The rain returned that night with intent.
Not the soft kind that whispered against windows, but the heavy, relentless kind that soaked through sound and thought alike. Anvika watched it from her room, arms folded loosely as droplets raced each other down the glass. The campus lights blurred beyond the window, halos bleeding into the dark.
She should have been working.
Instead, her mind replayed fragmentsmeasured steps, quiet sentences, the way Aadvaith positioned himself without touching, without asking. It unsettled her how little effort it took for him to be present. How easily his presence steadied things she hadn't realized were unsteady.
She shook the thought away and turned back to her desk.
Notes waited. Deadlines didn't care about unnamed feelings.
Across campus, Aadvaith sat alone in his apartment, lights dimmed, the rain a constant percussion against the balcony railing. His notebook lay open, untouched. The words from earlieryou shouldn't have had toechoed faintly, not as regret, but as recognition.
He had learned early how to be calm.
Not because it came naturally, but because chaos demanded a counterweight. He had learned to hold storms inside, to let them pass without spilling outward. People mistook that for ease. They were wrong.
His phone buzzed on the table.
A message notification.
He didn't look at it immediately.
He waited, as he always did, until the impulse to react faded into something manageable. Then he picked it up.
Anvika:
I revised the third section. Sent it to your email.
He replied with a single line.
Aadvaith:
I'll review it tonight.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Anvika:
No rush. Tomorrow works.
He paused. Considered. Typed.
Aadvaith:
Tonight is fine.
Another pause.
Anvika:
Alright.
That was all.
It should have been enough.
He set the phone down and opened his laptop, pulling up the document. Her revisions were precisetightened arguments, cleaner transitions. She hadn't overwritten his work. She had refined it.
Respect, embedded in effort.
He felt it settle somewhere deep.
The next day arrived muted, clouds lingering like unresolved thoughts. Anvika reached the library early this time, not intentionallyshe simply hadn't slept well. The chair across from her remained empty longer than usual.
When Aadvaith arrived, she looked up automatically.
He looked… unchanged.
Calm. Collected. The same steady presence.
But something about his eyes was different.
Not tired. Not distracted.
Focused inward.
"You're early," he said.
"So are you," she replied.
They settled in, opening documents, sliding notes across the table. For a while, they worked in silence, the library's quiet holding them gently.
Then Anvika broke it. "You didn't comment on section three."
"I agreed with it."
"That's not your style."
He met her gaze. "It is when I do."
She studied him, searching for something beneath the surface. "You don't like conflict."
"I don't avoid it," he corrected. "I just don't dramatize it."
She nodded. "You compartmentalize."
"Yes."
"That's not always healthy."
A pause.
"I'm aware."
They returned to work, but the silence felt heavier now, threaded with awareness. Anvika found herself watching him when she thought he wasn't lookingthe way his jaw tightened briefly when he concentrated, the way his pen paused mid-word when a thought demanded full attention.
"You're carrying something," she said suddenly.
He looked up.
"Am I?" His tone was neutral, but his eyes sharpened.
"Yes," she said. "You've been quieter than usual."
"That's saying something."
She didn't smile. "You don't withdraw without reason."
He considered denying it.
He didn't.
"It's not relevant to the project," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
He leaned back slightly, gaze drifting to the window where clouds pressed low against the glass. "Some things don't need witnesses."
Her voice softened. "Some things need them."
He looked at her thenreally looked. At the steadiness she carried without armor. At the way she didn't pry, didn't push, didn't fill the space with assumptions.
"You don't fix people," he said quietly.
"No," she agreed. "I listen."
"That can be worse."
"Only if you're afraid of being heard."
Silence stretched.
Not uncomfortable.
Deliberate.
Finally, he spoke. "I don't like when calm becomes expected."
She frowned slightly. "Why?"
"Because when you falter," he said, "people don't know what to do with it."
Her expression shiftednot pity, not concern. Understanding.
"You don't have to be constant," she said. "You're allowed to be human."
He exhaled slowly. "That's easier to say when you haven't had to hold everything together."
She didn't argue.
She didn't say I understand when she couldn't fully.
She said, "You don't have to hold it alone."
The words hung between them, fragile and steady all at once.
He didn't respond.
But something inside him loosenedjust enough.
They worked through the rest of the afternoon, the tension easing into something quieter. When they finally packed up, the sky outside had lightened, the rain replaced by a thin, uncertain drizzle.
"Walk?" she asked this time.
He nodded.
They took the same path by the lake. The water was restless, small ripples chasing each other under the gray sky. They walked in silence, steps aligned, shoulders never touching.
"You know," Anvika said after a while, "people assume independence means isolation."
"It doesn't," Aadvaith said.
"It means choice," she continued. "I survived alone because I had to. But that doesn't mean I want to stay that way."
He glanced at her, something steady and protective settling in his chest. "You shouldn't have to."
She smiled faintlynot at him, but at the thought. "You say that like it's a given."
"It is," he said. "For the right people."
They stopped near the water's edge. The air smelled clean, washed through.
Anvika turned to him. "You calm storms," she said. "Even the ones you don't show."
He held her gaze. "You quiet them."
Neither spoke after that.
They didn't need to.
When they parted, it wasn't with promises or confessions. Just the quiet certainty that something had shifted againsubtle, but undeniable.
That the storm Aadvaith never showed had, for the first time, found a place to rest.
And Anvika, who had survived alone, was beginning to understand something equally unsettling.
She was never meant to stay that way.