Rahul was easily having the worst day of the year.
It started with him injuring his thigh painfully hard during fielding. He could barely walk, so he didn't come down to bat till his team was on the verge of fluffing an easy chase. He couldn't stand and pull off a miracle, but he hadn't even expected to.
It was hard to concentrate with a throbbing pain in your body--and though he'd been trying not to think of it as the match ended, he was dreading the tests and the reports.
Then Virat and Gauti bhai had to get into one of their altercations that day, and half their teams had to enjoy the show they were putting on (Marcus had actually been laughing loudly, Rahul made a mental note to give him a piece of his mind later)--and of course, Rahul had to be the one to intervene, which straightaway put him in both Virat and Gauti bhai's bad books.
And now, Virat was nowhere to be found.
After pacifying Gauti bhai and getting a earful in return about him daring to pacify, Rahul was limping to the RCB dressing room. Virat wasn't present there.
He had a horrifying doubt if Virat had ended up at the LSG dressing room in search of Gauti bhai again, and then he had to limp across the field all the way to his own dressing room.
Virat wasn't there, either.
Rahul spent quite a bit of time limping from place to place where Virat even had a slight chance of being, but he was simply nowhere to be found.
Finally, Rahul spotted Siraj and sighed with relief, because he'd begun to realize it was time to give up.
"Siraj!" he hailed. "Where's Virat, d'you know?"
"I think he left for the hotel with the first lot," said Siraj.
"Oh."
"You don't look well," said Siraj in concern. "You shouldn't be walking around with that foot--sit down--"
"I don't need to sit--"
Siraj turned a deaf ear to Rahul's protests and helped him sit down near the boundary. He did not miss the wince, either, because he gave him a stern look and asked, "Didn't the physio want to get you checked?"
Rahul nodded.
"And you're walking around?"
"I was looking for Virat," admitted Rahul. "I didn't know he'd returned...I'll give him a call and go..."
Siraj was called to board the last RCB bus going to the hotel as Rahul called Virat.
Virat answered when the call had almost rung itself out.
"Hello?" he said.
Not HELLO, RAHULIYA or HELLO, MOI, WHATSUP!
Rahul sighed again.
"Are you upset about that thing with Gauti bhai, Virat?" he asked.
"No," said Virat.
"Or angry?"
"Nope."
"Then what happened?" asked Rahul.
"What happened where?" said Virat.
Rahul was not just surprised; if he was honest to himself, he was a bit hurt, too.
That Virat hadn't waited after the match and didn't seem to think he'd done anything out of the ordinary. Surely waiting after the match to talk was their normal?
Definitely.
It had been their normal for years.
"I mean--" Rahul paused. "Where are you?"
"At the hotel, why?"
"Anushka and Vami are both all right?"
"Yeah."
Was it Rahul's imagination, or was Virat giving shorter answers than usual?
Maybe he was preoccupied...maybe he was still a little disturbed with the fight with Gauti bhai...maybe he was just tired...
And deliberate short answers wasn't truly Virat's style. (Rahul had to admit it was much more his style).
Shouting the roof down was Virat's style if he was upset. Not that Rahul had had much firsthand experience. But he'd seen that rather a lot.
He hadn't even registered consciously that he was waiting for Virat to ask about his leg, till Virat said, "Okay, then..."
The way people said when they wanted to end a conversation.
Rahul suddenly felt a lot more defeated than when LSG lost the match an hour back. He felt confused, too, but more than anything, defeated.
"Yeah, bye," he said. "Good night."
Maybe Virat was just really, really tired to wait or talk.
Rahul was about to draw his knees to his chest and froze, pain flaring up and down his body.
Stupid leg.
He let it stay sprawled on the ground and contemplated.
Last time their teams met, a month ago for the first leg...Vamika had got fever, he remembered, and Virat hadn't waited after the match.
Vamika's fever was a special occasion, though...
And the time before the last, Eliminator last year...
That time Rahul had needed to be somewhere after the match urgently, and he didn't remember if he'd waited to talk to Virat. Likely he hadn't.
It was pretty long ago they'd waited for each other after their match, wasn't it?
Well.
Maybe it had stopped being their normal for a while now, and Rahul had been the one who hadn't noticed, who had still been living, mentally, through their normal a few years back.
The physio came rushing up to the boundary. He didn't look pleased at all.
"How long do you intend to push off the X-ray?"
"Sorry," said Rahul, who'd frankly forgotten about the X-ray. "I'm sorry, let's go."
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The reports were far from good.
The pain hadn't been that bad, surely, for him to undergo a surgery and stay away from cricket at least three months?
Three months.
At least.
The WCT final was in a month and a half.
The second WTC final he was going to miss, apparently...
After calling Athiya, Rahul was automatically about to press Virat's contact, but then, his finger faltered.
He opened up Rohit's instead. Rohit, who'd been continuously messaging him after the match ended, unlike Virat who had quite possibly forgotten there had been an injury at all.
Rohit picked up instantly and sounded anxious.
"What do the reports say?"
"Ligament tear. I can't play for a few months," said Rahul dully. "IPL...and the final in June..."
"Oh, god," said Rohit. "This sucks."
"It does, kind of."
"You need to stop doing this," chided Rohit. "Taking us to the finals and then getting injured before the final."
Rahul couldn't help a small laugh.
"Good thing the World Cup is late this year," said Rohit, as cheerfully as he could. "Be back with a bang before that, Rahuliya--"
Rahul's heart sank.
"--as Virat would say," said Rohit, oblivious. "What's he saying anyway? Has he cooled down from all the fighting?"
"I guess so."
Rahul wished he hadn't sounded so dull, because Rohit was the most perceptive of their seniors.
However, just this once, Rohit misinterpreted the tone.
"That's right, you don't have the energy to calm down idiots who can't stay calm in the face of the slightest provocation," he said sympathetically. "Do you need a surgery or anything...?"
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Afterwards, when Rahul's PR team had posted the update on Instagram that he was ruled out for months, stuck in the hospital, Rahul got calls from most of his family and friends, offering sympathy and well wishes.
The only close person who didn't call was Virat.
Rahul stared at his phone dimly the whole night. He couldn't sleep anyway with the pain in his leg, and there was this hollow sensation inside his stomach that made everything ten times worst.
IPL. WTC Final. World Cup. Virat.
Virat...
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And just like that, they'd left a tiny gap for Distance, that manipulative troublemaker, to crawl in.