#viraj and ramya's home

[voidsteffy]

Home: Chapter I

Premise: Viraj x fem!OC Ramya [Hi! Nanna] -> A comment from Viraj drives a crack through Ramya's fragile soul. Best friends to lovers trope, she fell first he fell harder trope. A bit of melodrama / quick escalation. Angsty(?) Beware, not proofread in my eagerness to finally post this.

A/N: I finally wrote!!! This one for my moots @iworshipsappho who commented on my post about this and motivated me to the moon, and @mahi-wayy and @vijayasena and @mellaga-karagani whose zeal and totally cool (hip, trend, movement whatever you wanna call their greatness) fanfics on South-Indian movie characters. @viswa-sakhi -> akkay look at what I've been upto! and @budugu -> yendi, yevanna matladande, yevaina paata padande!

« • • • »

The thing with her was that she did things for others she didn’t have to.

She didn’t have to give Viraj her first ever photoshoot as a costume designer to propel his career. She didn’t have to watch him propose to another woman. She didn’t have to spend all her time tending to his family after his wife left him.

But she did it all, because she was in love with him.

Ramya first met Viraj when they were interning at a magazine. In those days the jobs blended into each other like the days blended into nights, like sunrise did into sunset. But he made it all something memorable. Soon, chats at the office turned into talks on the sidelines, and then into long deep talks all night long.

The moment she saw him, she knew this was the man who was going to break her heart.

It’s okay, maybe that would mean she had a heart in the first place. Ramya couldn’t feel it except when it ached.

While her career as a costume designer grew, her calls with Viraj became few and far in between. Until she visited Viraj in Coonoor.

She hadn’t known about Yashna then.

Hadn’t known about just how infatuated Viraj was with Yashna, and to no fault of his. Something with them just seemed to click, and for the first time in all eternity, Ramya— someone who hadn’t felt pain in her life— ached at the love blooming before her eyes.

Ramya’s life hadn’t been easy by the least, but she refused to cry. She hadn’t cried when her parents admitted they conceived her just to have an organ bank for her ill older sister. Or when her sister collapsed and died of an aneurysm before she could help. Or when her parents disowned her out of grief.

She wasn’t about to cry now either.

Alone in that decorated hotel room, never having felt lonelier in her life, Ramya let the first sunrays of Coonoor pierce her with the warmth she sought in Viraj’s touch. She had come there in hopes of confessing her love to Viraj but it was too late.

He had given his heart to Yashna and there was no turning back from it.

“Hey…” Viraj’s voice came from the other side of the door after a knock. “It’s Viraj. Are you awake?”

Ramya didn’t answer him, all but praying he’d go away.

“I don’t know if you’re listening, you’re probably still asleep. Maybe it’s good that you’re not gonna hear this…” he sounded excited, the sound of his feet pacing echoing on the wooden panels.

She held her breath.

“Nothing…! I feel— God, I haven’t felt like this ever Ramya!”

She felt his fist lightly thump on the door, and she could feel the smile on his face, the happiness and the lightness in his throat. Ramya slid down to the floor, legs pulled to her chest and arms around herself, her back to the door as Viraj spoke on.

“I love Yashna!” he gasped as soon as the confession left his lips. “I love her so much Ramya, I just feel like I can do anything with her by my side. I’ll protect her, I want to marry her.”

Oh to be loved that way by him, she thought.

This eternity to love.

The next to be loved.

« • • • »

Ramya wasn’t married to Viraj or Yashna, but somehow she was always involved in their lives.

Convincing Yashna’s father, protecting them from her mother, arranging the wedding. Ramya did it all. She really couldn’t bear to see Viraj nor Yashna miserable.

She hadn’t realised this until the shock on Justin’s face sunk in.

“Why are you giving away this money amma! If he wants to buy a house he’ll buy it with his own money.”

“C’mon Justin. This is Viraj we’re talking about, you know he’s too proud to ask,”

“But you saved this money for your wedding.”

The money she had handed over to him didn’t matter much when compared to their happiness, she just couldn’t explain it.

“Yes, but this is their marriage. That’s more important.”

He had looked at you then, perhaps deeper than he ever had looked at a person. And after a long pause, he smiled and nodded like he knew the secret to a universal illusion.

« • • • »

Though Yashna had mentally left him long before she had physically left, her disappearance from Viraj’s arms was jarring. She had left their little baby behind, who didn’t understand anything but the fact that she had no mother.

Mahi was the first baby Ramya had picked up.

It was also the first time (in a long time) that Viraj’s daughter stopped crying.

And so a new family was formed, glued together by the needs and dreams of Mahi: just her, Ramya, dad, grandpa, Justin and Pluto. Years passed and the good-night stories grew longer. The birthdays were grander and the smiles less heavy.

In every conference call that Viraj and Ramya attended for Mahi’s cystic fibrosis treatment research, everyone assumed she was Mahi’s mother.

It wasn’t long before Viraj stopped correcting them. However, Ramya remained just a friend, his best friend. She lived in the room across from him, had the password to his accounts, his favourite menu was on her speed-dial, Mahi’s school schedule and medicine timings synched to her calendar. She still didn’t have Viraj’s love.

Not that she loved Mahi for Viraj’s love in return, or practically lived in their house and took care of them to get a love confession from her best friend.

But everytime Mahi asked that one weighted question, it left Ramya questioning her own love.

“When will I hear my mother's story?”

That night, she was worn out by the world and its noise, and Viraj wasn’t home yet. Mahi had grown especially restless with her father’s dismissal of any story with mothers. It made her act out a bit no matter who it was at.

“Sorry kanna, enough stories for tonight. It’s getting la—”

“So you’ll tell me tomorrow?”

“We’ll see Mahi, it’s Nanna’s turn for storytime tomorrow.”

Mahi grew pleading, there was an ache in her eyes. An ache that was never palatable to see in a young girl’s face. Mahi was little, she didn’t understand the concept of losing a mother, or being abandoned. To her, there had always been a mother and she was still here somewhere, but just absent from dinner tables and baking competitions and bedtime stories.

Now that she thought of it, Ramya seemed closest to a mother she’d maybe ever have.

“But he never tells me that story!”

“Mahi…” came Viraj’s stern voice from the threshold of the pink room. “Don’t trouble Ramya.”

“But nanna!”

“No buts, enough bedtime stories for tonight Mahi!”

Ramya left the room to leave father and daughter alone, but when Viraj came out at last after a heated argument, he wasn’t just tired or sad. He was angry.

He stomped up to Ramya at the kitchen platform where she was reheating dinner.

“Did you promise her you’d tell her about her mother?”

Ramya, as usual, was quick to deny. Yashna, however beautiful and ruled by her mother as she was, was the last thing Ramya wanted to broach at storytime.

“No, of course not. Did Mahi say that?”

Viraj visibly shrunk into a chair at her question, his hands twitching on the platform as he shook his head in a no. Ramya placed her own above them, making Viraj to look at her.

“You know… You have to tell her about it all one day.”

He rolls his eyes, “Not you too Ramya.” Tired to the bone, now afraid of mentioning Yashna as much as she was afraid of loud noises.

“What ‘not you too’ ? There’s a reason everybody in this house keeps begging you to rip that band-aid off Viraj. It’s one thing to start this facade, but an entirely different task to keep lying everyday about it!”

She hadn’t realised when her voice had gotten so passionate, when she had forgotten the clicking of the oven and started glaring at her best friend.

He wasn't any more pleasant.

“Oh!” he scoffed, “You think I do this for fun? Huh? You think I like not giving my daughter a mother to even imagine? You think I like being this tired overworked single father whose daughter is being raised by a stranger?”

He said the last word with such venom, a hand recklessly flying to gesture to her, that her prediction of all those years ago came true at a heavy expense.

The thunder tearing from the skies flashed across Ramya’s face, and in that moment, Viraj realised he broke her heart.

“Stranger…” she whispered.

He shook his head, shooting out of his seat to do damage control but perhaps he couldn’t ever repair the wound he caused.

“You think I’m a stranger? Stranger to who? You? Mahi?”

“I’m so sorry Ramya. I didn’t mean it like that…”

“Mahi’s first word—”

“I’m so—”

“—No!”

Viraj froze at the shake in her voice. She was inching away from him, away from years of feeling like a part of this sweet family.

“Mahi. Mahi’s first word was ‘Viraj’ because I kept calling your name whenever I was near her. Her favourite colour changes every week though she denies it every time. This week it’s Falu because she didn’t like the name ���Maroon’. She scored such good marks in her test today. You know the first thing she asked for, after she showed me her report card? You. Her father. She wished she could ask for her mother but she’s known no one. No one!”

Every word from Ramya felt like it was coming from between the cracks of her soul. It broke something in Viraj.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

Ramya sniffled, but didn’t let anything else betray her. The world was a blur, but all she cared about was getting out of the house before she’d say something she would regret. She loved Viraj, but she didn’t want to become him.

“She doesn’t know you fully because a part of you will always be with her.  She’ll never know me because I’ve given away all parts of me to you. And you call me a stranger!”

It was not everyday he heard the harsh truth from Ramya. Part of her thought Viraj knew she loved him. At the very least, she thought he respected her.

“Everyone around you is chipping away at themselves protecting a reality you created Viraj! Do you realise just how much you’re suffering because of that reality, how much you’re making us suffer?!”

Somewhere in her moisture-framed vision, Ramya knew she was gathering her keys and bag to get out of the house. But it wasn’t until the rain spatter hit her that she realised she was rushing out. Viraj was just a cry behind her, begging her to forgive him, apologising.

She saw a car pull up in the driveway, Justin’s face illuminated by the overhead lights inside before he jumped out with concern.

A pair of arms enveloped her shoulders. It had been too long since he hugged her, more so like this. Like he was afraid of losing her, afraid of her losing it.

The back of her blouse getting wet with Viraj’s warm tears, and the rain kissing the pair from all around, they slid to the ground.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry”

Justin’s shouts became closer and closer until he stood in front of them. He kept asking what happened but she was out of words to describe the sudden pain in her life. Maybe it had always been there.

If she was a stranger to Viraj, who else did she have? Maybe not even herself.

Her first cry tore out of her throat, and it agonised her more than abate her grief. She caved into herself and Viraj bent with her, on her back with his cheeks muttering the same nothings again and again.

“Justin…!” Ramya cried.

“Amma? Tell me, what happened?!”

“Justin! Please take me away.”

“What?”

Against Viraj’s protests, she stretched a hand out for Justin which he took as fast as lightning.

“Please take me away! I want to go… G-Go—”

He pulled her out of Viraj’s desperate grip into his arms. “Let’s go… Where should we go?” He took her purse, supporting her towards his car. Justin dreaded the day he’d find Ramya on Viraj’s doorstep with her heart broken and her life flashing before her eyes. He hated this.

“It’s ok, it’s going to be ok… Easy there…!”

“I want to turn back Justin!” she cried into his shoulder. His brotherly arms around kept her grounded. “I want to turn back so badly. But before I go back to him, take me away.”

“Ramya I’m so sorry!”

Viraj’s cries turned to his father-in-law at his doorstep while Justin got Ramya safely into the car. They were silhouettes marred by the elusive darkness of the night, wracked with guilt.

“Let’s go…” Justin sighed. “It’s going to be ok amma.”

“I want to go home!” she cried.

“Home?”

“Home…! I want to go home! Home! Please take me home… I want to be home!”

« • • • » stay tuned for Chapter II « • • • »

(moots, tell me if you wanna be tagged❤️)