The rain tip tapped outside and its sound filled the quiet room. The only other sound was the sound of the keys as Zayan's long fingers swiftly moved across the keyboard of his laptop. 

It was nearly 12 AM at night and he was preparing an important case for the next morning's hearing. His laptop was open on his lap and his files and books spread across the bed.

In irritation he scratched his neck and blew out a long sigh. A small frown decorated his forehead as he stared at the document open on the laptop screen trying to figure out something. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

A shiver ran down his spine and his fingers were freezing. Rubbing his hands together to bring some warmth to them, he looked around the room as the cold spread its claws.

He got up and moved to the window from where the chill seemed to be coming from. Moving the curtains apart, he glared at the open window as cold air hit his face. 

Maya. 

He shook his head. He had no idea why she loved the winter cold and how she could enjoy it. He snapped the window shut and closed the curtains.

Running his cold fingers through his hair, he sighed looking around the bedroom.

He found Maya's shawl discarded on the foot of the bed. Grabbing it, he wrapped the colorful shawl around himself. 

God, how he hated the cold. 

It smelled like her, he thought as he caressed the soft material of the wooly shawl as it provided him warmth.

He sat back on the bed and turned to his laptop feeling a little eased.

*

So engrossed in his work, he hadn't noticed Maya stepping into the room until she placed a steaming cup of coffee on the bedside table. He looked up at her and stifling a yawn.

"Thanks." He smiled. How did she know that he needed this so much? 

He wrapped his fingers snuggly around the cup and stared at the steam drifting from it. Even its aroma was making his senses wide awake.

"Why are you wearing my shawl?" She questioned humourously. He looked odd with the colorful shawl.

"I was cold." He shrugged. "And why on earth would you leave the windows open?"

"I forgot." She said sheepishly, making him shake his head. "Do you want me to get you a sweater?"

"No this is comfortable." He said, unconsciously bringing the shawl closer to himself as its scent engulfed his entire being.

She nodded and grabbed her night cream from the bedside table.

"Do you mind the lights on?" He asked her, glancing at the wall clock striking 1 AM. He took a small sip as the warmth spread to his core and he sighed in contentment.

"No, I'm good." She assured him as she rubbed the cream on her hands. She was so used to sleeping with the lights on back from her medschool days that sometimes she wouldn't be able fall asleep in the darkness on normal nights.

Zayan nodded and turned back to his work. He absent mindedly sipped on the coffee she had gotten for him and scratched his head flipping through the books he had open in front of him. He had gotten stuck on an important point and he couldn't figure out the amendment that could be used there.

With a heavy sigh, he snapped the book shut and turned to the next one. His shoulder muscles were sore and there was a kink in his neck. Running a hand through his hair, he let out another sigh.

"What's wrong?" Maya questioned as he stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles.

She got up from her position and moved to his side. 

"Loosen up and relax." She told him as she placed her hands on his shoulders and massaged his knots.

Zayan closed his eyes as she massaged his shoulder muscles and the tension in them eased a little. In contentment, he leaned against her as a sigh escaped his lips.

The cogs were turning in his mind and he wasn't mentally present in the room. He had always been like that. If he'd get stuck at something there was nothing else for him till he got out of the situation.

All of a sudden, as an 'aha' moment, he exclaimed, "I can open the case from Section 48d." Maya glanced at him, surprised.

Quickly, rummaging through his files he wrote a few things and sighed. This time, it was a satisfied sigh. 

Maya shook her head in amusement and laid down on her side of the bed and snuggled into the quilt. The room was quiet except for the scratching of his pen on paper and the ticking of the clock on the wall. 

She took out a magazine she had been reading. She flipped its pages in boredom, absentmindedly staring at the advertisement splattered across the lengths of the pages.

She stifled a yawn and shifted her stare to Zayan. He looked so engrossed in his work. There was a small crease between his eyebrows with his eyes transfixed on his notes. He was biting his top lip as he wrote something. Every once in a while he would let out a small sigh, that she was audible only due to the silence. He was so engrossed in his work that he hadn't noticed her staring so keenly. 

His eyebrows creased as he flipped the pages of the documents in his hand. Slowly, the crease dissolved on his forehead and Maya didn't realize when sleep pulled her in and she slowly lost her senses as her eyes fluttered close, with him as the last image in her mind.

***

Zayan finally closed his laptop and placed it on the side table. He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 3:35 AM in the morning. He stretched his arms and yawned.

Dragging his feet out of the bed, he snapped the lights of the room shut. Only the lamp from Maya's bed side table illuminated the dark room now.

He glanced at Maya fast asleep. She had constricted herself into a cocoon. He glanced at the blanket pooled at her feet and shook his head. Wasn't she cold? Looking at her made him shudder in cold.

Grabbing the blanket from her feet, he covered her with it and tucked it under her from the sides. He closed the magazine she had been reading and put it on the side table.

After checking the alarms on his phone and he laid down on his side stifling a huge yawn with the back of his hand.

His mind was fully awake, still stuck in the case but his body was really tired. 

He closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn't come. Sighing he got up in a sitting position as the cold winter air nipped at his face. The soft glow coming from Maya's lamp was so irritating. He could never sleep without complete darkness and it was a wonder how Maya was able to manage that. They were opposites like that.

He glared at the lamp emitting yellow light. Too lazy and tired to get up and walk around the bed to turn it off, he leaned over Maya to turn the button off. She stirred in her sleep as his weight shifted on her. He quickly snapped the button shut and moved back to his side of the bed. 

In the darkness of the room, he glanced at Maya as she turned on her side and thankfully went back to sleep again.

It was such an irritating feeling with his eyes aching badly and his body screaming for sleep, but sleep wouldn't grace him with its presence. It wasn't the first time he was laying awake in the darkness of the night, when the rest of the world was asleep, so he was quite used to it.

He turned on his side and shivered from the cold. He snuggled in the blanket and rubbed his cold hands together to get some warmth in them.

As he listened to the 'tick tock' of the clock, out of nowhere a though occurred to him that Leya hated the noise of ticking in the dead silence of the night. She would take the batteries out before sleeping. A small smile grazed his lips before he gave up his jumbled thoughts and was finally lulled into a dark abyss of sleep.

***

"Zayan, I swear to God this is the last time I'm waking you up!" Maya said when his annoying alarm reverbrated through the room again, breaking the comforting silence. She chose not to walk over to the socket where the phone was being charged and switch the alarm off.

"Turn this off for Goodness sake!" He mumbled as the blaring sound of the morning alarm reached his sleeping ears. She ignored him and continued taking small sips of the chai  she had made for herself earlier in the morning. The alarm had stopped screaming for a few minutes.

Normally he was a morning person, but he had had only a few hours of sleep.

Maya glanced at the clock on the whole striking 7:45 and shook her head. He was so going to be late today. Abandoning her chai , she walked up to him and shook him awake.

His eyes snapped open when she told him that he had only an hour to go before his hearing. 

She stared at him a little amused as he literally jumped out of the bed and shoveled his feet in his slippers, running a hand through his hair as he took out his clothes for the day.

Maya went back to the open window and sipped the warm liquid from her teacup. 

She stared at the rain going pitter-patter on the balcony floor. The small pellets of rain hit the floor. It was as if she was transfixed in the magic of the rain. It was music to her ears. The other sounds of the world had been drowned out with rain and all she could hear was the tap tap of the rain with the occasional rustle of the leaves as a sudden gush of wind would come quickly and then disappear. A few leaves would fall following the gust of wind and a few birds chirped. 

The sky was a heavenly hue of blue, so beautiful that it would leave one mesmerized by its beauty. 

The tumultuous clouds were cottony white spread across the expanse of the limitless sky. The gray clouds were absent and she was so glad for that. The gray clouds made her mood gray and it felt as if the sky was crying.

Or maybe her perception of the rain just depended on her own mood. 

The rain had a very calming, soothing, serene effect on her today. Yet it was exciting at the same time. She closed her eyes and inhaled the sweet smell of the rain as it mixed with the soil. She wished she could record this scent of the rain just as a camera can freeze a moment in your memories for ever.

A distant horn or ambulance siren mixed with the soft music of the rain and whizzing of the trees along with a warm cup of tea was the best thing ever.

She closed her eyes as her mind drifted away from the present. She had changed so much over the past few months. These changes in her own personality bothered her so much. In the past she would see happiness in everything and now things felt depressing. 

Her eyes startled open and her mind snapped back to the present as she felt someone's presence behind her. 

She glanced over her shoulder to see Zayan buttoning up his crisp white dress shirt. His signature perfume whiffed through her nostrils and she blew out a small inaudible sigh.

He rubbed his hair with a towel and discarded it on the bed carelessly. He brushed his hair without glancing at the mirror. He glanced at Maya as a shudder of cold through the open window went through his spine. Why she had opened the window in this cold was beyond him. Her open hair was flying over her shoulders from the wind.

Grabbing her poncho from the bed he stepped forward and wrapped it over her shoulders making her glance back at him with a serene look. 

"You're going to catch a cold." He commented as the cold wind snipped at his warm face.

"I'm not cold." She shrugged, still tightening the poncho around her shoulders.

He brushed his warm fingers with her cheeks to prove his point. Her cheeks were cold and her nose was going red too.

He took the half full chai from her hand and took a sip making her look at him. She ignored the fact that he had drank the tea from the same place that she had been drinking. Normally, she would have shook her head thinking about hygiene and maybe even found it gross but this seemed oddly intimate.

"That's mine." She said a little shyly as a small blush spread on her neck.

"So?" He asked as he took another sip.

"I'll make you another cup." She said, crossing her arms across her chest.

"No, this is fine. Besides this tastes better." He said with a flirtatious wink.

"Yeah sure." She rolled her eyes, surprised at his attitude. He wasn't so talkative usually.

"And since when did you start drinking chai?" He questioned after swallowing the warm sugary liquid, remembering her strong dislike of tea. God, his sleep deprived brain needed this heavenly drink to wake up, he thought as he sipped it.

"I don't know." She shrugged, looking away from him. "I felt like it. Maybe its a habit I picked from you." She said in the same tone making him laugh. 

She had always been a coffee person drinking tea only in her exam season when she needed multiple cups to stay awake and a single cup of coffee wouldn't do. This was one of the few changes in her life over time. But maybe this change wasn't that bad, she thought with a small smile,

A few strands of his hair fell on his forehead and she felt an odd desire to brush it away. She glanced at his hair falling on his forehead and then shook her head at herself. Clearing her throat, she turned to look outside the window.

"Where's my phone?" Zayan asked, putting the empty cup of tea down to look for it.

"I put it on charging after you slept." She said shutting the windows close. The fog on the windows blocked the scene from outside. She pulled the curtains over the window making the room look a little dimmer without the natural light from outside.

"Thanks." He appreciated as he took the wire out of the fully charged phone and scrolled the screen with his index finger. It really did warm his heart to have someone looking after his needs so closely. And this wasn't even something big. It was just a gesture that showed her care for him. To someone else it might even come out as a little odd with him feeling giddy on such a small thing as this but for a person like him, these little things mattered much more. 

Maya glanced at the wet towel on the bed and grabbed it shaking her head. Men.

Zayan caught Maya's eye at the moment and smiled sheepishly reading her expressions.

She hung the towel to dry and turned towards the mirror gathering her hair into a loose bun on the top of her head and clipped them. Through the mirror she glanced at him shoving his laptop and other things in his bag.

"Come downstairs for breakfast, you're getting late." Maya reminded him, making him suppress his smile at her concern.

***

 "Zayan, beta, you're not leaving without breakfast." Mama was saying obstinately as he collected his files and placed them in his bag with the laptop. The commercials from the television filled the dining room like any other morning. The rich smell of the parathas drifted from the kitchen encompassing the entire apartment. It was a typical morning.

"I'm running late, Mama." He protested, as he fumbled with his tie trying to make the knot without the mirror.

"Open your mouth." She said as she brought a piece of the paratha and omelette to his mouth, making him frown and opening his mouth reluctantly. The older lady smiled seeing him chew the food. This was the least, she could do to redeem her absence in her children's life after her husband had passed away. She remembered with a sigh as she thought of how Areesha used to leave for work without having breakfast and not having her mother there to take care of her. 

Maya stepped forward and took his tie from his hand making him smile at her thankfully.

Having had years of practice at tying her brother's tie, she was very apt at it. She came to stand in front of him as his mother forced another huge bite in his mouth. 

She felt a little shy and overwhelmed standing so close to him in his careful scrutiny with her mother-in-law there as well. 

His rich intoxicating perfume mixed with his aftershave was overpowering her senses as she worked a little nervously to make the perfect knot of the thin black tie. She kept her concentration on the patterns engraved in the tie and avoided looking at his face as she carefully made the knot around his neck with her fingers only slightly brushing with his skin.

"I feel like a child going for an exam." He said through a mouthful with a small frown adorning his forehead with his mother feeding him and Maya tying the knot of his tie around his neck.

Maya smiled and helped him in his freshly ironed jet black coat. He closed the first button and straightened the coat. The sleeves of his white shirt were peeking out at the handcuffs of his coat. Grabbing his briefcase, he was ready to go and conquer the case. His mother whiffed a few duas over him and placed a small kiss on his forehead.

After Zayan had bid them goodbye, he glanced at the watch strapped to his wrist indicating that he was getting late. 

He grabbed his car keys from the key chain on the wall and Maya followed him to shut the door.

"Pray for me, please?" He requested as he opened the door of their apartment to leave.

Maya nodded with a bright smile. Today, he had the final hearing of a very important case he had been working over for months. She knew how passionate he was about his job. She had witnessed his dedication to his work and prayed for his success with all her heart.

"Drive safely, okay?" She told him before she shut the door. 

"Allah Hafiz." He mumbled.

"Fe Aman Allah." She whispered after he left and shut the door, its clicking sound masked by the morning's hustle bustle. (In Allah's protection)

Ya Allah, please bless him with success! 

A small dua escaped her lips before she even knew it.

***

Assalam o Alaikum people! Hope Ramazan is going good for those who are fasting! May Allah SWT accept all our good deeds and reward us according to His Glory and Majesty and forgive us for all our sins, big or small, that we committed knowingly or unknowingly. Ameen.

Updated exactly after a month because I haven't been writing much lately. So before anybody asks, I have no idea when I'll be able to come with the next chapter. 

Anyway, I was so excited to share this chapter with you guys. I love how the chapter turned out as they subtly progress in their relationship.

A fun fact: I wrote the rain scene some time ago when it was actually raining and now that I reread it for editing I could feel that rain. That's the power of words!

Do share all of yur favourite parts! I loved the feedback from the previous chapter. As I have progressed as a writer, I've realized that a single thoughtful comment from a reader is much more worth than the votes. The effort really pays off when anyone takes the time to put together their thoughts about the chapter and share it.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Do remember me in your prayers in this blessed month. I'm preparing for a very important exam so please do pray that I can prepare well for it.

Allah Hafiz! Stay Happy!