Spice and Smoke

by Suleikha Snyder

  There was a dark, ironic light in Michael’s eyes that Avi didn’t understand. “Last chance for conscience…first chance for the rest of my life.” But the words…oh, they were clear enough. Crystal. Letting Avi know that his moral qualms were now a nonissue. He kissed Avi back like he wanted him, like he craved him, like these past weeks of filming had starved him and Avinash was a buffet.

  When Avi unzipped his fly and palmed his cock through the thin cotton of his shorts, he made inarticulate sounds of pleasure, rising up to grind against his fingers. He clutched Avi’s shoulders, blunt nails biting through his T-shirt, and whispered demands like, “faster” and “harder” and “right there”. Avi slicked Michael’s throbbing cock in his fist, tormenting him until all the clipped English had a quick and dirty fling with the filthiest Hindi he’d ever heard in his life. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Michael panted, the grip on Avi’s shoulders growing painful.

  Michael’s hand came away from Avi’s back, moving down to still his strokes. Then, the words changed. “I want you. I need you. Let me in.” Avinash shivered, his own cock on the verge of giving over to oblivion.

  Michael flipped them so he was the one on top, and in quick succession, he undid Avi’s jeans and shoved them down around his knees. Avinash kicked them down further, awkwardly shimmying until they were off completely and he could feel the damp grass and soil against his bare ass.

  Those thousands of hours of dance lessons had never proved as useful as in this very moment. But his brain kept time with his body, and he managed to bark out instructions on where to find the condoms he always tucked into his wallet. Michael pulled away just long enough to search and retrieve…to tear open the packet and unroll the sheath over himself…and then he was back in Avi’s arms, kissing his face, his throat.

  “Motherfucker,” Michael whispered. “Saley, haram zaada, kaminey.” The insults all sounded like endearments. “What have you done to me? You’ve driven me mad.”

  The feeling was damn mutual. Avinash again began jacking Michael’s cock, and his own, too. Until there was just enough pre-come for him to use for lube. He was so tight. He hadn’t been on the receiving end in years. But he wanted Michael inside him. He had since that first day at the muhurat. So when Michael began to nudge into him, Avi raised his knees, biting his lip at the pressure, the instant ache, but desiring it just the same.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Michael murmured, staring down at him with ridiculously soulful eyes, even as his hips began to piston in the familiar rhythm and he slid in, centimeter by centimeter.

  “I don’t want to share you.” The confession tore from Avi’s throat just as Michael pushed all the way home. “I don’t want to share you either, Michael. Tum mera ho. Humesha ke liye.”

  You’re mine. Forever.

  As he closed his eyes and felt his whole body arch with orgasm, he knew he’d just uttered the latest in a long succession of lies. Michael couldn’t be his. He could no more own this man than he could fly. He was married. He had a career and a reputation and a carefully constructed house of cards built around it all.

  Making The Raj had been a huge mistake.

  Falling for Michael Gill had been an epic one.

  Chapter Ten

  The most beautiful woman in the country was plain in sleep. Propped up on his elbow, watching her, Harsh was mesmerized by how unassuming she looked. Not the diva, the star, the bitch who struck terror in the hearts of makeup artists and journalists and taxiwallahs alike. Her long hair hung in tangles around her face; her lips were chapped from their kisses. Kohl smeared along her eyelids and the skin beneath. But to him, this was perfection.

  The bedside clock blinked owlishly, the numbers heralding four AM. They would have to be up soon for makeup and wardrobe. But six pages of script that needed to be put to film were the last thing on his mind. It was the film of his life that was more pressing as he slid out of bed, went hunting for his clothes and dressed. He had denied himself for so long…telling himself that Trishna was not for him, that she was Bollywood royalty and he was nothing but a lucky case who had worked his way up the ladder and still had to fight to maintain his place. How could he go back to that place now? Alone. Akela. Harsh shuddered, and allowed himself the indulgence he’d denied hours before…pouring himself neat gin from the sideboard and knocking it back.

  It was, of course, at that moment that the key fumbled in the lock, and then, the door swung open. Harsh choked, the liquor burning a path down his throat, and he swayed on the balls of his feet. Avinash stared at him from over the threshold. Avinash…and Michael.

  “Well, this is…unexpected,” Avi drawled; his voice was rough with smoke, his eyes bloodshot. Or perhaps that was simply proprietary anger making his gaze so fiery.

  It only took a moment for Harsh to register that Avi and Michael were holding hands as they came inside. Their clothes were askew and covered with grass and dirt. “Well, this is…not,” he countered. “Come to introduce your new playmate to Trishna? Brilliant! Shabbash! What a great husband you are.”

  Avi flinched, and Michael stepped in front of him. “Harsh,” he warned quietly. “You’re in no position to talk, considering you just crawled out of his wife’s bed.”

  It was the protective gesture a lover would make, and Harsh felt something in his chest twist. They’d all really gone and done it, hadn’t they? Really messed things up. Not even forty days into the shoot, and they’d turned it into a serial more complicated than A Handful of Stars. He separated two more glasses from the collection on the bar and went about pouring more gin for all three of them, splashing liberally.

  Avi and Michael accepted their drinks warily, and Harsh dropped into the chair…the chair where Trish had sat only hours before, when he’d pulled her into his lap and they’d made love and everything had felt like it was finally perfect. “You can’t keep living like this,” he insisted. “Yeh jhoota zindagi hai. It’s a lie, and it will only destroy you both. Michael, also. It’s not fair. Yeh na-insaafi hai, Avinash.”

  “You think I do not know that, you smug prick?” Avinash’s entire body seemed to shake, and Michael, not caring that they weren’t alone, hugged him from behind, as if he could absorb the tremors into him. “You think I don’t know that I have to let her go? That I must walk away from all of this?”

  “No.” Trishna’s voice came from the mouth of the hallway. As her husband and his lover separated from their intimate embrace, she knotted the cord on her robe. “You can’t leave me, Avi.” The smudges under her eyes somehow seemed more pronounced. As Harsh and Michael both began to voice protest, she spoke over them, in that imperious tone that made mere mortals crumble. “Not while we’re filming. The negative publicity would kill the project immediately, and I don’t want that many jobs on our heads.”

  “If you’re going to cite publicity, then you can’t divorce until after the release,” Michael pointed out. He set down his empty tumbler, tipping his head forward so his hair obscured most of his features…and his words. “That could be one to two years, at least.”

  One to two years. Harsh didn’t need to repeat the number aloud. It echoed. On Avi’s ashen face, in the way Trishna didn’t glide but stumbled into the room. He could not wait that long to be with her again. It was too much to ask after ten years of misguided honor had kept them apart.

  “I won’t give you up,” he blurted out, and at the same time, Michael said, “I can’t be with you while you’re married, Avi. It’s too much to ask. Too much to keep secret.”

  “I know,” Avinash slumped against the door, swirling the dregs of his drink in the bottom of the glass. “So hum kya karega? What can we do? There is nothing.”

  “Bullshit!” Trishna had steadied herself on the arm of the couch, and the steel in her voice soon bled into her spine. “This is the industry. People live all kinds of lives and nobody pines away like Devdas and dies of a broken heart. You and I did it for seven years, and no one blinked an eye,” she pointed out to Avi. Then
she whirled on him. On Michael. His beautiful ice queen; her face was now flushed with heat, with purpose. “No one is giving anyone up—and you most certainly can be with Avi while he’s married, Michael, because you would not be sharing him. Woh sirf tumhara hoga. He’ll be yours in every way. Just not in name, and that is no different from being with him without me. You can’t announce a big gay Bollywood wedding on the front page of The Times of India. You would still have to stay quiet, live your lives just for tum dono, for the two of you. So, kya farak hain? What’s the difference? We can do this. I think we can make this work. I think we have to,” Trish stressed.

  Harsh was enraptured by how she delivered perfect lines that a screenwriter could have penned. So it caught him off guard when glass shattered just a few inches from his feet and droplets of gin splattered his clothes. Avinash’s arm was still poised like that of a cricket bowler’s. He clenched and unclenched his fist, breath coming in ragged gasps. “So we’ll be one big happy family, Trish? Selling an illusion, but with two more team members doing the pitch?”

  “It’s not an illusion. We’re not buying and selling anything.” She crossed to him, taking his hand in hers and rubbing it until the tense movements ceased. Harsh remembered how she’d touched him with those very fingers just hours ago, and he wasn’t a good enough actor to hide his flinch when she leaned in and nuzzled her husband’s cheek. Neither was Michael. “You are my family, Avi,” she said. “Always. You just can’t be my heart. Not when you can’t fill all of it. Just as I can’t fill all of yours.”

  “But you are going to fill those places with him?” Avi jerked his head in Harsh’s direction, the scorn practically dripping from the words. “He doesn’t like me…and I think he’s ek number ka idiot. I don’t trust him to do this. Or to tie his shoes, even.”

  Trish turned to Harsh, then, with beseeching eyes. Tear-fringed, haunted. This one look alone had won her three FilmStar Awards. Harsh didn’t have a chance. But, still, he let her speak her piece. “Harsh, please. Can you do this? Can you be with me this way? Can you stay with me even if the world thinks I’m staying with him?”

  Yes. Of course he could. For her, he would shoot down the moon. Maybe he could not tie his shoes, but he could bind this. He told her that the best way he knew how…by taking her in his arms while she still held Avinash’s hand. He kissed the corner of her mouth, tasted a tear that had escaped and gotten caught there. “Yes. Haan, Trishna. Main tumhara saath ho. I’m with you. With all of you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They made a beautiful picture, the three of them, like something a person would see painted on the side of a cinema hall. Avinash held out his free hand to Michael, as if the tableau was incomplete without him in it. Yet he couldn’t make himself move; he could not seem to take the final steps and join the picture.

  Was this really going to work?

  This was not how he’d planned his life. This was not how he’d planned this shoot, for that matter. It was just supposed to be a job, a handful of dates, a few rounds in the dubbing booth, and maybe some critical acclaim to go along with his paycheck. Until Avinash Kumar had gone and cocked it all up for him…literally.

  Could he really be with this man this way? In this crazy arrangement for God only knew how long? Yes. Every muscle within him was screaming to bend, to move. He had already done the hard part, na? Going to Avi in the garden? This was the easy bit. This was the bit where they worked out their happy ending.

  As the minute ticked by, it was Trishna who came to him and tugged him close. “Just say yes, Michael.”

  It was an order, because she was so used to giving them, so used to being obeyed without question. He knew that was why Avi had chosen to be with her…because she was strength personified; she was security and a safe place for him to run wild. She would protect him and his secrets to the death. Now, she was asking Michael to help her with that task. She placed his fingers in Avi’s, as if she was presenting them to be wed. All she needed was the sacred cloth to tie them together. “Say yes,” she repeated. “Because you want to. Because you need to. Because you’ll be killing him if you don’t.”

  You’ll be killing him. He remembered seeing Avi out there in the garden…drunk and broken and so needy, wanting something he couldn’t even give proper name to. Michael had obliged without even thinking about it, sliding inside him, marking his skin with lips and teeth, making promises that only seemed wise in the hours between dusk and dawn.

  “Michael…” Avinash’s rough features were bleak. Michael still thought he was perfect. He would always think he was perfect. “I don’t want to be in this without you. I don’t think I can be in this without you. But yaar, I understand if you want no part of this.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Ignoring Trishna’s barely perceptible nod, not giving more than a moment’s notice to how Harsh politely looked away, he stepped closer and took Avi’s face between his palms. “I want every part of this. I want it so much it scares me.” He kissed him like he had during the launch party: savoring the moment, taking his time slanting his mouth across Avinash’s and availing himself to his whiskey-stale tongue. “I want you,” he repeated, touching their foreheads together, leaning in as he took much-needed gulps of air. “Don’t care what it does to me. I’m so bloody done for.”

  A wide, gentle palm skimmed down his back, and given the placement of Avinash’s arms around him, it could only be Harsh who was touching him…who was suddenly close enough to kiss the top of his head. It wasn’t a come-on, wasn’t remotely sexual. Just kind and generous…far more generous than either Michael or Avi was feeling at the moment.

  “Nahin,” Harsh said in that husky, genial voice that had won a billion hearts. “You’re not done for. We’re just starting this picture. It’ll be a long while yet till the credits roll.”

  Trishna’s infectious laugh surrounded them all like yards of silk. “Maybe we’ll run forever, like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” she suggested. “Seven hundred weeks of continuous play.”

  “Seven hundred weeks ka baat chhoro, darling.” Avi chuckled before moving to kiss him again. “Leave off talk of continuity. How about we just play tonight?”

  Later, Michael would not be completely sure how he ended up in a king-sized bed with three other people, one of them the straightest man to ever walk the earth. But in the middle of it, surrounded by laughter and sweet touches and vows made, all he knew was that it felt absurdly right. It was right to have Harsh and Trishna make love lying next to him, a tangle of golden limbs and long hair…they were salvation and sin wrapped up in one another. It felt perfect to have Avinash sprawled on top of him, sucking on his throat and, no doubt, leaving a Hell of a mark for the makeup girls to cover up in a few hours.

  “I could love you,” Avi whispered for only his benefit. “I could really love you, Michael Gill. You could love me, too.”

  There was only one reason Michael could have possibly agreed to this gorgeously dysfunctional madness. To touching a man intimately with his wife so nearby, and wringing filthy gasps from his throat in the process. He smiled, threading his fingers in Avi’s hair and cradling his face. “I think I already do.”

  The monsoon season was here…days of heavy, humid heat finally giving way to the inevitable. As the crew starting scrambling to wrap things up for the day, Trishna tilted her head back and let the first drops of rain kiss her face. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine each one was the brush of Harsh’s lips.

  The subtle stroke of his fingers on the inside of her wrist told her that he was thinking the same…that he was promising it for later. Across the courtyard, Michael was laughing at something. Whatever it was made Avinash drop to one knee and begin doing his best reenactment of the gazebo scene from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. He really was quite brilliant, holding his hands just so, and then twirling Michael in an over-the-top version of the characters’ romantic dance. Though she saw the magic, the spark, no one else could see it as anything but two madcap boys en
gaging in comedy. The camera guys laughed, while the AD rolled his eyes at the tamasha.

  It was just noise and silly business. A big to-do.

  Then a profane shout shattered the easy moment. Sam Khanna, five-seven with an additional six meters of attitude, strode across the set. A half-smoked cigarette was clamped between his almost cruelly thin lips. He tossed script pages down on the steadily dampening ground with a dramatic flourish and fixed Joshi with an accusatory look. “What the fuck is this shit, man?” he demanded. “How is Vikram Malhotra on this fucking film? What is the meaning of this?”

  The director began trying to explain himself, his normally exuberant pitch style turning into an incoherent, nervous stream of babble. Trish met Harsh’s knowing gaze, and laughter overcame them in unison.

  Sam had so much to learn. The same lessons they’d learned. There was no meaning. There was simply fate and where it led you: straight to where you belonged.

  Part Two

  Monsoon Bedding

  Flashback…

  The whup-whup sound of the ceiling fan was like a gavel banging. Viki sounded like a vakil and looked like a bloody judge, sentencing him to hanging. Phaasi would be kinder than the slow death caused by Vikram’s superiority. “I’m not the only one worried about you, Sam. Jaidev is worried, too.”

  “Fuck off, man,” he snarled. Sam was used to playing the villain of the piece. It was his forte. Knowing how to slide around a set like a serpent, sneer like a smile had never crossed his face. But playing the villain in his life was…was different. Especially in this moment, when every word of Viki’s was like an echo, bouncing around in his skull, harshing the buzz of the coke. His nose was still tingling, and when he ran the back of his hand across his face, a few stray white flecks came away on his skin. “Shut up. Jaidev is my son. I’m his bloody father. Not you.”