It was evening. Anuj and Nikhil stood in the lobby of the first block, Anuj clutching his anatomy book like it owed him money. It was 10:15 - students flitted around them in a steady current, marking their biometric attendance and vanishing off into the evening like nothing life-altering was about to happen to anyone. Which, to be fair, it wasn't. Not to them.
"He just messaged me. He's coming. I told him we're ready," Anuj said, fingers tightening around the spine of the book like it was the only stable thing left in his world. Nikhil nodded noncommittally - though his gaze was fixed on his phone, thumb moving over the screen without actually doing anything. He wasn't reading anything important. And to be completely honest, he was dealing with his own set of nerves - for completely different reasons than Anuj, though.
Anuj was anticipating the markings. Nikhil didn't care about much other than the person giving them. Before coming here, Nikhil had changed his shirt. Three times. Three separate times, like a man preparing for war instead of a five-minute anatomy session in a lobby. It was not a fact about himself he was proud of. Anuj had witnessed it and had, smartly - fortunately for his own peace as well as Nikhil's - said absolutely nothing. Smart choice.
At exactly 10:17, Aarav walked in. He was carrying a book - a copy of the Lower Limb anatomy textbook, ratty at the edges, clearly well used and frequently opened. There was no doubt it was his own copy, worn soft in the way only a book someone actually studies from gets worn. Nikhil suddenly, inexplicably, wanted to get his hands on that book and just - look. Before he even knew it, a smile had formed on his lips. Soft. Almost dreamy. Disgusting, honestly.
"Remember," Anuj whispered urgently at last, leaning in like a man briefing a soldier before a mission he already knew was doomed. "We're just meeting him for the markings. That's it. Please do not provoke or poke him. Please don't start one of your things."
"...When do I ever start things." Nikhil murmured, not really listening. He couldn't care less about what Anuj was saying. His gaze was fixed on the boy walking toward them, as if he were physically incapable of tearing it away or looking elsewhere. For the first time, Nikhil experienced what it meant to be truly transfixed on someone. His eyes were drinking in the sight of Aarav like he'd never seen him before.
Aarav, standing there, looked - tired. The long evening had softened his usually sharp, prickly edges. His hair was slightly mussed - but nowhere near the wild storm cloud it had been the previous day. Instead, it looked softer. Shinier. Or maybe it was just the lighting. It fell over his forehead, making him look younger than usual - he almost looked like a high schooler. He was wearing a simple grey hoodie, sleeves rolled up loosely, the ends slightly damp. He'd clearly come from the bathroom - and had washed his face too, if the damp strands stuck to his forehead were anything to go by.
Right now, Nikhil thought, Aarav looked small, soft, and unfairly, dangerously approachable.
Nikhil's brain quietly, respectfully, short-circuited.
'Oh no,' he thought, with the eerie clarity of a man watching his own demise unfold in slow motion. 'Oh no, he's so cute. He looks adorable. Like a little kitten who just got caught in the rain. Why does he look personally offended by the concept of existing? I'm going to die.'
Aarav, meanwhile, walked up to the pair after marking his attendance. "Let's get this over with," he said flatly, pointedly not meeting Nikhil's gaze.
They sat on the nearby benches. Anuj sat on one side, spine straight, red pen in hand, the first chapter of Lower Limb already open in rapt attention. He was the picture of a model student.
Nikhil, meanwhile, sat comfortably - too comfortably. His eyes never left Aarav's face, even as the senior continued to stare anywhere and everywhere except at him. His body was angled sideways, tilted in a position that made it far more convenient to not look at the book, but rather, at Aarav's face. And he made no effort whatsoever to hide the fact that he was looking. Oh, he was very much looking. He was angled like a sunflower chasing the sun.
Aarav, meanwhile, was having very different thoughts. He was regretting every single life choice that had led him to this exact moment. He should've just refused Karan and insisted that someone else give the anatomy markings. But no - when Karan had asked him, and had even offered to cover all the markings himself if Aarav wasn't up for it, Aarav - in a fit of pure ego and a personal contest to prove to his own conscience that he wasn't bothered by Nikhil and his ridiculous new antics - had said he was fine giving them the markings. After all, anatomy was his strength. As for biochemistry, well. You could excel at biochem by studying for two days before the exam itself.
Aarav opened the textbook. "Let's start," he said. "Lower limb first. What's your syllabus for sessionals again? Upper limb too? Or is head and neck included as well?"
"Some part of head and neck is," Anuj replied instantly, already listening with rapt attention.
Aarav nodded approvingly. Well - this felt almost normal. Like how markings were supposed to go, if only it would just continue being this way.
Then Nikhil opened his mouth. "You can mark my book, boss," he said in his stupidly charming voice - which had absolutely no business sounding that deep in the evening air. He held the book out toward Aarav with the kind of cocky confidence that made the shorter boy want to hit something. Preferably Nikhil's face.
"Mark it yourself," Aarav fired back. "I'll say the topic name, you guys mark it."
He didn't wait for Nikhil's response. He started with the first topic. "First - front of thigh. Really important. Mark it five stars. Out of it, femoral sheath, triangle, and canal - these three are the most important. Hernia is an important clinical - in lower limb as well as abdomen, which you'll study later -"
"Hernia... fascinating," Nikhil breathed, still staring at Aarav's profile, dark gaze fixed on every micro-expression flickering across his face - the way his brows furrowed slightly as he read, or the tiny frown tugging at his lips as he tried to decide the exact degree of importance to assign each topic. It was adorable, honestly. Like a kitten wearing reading glasses.
Anuj wanted to crawl under the ground and die. Then come back as a ghost and haunt Nikhil for the rest of his natural life.
Aarav continued, ignoring Nikhil entirely. His voice did get considerably tighter, though. "Now, muscles. Sartorius is a must-do, as well as quadriceps femoris - know the origin, insertion, nerve supply, and action by heart, they ask this in vivas a lot."
Nikhil sighed softly, the exhale a small dreamy thing that had absolutely no business sounding so smitten in the middle of anatomy markings.
'He's so passionate,' Nikhil thought. 'Look at him go with his academic little things. Look at him gesture with his pretty hands at the diagrams. I want to hold those pretty hands. I want to kiss those -'
He shook his head violently. 'No, no. Bad Nikhil. You're giving him time to think. Because you're a gentleman. Give him time to think.'
Anuj, meanwhile, had watched the entire progression of emotions cross Nikhil's face, complete with the violent head-shake at the end, and in that moment realised just how much in life he had taken for granted up until now. For example - not having a Nikhil Goyal in his life for the first eighteen years of his existence. Only now did he realise how good he'd had it before.
Meanwhile, Aarav seemed to have noticed Nikhil too. This time, however, he didn't stay silent. He finally snapped - snapped his textbook shut with a sound sharp enough to make Anuj jump and his face descend into gradual, dawning horror. Aarav fixed Nikhil with a glare that could've melted steel.
"You," he said, jabbing a finger at Nikhil's chest. Nikhil absolutely did not want to bite it. That's just haters talking. "You haven't written a single word. Hell, you're not even looking at the book. What part of 'sessionals are an important exam and determine your internals' do you not understand?"
Nikhil blinked, as if Aarav's reprimand had physically broken him out of a trance. He glanced down at his still-blank, brand-new book, then back up at Aarav's irritated face. Instead of looking admonished, or ashamed, or - maybe - actually picking up his pen this time -
"I'm listening to you," he said simply. "You explain it so well. You even make me forget we're talking about the dreary subject that is anatomy when you say it."
Aarav's mouth opened. And closed. Opened again. No sound came out. He genuinely could not speak. Finally, what he did do was snatch Nikhil's book right out of his hands, settling for marking it himself - which was, technically, what Nikhil had suggested from the start.
"...I'm doing this because you're too shameless and incorrigible to even try doing it yourself," he snapped, circling the femoral triangle with far too much force from the marker. Had the pages been plain paper instead of laminated, they would've certainly torn. "You are a walking statue of weaponised incompetence -"
"You sound like an angry wife. 'Weaponised incompetence.' Very 'scorned wife' word choice."
Aarav wanted to shove that book straight into Nikhil's infuriating head. Instead, he settled for taking it out on the adductor canal - circled with such aggression it nearly tore straight through the laminate. New record.
Anuj put his head in his hands. 'This is my life now. And there's nothing I can do about it.'
And so, the marking continued. Aarav went through the remaining topics of lower limb - but the tightness in his jaw never quite left. His voice came out efficient, clipped, professional. He also pointedly refused to even glance in Nikhil's direction, as if doing so wasn't a mere glance but a matter of principle. Nikhil, for his part, continued his one-man performance of attentive, besotted longing - nodding along with every topic, though Anuj was fairly certain he wasn't actually listening to a single word Aarav muttered. He even made the occasional soft "mmhmm," as if gently prompting the senior to keep talking, just so he wouldn't have to stop looking at him.