Gayatri still remembers the first time she met Hobie. How could she forget? She'd been sitting outside the café she and Pavitr meet at, wondering where on earth he could be. Pavitr had never been the kind of person to show up late.
Just when she was about to reach for her phone to see if he was all right, her boyfriend had appeared, holding the hand of a complete stranger.
"And this is my girlfriend, Gayatri. She's an extremely classy teenager."
"Pavitr! Where were you? I was getting worried about you," she had started to say, and then her brain processed what her eyes were seeing.
Whoever Pavitr's new friend was, he was nothing like anyone Gayatri had ever met before.
The first thing she noticed was his jacket. Studded leather, although it was hard to tell under the layers of paint and sew-on patches and pins. The rest of his clothes similarly looked like he'd been attacked first by a secondhand vinyl record store, then by a dog. His jeans were ripped, but he - or someone else - had made an attempt to repair them.
After taking in the state of his clothing, Gayatri noticed his hair. Whoever this boy was, his hair was the only hair she'd seen which could compete with Pavitr. Miniscule, tight curls were interlocked to create thick ropes of hair, creating an effect unlike any hairstyle she'd ever seen before.
The last thing Gayatri noticed in this first impression was the amount of piercings this boy had. Not just the ones in the bottom of his earlobe. All around his ears - asymmetrical - along his top and bottom lips, on both eyebrows, and in his nose. He shone like a pile of money. Small metal beads and rings glittered everywhere a piercing could be had, and a couple of places Gayatri hadn't realized you could pierce. He was stunning. Not entirely in a good way, but not entirely in a bad way, either.
"Gayatri, I'd like you to meet my new friend Hobie. He might be my new best friend. We haven't decided yet." Pavitr, as always, had sounded like he was about to die from excitement.
"I don't think we've known each other long enough to make that decision," Hobie said, and Gayatri's jaw had fallen open in shock.
She did remember to close it before too long, but it was still embarrassing. "I'm so sorry. You're British?"
"People tend to react like that," this strange new boy had said, and then Pavitr had interrupted with something about how he was nice even though he was British, and soon Gayatri wasn't even upset that Pavitr had invited a stranger along to their date.
Now, they're sitting in that same café, and Pavitr's in the washroom, and she's about to ask Hobie something she'll probably regret tomorrow.
Gayatri leans towards Hobie, beckons him closer. "Can you teach me how to enjoy giving Pavitr head?"
"Pardon?" Hobie says, setting his chai back on the table very quickly. It's a wonder he doesn't spill it.
"I'm sorry for assuming, but you are.. you know? Right?"
"A massive poof? Yeah. I am."
Gayatri's blushing so hard she might die. Forget tomorrow, she's already regretting it. "I'm sorry. Forget I said anything."
"No, no, don't worry about it," Hobie says, and he says it so nicely she almost follows his advice. "My biggest advice would be to try a different position - I'm assuming he's standing and you're on your knees?"
Gayatri nods, and hopes nobody is listening to them. Thankfully, Hobie's being quiet, but she still shouldn't have asked such an immodest question in public.
"Try it with him sitting and you kneeling, or if you lie down at a right angle and you sort of slide your head under his leg..." Hobie's trying to covertly demonstrate what he means with his hands, and it's not working, but it's endearing nonetheless.
"So, did you have a chance to try what I suggested?" Hobie whispers, the next time they're at the café and Pavitr is off in the washroom. When Gayatri looks at him blankly, he holds his loosely closed fist beside his cheek and sticks his tongue into the flesh of the other side of his mouth. Gayatri blushes when she realizes what he means. Nobody's paying attention to them, but he could still be a little bit more discreet.
"I don't think I like giving blowjobs," Gayatri replies. "I tried both. Not as bad, but I just don't enjoy it."
"That's fine. It's not for everyone. Personally, I love giving them, but receiving them is awkward as hell." How on earth is this boy so open and yet so unembarrassed? They've only known each other for what, three months?
"Could you give him a blowjob? Like, for me?" Immediately Gayatri wonders what could have gotten into her, to suggest such a thing. What kind of a person asks their boyfriend's gay best friend to give their boyfriend a blowjob? "Not that I think you're attracted to every boy you see," she adds. "Just. You like the act. I don't."
"Why do you want Pavitr to get his shit slonked so badly?" Hobie asks, and Gayatri can't help but laugh at the way he says it. Slonked can't seriously be a word. But it conveys the meaning well enough. And it's not a 'no.'
"He's the perfect boyfriend," she says, and Hobie laughs, nodding. "He seems to love when it's his turn to, you know. I want him to feel like he makes me feel. Even if it's not my mouth doing it."
"Fair enough. And you're sure you're okay with this?" Hobie asks. "I'm sure Pavitr would be happy to just eat pussy all day long. He's like that."
"I want him to get to feel like I do," Gayatri says. If only she'd never asked, she wouldn't have to be sitting in a public café, practically begging a near-stranger to perform fellatio on her boyfriend.
"Well, we'll see what he thinks," Hobie says, and to her horror, Gayatri realizes that Pavitr is sitting across from her now.
"See what I think about what?" Pavitr asks, innocently chipper, as per usual. "Oh, are you thinking of going to see a movie? I've heard Badhaai Do is supposed to be good. A lot of people hate it, but a lot of people love it too. Or we could go see Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani again."
"Hobie doesn't speak Hindi," Gayatri says, before the British punk can tell Pavitr what they were really talking about.
"I have faith that he can follow along by guessing. And we'd be right there, if he needs us," Pavitr says, beaming. His endless optimism would be exhausting if he weren't so lovable.
"I can go early," Hobie says. "I don't need to tag along on your dates more than I already do."
"Nonsense," Pavitr says. "You should watch Badhaai Do with us. There's gay people in it! It's about a lavender marriage."
"You do understand that me being queer doesn't mean I like everything with gay people in it, right?" If he wasn't smiling like a child right now, Gayatri would think he was offended.
"We weren't talking about seeing a movie," she says, quietly.
"Care to share?" Pavitr asks. "Or is it a secret? That's okay. But if you're cheating on me with my best friend, it's not okay. But anything else. Unless you're planning on hurting Maya Auntie. Or robbing a bank. Or murdering someone in cold blood. A lot of things aren't okay. But a lot of things are okay."
"Can we go somewhere else?" Gayatri asks. Pavitr doesn't know how narrowly his first guess missed the mark.
"Sure," Pavitr says, and tips... oh gosh, that must be twenty percent. Her boyfriend really is a ridiculously good person. So it's ridiculous, what she and Hobie are about to propose to him.
Gayatri leads the boys to a quieter part of the street, then grabs Pavitr's hands in hers. "You know how we've been, uh. Well. You know. Um." She's dissolved into such stuttering that Pavitr just shakes his head, that immutable smile still on his face.
Hobie comes up behind her and does that obscene gesture with his hand and his tongue again. Really. Why on earth would he be so quick to mime the act of a blowjob?
"You told him?" Pavitr asks, surprise not wiping the smile from his face. "Am I bad at it?"
"No!" she says. "No, you're, uh, very good at it."
Hobie laughs.
"Shut up," she tells him. "No, you're doing everything right. The problem is me. I don't like doing it to you."
"We don't have to," Pavitr says immediately, and it's that selfless enthusiasm that reminds Gayatri why she's doing this. Hobie's a great best friend to Pavitr, and he's always been lovely to her. He would never do anything to hurt either of them.
"Do you want me to say it?" Hobie asks. "This is killing me."
"No, no, I can say it. Pavitr, I want you to feel the way I do when you, you know." And to Gayatri's horror, she finds herself making an obscene hand gesture with her first two fingers to reference cunnilingus. What is she turning into? Hobie, apparently. "Because I don't enjoy returning it, I want Hobie to do it. For me."
"Excuse me?" Pavitr asks. "You want Hobie to. You know. My best friend? And you're okay with it? He's not being weird? This isn't a prank?"
"It was her idea." Hobie says, slinging an arm over Pavitr's shoulder. He really is ridiculously tall, and taller in those boots, and taller still with his wicks.
"I'm flattered that you want me to have this so badly, chakkare, but you really don't have to worry. I'm fine with it being one-sided for you. You're such a good girlfriend. I'm not sure how I'd feel about my best friend - my male best friend, at that - being your proxy. I'm straight."
"That's how we make sure it's just sexual," Gayatri says. "There's no risk of you abandoning me to run after Hobie."
"If you're not comfortable with this, I won't do anything," Hobie says, holding up the hand that isn't slung around Pavitr's shoulder. "Consent is punk."
"I shouldn't be so willing to cheat on my girlfriend," Pavitr says, but he leans into Hobie as he does so. That's almost a 'yes.' Gayatri's heart warms to see him so casually intimate with the other boy, even if it's just platonic. "It's tempting, though. Not that I haven't enjoyed our time together, Gayatri."
"It's not cheating," Gayatri says. "I'm telling you to do it."
"It might be easier the first time if she watches?" Hobie suggests, even quieter than the rest of the conversation. Both Gayatri and Pavitr blush. Hard. "Or not. We could not do that. Whoops. Forget I mentioned it."
"I don't think either of us are ready for that," Pavitr says. "But I appreciate your offer."
"You should at least try once," Gayatri says, turning to wedge herself under Pavitr's other arm. It's like she and Hobie are carrying a wounded soldier off the battlefield in a war movie, but also nothing like it. "I want you to experience someone enthusiastic at least once."
"Alright. We can try it," Pavitr says, squeezing Gayatri tightly against his side. "But no promises after the first time."
"Of course not," Hobie says, and the deal is done. Someday, probably very soon, he's going to be the one on his knees, struggling to hold all of Pavitr's dick in his mouth.
Gayatri leans her head into her boyfriend's neck, trying not to hold onto that image for too long. Maybe Hobie was onto something when he suggested she watch.
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