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

A better normal

"Do you realize that if someone recognizes are, we're pretty much dead?" Ishan said, maybe after their tenth kiss in the shade of the coffee shop, Shubman wasn't in a state to count straight.

"Well, I have the car, but..."

"But?"

"It's five hundred metres away," said Shubman.

"That's a lot." Ishan sounded sarcastic, but he didn't push for the car.

When Shubman had entirely lost track of everything, Ishan's phone shattered their preoccupation harshly.

Ishan tried to reach for it with his hands still woven with Shubman's.

It was Rohit bhai.

"Hello, Ishan," he began in a booming voice. Shubman winced. "Have you landed in Patna?"

"No, I-"

"Missed the flight. Right, I'm sorry if I'm spoiling any surprise, but is Shubi with you?"

Ishan's cheeks went crimson as he said as innocently as he could, "Uh, yes, he is, Rohit bhai."

"Ask him," said Rohit bhai in a terrible voice, "does he have no sense of consideration that he has been gone five hours and not passed a single message to us?"

Shubman remembered his dead phone.

Oh, no.

Ishan smirked. "Do you have no sense of consideration?" he asked.

Shubman snatched the phone. "Rohit bhai, I'm sorry, I forgot to-"

"Yeah, I can imagine how busy you've been," said Rohit bhai. "You both are to come back immediately...without any detours... And for your information, Shubman Gill, your Virat bhai is furious with you and you'd have him to answer to."

"I'm sorry, we're coming back," said Shubman, groaning inside. "Tell him we're coming, um, right back."

They didn't dare to take a detour on the way to the car (well, Shubman didn't, in spite of Ishan's provoking, but Virat bhai wasn't angry with Ishan, was he? thought Shubman resentfully), but they held hands all the way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Over the months that followed, Ishan felt that the best part about their relationship was very little changed.

They already used to share rooms when they got double ones, spend all the time in each other's rooms when they got single ones, travel to and fro between their homes when they didn't have any international tour and miss each other and count days to MI vs GT like crazy during IPL.

Sure, they had to put up with a whole lot of teasing and stuff from their teammates and siblings, and there was a bit of fear inside them that if the media got to know, there would be a huge circus, but there were compensations...

"And as for the media thing, we've already built a safety net," Shubman would say. "We've already pretended to be a couple-"

"As a joke," Ishan never forgot to put in.

"So they won't take us seriously even now, and there won't be a scandal," said Shubman, ignoring him.

And that was a relief, because Ishan didn't find it possible to sit in the dugout during a Test match for hours and never reach out to take Shubman's hand even once.

Given the choice, he'd never let it go.

There was also the slightly (or lot) more serious issues of telling their parents.

It would've been hard enough to tell them you were dating a girl, and this was daunting as a mountain.

But they kept assuring each other they'd figure everything out together.

And honestly, so long as he was with Shubman, Ishan was not scared of any mountain in the world.

All in all, it was a much better normal.

The best normal.

~~~The End~~~

A/N: Epilogue coming up in some time!