AN: Cross-posted to AO3. Written because I've recently rewatched the movie, remembered how much I love/d it, and made the next logical step in making the ~romance a little bit more ~romance-y. Sorry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Warnings: Some very short scenes of sexually explicit content. It's not extensive and imo doesn't ruin the general story, but if it's really not your cup of tea, then I'd recommend not reading any further than this.
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It's not love.
Seema was fierce and flaunt and fire. Everything she did was pinpoint precise; every laugh hidden behind dainty hands, every look hooded in a way that always screamed effort instead of nature. There was always a certain cruelty in the way she walked, talked, had always been raised with the knowledge that she could have anyone eating from the palm of her hand and the practice of exploiting it to the ends of its extent.
Priya isn't Seema. Priya is soft, sweet, safe, hidden underneath all the embers. Her laugh resonates across rooms with its mirth, is an invite rather than the scathe of her sister's. There is genuineness in what she says, through her eyes and through her lips, and there is passion so blatant that Ajay understands, knows it like he knows the face of his mother, his father, his sister, like he knows what must be done in the memories of their stead. She is kind without being walked over, much kinder than Seema ever was, and she dreams, wishes for the day she could use all of her kindness for something much bigger than she could ever be.
When she touches him, it's not with the hushed urgency that Seema always did. It's with a sense of surety, of the thought of them being it for her and nothing else. When he touches her, her face is honest, always tells him what she wants without ever saying a word. She looks at him as if he completes her, not just someone to tick off the checkboxes of the life her father had planned for her but someone who creates new ones to fill. When she comes, he comes with her, because despite it all, there's nothing else he enjoys as much as being close to destroying everything Chopra built as he does taking everything that Priya gives.
It's not love, Ajay tells himself, and shuts off the voice that doubts.
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"Vicky," she whispers on the night of Seema's death, huddles closer into him and hides her face in his chest. There's a dissonance within his body, of what he wants to tell Priya; trust me, is what his mind tells him to, don't ever believe anything I say, commands his heart.
"Yeah?" is all he says instead, speaks through condition rather than anything else.
"Do you think," she starts, stops, takes a breath, and it shouldn't affect him that it's shuddering, shouldn't bother him that she's wrecking herself by every hour that passes without Seema there, all from his doing. "Do you think she would forgive me? For not saving her?"
"Why would there be anything to forgive?" he says, another tally to the suffocating list of his lies. "It wasn't your fault, Priya. You couldn't have done anything to stop it."
"I could have," she breathes out, "I noticed she was becoming distant. I knew she was hiding something from me. I could've asked her, I could've—"
"No," he tells her firmly, "You couldn't have done anything," and it's the first truth he's said in a long while.
"I know," she says, hollow, defeated, sounds smaller than what she really is, "And I hate myself for it."
Hate me instead, his heart clenches out in feeling what he would never spill out in word, tells him he has enough hatred to cover both of their regrets, has enough anger to feed the destruction it seeks.
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Karan is a nuisance, hovers over Priya and the family as if he knows she's the next to fall the moment he leaves. The more Karan stays, the more Ajay grows restless, but he tries to move past it, tries to keep up the charade as best he can and expects the same results.
What he doesn't try for nor does he expect is how real his jealousy could be.
Karan touches her, holds her back and her face and her arms with his hands, at all the places Ajay has, would, and there's anger within him that's so sudden, so persistent, has him stalking over to where they're standing without a breadth of hesitation nor a modicum of what he plans to say.
"Priya," he calls out, and she looks up, immediately pries out of Karan's arms to envelop herself into his. The anger's replaced by vindication, satisfaction, of a feeling he can only summate by the look of defeat on Karan's face. "I'm sorry I'm late."
"It's okay," she murmurs against his shoulder, lips warm and soft even through the cloth of his shirt. "You're here now."
Karan clears his throat. "I was just calming her down, she was a little—"
"Thank you," Ajay says, but it's clipped, insincere, already has Priya turned away from Karan's gaze. "But I'll take it from here."
Karan spares Priya a last look, but Priya isn't looking. She whispers up to him, "Get me away from here," and Ajay nods, laces his fingers through the tremble of hers, returns Karan's stare with smug victory rather than the sombre realization that Karan's holds.
Priya will be another casualty, this Ajay knows, but until then, Priya is his to keep alone.
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"I'm sorry," Priya says, a soft, minute sound, almost overwhelmed by the roar of the car engine if Ajay hadn't grown to be so attuned to all noises that could count as a warning.
"What for?" he asks, and looks over to see her with her lips pressed in a tight smile. "Priya."
"All you've been doing lately is listen to me cry about Seema," she answers, a little incredulous laugh along with it, as if she still doesn't believe that her sister is gone, that her sister is dead, that her sister is somewhere she'll never get the chance to see her again. "You're probably sick of hearing about her when you didn't even know her. I'm sorry."
"I knew her," he says, before he can even think about it, and Priya turns her head so sharply he hears the whip of her hair against the leather of the seating, masks the quick thrum of his heartbeat at slipping this easily in the game when he's so close to winning it. "You talked about her enough that I felt like I did. Anyone important to you is important to me."
At that, Priya's shoulders immediately sink back, face drained of the tension it held before, of anything other than the staunch shadow of Seema's death looming over her, "She was amazing, you know. You would've loved her."
"I'm sure I would have," he says, remembers wide eyes and a smile that was as loving as it was sly, and there's a sudden pang in his chest that he doesn't see coming, has him gripping tightly onto the steering wheel to stop himself from a confession he's not worthy of to have be absolved, "I'm sure."
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It's not the same as with Priya, but in his own way, in the ways that he was allowed, he knows he did.
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"Tell me about your family," is Priya's request, draws it out on the skin of his stomach, warm breath fanning over the planes of his chest, and it lulls him enough that he doesn't register what she's really asking until she repeats it, "I've had enough of talking and thinking about my own. You should tell me about yours."
Anger surges through him like the flames of the pyre he'd used to burn the body of his sister, like the pressure of the dying rain on that night he and his mother had found his father lying on the ground, both lifeless, both from the cruelty that Chopra had reined. He's reminded that no matter what he convinces himself to believe, Priya is Chopra, through and through, has his blood and was risen from the riches he had stolen from them, and all he wants to do is to push her away, feels her every touch like the burn he has felt with each of the ones withheld from him by his own mother.
He pulls her in tighter. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything you want to tell me," Priya says, and Ajay tempers down the urge to let everything mean what everything should, of revelations that would send her away of her own volition, the way he wants her so suddenly gone now, "You've done enough for me. I just want to listen."
"My dad," he starts, swallows the obstruction in his throat before continuing, "Was hardworking. Noble. He didn't let any wrongdoing pass even if it was by his own friends."
He feels his hand begin to shake against Priya's waist, but gets it caught within Priya's own before he can pull it away. She looks up at him with comfort, understanding, with love he seeks but doesn't deserve, and he deflates, lets himself be tired enough to be held by someone who shouldn't, is tired enough to admit, for just that moment, that he wants Priya close to him more than he'd ever hate her for being Chopra's kin.
"My mom was strong-willed. She'd rather fall into insanity than stoop to something that was against her beliefs," he goes on, owes Priya at least this, "My sister—"
Priya inhales. "You had a sister?"
"She died young," he nods, thinks she could've grown like Priya and Seema if given the chance to, would have been spoiled by him and his father the way Chopra had done his girls. "She was sick most of the time. By the end of it, we couldn't do anything for her."
"I'm sorry," Priya says, quiet but genuine, and Ajay thinks this is what Seema had lacked, what differentiates her from her sister now; not once had she ever asked about him that wasn't in any way tied to her, and even if it came about off its own accord, she'd never had the capacity to just listen, the way Priya does, the way Priya tries to. It suited him then, trying to keep everything about him unknown while making Seema feel like there was no one else she knew better, but it's another reason he reluctantly compiles as he figures out why the thought of doing Priya off pits out his gut in dread much more than the thought of doing it to Seema ever did.
He presses a kiss on her temple, as much a comfort to him as it is to her. "It's not your fault," he says, knows it's true, regardless of what she is to Chopra. "Seema, my family—it isn't any of your fault. Don't be sorry." It only proves to make it all the more vile.
"It's not yours either," Priya says in earnest, and Ajay only wishes. "We've been done wrong. We don't deserve any of this."
Ajay wants to laugh. "To being fucked over, right?" he rolls them both around until Priya's back is pressed flat against her mattress, until he's close enough to peer down at her and see the flecks of gold in her eyes, the thick curve of her lips parted for a breath.
"To being fucked over," she rasps breathlessly, and Ajay kisses her like he means it, open-mouthed and biting teeth and tongue that traces out the bitterness both their losses heave; does mean it, because the closest person to ever understand him is Priya, her sympathy crafted and moulded by his own misdeeds for her to get what it truly means to grieve.
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Some nights, Seema comes to him in a dream.
You're in love with her, she croons, with a shriek of a laugh that pierces his ears. You plan to kill her but you're in love with her.
It's not love, the answer comes in his own voice, but it's minuscule compared to the growing presence of Seema's memory. I'm doing what must be done. I can't love either of you.
He sees the pink of her skirts, feels the gush of wind that comes with its flutter, and then he hears her, all mischief and intrigue as if she were still alive, Couldn't, can't, but you did. Horrible, isn't it?
Whatever it is, he snaps in response, doesn't have time for guilt nor for what else he's being accused of, I'm not going to let it stop me. I'm seeing this through to the end.
But you hope, don't you? she says, whimsical and otherworldly, and it should be his first trigger to wake up, his first clue that none of this is real, but her voice shackles him down, has him imprisoned by the implication of her words. There's a part of you that dreams, Ajay. You think you can kill our father and then live the rest of your life deceiving Priya from what you really are, from what you've really done.
I don't dream of anything but destroying Chopra, he exclaims, feels as heavy as Seema is weightless in the glow, as if death had been the freedom he had promised it to be. Anything else is meaningless.
Except Priya, she says, and there's a prickle on his skin from the simple truth of her tone, She means everything.
What does it matter? and there's despair that curdles his throat when he speaks, desperation for the antipathy he wishes he still bore unquestionably, It changes nothing.
Oh, it matters, she laughs again, ominous in its clarity, You think she'll forgive you for what you've done to me? You think she loves you more than she does me?
It doesn't matter, he insists, doesn't know if it's for her to hear or for him to believe, It doesn't matter.
It matters, she repeats, and it's with sorrow that reeks with finality, of pity someone from the dead should have no agency to feel for him, because your love for her is starting to eclipse all the hatred you've festered all these years, she gives him a final smile, identical to the last one that graced her face before he had sealed her fate, and that is your undoing.
For the first time in all the nights she's visited the realms of his sleep, Ajay wakes up terrified of the image she leaves.
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Chopra gives him her hand in marriage the same moment he bequeaths him the power of attorney, and Ajay refuses to take it as a sign, refuses to indulge Seema's taunts, refuses to consider it as anything but a stepping stone for what he's always set himself out to do.
"Vicky," Priya says, tugs on his hand as they walk out of Chopra's building. Her bottom lip is chewed with worry, a stark contrast to the vision of ecstasy she was before, back when her father had first announced their engagement in his office. "Look, I know my dad means well, but if you don't want to marry me—"
This is as demure as he's ever seen her, as insecure as she's ever let herself be around him, and it all looks and feels horribly wrong. "What?"
"I'm just saying," she pulls her hand completely away from his grip, regains enough bravado to look him in the eye without balking, without looking at all affected by whatever rejection she feels she's getting, but her hands fumble at the edge of her shirt too much for him to believe it, knows her well enough to be certain that this isn't the same Priya who would fight him about the nature of Seema's death, regardless of all the evidence he's meticulously hidden away from her. "No one's forcing you to do this, alright? I saw how you looked in there, and I—I won't take it personally if this isn't what you want."
Ajay knows at this point that it isn't about wanting, has only ever been about what he's allowed to want. "Why do you think I'm with you?"
"Because I needed you," Priya says, uncharacteristically tremulous, too obviously looking at something far beyond Ajay's shoulder. "Because Seema died and I had no one else to turn to."
"You think—" and he breathes, because that's how it all started, a simple question of need; he had needed her to need him, enough to let him in, enough to let Chopra think that he needed him to prevent the loss of another one of his daughters. That's how it started, how it was supposed to last, but it's long warped into something else, something far deeper than it is, because Priya was never supposed to be someone he's allowed to want and yet does, wants and wants and wants for her when all he can do is ache for something far out of both of their reach. "You think I'd be with you through all of this if I didn't want it to last?"
"That's how you made it seem," Priya says, juts out her chin in defiance, and he's more relieved than he could ever admit to have her back to the unyielding steel of her stubbornness. "So that's how I'm taking it."
"I want to marry you," and he doesn't know what is or isn't an act anymore, not when it comes to Priya, wonders if he should worry that the lines are blurring between whether or not he still cares if it isn't. "Take that instead."
Priya narrows her eyes, never has been as trusting as Seema was, and it's a danger to Ajay's plans, doesn't know what it says about him that it thrills him all the same. "Prove it."
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And he does, lends all the time and effort it requires for her to believe him.
"Marry me," he says, mouths it along the angle of her jaw, the curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder. He feels her shiver as he shucks her out of her clothes, brands the traces of her flesh with the mark of his lips.
"Marry me," he says, breathes it over the dark peaks of her nipples, pert and taut from being laid bare. He takes one in his mouth and she arches, into him and around him and films her fingers in his hair, tugs his head closer, closer, closer until all he can smell is the dusky scent of her skin, a mixture of sweat and the perfume he knows she only wears when he's coming around to see her.
"Marry me," he says, spells it out against her clit, hot and wet and a languid maneuver of tongue and teeth, and she screams, lovely and wrecked and the most beautiful she's ever sounded, has ever looked, hair unkempt and face flushed and the blacks of her eyes dilated to its limits, pleasure quaking her whole being as she rides out her high against the eager promise of his mouth.
"Yes," she gasps, "Yes, I'll marry you—Vicky, please—" and he watches greedily as she undulates beneath his hold on her hips, knows that he doesn't have much time left to spare when he's so close to reaching the heights he should be; knows, at the back of his mind, that these are the last chances he has to drink in the sight of Priya like this—pliant, gorgeous, his—before he has to fulfill the desires he's always had before she'd come in to rewrite over all the wants he thought he ever did.
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It's not Seema he's afraid of.
He tears at the claspings of his own shirt, is reckless in his pursuit for skin and heat and Priya, all laid out for him to tease and to touch and to make tremble, claws and clings at her waist the way she does his shoulders. There are the beginnings of a long line of bruises down the length of her throat, and he kisses them with the reverence of a pious man, with possession so primal it tears down at any inhibition left within him. He rocks against her, slick and frantic and torturous and thorough, draws out sounds from her that mean more than the words he would never say, and then she opens her eyes and he sees—
He sees himself tell her of the sins her father had committed, of the aftermath it boded for the lives of his father, his mother, his sister, his own. He sees her watch him strike down at Madan Chopra the way he deserves, and she is the one to clean the blood off his hands with her hold. He sees her, when all is said and done, sitting beside his mother, matrimonial bangles chiming in unison as she turns towards him, smile knowing and hand caressing at the supple base of her stomach, right above where the vision of him knows their child will lay.
His heart races and his eyes blind out, and then he's coming into Priya harder than he's ever done, has none of the control he's been careful to uphold whenever it comes to losing it with her, for her. His arms slip and the only thing that holds him up is leaning against Priya, feels every gasp and every heave of her breath, feels the pump of her heart match time with every beat of his.
It's not Seema he's afraid of; it's the truth that lies heavy in the spaces of her words.
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"I think," Priya says, hushed in the silence of the night, the gentle hum of her voice pressed against the side of his ribs, "I love you."
Ajay pretends to be asleep.
"I think," she follows through, doesn't wait for him to answer, doesn't seem to expect him to. "That scares me."
He doesn't know he's holding his breath until he releases it at the sound of Priya's, evening out in her sleep.
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There's nothing else he's feared more.
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The fallout arrives, is both too soon and yet not soon enough; it's not nearly quick enough to prevent all the damage Priya's done to him, all the damage he's done to himself with the fall.
Priya is radiant in the before—in how she laughs and twirls and owns the stage, illuminates the whole place with the cadence of her steps, her moves, the way she smiles up at him when she meets his gaze. Ajay looks at her, thinks of all the wretched words he can't, won't say, but they all align quietly into something he finally completely, irrevocably understands, feels calamity calling but finds calm in the warmth of Priya's hand.
Priya is radiant in the after, too—in how her eyes blaze with anger, how her words thicken with disgust, how the wounds she's supposed to have forgotten pick apart at the seams, pried open by the stab of each of his lies, of the horrid, churning picture of Seema's blood on one of his hands and her own heart in the other.
"I told you, that night—" she says, brimming and unstable, and there's a scald in Ajay's hand where he longs to touch Priya and knows he can't, not now, not anymore. "This is your answer, then? This is what it all was for?"
"Yes," he replies, and it's as flat as it should be, relays nothing of what Vicky feels and all of what Ajay has been wanting to admit. "You think you were ever enough?" He almost convinces himself that there was always a distinction.
"I want you dead," she chokes out, is radiant even in her loathing, and everything inside Ajay twists into self-destruction, wants to punish whoever hurt her, wants their agony on a silver platter, even if it is his own, "I want you dead."
It's clear to him what to do after that; he always did want for everything she did.
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The last thing he sees is Priya's face, botched with the streaks of her tears, and he thinks beautiful, thinks in an endless mantra of Priya, Priya, Priya. He hopes it makes up for the words he's always meant but never said, hopes, if there is a god, that he be allowed that one repentance so he may never forget her name.
The last thing he hears is Seema's voice, welcomes the echo of her laughter as he finally lets go, You're in love with her, didn't I tell you? You're in love with her.
It's not love, and Ajay laughs, finally gets the joke.
It's the one lie he's never quite managed to make himself believe.