There’s an electricity outage in their apartment.
Ria’s scrolling through her phone, some lights on in her bedroom, just reading comments and responding to fanart, when suddenly her room’s engulfed in darkness. It’s way past midnight, and she isn’t sure whether she should bother her housemates. She gets out of her bed, shivering at the sudden cold from being wrapped under several blankets for quite some time, and opens her curtains a bit. She looks at the city below her – some places still have their lights on, but where she’d usually find nothing but a city of static fireflies, now most she sees is darkness. The moon highlights some bricks and outlines of buildings, though most of it is a bottomless void.
She checks her phone – #PowerOutage is trending on Twitter for London and its area. There’s a handful of people actively tweeting about it. She reckons there’d be more if it wasn’t late at night.
After yet another shiver, she reaches out to her bed to grab a blanket, wrapping it around herself before heading into the living room she shares with Niran and Aarav. Here, too, everything is dark. With the flashlight of her phone in her hand, she wanders around the living room. In a sort of late-night habit, she reaches out to the water boiler to make herself some tea, only realising that of course, it isn’t gonna work when the machine doesn’t respond after the third press on its on-button.
She sighs, walking to Niran’s room in hopes he’s still awake.
With all this time living with the two boys, she knows she’s not gonna find Aarav awake at hours like these. But Niran’s nearly nocturnal when it comes to these things, so he’s her only hope now.
Ria rasps her knuckles on the door, a soft knock hopefully only heard by Niran if he’s awake. She waits for a minute – nothing.
When she checks the door, it’s clear that it’s unlocked. She opens it, just a little bit. Into the room, she whispers, “Niran? Are you awake? The power’s out in most of London.”
The bedsheets rumble and she thinks she hears a groan coming from it.
Ria shines her flashlight into the room, scanning the desk and its chair to see if Niran’s sitting behind it, to no avail. Then she checks the bed, maybe he was scrolling through his phone like she was.
She shouldn’t have checked the bed.
Her flashlight lands onto a pile of curls – obviously Niran’s – and his scrunched eyes. As she moves it a bit further to get a clearer picture… that’s—
She sees another pile of hair, pitch black and close to Niran’s back. The owner of this pile of hair shakes his head to lay more comfortably, and Ria catches just a glimpse of—
Of Aarav.
She stifles her surprised gasp, flashlight shifting back to Niran for a brief moment. Their eyes meet, and all Ria can do is blink and shuffle out of his bedroom.
She goes back to her own bedroom, huddled under millions of blankets, as she types open a text chat with Steve.
Oh my god, Steve, you’ll never gu
She stops typing. This feels wrong, telling her friend about what she saw. Maybe Aarav and Niran are keeping this a secret – she’s sure neither of them is out of the closet. It’s not up to her to share this.
She deletes the message, closing her Whatsapp, dropping her phone on her nightstand.
“Oh my god,” she whispers to no one in particular, “Oh my god,” louder, this time. She shakes her head, closing her eyes and trying to sleep. She’ll talk to them in the morning, it’ll explain things. Probably.
—
“Aarav,” Niran stirs, turning around in Aarav’s hold. His body is incredibly warm against Niran’s, but Niran doesn’t mind. He normally runs colder, so it’s nice to have a cuddly heater in his bed.
“Hmm?” Aarav grunts, waking up. His arm stretches around Niran’s waist.
“There’s a power outage in London,” Niran says, confused.
“What?” Aarav joins him in the confusion. He rolls his shoulders on the bed and makes room for Niran to turn to face him. He leans on his elbow to gain some height, to look better at Niran even though there’s only one sliver of moonlight on his skin. “What?” he repeats.
“Yeah, ‘s why the lights are out, and my computer stopped whirring,” Niran says, a finger idly circling on Aarav’s skin.
Aarav groans, “You had to wake me up for that? How do you even know?” He rubs his eyes, looking around him in Niran’s room and seeing nothing but blackness.
“Ria just came into the room and told me,” Niran shrugs, eyes focused on his finger rubbing into Aarav’s skin.
“Ria–” Aarav pushes Niran at his shoulder, “Ria just came into the room?!”
Niran meets Aarav’s eyes, “Yeah, she–”
“She saw us?”
“Oh, well, probably,” Niran shrugs, he moves to wrap his arm around Aarav’s waist again to cuddle closer, and fall asleep again. This does not seem like an issue he needs to deal with right now, at 4-something am.
“Dude? Ria- Ria saw us and you– why didn’t you lead with that?” Aarav shakes his head.
“Well, I thought the power outage–”
“So much for secrets,” Aarav giggles. It may have been only a few months of sleeping together, but they certainly had to fight their way for opportunities to spend time together without raising too much of Ria’s concern.
“Ah, well, she’ll forget in the morning.”
“There’s no way– There’s no way Ria will forget about something as– as– as juicy as this,” Aarav says, “She still remembers when she saw me in my Christmas underwear I got from my parents, back when we just started living here.” He points at Niran’s chest, “She’s not gonna forget, bro.”
“Whatever,” Niran smiles, leaning in closer to him, slinging a leg in between Aarav’s and nestling his head atop Aarav’s chest, “We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
“If it’s the first thing she brings up, you owe me a blowjob.”
“I’d happily suck you off if you asked, but sure, bet,” Niran mutters against Aarav’s chest, pressing a kiss on the skin.
“What do I have to do if she keeps it in till tomorrow?” Aarav asks, voice smug.
“I dunno-” Niran honestly wants to sleep already, “Make me dinner, or somethin’”
“Dinner?” Aarav says, “Hey, but that’s-”
Niran leans up, exasperated, and kisses the next words from Aarav’s lips. Aarav remains silent, hands snaking around Niran’s waist and holding him in place. Niran mutters, “Dinner, or I'm gonna suck you off during your next stream. See how well you keep me secret.”
“Fine, dinner it is.” Aarav kisses Niran again, smiling, “You’re a disaster.”
“Go to sleep.”
Aarav does, thinking of a nice burger recipe in the meantime.
—
Turns out, Ria’s pretty able at holding back her curiosity. She manages to get through her day with only sneaky glances and little digs, but no outright interrogation.
That lasted roughly a day and a half.
Aarav makes wonderful burgers, too.
Niran sucked him off as a thank you, so, like, they both won.