| Junoon |
ArShi FanFic
| Prologue |
Yeh ishq nahin aasaan, bas itna samajh lijiye
Toota hua dil apna yoon unko dikhaana hai
Phir aag ka darya hai, phir doob hi jaana hai
~ Mirza Ghalib
Smoke rose into the dusk in a thin, restless curl.
Arnav Singh Raizada watched it loosen from his mouth and disappear into the evening, much like every sensible thought that had tried to survive the last few minutes. Nicotine dulled the body. It did nothing for the mind.
His mind, inconveniently, had chosen her.
There was no reason for it. No decent one, at least. He had seen beautiful girls before, girls who knew they were beautiful and moved through the world as though it owed them space. Delhi Imperial College was built for them, for their perfumes and polished shoes and expensive phones left carelessly on cafeteria tables. Their lives came padded in leather seats and tinted glass.
Khushi Kumari Gupta was worse.
She did not merely belong to that world. She seemed whittled out of it.
Inside the cafe across the road, she sat with Preeto Bhaitya near the glass wall, light slipping over her hair and cheekbones as if even the dying sun had been instructed to behave around her. Her clothes were simple only in the way the wealthy understood simplicity, immaculate, restrained, chosen to look effortless by someone who had never known the embarrassment of actual effort. Her fingers circled the straw of her drink. Her mouth curved faintly around it.
Arnav hated the image at once.
He hated the long fall of her hair. Hated the sheen of it where it brushed the line of her back. Hated the impossible calm of her face, the pale finish of her skin, the little tilt of her head when she listened to her friend. Most of all, he hated the way she caught light without asking for it.
Privilege had a smell. Expensive coffee, polished glass, perfume soft enough to pretend innocence.
She was an untouchable diamond set among copper and brass.
And he... he was ore still dark with earth. No matter how far he clawed upward, there were doors that stayed closed. Not because he lacked ability. He had more of it than most of the names that strutted through DIC. He knew that with cold certainty. But ability did not change bloodlines. It did not polish hunger into heritage.
That thought did not wound him. He had made peace with the mud. There was power beneath the ground, if one knew where to dig.
The underground was his dominion.
He shifted on the motorcycle, angling himself so Aman stood between him and the cafe. It was a practical movement. Nothing more. He did not need to watch Miss Gupta smile at whatever nonsense Preeto was narrating with her entire face.
Then the breeze came. It caught his hair first, infuriatingluy soft at his forehead, and he knew what would follow before it happened.
Her eyes lifted.,Across the road, through a wall of glass and the dirty gold of evening, Khushi stilled.
Their gazes met.
For a moment, the city seemed to thin around them. He could still hear traffic. A horn, the rattle of a cart, Aman's voice somewhere close. Yet none of it arrived whole.
Khushi's fingers tightened around the drink.
She should have looked away.
She did not.
Colour climbed into her cheeks by degrees, slow and startling, a pink deepening toward the shade of the roses he forced into bloom in the narrow strip behind his house. He cultivated those flowers with a discipline he reserved for few living things. They demanded attention. So did she, apparently.
His jaw clenched.
The pull came again, familiar now, though he had refused to name it. Iss....junoon ko kya naam doon?
Not attraction. Attraction sounded too ordinary. This was more insulting, a current under the skin, bright and senseless, dragging him toward the one person he had decided to dismiss.
Her lips parted. A small hesitation. Then her teeth sank into her lower lip.
Arnav's gaze darkened before he could stop it.
Even from that distance, he saw the rise of her breath. Saw the faint unease in the shape of her stillness. His hand tightened around the handlebar. An obscene little instinct rose in him, to cross the road, reach through all that polished glass, and free that captive lip with the press of his thumb.
Madness. Utter madness.
Aman's palm clapped in front of his face.
"Oye. Are you listening or has the smoke entered your skull?"
Arnav turned on him slowly. The view of the cafe vanished behind Aman's shoulder. He should have been relieved.
"What?" he asked.
Aman grinned without shame. "Homework. Lend it to me."
Arnav dropped the cigarette and crushed it beneath his boot. The boots were his own, bought six months earlier after his first real payout. No charity, no castoff, no pity disguised as generosity. Every crease had been paid for.
He looked at Aman.
Aman pressed a hand to his chest. "Don't glare. You finished it before Professor Saheb finished reading the first slide. We both know this."
Arnav jerked his chin toward the backpack lying across the motorcycle seat.
"Mere Sher," Aman said cheerfully, already reaching for it. "Blessings upon your terrifying heart. By the way, Lavanya has been yapping again. She still thinks you two are together."
Arnav said nothing.
Aman, cursed with curiosity and a tragic lack of survival instinct, followed his gaze.
The cafe door opened. Khushi and Preeto stepped out, the spell of glass around them breaking without making either girl seem less removed from the street. Preeto spoke animatedly, one hand slicing the air. Khushi listened, keys in hand, her attention soft until it drifted, again, to him.
Aman's grin fell into something sharper. "No. Absolutely not. Don't tell me you have developed a fancy for that porcelain doll. I know she is your lab partner, but that is where the story ends. Girls like her do not glance twice at us."
"Zip it," Arnav said, voice low, "if you favour that mouth."
Aman lifted both hands. "As you wish, huzoor."
Arnav swung onto the Royal Enfield Classic 350. The machine settled beneath him with the ease of something built, broken, rebuilt and understood. When he thumbed the ignition, the engine answered with a deep, throaty rumble.
Across the road, Khushi's Audi stirred to life.
Of course it did.
Smooth, sealed, and refined. It glided forward like it had been taught not to trouble the world with its movement.
Aman saluted lazily. "See you tomorrow. Try not to murder anyone before class."
Arnav eased into traffic.
He did not believe in fate. Fate was a word invented by people who liked poetry more than consequence. So naturally, when the light turned red, his motorcycle came to rest beside her gleaming Audi.
Through the tinted glass he saw her in profile, still listening to Preeto. Her hands rested carefully on the steering wheel. Too carefully. He had noticed that about her before. The car might have been powerful, but she drove it like it was a living creature that could be offended by sudden decisions.
Irritation burned through him, hot and white. And before he knew it, he blipped the throttle. The engine snarled. A beautiful, deliberate, and garish sound.
Her head turned. Arnav looked away at once, satisfaction curling through him despite himself.
Ridiculous. He should not care whether she noticed him. He should have preferred it if she did not. But the thought of her being unaware of him while she sat so close felt unacceptable.
Her gaze lingered. He felt it with an accuracy that annoyed him.
Only then did he turn back and their eyes met again.
This time he allowed the smirk to come.
Ditch your friend. I am better company.
The blush returned, devastating in its honesty. Preeto stared between them with something like alarm on her otherwise unremarkable face. Unremarkable, because no face nearby could compete with Khushi Gupta's eyes when they held his like that, hazel and bright and entirely too alive.
Then his mind betrayed him.
He saw her step out of the car, not as she was, careful and composed, but as some reckless version of herself that could only exist in the darkest corner of him. She crossed to him without hesitation. Climbed onto the motorcycle. Her arms wound around his neck. Her breath touched his throat. The engine's vibration ran through steel, through denim, through skin.
Her hair loosened in the wind. Her fist caught in his jacket. Her body leaned into his with a certainty that stole language from him.
Open. Close. His.
A horn tore through the fantasy. Arnav's jaw locked hard enough to hurt. The light had changed. Behind them, someone leaned on the horn again with great moral urgency.
He kicked into gear and the motorcycle surged forward. Her car did the same a second later. He caught the faint lurch of it, the tremor before she corrected course, and a dark, unwilling satisfaction settled low in his stomach.
Perhaps he was not the only one who had lost his senses at a traffic light.
At the next turn, they parted.
Khushi disappeared toward guarded gates, clean lawns and chandeliers pretending to be stars. Arnav turned toward streets that polite society pretended did not exist. The underbelly of New Delhi opened before him, familiar and waiting.
There was no room for Khushi Kumari Gupta in his world. Nor in the abyss of his mind. He knew what he was made of.
And whatever reached too close eventually burned.
...
| Character Aesthetics |
He believes he will burn whatever comes too close.
She believes she must never crack.
Arnav Singh Raizada
Six feet of rebellion, wrapped in a silence far too magnetic to ignore.
At twenty-two, he's the college's most feared delinquent; leather jacket, roaring motorcycle, and a reputation forged in gundagardi. But behind the smoke and sneer lies a mind that aces exams and a pride that refuses charity. He believes the sun was never meant for men like him.
Until her.
Khushi Kumari Gupta
21. Five-and-a-half feet of polished perfection.
The sponsor's daughter. The college princess. Always flawless, always smiling, and quietly suffocating beneath the weight of expectation. She has everything... except the freedom to be imperfect.
Until him.
Their arcs collide where fire meets glass. And neither will remain what they once were.
Next: Chapter 1 Wattpad
