Did You Know Me? (Shubman Gill x Ishan Kishan)

Second time Ishan realized something's not right

Four months before the World Cup

The second time was after their country lost the World Test Championship final.

After an hour of a console-speech of Rohit bhai, which he broke off midway and told Virat bhai to continue, neither of which to be honest had done much to make them feel better, Ishan and Shubman had crashed in their shared room.

Sleeping the loss off seemed a good idea.

When Ishan was almost asleep, he heard a soft sniffle from the adjacent bed.

He switched on the bedside lamp and saw that Shubman was crying.... He was trying to stifle it in his pillow, but he was shaking.

"Aw, Shubi," said Ishan. "It's me. You don't have to hide it."

He joined his friend on the bed and coaxed him to remove the pillow.

Shubman's face was red when he did.

"Come here." Ishan held out his arms.

Obediently, in a rare show of actually being younger than Ishan which he normally denied, Shubman snuggled up to him. He was still crying though, just Ishan's shoulder had replaced the pillow.

"Wanna talk?" Ishan asked.

Shubman shook his head.

"Wanna go for a walk?"

Shubman shook his head again.

"Okay. What do you want to do?"

"Just...." said Shubman, tearfully. "Stay here."

"Okay. Okay, no problem."

Ishan kept rubbing his friend's back as he cried. Unfortunately the soft sobbing turned into loud, helpless sobbing soon, and Ishan was desperate for something to cheer him up.

Something.

Anything.

True to his nature, Ishan found the way out with jokes.

He traced a hand along the curve of Shubman's neck. Shubman, who Ishan knew was ticklish, shivered and looked up at him. "What?"

"You know, I never noticed, but you are actually very hot," Ishan winked. "It's no wonder the women in the country go wild about you."

Shubman gave him a grudging grin through tears.

"You notice that now?" he said arrogantly.

"I know," said Ishan with mock-regret, though somewhere inside he wondered how he hadn't noticed this earlier, when it had been staring at his face for years.

When Shubman pulled away from their hug, Ishan felt an instant sense of loss.

Then he realized for the second time something was not right.

Without thinking much, Ishan pulled Shubman back into his arms. Obviously , Shubman did not protest, and let Ishan hold him to sleep.

The way he was aware of every inch of his friend's body pressed against him did not strike right to Ishan.

And when he woke up next morning while his roommate still slept and found himself staring at the curve of Shubman's neck and when he had a fleeting, absurd desire of tracing it with his lips, he knew something was definitely very, very wrong.