Family Remains

[toujours_nigel]

a.k.a the train-trip fic 22by7asked for. (hope you like it).

This is:

a) not mine.
b) slashy.
c) rated R.
d) post-film.
e) AU.
f) the first part of possibly three.

He knows—technically, theoretically—that it’s hard to set up business. He’s heard stories, about Baba in Calcutta and Dada in Bombay, three decades apart. He knows.

 

But all they’ve done is hock the stones—nothing like circumspect, butts on faded cushions and credit sheltered behind his brothers’ names—and outline the plan. There’s not even been the basic uproar he’s been expecting; Dada’s just nodded and delegated to Shukla, who’s seen to legalities, and Mansoor, who’s gone into excited little conferences with Charlie as to which of Dada’s boys are now his boys. The more things change, fuck it.

 

And he tools around in his car, gets it reupholstered—being left out in the rain, all night and day, has done nothing for it—decides that Sweety is a worthy investment of time and money. Charlie’s busier than him, but neither Shukla nor Mansoor feel any hesitation in ordering him around, unlike, say, chhote saab Mikhail, who hasn’t come in at the lowest level (which includes an intimate knowledge of the inside of a horse’s ass), and so he’s even more at loose ends than ever. Besides, the girl’s drop dead gorgeous, and what a fucking waste, in the kurtas and kameezes she drapes herself in.

 

It takes wheedling to get her away from Shukla’s office—neither she nor Shukla seem at all eager to let her go—and even more to force her into the idea of shopping. But by the time she’s through, he’s appreciably lacking in cash, and the girl beside him looks like she walked off a ramp. Guddu’s going to die. “You’re unbelievable,” he tells her.

 

“I don’t look half-bad, no?” And he’d sneer at her, but she catches his eye and grins.

 

“Nah, not half-bad.”

 

“You shop with girls a lot?” And then there’s her deep-seated desire to shove him in a box stamped ‘gay male’.

 

“Mostly when I’ll get to take the clothes off them,” he answers, turns a corner. Sweety begins to look a little self-conscious, now they’re near her home, and the leers aren’t really appreciative.

 

“You’re such a fake.”

 

Charlie doesn’t let him drive through colonies—always thinks he’s going to run people down. It’s an idea. “How?”

 

“You took me shopping, no?”

 

He gives her the obligatory ‘and you think I don’t want to fuck you, why?’ leer, but frankly, she’d slap him—she fired on her brother, he doesn’t trust her an inch—if she didn’t maul him, and the list of her defenders starts with Guddu, ends with Charlie, and even has bloody Malati-di in it somewhere. “Guddu’s expression will be reward enough.”

 

“You shouldn’t pick on him,” she says, suddenly militant even in the soft straps and drapes of her dress, “it’s not like he can help it.”

 

“Sweety,” baby, doll, bitch, “I don’t pick on your pati parmeshwar because he has a speech impediment, I pick on him because he’s an idiot.”

 

“He’s braver than you think.” The shape of her jaw is stiff with anger. “He faced up to my brother for me, he went to the police, he…”

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s a hero, he’s a superstar, fine.” He follows her out of the car and up the stairs to her fifth-storey walk-up—one of Shumon-da’s rents had conveniently fallen empty, the last tenant moved away—and glares down the women who mutter at her. “What’s he doing with himself, anyway?”

 

“He’s looking around—I think he’s going to help out at a school for special children, you know, he empathises.” He doubts Guddu’s ever empathised with anyone, and he knows Sweety’s fishing, but his charity’s never extended that far, and if all he has in his brothers’ holding is a veto, that’ll be buff as Sylvester Stallone before anyone he can control employs Guddu.

 

Mr. Sharma’s always rubbed him the entirely wrong way—unlike, say, the other Mr. Sharma—since he walked in and saw him repeating the Hindi-dubbed lines of Spiderman on Charlie’s second black-and-white running off electricity hooked from the nearest chawl. Now he stares from him to Sweety to him like a fractured reflection of Charlie, and doesn’t seem to notice that she shrinks under his eyes and begins to look less breathtaking.

 

“You b… bou… bought her th… tha… that!”

 

“Colour brings out her eyes, doesn’t it?” And the cut brings out everything else, but he’s deep in Bobby Darling mode. Flutter, flutter, swish, swish.

 

“Sh… she’s ma… married!”

 

Sweety’s rolling her eyes, back from whatever trip she decided not to take down lack-of-self-esteem lane. “She’s twenty-one.”

 

“Guddu.”

 

“Le… let me sp… speak. You ca… can’t buy her th… things li… like this; she’s pre… preg… pregnant.”

 

He’s standing at the door, still, hasn’t crossed the threshold, spine against the support. “Should’ve bought condoms, bitch.”

 

He’s out and down the stairs before Guddu’s stopped spluttering, and can’t force himself not to drive towards Mumbai Central. He likes to think he’s not always been like this, crawling to his brothers and to Charlie, but he has, he’s always been youngest and best beloved, and he’s used to the easy out. Baba, Ma, Mashimoni, Dada, Shumon-da. And then Charlie, and look how brilliantly he’s fucked that up.

 

Charlie’s not at home—the railway carriage is dark—when he parks the car and squeezes through the fence and breaks in. He knows his way in the dark, by now, and switching on the lights is useless, with the sun still setting outside the window grilles. He strips off, quick and efficient—odd, in this place, but it’s odd to do it alone, anyway—and slips into Charlie’s narrow, unmade bed. The crickets have started, before he falls asleep, and the cheap formica-and-scrap-iron walls are cold beyond his huddle of blankets.

 

Charlie comes in after the last train has rattled past—he wakes when the lights come on—and walks cat-quiet through the empty spaces. He sits up, bleary, shading his eyes with one hand—he must have been asleep hours—watches Charlie’s shoulders slump, watches him put the gun away. They should speak, but he has, he realises with a cold shock, nothing to say, so he lies back down, face to the wall, like sleeping in a train, and waits for Charlie to lie down behind and put an arm around him.

 

***

 

Morning is the 4 a.m. train in the distance and Charlie’s heart beating under his hand and his breath regular in sleep and his hips pressing close. The sky is still a cold clear blue and the arm draped around Charlie over the blankets is goose-pimpled. He pulls it slowly onto Charlie’s skin in a shock of cold and pulls him closer in a tangle of limbs, brushing kisses into his hair, arms tightening around him, suddenly ravenous. Charlie wakes to teeth worrying his earlobe and tries to pull away, talk, ask questions, but he has nothing that can be said before this, and stops his mouth with kisses till Charlie’s bucking up against him, as desperately grasping as he is. They haven’t touched in weeks save at wrist and shoulder and one fleeting kiss goodbye.

 

He rolls to sit up, shoving the covers to the mess of shoes and shirts and belts, and looks at Charlie looking at him, runs skin-hungry hands over his body as though he hasn’t mapped it through all its changes, finds a single raised scar sloping down his right hip and traces it obsessively till Charlie gasps and moves to sit up, pushes him down with a hand on his chest and holds till his body slackens, listening to his blood beat. He leans in to kiss the questions away again, lets his body collapse, rolls to his stomach, erection held tight between his body and the bed, and waits, breath sobbing out in anticipation, for the rustle of Charlie hunting for condoms and lube to stop. Five weeks.

 

Charlie turns him over with a hand at hip and shoulder, and prepares him textbook-thorough, one finger in, two scissoring, three twisting up and in, relentlessly gentle, till he pushes himself up on both elbows and tugs him down, body slotting into the cradle of his hips, weight held on arms braced taut on either side of his head. He wraps his arms around the knotted shoulders, raises his hips to wrap his legs over the small of his back, holds for Charlie to push in, fucking in a tight clinch, no space for anything but the infinitesimal thrust of Charlie’s hips pressing deeper into him.

 

Charlie fucks silently, too many years of alleys and other men’s cars, and he stifles himself against his skin, biting down, red and angry, on the swell of a bicep, when he comes, nuzzling up to take Charlie’s mouth when he orgasms. He loses track of what he was doing and stays there, kissing him with unintended tenderness, bruising fingers knotted in his hair, as the sky turns a warmer shade.

 

When he can’t force himself to hold on any longer, Charlie pulls out and away, tosses the condom out, sits up, sun-dappled like behind bars. “What brought that on?”

 

“Why, Sophia leave you too tired for this?” Don’t make me say it, just. A fight’s so much simpler.

 

Charlie shrugs, the faint shadow of a bruise rippling along his shoulder. “Complaining?”

 

“No.”

 

“Phir?”

 

“I’m going to Goa, thought visiting you was polite.”

 

“For how long?” Charlie’s shifting into some semblance of alertness.

 

“Dunno. Whenever.” He stretches, obscenely relaxed, rubs his cheek cat-like against the smoothness of the cheap factory weave. “Why’s it matter?”

 

“Fignaturef,” Charlie insists. He shrugs, turning it into an invitation. Come play. “Fine, juft tell me where you’ll be, I’ll come get you.”

 

“No.”

 

“What?”

 

“Don’t come get me; I’m not telling you where I’ll be; I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Pick one.”

 

“What if it?”

 

“I’m bored,” he says, contemplates sleeping through this, hoping to wake up and find it resolved.

 

“You’re bored?”

 

“Yes. Can we stop talking now, I want to sleep.”

 

Charlie reaches over and hits him hard on the ribs. “Up.”

 

“Why, you gone deaf?”

 

“How can you be bored? Fhukla if doing all the work.”

 

“Dunno. I just am. It sounds so dreary, y’know?” He knows how to be this man, shining fake, drowning in alcohol and the younger sons and brothers of ‘legit’ businessmen. It comes easy. “All that work, all that responsibility.”

 

“Ballf. You’re bored becaufe you don’t have any work fo you won’t work?” He nods, eyes closed, Charlie’s face is more than he wants to see. “Mikhail.”

 

“Hmmm?”

 

“Ki hoyechhe?”

 

Great. Bangla. “Told you I’m bored. Look, they’re your fucking diamonds, it’s your damn money, why’re you involving me in it?”

 

“Becaufe it’f you,” Charlie snarls, looms over and shakes him. “What the fuck are you on, fucktard?” He’s going to have bruises later from Charlie’s fist and fingers. “Bol shala madachod ki hoyechhe.”

 

“You want to be independent, no?” Charlie nods, wary. He sits up, crowding Charlie back, pushing him, crawling up to straddle him, cupping a hand over his jaw. “So do it yourself. If I’m in this, Dada will never let go of it, he’ll never stop treating it like a subsidiary, you’ll never cut loose.” He kisses Charlie’s forehead, eyelids, mouth, quick and messy. “So just do it, yeah? By yourself. It’s your deal, anyway, not mine.” Charlie clamps down on his wrists. “Let go, shonamoni.”

 

“We’re doing this,” Charlie says, grips till his hands go numb. “I told you, we’re going to do this.”

 

“You are,” he says, unfolds his body from Charlie’s till they’re only touching at his wrists, and waits for him to let go. “Chharo, shonamoni.”

 

And because Charlie’s used to people leaving—father, brother, some lover he’s never known—he sits back on his haunches, spine straight, head up,  hands parallel on his thighs and watches him dress and toe into his shoes and walk into the perfect day.

 

*** *** ***

 

Translations:

 

Ki hoyechhe?: what’s happened?

 

Bol shala madachod ki hoyechhe.: Tell (me) what’s happened (you) mother-fucking asshole.

 

Chharo, shonamoni: Let go, sweetheart.

***

And also, I made two icons: