The Birthday Fic

[toujours_nigel]

Mikhail, it turns out, has the horrifying habit of constantly keeping in touch with his brothers. They don’t converse, which is some relief, but Mikhail leaves a trail of texts and terse 30 second conversations on Shumon and Mujeeb’s phones. He thinks at first that it has something to do with being kept on a short leash as a kid—his brothers brought Mikhail up after their parents died when he was five; this has a lot to do with how bad Mikhail is at being an adult—but when he starts getting pelted with texts and calls, he figures it’s just Mikhail being Mikhail, and shrugs it off.

 

Then he gets back one night, and finds his door forced, his lights blazing, and Mikhail sat cross-legged in his hammock. “Hey.”

 

“I got you something,” Mikhail says, tosses him a phone. “Should’ve told me you lost yours.”

 

He catches it one-handed. “Forgot.” His phone’s in the bottom of his bag, switched off. “Thif if your phone, though.”

 

“Shumon-da bought me a new one,” Mikhail shrugs. “Hand it over, I’ll program what numbers you need.”

 

He drops to his knees before him, offers up the phone. “What were you calling for?” Mikhail’s jeans need washing, fabric rough under his palms.

 

“You free tomorrow?”

 

He wants to crawl closer, put his head on Mikhail’s thigh, have his hair pulled. “Yeah.” He needs a shower, though. Shouldn’t even have come this close.

 

“Lunch at my house, then.” He switches the phone off, tosses it on top of Charlie’s bag. “Around 1:00, say.”

 

“Why?” He’s been in that house exactly twice—it’s the type of house that makes him feel small and dirty, like he should be warded away by the doorman.

 

“Turning twenty-one,” Mikhail says, studiedly nonchalant.

 

 He takes a moment to unravel that, before crawling in, Mikhail’s legs spreading, settling against his shoulders. “What do you want?” Because Mikhail’s a kid—loves everything people give him.

 

“Sextape,” Mikhail says, instantly, takes his hands, kisses them—fingers and palm and wrist. “You and the lovely, the luscious, the unbelievably sexy Sophia.” He draws her name out in a lecher’s moan.

 

“Wouldn’t agree,” he says, keeps his voice light. The fucker knows. Of course the fucker knows, with his obsessive tendencies of keeping track of people.

 

Mikhail hums non-committal, puts his hands down, looks up. “If you asked…” The phone rings, and Mikhail cuts himself off and fishes it out of his back pockets, writhing uncomfortably. “Hnya Dada, bolo. Na, okhanei achhi. Etokkhon chhilo na, shobe matro phirlo. Ami ki jani, tai hobe, amake bole kore naki... jachchhetai baje boko na toh, tomar misconception’er jonyo ami dayi noyi…hnya, ashbe. Na, lagbe na, I’ll get something. It’s okay. Dada, don’t… Dada.” He flips the phone shut. “Damn it.”

 

“Problem?”

 

Mikhail sighs, rubs a hand over his eyes. “Dada’s being his over-protective self. Chhor.” He pushes up from the hammock, Charlie falling back to sit on the floor. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

***

 

Mikhail, it also turns out and he thinks he should’ve known this, gets what he wants. His new phone—and, because Mikhail’s no fool, his old one—buzz with incoming messages from about 9:00 a.m., all increasingly panicky. Remember to turn up, the first one says, then. It’s at one, 1:00. In the afternoon, not night. Not that that I’d mind, but Dada might. I hope he would. I think I killed my brain, ouch. Dress to cover the bruises. The last one says, It’s 12:10, go get ready.

 

He sighs and rummages in his meagre wardrobe, the bruises Sophia left blooming purple, and fixes upon the blue shirt he wears to the interviews Guddu badgers him into turning up for. Combing his hair down takes care of the rest of the damage. Bloody Sophia. I’m coming, it only takes ten minutes, he fires off at 12:30, struggling into his shirt—he sent it off to get laundered at some point and now it’s stiff enough with starch it could stand on its own. His phone buzzes when he’s lacing his shoes. Difference between birthday and day I was born, assfucker, is that it isn’t 1982, when last it took ten minutes.

 

Mikhail is right—this is becoming a pattern he’s not at all fond of—because he only makes it to the door at 1:10. The woman who opens the door is all smiles and, “go upstairs, chhor’da is expecting you.” He follows her up the stairs, fighting down the way his skin crawls—this house shouts old money and, though he knows Mujeeb and Shumon possibly bought it off some sad fucker who lost his inheritance, it still creeps him out.

 

Mikhail’s in the drawing room, sitting straight-spined in a hard-backed chair, and throws him a hate-filled glare that should be trained from beneath a mass of unruly hair and quite fails to make the same impact in a clean-shaven face fringed with short, neatly-cut hair. The starched whiteness of the clothes doesn’t help, and after a second, he’s too busy clutching his stomach, laughing, to notice the unabated glaring. “You’re late.”

 

“Awww,” he says, all tension gone, “if it past your bedtime, baby?” He draws a hand over Mikhail’s chin. “Do you even fhave yet?” He knows, technically, that he’s going to get very bashed up, later, what with the Sophia thing and the phone-switched-off thing and now this, but Mikhail’s never struck him as having a baby-face, and right now he’d be comfortable in a school uniform—maybe never shaving is a defence mechanism. The narrowed eyes and the finger are all pure Mikhail, though, and that just makes it more amusing. “You fhouldn’t do that. Tchtchtch. That what they teach you in fchool?”

 

“I hate you,” Mikhail enunciates, “I hope Hasina stamps all over you, I hope Blue Thunder shits on you, I hope Ace tries to mate with you.”

 

The way his mouth looks is hypnotic—the way he looks is horrifying, like seeing him naked in public, raw and stripped. He stomps down on the temptation to kiss him, and settles for mocking. “You invited me, you know.”

 

“I did nothing of the sort.”

 

“Really, fo who did?”

 

Mikhail looks up as Mujeeb and Shumon emerge from one of the rooms leading off the drawing room, and stop and stare at them. He shifts his weight, uncomfortable to be seen like this, and determined not to move. “You’re here,” Mujeeb says, smile cheery and sinister. “We were wondering how late you’d be.”

 

“Few minutef ago,” he says, moving towards them to shake hands.

 

“Good to see you,” Shumon says, clapping his shoulder, then, “kire, ekhon mejaj bhalo holo toh?”

 

Mikhail scowls. Mujeeb frowns at him till he stops and pastes on a smile, then turns to him. “Eto nyakamo kore na chheleta.”

 

“I… don’t underftand Bangali.”

 

“Bangla,” Mujeeb says, “Bangali is the race, Bangla is the language.”

 

Shumon, meanwhile, is standing behind Mikhail, leaning in, and is muttering something that sounds like, “Bangla bojhe na, tahle tor oshubidha hoye na, maane raate?”

 

Mikhail explodes off the chair and stalks off into the dining room, muttering under his breath. Shumon and Mujeeb grin at each other and fall into line, herding him before them.

 

***

 

Lunch is as much an ordeal as everything in this house is, for him; he’s never sure whether they’re as oblivious as Mikhail, about what they’re letting into their house, but he’s seen Mujeeb looking at him, and the kind of work Mujeeb gives him—the menial work he would never ask Shukla to do, the kind of work Mikhail is bemused to find him doing—and he thinks that Mujeeb, at least, is as far from oblivious as it is possible to get. But still he gets invited—gets coerced, by Mikhail’s lips and tongue and teeth—and he comes, every time, to act out an ease he does not feel, and take and take and take like the expensive slut Guddu thinks Mikhail is.

 

Malati’di leads in a troupe of servants—Malati’di thinks he’s not fit to lick Mikhail’s patent leather boots, and makes it obvious to everyone but Mikhail—who arrange food ritually in front of a steadily-reddening Mikhail till he’s ringed around with food in shaped platters. The rest of them wait for the tureens to be brought in and he blinks and winces when Malati’di—eyes like a striking snake’s—puts a plate of fried fish in front of him.

 

Shumon leans over to peer short-sightedly at it. “Ki, amader tuchchhotachchhilyo, Charlie’r jamai ador? Eta bhalo holo?”

 

Mikhail looks up from his daal-chawal and shudders. “Malati’di, maarbe naki chheletake? Charlie, don’t eat that.” He puts out an imperious hand. “Give it here.”

 

Mujeeb sighs. “Tui ekhon or maachh tao bechhe dibi?”

 

“Hadn’t thought of that,” Mikhail says, brightens. “Be a moment. Charlie, eat something that won’t choke you to death. Here, try this.” He pours an awkward left handed scoop of vegetables over his plate and goes off, fish in hand, presumably to locate a wash-basin. Mujeeb and Shumon catch each other’s eye and explode into laughter.

 

He keeps his head down through shouts in the backdrop, till Mikhail puts the plate of fish—now de-boned and shredded—beside his plate.

 

“Eto prem shoye na,” Shumon says, still grinning madly. He’s never sure whether or not he wishes he understood what they’re saying.

 

“Sharakkhon baje na bokle chole na?” Mikhail huffs, goes around the table and starts gobbling at a speed he’s hard-put to keep up with.

 

“Aha re, koshto holo?”

 

“Shumon, chhar.”

 

“Hnya, Dada.” And there’s peace for a few seconds. “Do you like the fish, Charlie?”

 

He doesn’t, but clearly that’s the wrong answer. “It’f very good,” he says, instead, eyes fixed on his plate.

 

“Ta hobe na, premik’er hathe bachha iliish. Amakeo jodi keu dito.” And then he’s off again, laughing helplessly into his food.

 

“Tumi tthatta korte dekechho? Etoi haanshir khorak kom porchhe tomar?” Mikhail asks, voice low and not really interrogative. “Ami kori, tomar meyegulor sathe? Raasta theke jeguloke kine aano shegulokeo eto baje bhabe treat korina.”

 

“Bara bari korish na,” Mujeeb says. “Jotheshto hoyechhe. Kha, kheye utthe ja.”

 

“I’m done. Charlie, are you done?”

 

He looks down at his plate, rice mingled with five different things, scattered across it. “Yeah.” He can’t eat another bite even if he’s force-fed.

 

“Chhor’da,” says Malati’di, nothing daunted, “chatni aar mishti khabe na?”

 

“Pore diyo.”

 

“Payesh’ta kheye jao,” she says, extracting bowl and spoon seemingly from thin air. “Tomar jonyo korechhi.”

 

Mikhail allows himself to be fed half of it, standing shoulders stiff, before shrugging her off and dragging him by the hand through one of the doors. He looks back and sees Mujeeb staring unblinkingly at him.

 

***

 

Mikhail lives sprawled across the top floor of the house, (and much of the roof that isn’t eaten up by Mujeeb’s rifle range) and his bedroom could swallow Charlie’s place and have space left for Guddu’s tenement. He’s supposed to be at ease here and can’t quite summon up the energy to pretend, and Mikhail, jittery and uncomfortable in his neat hair and neat clothes, notices and misinterprets as soon as he’s shoved Charlie in and locked and barred the door.

 

“They’re bastards,” he says, spread-eagled on the bed like some strange parody of the god his name worships—names mean nothing, he’s no Christian. “I shouldn’t have told you to come.”

 

Charlie, on his feet by a window, trying and failing not to guess what each of Mikhail’s belongings would earn him if he hocked them, shrugs, says, “It’f okay,” doesn’t say that the way Mujeeb and Shumon treat him puts him at ease and Mikhail sets his hackles up.

 

“Like fuck it is,” Mikhail snarls. “Come here.” There’s a very strong streak in Mikhail of the tyrant—he demands all the time, of everyone, gets into fights that aren’t his, gives to those who don’t want his charity, gives to him till he feels like he never stopped sucking off middle-aged losers in dark alleys and taking it up the arse in cars with tinted windows.

 

“They did nothing,” he says instead.

 

“I know why Dada makes you… saaala, Rahul used to do that till you came.” Rahul’s fourteen and skinny and picked up off the street. He’s been Rahul. “He hasn’t the right.” Mikhail’s hair is sticking up in clumps from lying down, his kurta’s creased in sharp folds.

 

“Fo? I work for him, he payf me, why won’t he make me work?”

 

“You’re my friend.”

 

He says yaar and not dost, and Charlie stamps down on every smile he wants to answer with, and snarls back. “I’m not your fucking rakhel, mother-fucker.” You haven’t bought me, he wants to scream, except Mikhail has, with needless gifts of clothes and watches and bags, and the new-old phone heavy in his pocket. “I’m not your wife.” His voice trails off, because, god, what is he, Guddu? And where the fuck did that come from? Mikhail’s eyes bug out. “Example, ftupid. Example of what I’m not. Don’t get excited.”

 

“No. No. Charlie.” And of course the idiot is now going to behave like he has been bought and paid for. Fuck. “They still haven’t the right.”

 

“I don’t even know what they faid,” he points out. “I don’t underftand Bangla, remember?”

 

“I could teach you,” Mikhail offers, in the way that means he never will.

 

“It’s okay, I barely underftand Marathi.” He’s stepped unconsciously closer since Mikhail said yaar, and now gets pulled in, Mikhail’s arms round his waist, head against his stomach. “Gods know how I’d butcher Bangla.” Mikhail nods and holds him a little tighter. He cards through the soft, short hair. “Happy Birthday, idiot.”

 

Someone knocks on the door and they shove apart, Mikhail going to it and he turning to the window. “Aar raag na kore dorja’ta khol toh ebar,” Shumon says. “Dada jodi ferot diye ashe, tahle angul chushte hobe.”

 

Mikhail opens the door and peers out. “Ferot?”

 

“Yes. Ja giye dekh.”

 

“No. Dada really?”

 

“Yes. Jao jao, hero, giye dekhe esho.” And Mikhail’s gone in a rush of stamping feet. “What are you sitting around for?”

 

***

 

Mujeeb’s gift to Mikhail is skimpy, red, and goes very, very, very fast even in commute-time crowds. It goes even faster when Mikhail gets bored of people jaywalking in front of his car and his own inability to even pretend to run them down and makes for the railroad tracks and drives along them an hour before parking at his fence. He makes to get out and Mikhail grips his wrist and shoves him back. “What?”

 

“Stay.” He slumps back—god, these are good seats. “I overreacted.”

 

“You tend to.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah. Mashimoni called this morning. Went on about how I should get married, and take on responsibility and how it’s my duty to carry on the family name, blah blah blah, and Shumon’da had the extension and kept agreeing with her and baiting her and the cow didn’t even get it and…” He sighs, fumbles for a cigarette, lights it. The smell of pot fills the interior of the car. “I’m an idiot.”

 

“You are,” he says, extracts the joint and takes a drag. “It’s okay.”


***


Translations:

Hnya Dada, bolo. Na, okhanei achhi. Etokkhon chhilo na, shobe matro phirlo. Ami ki jani, tai hobe, amake bole kore naki... jachchhetai baje boko na toh, tomar misconception’er jonyo ami dayi noyi…hnya, ashbe. Na, lagbe na, I’ll get something.: Yes Dada (big brother), talk. No, still there. (He) wasn't here all this while, just got back. How do I know, must be, not like he asks permission/tells me beforehand... don't spout rubbish, I'm not responsible for your misconceptions... yeah, he'll come. No, I don't need it, I'll get something.

kire, ekhon mejaj bhalo holo toh?: Temper/mood better now?

Eto nyakamo kore na chheleta.: The boy puts on such airs.

Bangla bojhe na, tahle tor oshubidha hoye na, maane raate?: Isn't it troublesome for you that he doesn't understand Bengali, I mean, at night?

Ki, amader tuchchhotachchhilyo, Charlie’r jamai ador? Eta bhalo holo?: We're being ignored and Charlie's being feted (specifically: treated like a son-in-law)? How's this fair?

Malati’di, maarbe naki chheletake?: Malati, are you trying to kill the boy?

Tui ekhon or maachh tao bechhe dibi?: Are you going to extract the bones from his fish, now?

Eto prem shoye na: can't stand all this (display of) love.

Sharakkhon baje na bokle chole na?: Can you not spout rubbish all the time?

Aha re, koshto holo?: Awwww, did your feelings get hurt?

Shumon, chhar.: Shumon, leave it.

Hnya, Dada: yes, Dada

Ta hobe na, premik’er hathe bachha iliish. Amakeo jodi keu dito.: Of course it is, your lover shredded it. If only someone did the same for me.

Tumi tthatta korte dekechho? Etoi haanshir khorak kom porchhe tomar? Ami kori, tomar meyegulor sathe? Raasta theke jeguloke kine aano shegulokeo eto baje bhabe treat korina.: You've invited him to make fun of him? You're lacking so much in things to laugh at? Do I behave like this with your women? I don't even treat the women you buy off the street like this.

Bara bari korish na, jotheshto hoyechhe. Kha, kheye utthe ja.: Don't take it too far, enough's enough. Eat, and leave.

Chatni aar mishti khabe na?: Won't you have the chutney and sweets?
 

“Payesh’ta kheye jao,” “Tomar jonyo korechhi.”: Have the payesh, I've made it for you.

 

Aar raag na kore dorja’ta khol toh ebar. Dada jodi ferot diye ashe, tahle angul chushte hobe.: Stop sulking and open the door. If Dada returns it, you'll be left sucking your thumb.

 Jao jao, hero, giye dekhe esho.: Go on, hero, go take a look.

***

this is pretty much unadulterated schmoop, fair warning, and pretty much only 22by7and applegnatwill get it, so that's fine, i guess.

oh, and i own nothing, but of course.