Echoes Between Us

By Roshan Tara

I met Aarush the summer my father traded what was left of his pride for a job beneath a powerful man. We arrived with one suitcase, a stack of unpaid bills, and silence stretched thin between us like a taut wire. Aarush’s house towered over everything, not just in size but in presence—the kind that made you feel like your shoes were too loud, your skin too visible.

I was eight. He was nine.

The first time I saw him, he was climbing a mango tree in the backyard, barefoot, grinning like the world had never told him no. His shirt had grass stains and his knees were scraped red, but he looked alive in a way I couldn’t name.

I was sitting behind the servant quarters, tracing ants with a stick in the dust, when his shadow fell over me. I flinched before I even looked up.

“You’re Kiaan, right?” he asked. No fear, no judgment. Just sunlight in his voice.

I nodded. Words felt dangerous around new people.

He plopped down beside me like we’d known each other for years. "Want some ice cream? We have vanilla."

I looked at his bare feet, the way his hands were covered in dirt but he didn’t care. I shook my head.

He shrugged. “Your loss. It’s the good kind. The one with real beans in it.”

Then he leaned back on his elbows, eyes to the sky, and we sat there in a silence that didn’t press down on me like most silences did. That was Aarush—he had a way of making space without crowding it.

We ended up in the same class that year.

He was the kind of boy teachers adored—always the first to raise his hand, always smiling like he knew something no one else did. He played lead roles in school plays, captained the football team, won medals for science quizzes and poetry recitations alike.

And me? I blended into the background so well, I once spent an entire class sitting in the wrong seat and the teacher never noticed.

But Aarush noticed. Every time.

He started waiting for me after school. Dragging me to the canteen even when I said I wasn’t hungry. Sliding his notes onto my desk with dumb little drawings in the margins. At first, I resisted. I thought maybe he was doing it out of pity. But pity doesn’t last years.

By the time we were thirteen, I knew everything about him—that he wanted to be an actor, that he hated politics even though his father practically bled power, that he played the piano when he couldn’t sleep and that he never let anyone see him cry.

He knew about my silences. He never asked why I flinched when someone shouted. He never asked why I always wore full sleeves, even in the heat. He just knew when to say nothing.

He didn’t know what happened behind the closed doors of our home—not fully.

My father had a face he wore for the outside world. Neat hair, forced smiles, perfect manners. Secretary to a powerful politician. But at home, he came undone like a storm out of nowhere. He had a quiet kind of rage that waited until no one else was looking. Sometimes it was shouting. Sometimes it was a sudden slap across the face so hard my ears rang for hours. Sometimes it was worse—belt buckles, broken plates, silence that cut deeper than any insult.

He hated weakness. He hated my mother’s trembling hands. Hated the way I cried when I was younger. Hated that I wasn’t like Aarush.

Once, when I was ten, I got second place in a math test. He made me kneel in the corner for hours until my legs gave out, then beat me for not standing up fast enough. My mother tried to stop him. She always tried. But she had her own bruises to nurse.

I learned early to stop expecting help. To hide my pain behind silence and long sleeves.

Aarush was light. My home was shadow. And yet he never made me feel small for that. That’s why it was him. Of course it was him.

It happened in the theatre room. I’d left my notebook behind and doubled back after class. The door was ajar. The lights were off. The velvet curtains swallowed half the stage.

And there he was. Aarush. Leaning against the wings. Kissing another boy.

I didn’t think. I just moved. My footsteps loud against the hollow wooden floor.

He didn’t even look surprised when I grabbed his arm and yanked him away.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

He blinked at me, calm, composed. "Kissing."

“He's a boy."

He tilted his head, the way he always did when people said things that didn’t make sense to him. "So am I."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. The other boy had already disappeared.

“Since when?” I asked, but it came out like an accusation.

He raised a brow. “Since always."

I stared at him. At the boy I’d spent years with. Shared tiffins with. Slept beside during school camps. Laughed with. Trusted.

Something cracked inside me, something small and stupid and scared. I turned and left without another word.

By next morning, the rumors had bloomed like mold. They clung to lockers, whispered through hallways, etched onto bathroom stalls.

"Gayrush. Chakka. How much do you charge, pretty boy?"

His name stopped meaning him. It became a joke, a punchline, a warning.

I kept my distance.

I told myself it was to protect him. That if they saw us together, it would only get worse. But the truth was uglier.

I was afraid.

Afraid of what it meant. Of what it said about me—that I hadn’t looked away. That I had wanted to know more. That a part of me had always been drawn to him in ways I hadn’t let myself understand.

So I watched.

Watched as they tore pages from his notebook and replaced them with crude drawings. As they stuck glue inside his locker, forcing him to pry it open with chipped fingernails while the whole corridor laughed. Watched as seniors brushed against him in the hall, whispering things like "slut" and "freak" and "you want a real man to show you?"

Once, I found his lunchbox half-smashed in the trash. A note stuck inside: Enjoy eating trash, fag.

He sat beside me that day at lunch, eating dry biscuits like nothing had happened. Smiling at nothing. I didn’t ask. I couldn’t. My throat was full of broken glass.

Another time, during PE, a boy tripped him on purpose. Aarush hit the ground hard, knees scraping raw against concrete. The coach didn’t see. The others laughed. He stood up, blood dripping down his shin, and said with a grin, "Didn’t know you liked me on my knees that much."

They shut up.

But it didn’t stop. Notes in his bag. Slurs shouted across the courtyard. Posters defaced with lipstick marks and "Aarush loves boys" scribbled in red marker.

He never crumbled.

He still raised his hand in class. Still walked with his head high. Still auditioned for the lead in the school play and nailed it like nothing had changed.

And every time someone said something cruel, he smiled sharper.

He was fire wrapped in silk.

And I was ash pretending to be stone.

When we both got into the same college, I thought: this is it.

My chance to undo what I ruined.

I wouldn’t run this time. I would look him in the eyes and say the words that had choked me for years.

I’m sorry.

I was scared.

I never stopped missing you.

I never stopped...

Aarush never hid who he was in college. If anything, he seemed more certain. He wore rainbow pins on his backpack, posted about queer theatre on his social media, and shut down every slur or whisper with that same sharp smile.

He was still Aarush.

Only now he was taller, with a jawline that looked sculpted from intent, and a voice deeper than I remembered. He'd grown into his beauty—and his bravery. His confidence wasn’t loud, but it hummed around him like static. People noticed him in every room, not just for his looks but for the way he carried himself: unapologetic, unafraid.

Coincidence had us in the same class again. Same major. Same campus. It felt like the universe was daring me to try again.

The first time I saw him on campus, he was leaning against a tree near the humanities building, headphones in, sketching something in a battered notebook. There was a smear of graphite on his knuckles and a pink highlighter cap between his lips. I stood there like an idiot for a full minute before he looked up. Our eyes met. He gave me a slow, unreadable blink, then looked away.

I started slow. Asking about classwork. Sitting beside him when there was a free seat. Offering snacks like I used to when we were kids.

He didn’t make it easy. But he didn’t push me away either. His answers were short at first. Then a little longer. Then came the small jokes, the sarcastic eyebrow raises. A subtle nod when I handed him a coffee before a lecture. A quiet thanks when I lent him my notes.

It took a month before he really looked at me again—not like a stranger, not like someone he was guarding himself from. Just me. Kiaan. And when he did, I almost cried.

One rainy evening, while we waited under the cafeteria roof for the storm to pass, he said, "You know I hated you, right?"

I nodded.

"I don’t anymore."

That was his way of forgiving me.

I started working part-time at a bookstore off-campus. It didn’t pay much, but it was enough to rent a tiny one-room flat nearby. The walls were thin, the water ran cold half the time, and the heater made a ticking sound that reminded me of a bomb about to go off. But it was mine.

I asked my mom to come live with me, to finally leave the house we both called a cage.

She said no.

She wouldn’t explain why, just that "he’s not always bad" and "at least we have a roof."

I didn’t understand. Maybe I never would. Some people live in fear so long, they start calling it comfort.

Aarush’s family, on the surface, had always seemed like the opposite. Loving. Laughing. Dinner table conversations. Birthday parties with balloons. But college revealed the cracks.

When his father found out he was gay, things shifted. He didn’t scream. He got quiet.

Too quiet.

He began avoiding Aarush. Stopped inviting him to political functions. Refused to introduce him to certain guests. And then the suggestions started.

"Just see a doctor. Just talk to someone."

A psychiatrist. For his sexuality. Conversion therapy masked as mental health care.

His mother tried to defend him, but her voice didn’t hold the same power.

"If word gets out," his father said, "you’ll destroy everything I’ve built."

Still, Aarush never bent.

He came out louder. Bolder. He wore eyeliner to class sometimes. Painted his nails. Directed a queer-themed play that earned a standing ovation. When someone made a comment in class about "real men," Aarush leaned back and said, "Your masculinity sounds fragile. You should get that checked."

And now that I stood beside him, he walked taller.

We started sharing coffees. Walking home together. Studying late in the library until our shoulders touched and neither of us pulled away. We started watching terrible old movies at my flat, sitting too close on the creaky couch. He fell asleep once with his head on my shoulder, and I didn’t move for two hours.

It was easy. Familiar. Like fitting back into a rhythm our hearts still remembered.

Until one afternoon, he turned to me with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and said, "Kiaan, I want you to meet someone."

The boy he introduced was soft-spoken, kind-eyed, artistic. He wore layered necklaces and smelled like lemongrass. They had been dating for two weeks.

I smiled. Said all the right things.

But something inside me curled into itself like paper catching fire.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of Aarush’s fingers brushing someone else’s skin. His laughter belonging to someone else's jokes. His stories whispered into someone else's shoulder.

Jealousy wasn’t the word. This was something deeper. Darker. It had teeth. It gnawed at the edges of my thoughts.

I wanted him. Not as a friend.

I wanted his attention, his warmth, his smiles—all of it. Just for me.

I wasn’t gay.

But if it was Aarush—maybe I didn’t care what I was.

I began watching him more closely. Letting my hand linger longer when I passed him notes. Leaning in when I laughed. Sitting too close, touching his arm when I didn’t need to.

He noticed.

He always noticed.

And still, he didn’t pull away.

I started texting him late at night.

“Can’t sleep.”

His replies always came fast.

“Me neither. Want to talk?”

We did. About nothing. About everything. About books, movies, food, the color of the sky.

One night, I typed, “Do you think things would’ve been different if I hadn’t walked away that day?”

The dots blinked for a long time. Then:

“Everything would be different. But then... maybe we wouldn’t be here now.”

Whatever this was. Whatever it was becoming.

I didn’t know what to call it yet. I only knew how it felt.

Like I was holding my breath every time he looked at me.

Like the world stopped spinning for half a second when he smiled.

Like I was falling, not off a cliff, but into something warmer.

Something terrifying.

One Friday afternoon, the sun hung high but filtered through gray clouds, and the world felt too still. Aarush was waiting for me in the canteen. I’d promised him I’d be there after submitting my research notes, but I lost track of time in the library. I was sitting with my laptop open, headphones in, scribbling down a rough draft of my psychology paper, when someone tapped my shoulder.

I pulled my headphones off. A boy I barely recognized stood over me, panting.

“Kiaan, right?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Aarush. There’s a fight in the canteen. He’s—he’s in it.”

The air punched itself out of my lungs. I didn’t ask what happened. I didn’t pack my things. I just ran.

Down the corridor, past the stairwell, nearly slipping as I turned the corner too fast. My heart was hammering against my chest, and all I could hear was the echo of footsteps and my own rising panic. My stomach twisted with dread. Not again. Please not again.

The canteen came into view, and what I saw stopped me cold for a heartbeat.

There were three boys. Taller than Aarush. Broader. One of them was pinning him down by his shoulders while another kicked him in the ribs. The third stood over him, fists clenched, shouting something I couldn’t fully hear.

“Get the fuck away from us, you filthy pervert!”

“You think it’s okay to sit near us? We don’t want your kind here!”

“Go die somewhere, freak!”

Aarush struggled under them, lips parted, breathing ragged. There was blood at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes—his fire-filled eyes—were wild with rage, not fear.

My body moved before my brain caught up.

I launched myself at the nearest guy, grabbing the back of his shirt and yanking him off with everything I had. He stumbled back, cursing, but I didn’t stop. My fist found his jaw, hard and fast. The impact rattled my knuckles, but I didn’t feel the pain.

One of them grabbed me, tried to pin my arms, but Aarush was already up again, swinging with all the strength left in him. A tray clattered to the floor. Plates shattered. Screams echoed as students fled from the chaos.

I took a punch to the side of the face. My vision went white-hot, but I didn’t stop. Blood filled my mouth. Someone grabbed my collar. I headbutted them, pushed them off, swinging again. Aarush caught another boy’s arm and twisted, shoving him into a chair.

The canteen was a warzone. Tables overturned, food splattered on the floor, glass crunching under our shoes.

And then—a whistle. A voice. Another.

Teachers.

Aarush grabbed my hand. His grip was hot and tight and urgent.

“Run,” he said.

I didn’t ask why. I just followed.

We bolted down the hallway, our footsteps echoing behind us. Past the lecture rooms, through the courtyard, across the back garden where no one ever went. My lungs burned. My ribs ached. But I didn’t care.

We stopped only when we reached the abandoned art shed tucked behind the music building. It was a place we used to hide during breaks in first year, back when we barely spoke, just sat in silence sharing packets of chips.

We bent over, gasping for breath, and then—

We started laughing.

Hard.

The kind of laughter that came from adrenaline and exhaustion and absurdity. The kind that cracked open something heavy inside your chest.

Aarush leaned back against the wall, sliding down until he sat in the dust. I dropped beside him, heart still pounding.

“You really punched him,” he said between laughs.

“You elbowed one of them in the throat.”

“He deserved it.”

“I know.”

We fell silent. The wind rustled through the broken window, and sunlight filtered in, golden and soft.

His face turned toward me. His lip was bleeding, a raw cut that curved down from the corner. Blood stained his chin, drying dark against his skin.

Without thinking, I reached out.

He caught my wrist before I could touch him.

Our eyes locked.

He didn’t let go. I didn’t pull away.

In that stillness, I felt it again—the thing I’d been trying to ignore. The way the world dulled when he wasn’t around. The way my chest ached when he smiled at someone else. The way my hands shook now, not from fighting, but from being this close to him.

He didn’t speak. Neither did I.

We didn’t need to.

I leaned in.

He flinched, just barely.

But then he let me.

Our lips met.

It was clumsy at first—uncertain, rushed, too hard. He tasted like blood and adrenaline. My lips bumped his bruises and he winced, but he didn’t stop me.

Then something softened. His hand slid behind my neck. My fingers tangled in the front of his shirt.

We kissed like we were afraid to stop. Like something inside us had waited too long, had burned for too long.

His breath caught in my mouth.

And I realized this was my first real kiss.

It tasted like sweet metal and fire.

It tasted like him.

When we finally broke apart, we didn’t speak for a long time. Our foreheads rested against each other. His breath was uneven. So was mine.

“I’m not gay,” I said softly.

“I know.”

“But I want you.”

He blinked, slow. “You sure it’s not just the fight talking?”

I shook my head. “I’ve wanted you for longer than I want to admit.”

He stared at me like he didn’t quite believe it.

“Don’t date that guy,” I said, voice barely a whisper. “Date me.”

His lips parted.

I didn’t expect him to answer right away. I didn’t expect anything.

But he leaned in again. Slower this time. Gentler. Our mouths met with the kind of reverence I’d only read about in books.

And I knew.

Whatever came next, we were already falling.

After that day behind the music building, everything changed. We started dating. It didn’t happen with declarations or labels—we just began moving in step with each other, like two melodies that had always been meant to harmonize.

He started calling me “my chaos,” and I called him “my calm.” We were everywhere together—walking across campus with linked pinkies, sharing headphones under trees, stealing kisses behind bookshelves in the library. The campus took notice. The same students who once whispered slurs now stared with something closer to envy.

We were, as someone put it on a meme page, the power couple.

And for a while, it felt like we’d won.

Weekends were spent tangled in bedsheets and books. His jeans and t-shirts ended up in my wardrobe. His toothbrush sat beside mine. There was a poetry anthology with his notes in the margins on my nightstand, and his cologne clung to my pillowcases. He made my apartment feel like a home—like a future.

I started imagining it, the rest of our lives. The tiny flat turning into a bigger one. Our routines overlapping until they became indistinguishable. Late-night dinners. Plays where he took the lead. Papers I wrote while he memorized lines. Coffee and laughter and love. All of it.

But the universe has never liked making things easy for me.

I don’t know how my father found out. I don’t know if someone told him or if he pieced it together from the quiet defiance in my voice when I spoke to him on the rare calls I took.

All I know is, the storm began quietly.

It was my mother who told me. She called one night—her voice shaking, terrified. I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks.

“Kiaan,” she whispered. “He’s planning something. Something terrible.”

I sat up straight, heart thudding. “What do you mean?”

“I heard him on the phone. With someone. He was talking about Aarush. About… about getting rid of him.”

My stomach turned to lead.

She went on. “He said Aarush’s father is in trouble politically. That he’s losing support. And that if the public found out about Aarush’s sexuality, it could ruin him.”

I gripped the edge of the mattress. “He wouldn’t…”

“He told him there’s a way to win the people back. That they need sympathy. A tragedy.”

“No.”

“Kiaan,” she whispered, her voice breaking, “they're going to stage an assassination attempt. During a rally. They’re going to pretend Aarush was caught in the crossfire. But it’s planned. All of it.”

My breath vanished.

“He said the sharpshooter is already in place. That it has to happen when Aarush is standing beside his father on stage. He told him not to worry—that no one will know. That he’ll make sure the hit is clean. No trail.”

I couldn’t speak.

My father. My own father. Planning to kill the only person who ever made life feel worth living.

I hung up. Grabbed my keys. And ran.

The rally was already underway when I arrived. There were flags everywhere, chants echoing across the field, a thousand people pressed together waving signs. My chest heaved. I shoved through the crowd, elbowing past strangers.

I could see the stage now. The bright red banner. The microphone. The camera crews. The lights.

And him.

Aarush stood next to his father, wearing a dark blue kurta, hair combed back. He was smiling politely. But I saw the tension in his shoulders. The way he scanned the crowd, even as he pretended to be composed.

His father was speaking about unity, about youth, about sacrifice.

I screamed.

“AARUSH! GET DOWN!”

He looked up.

Our eyes met.

And then—

A gunshot cracked the sky.

It was like everything froze. The crowd gasped. Chaos bloomed.

And Aarush fell.

Blood bloomed across his chest like ink in water. He staggered back, his mouth forming a small, shocked ‘oh,’ and collapsed.

I don’t remember screaming, but I must have.

I don’t remember how I reached the stage, but I did.

I dropped to my knees beside him. His eyes were open, but fading. Blood pooled beneath him, warm and sticky, soaking into the stage floor.

“No no no no—” I pressed my hands to his chest, trying to stop the bleeding. “Stay with me, please, Aarush. Please.”

He looked at me. A soft smile touched his lips.

“Hey,” he whispered, like we were just waking up in bed. Like we had more mornings.

“Don’t talk. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine.”

“Liar,” he said weakly, still smiling.

Tears streamed down my face. “You’re not allowed to die. Not after everything. Not after I found you.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “I always did.”

And then his hand slipped from mine.

The world fractured.

I carried him through the crowd, not caring how many people stared or gasped or stepped aside. His blood soaked through my shirt, warm and terrifyingly quiet. His head lolled against my shoulder. His fingers—once so full of motion and life—hung still.

I don’t remember the road. Just the burn in my legs, the fire in my throat, the sound of my heartbeat thudding like a war drum. I kept whispering his name between breaths.

“Aarush... stay with me. Please.”

But by the time I burst through the hospital doors, I already knew.

The nurse tried to take him from me gently. I didn’t let go right away. Only when someone said, “We have to try,” did I release him.

They rolled him away. The doors swung shut behind them. I stood there, alone in the hallway, shaking and stained red.

And then the doctor came back.

He didn’t have to say it.

The look in his eyes told me everything.

“He didn’t make it,” he said softly, voice wrapped in practiced sorrow. “I’m sorry.”

My knees buckled.

They let me see him.

The sheet only covered him to the chest. His face was pale. His lips still held the shape of a smile—one of those soft, sideways ones he used to give me when he knew I was overthinking everything. There was a bloodstain just above his heart. The bullet had taken it. The heart that held all his light, all his defiance, all the love he had given me.

I took his hand. It was cold. I bent and kissed him on the forehead.

My mouth opened to say something, anything, but all that came out was a choked sob.

I had survived my father. I had survived loneliness. I had survived shame, silence, and the weight of secrets. I survived everything because Aarush existed.

And now he didn’t.

They took him from me. Just like that.

I stood up slowly, my vision burning, my limbs aching. I walked out of the hospital and into the heat of a late afternoon sun that suddenly felt cruel.

I didn’t cry anymore.

I was past crying.  

That night, I sat in the apartment we once called ours.

His hoodie was still draped over the chair. His coffee mug—with the chipped rim and smudged ink mark—was on the counter, half full. I didn’t throw it out. I didn’t touch anything.

The air was too quiet. Like the walls themselves were holding their breath.

I sat on the floor, knees to my chest, and stared at the ceiling until my eyes stopped blinking.

I replayed everything. The mango tree. The theatre room. The jokes. The late-night texts. His head on my shoulder. His mouth on mine. His name in my throat.

I wanted to scream, but even that had been taken from me.

Instead, I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and pulled out the poetry book he used to read. The one with the crooked spine and the little pink sticky notes poking out like bookmarks for feelings too big to name.

His handwriting was still in the margins.

“I want a love that doesn’t survive the world. I want one that remakes it.”

He’d written that next to a Neruda poem. I traced the ink with my fingertip. Let it burn.

I closed the book. Washed the dried blood from my hands. Slowly. Like it mattered.

Then I looked in the mirror and met the eyes of someone I didn’t recognize.

Someone who had nothing left.

At home, the world moved like it was underwater. I stepped through the front door, past the hallway lined with fake smiles in photo frames, into the study where the plans had been made. Where evil had found a calm, familiar voice.

The drawer was unlocked.

The gun was there, gleaming like it had been waiting.

My hands didn’t shake. I loaded it one bullet at a time, calmly, like it was just another task on a checklist. Because I knew what I had to do.

I walked out, weapon tucked into my coat. I knew where to go.

Aarush’s house.

The gate was open. The guards were gone, likely dismissed for the evening. Inside, the sitting room was alive with the sound of celebration—clinking glasses, smug laughter, talking confidently about this year’s guaranteed victory.

My father was there. Aarush’s father too. Sitting side by side on the sofa, grinning.

“Didn’t I tell you?” my father said, raising his glass. “Tragedy wins sympathy.”

“They’ll forget he was gay by next week,” Aarush’s father muttered. “All they’ll remember is the sacrifice.”

I stepped into the room.

They both looked up. Their grins flickered.

“Kiaan,” my father said. “What are you—”

I raised the gun.

There wasn’t time for questions. No courtroom. No speeches. Just justice.

The first shot hit Aarush’s father in the chest. He gasped. Stumbled. Blood bloomed across his suit like a dark flower.

The second shot struck him in the head.

He dropped.

My father lunged toward me. I turned and fired.

He hit the ground with his mouth open, still trying to speak.

Silence filled the room.

Two bodies.

Two traitors.

Two men who thought their power gave them the right to destroy something beautiful.

I stepped outside, the last bullet heavy in the chamber.

The sky had turned a deep, endless blue, bruised by twilight.

I walked to the edge of the garden where Aarush and I had once stood, hidden behind a hedge, laughing while we threw tiny pebbles at the window of his room. It was where he had kissed me the second time. Where he told me he wanted to be with me forever.

I wanted that too.

But there was no forever left.

I pulled the gun slowly from my coat and placed the barrel against my temple. It felt cold. Final.

And in that moment, just before the trigger clicked, I closed my eyes and imagined his voice.

Aarush had been both: my shadow and my light. He showed me the truth of who I was, not in spite of the darkness, but because of it.

The world never gave him a chance to live freely. It punished him for existing. For loving. For being radiant.

I pressed the trigger.

And followed him into the dark.

By Roshan Tara