As Long As I Have You // A. Ghale

The [Home]stead

We had made a stop at the homestead and we 'accidentally' fell asleep. I had found myself wrapped and tangled between Ajay and the covers that lie between our bodies.

"Good morning, beautiful." Ajay says, pushing a strand of my blonde hair behind my ear gently. I smiled, he had a way of sending butterflies through my entire body.

"Oh hush." I say, clearly blushing at the statement he had just made. It wasn't like I was trying to hide it, and he knew that. He must have liked that.

"Listen, I actually have something fun for us to do today." Ajay tells me, sitting up in our bed. I started to join him in sitting up.

"Oh yeah? What's that?" I ask him, whipping the bit of sleepy I had in my eyes out. I had no idea of what Ajay had in mind. It literally could be anything. I just hope it has absolutely nothing to do with those little shits, known as honey badgers. Those fuckers drive me mad.

"We're going to fix up the homestead and maybe redo some painting and add some decorations. You in?" I smile, Ajay was going to finish what I had started a few days prior. I was already getting hype.

"Hell yeah." I say, I was always a whore for some fixer upper show on HGTV. I loved to do renovations so this task was something I was totally down for.

We started with the outside, and finished painting the walls that I had not finished. We hung strings of lights across one of the dominant trees in the yard and included a large elephant statue with. the colorings of Kyrat, courtesy of Bhadra's grandmother.

"Do you ever think about our future, like getting married and having children of our own?" I ask him, continuing to brush the red paint on the hard wood walls of the homestead.

"I do, but I think Kyrat isn't ready for any more Ghale's at the moment." Ajay smiles and picks up another empty gallon of paint.

We had soon finished the exterior and began to navigate our way to inside. It wasn't exactly 'clean' but it wasn't 'dirty' either. It needed some extra staging things to sort of fill the room. Ajay and I had surprisingly quickly gotten the house cleaned up, throwing away old wallpaper and things that gathered dust. It was looking very nice, but something wasn't right...

"Ajay, are you okay?" I ask him, as I turn around. He's holding a picture of his mother, Ishwari, in his hands. He doesn't speak for a while, but I knew something was wrong when I droplet of clear liquid had fallen onto the photograph.

"She was such a wonderful woman, and mother. She always put me above anything else. I-I should've been a better son. It's just too late..." Ajay slowly breaks down, but I catch him in his sobs. I hadn't seen him like this, he was truly missing a piece of his heart, that was his mother. It hurt me deep inside to see him going through this elongated pain of losing a parent, something I had felt once before too.

"She's proud of you, Ajay. You must know that. She loves you very much, she's still looking over you as we speak." I tell him, and he looks at me softly, his eyes are glazed over. His eyes had lost a bit of their shine and I could see how broken he was inside. He wouldn't let anyone in either, but with me, something was different.

"I love you." He says, grabbing my head and embracing my body. I felt him pull me closer and I just wanted him to know how much I care about him. Truth is, I didn't know what to expect when coming to Kyrat, but definitely not finding love. Not that I was complaining...