and a droopy Rohit, who had never heard the phrase before.