A Day in the Life of Rehman Dakait, Certified Menace:
Disclaimer: So obviously this goes without saying, this is a completely fictional work based on the characters from Dhurandhar. I'm not promoting any of the ideologies or situations shown in the movie.
A/n: This is a crackfic and is just fluff.
Pairing: Rehman Dakait x Journalist Ulfat
8:02 AM:
It started, as most disasters in that house started, with Rehman deciding he was going to cook breakfast without supervision.
Ulfat walked into the kitchen to find smoke curling off a pan, her husband standing over it with the calm of a man who had once talked down an entire rival crew with nothing but a cold stare, and absolutely no calm whatsoever about the omelet currently dying in front of him.
"Don't," he said, holding up a spatula like it was a weapon, "say anything."
"I haven't said a word."
"You're thinking it very loudly."
"I'm thinking that the man who once made a customs officer sign over an entire warehouse just by looking at him has been defeated by an egg." She leaned against the counter, arms crossed, thoroughly enjoying herself. "This is the best thing that's happened to me all week."
He turned the burner off with the aggression of a man losing an argument to inanimate objects, scraped the offending omelet into the bin, and rounded on her with narrowed eyes. "Come over and help me before I set off the smoke alarm and half my men storm the house thinking I've been shot."
"That would almost be worth it."
But she came anyway, nudging him out of the way with her shoulder the way she always did, and he didn't go far , just far enough to lean against the counter behind her, arms braced on either side of her, chin dropping onto her shoulder while she cracked eggs into a fresh bowl.
"You're crowding me."
"I'm supervising."
"You're breathing on my neck."
"That's a feature, not a bug." He pressed his mouth briefly to her shoulder, right where her dupatta had slipped, and she nearly dropped the egg she was holding, and neither of them commented on it, because commenting on it would mean admitting how easily he still managed that, six years in.
10:45 AM:
Donga appeared at the office door looking like a man who had personally been asked to walk into traffic.
"Bhai. There's a...situation."
"What kind of situation." Rehman asked, expecting the usual petty fights.
"The kind where a dog got into the warehouse and now nobody can get near the imported rugs."
There was a full three seconds of silence in which Rehman Dakait , a man who had once negotiated a truce between two rival gangs over a single cup of tea, stared at Donga with the face of someone recalculating his entire life's choices.
"I run a criminal enterprise," he said, mostly to himself. "I did not sign up to be defeated by a dog."
Ulfat, who had been listening from the doorway with a mug of coffee and zero intention of missing this, could not hold it together anymore. She laughed so hard she had to set the mug down.
"Oh, this is going in my notes. This is going in the notes tonight."
"You are not laughing at me during a crisis."
"I am absolutely laughing at you during a crisis. This might be the greatest crisis of your career." She wiped at her eyes, still grinning, and when he stalked past her toward the door, clearly going to deal with the dog himself out of sheer wounded pride, she caught his sleeve without thinking twice about it. "Wait. I'm coming."
"Absolutely not, it's a warehouse full of armed men and an angry dog."
"It's a warehouse full of your very silly employees and a dog that is, by Donga's own description, extremely fluffy. I want to see this. I'm your wife, I have rights."
"You have no rights regarding warehouse incidents."
"I have press credentials."
"That's not — that doesn't even apply here—" he tried to come up with an excuse only to fail miserably.
She was already grabbing her shawl off the chair, and he was already sighing the specific sigh that meant he'd lost, and grabbing her hand on the way out like it was the most natural thing in the world, lacing his fingers through hers as they walked, still muttering under his breath about dogs and dignity and the general unfairness of his life.
12:20 PM, Warehouse:
The dog turned out to be an enormous, deeply unbothered golden retriever that had wandered in off the street, made itself at home on top of an extremely expensive Persian rug, and was now being circled at a wide, respectful distance by six grown men with guns who looked more frightened of it than they'd ever looked of Rehman.
Rehman took one look at the situation, one look at his men, and put his head in his hands.
"You're telling me," he said slowly, "that none of you — six of you, six armed men — could handle one dog."
"Sir, it growled at SIyahi."
"I did not growl. It growled first." an offended voice countered.
"It's a golden retriever, Siyahi, it does not have the emotional range to growl first at anybody."
Ulfat, standing just behind her husband, had her phone out and was filming the entire thing with the focused joy of a woman documenting the single greatest moment of her marriage.
"Put the phone away," Rehman said, without turning around, somehow always knowing exactly what she was doing.
"Never. This is journalism."
"This is blackmail."
"Same thing, different byline." She lowered the phone just enough to walk past him toward the dog, crouching down with her hand out, and the dog — betraying every single one of his men in one single instant — trotted straight over and flopped its entire enormous weight against her legs, tail going like a metronome having a breakdown. "See? He just wanted a friend. Unlike some people in this room, who apparently wanted an armed standoff."
Rehman watched his wife scratch a golden retriever's ears while six of his most feared men stood frozen at a distance, and something in his chest did the thing it always did when she made everything look easy that wasn't easy for anybody else, and he crossed the warehouse floor and crouched down next to her without a word, one hand coming to rest low on her back, steadying more than necessary, the dog immediately transferring its affection to him with total disregard for his reputation.
"Traitor," he told the dog.
"He has good taste." She glanced sideways at him, close enough now that her shoulder was pressed into his, and something in the moment shifted quiet and warm despite the audience of six deeply confused gunmen. "We're keeping him."
"We are not keeping a dog that infiltrated a smuggling warehouse."
"His name is going to be Jameel, I'll call him Jammy."
"Absolutely not, I have an actual Jameel, this is going to cause chaos at every single meeting—"
"That's the best part." she grinned.
4:15 PM, Home:
They came home smelling like warehouse dust and dog fur, and Rehman collapsed onto the sofa with the specific full-body drama of a man who had survived a war rather than a mild afternoon inconvenience, one arm flung over his eyes.
"I need a minute," he announced to the ceiling. "Today broke something in me."
"A dog broke something in you." she scoffed.
"A dog and my own men. Betrayed twice in one day."
Ulfat toed off her sandals and climbed onto the sofa beside him without asking, which was also not asking-required territory anymore, curling herself into his side, and his arm came down off his face automatically to wrap around her, pulling her in closer like it was reflex by now, like six years had worn a groove into him shaped exactly like her.
"Poor menacing husband," she said against his chest, not sounding sorry at all. "Defeated by golden retrievers."
"Mock me quietly. I'm recovering." he murmured, pressing his lips to her hair.
"You liked it." a smile curved at her lips.
"I did not."
"You held my hand walking to a warehouse standoff over a dog. That's the single most romantic thing you've done all month and you did it for a golden retriever named Jameel."
He was quiet a second, and then his hand came up to tip her chin toward him, and whatever smart thing she'd been about to add got lost entirely when he kissed her — slow, unhurried, like the whole ridiculous day had just been leading here anyway, like a warehouse dog and a ruined omelet were simply the tax he paid for afternoons that ended exactly like this. She melted into it without any of her usual smart commentary, one hand fisting loosely in the front of his kurta, and when he finally pulled back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers, he was smiling the small, unguarded smile that only ever showed up when it was just the two of them.
"I'd hold your hand through worse than a warehouse dog," he said quietly.
"That's disgustingly sweet for a man who threatened to rearrange a supplier's teeth this morning."
"I contain multitudes."
"You contain a golden retriever's worth of loyalty and the emotional range of a man who cried at his own wedding for four hours."
"I had something in my eye." he looked scandalized that she'd even bring it up.
"Sure you did." She kissed him again before he could argue further, short and warm, and this time he laughed against her mouth, low and real, and pulled her fully into his lap without breaking it, the two of them tangled together on the sofa while somewhere down the hall the dog they weren't supposed to be keeping was already asleep on the good rug, entirely unbothered by the chaos he'd caused, entirely at home.
