It was ages and ages since Virat and Jaddu had spent a peaceful (*cough*) evening together, the last one was during the Adelaide Test in mid-December, then Virat took his paternity leave and then Jaddu was out for the first two Tests vs England and finally, a couple of days before the third Test, they were sitting cross legged on the couch in Virat's room, leaning against each and each trying to push the other off. And they were trying to figure out whose fault it was that they were sitting together like this after so long.

"You left for Viratee's birth," accused Jaddu.

"It's Vamika," said Virat with dignity. "Kindly try to remember that. And you got yourself injured."

"Yes, so I had to leave. You didn't have to leave," said Jaddu, with the air of making a very killing argument. "You left by choice."

"But you were the one who got injured because you played the stupid shot to the bouncer. Me, however—" Virat paused as he realized what a perfect opening he had given Jaddu and hoping he hadn't caught on to it.

But obviously Jaddu had.

"I'm inclined to think you had a hand in Vami—Viratee's birth, yourself." Wicked grin.

"Vamika." Annoyed scowl.

"Viratee." Wider wicked grin.

Jaddu's phone chimed.

"What the hell is that at this time of night?" Virat demanded (it was 2:59 am).

"Ah," said Jaddu with much satisfaction. "It's my Nickelodeon notifying me that my show's about to start."

"Your show—" said Virat, nonplussed, peering over Jaddu's arm to look into his phone.

"Ninja Hattori," said Jaddu.

Virat, who wasn't aware of Hattori's existence, asked doubtfully, "You sure you got the name right?"

"Virat. I've been a big fan of Hattori's for five weeks."

Virat mentally calculated that five weeks was around the same duration Jaddu had spent in the hospital and in rehab.

"Ok," he said smoothly. "Let's watch it, then."

***

At 5 in the morning, Rohit woke up to tremendous roars of laughter somewhere to the south of his room. Imagine how loud the roars must have been that they managed to wake up even Mr. Sharma, but there you were.

An irritated Rohit covered his head with his pillow and turned over.

"AHAHAHAHAHA."

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

"DID YOU SEE THAT VIRAT!"

He knew it was be Jaddu and Virat, thought Rohit, scowling, and pressing the pillow against his ears harder.

"AHAHAHAHAHA."

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

"OHOHOHOHOHO."

"OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO."

"OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO."

"OH GOD, JAD! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

A miserable 10 minutes later, Rohit threw off the pillow and the blanket and dragged himself out of bed and stormed down the corridor to the source of the din—obviously Virat's room.

"WHY ARE YOU TWO SO ANNOYING?"

Virat and Jaddu jumped out of their skins and looked around in alarm to find a sleepy figure glaring at them.

"Um, Ro..."

"It's four in the morning! I was sleeping! Everyone was sleeping, in fact!"

"How come we woke only you up?" wondered Virat.

"Maybe he's destined to sit down with us on this overloaded couch and watch Ninja Hattori with us in the early hours of today," speculated Jaddu philosophically.

"Wh-wha—" Rohit was cut off by an enormous yawn.

Now it turned out that in the episode Virat and Jaddu had been watching right then, everyone had been killing themselves to obtain a photo of Hattori without his hood, so they could blackmail him later.

So, as a confused, sleepy and angry Rohit stood half-yawning, half-glaring in the dim light of the corridor—looking quite remarkably weird—both the intelligent boys (self-proclaimed) made a lunge for Jaddu's phone. Jaddu being Jaddu reached it first, and swiftly snapped a picture.

The sudden flash broke Rohit out of his stupor.

"What was that?" he asked.

"A nice addition to our weirdo gallery," said Jaddu innocently, as Virat, checking out the picture Jaddu had managed to capture, dissolved into helpless laughter.

It was truly the weirdest photo you might have seen in your lifetime, the weirdest and the most embarrassing and—

"Did you take a picture?" said Rohit grumpily. "Show me..."

Virat's laughter showed no signs of dying in the near future as Jaddu obliged, and held up the phone at Rohit's face, whose jaw dropped in horror.

—the kind of photo that would kill you if it was made public.

"Dele—" Rohit lunged for the phone, preparing for a life-and-death struggle. Almost to his suspicion, he managed to snatch away the phone at his very first attempt.

Triumphant to have got the better of Jaddu for once, he carefully deleted the picture from the gallery.

"Jaddu," protested Virat, though he was still howling.

"My gallery is synced with my Google account," said Jaddu, settling down on the couch again, looking very peaceful indeed.

Rohit scrolled down the phone and found the Google photos folder. Thankfully it wasn't password protected.

So he deleted it from the Google account, and his triumph, which had deflated a little, returned. "Thanks for telling me that," he beamed.

"I already sent the photo to a couple of chats via WhatsApp," said Jaddu, totally unperturbed.

"Why are you being a—" Virat reached out suddenly to claim back the phone from Rohit's hands, but Rohit batted his hand away. "—moron?"

Jaddu raised a palm at Virat the way priests did to their ardent followers, the kind that conveyed, Don't worry, bhakt.

Rohit opened Jaddu's WhatsApp.

"It's password protected?" Virat asked.

"Yes," said Jaddu, stretching comfortably.

"Too bad I already know your password," shot back Rohit. "It's sanjumanju."

"Oh yes, I knew that too," said Virat. He turned to Jaddu, who looked a little stumped now.

The awful photo had been sent to two chats—on to Virat and one to their group—though when Jaddu had managed to send it, neither Rohit nor Virat knew.

Delete for everyone.

"There," said Rohit. Then he checked Jaddu's Instagram and Snapchat and everything else to see he hadn't sent it elsewhere. It turned out that he had sent it to Shikhar on Instagram, too—was he super human?

"You barely had half a second before I took your phone away," grumbled Rohit. "Are you even human?"

"Take that as a compliment," drawled Jaddu.

"Whatever," said Rohit. He examined the photo for fifteen more minutes. "I've eradicated the picture from everywhere, and you two managed to spoil my sleep completely."

"You're getting overconfident," Virat told Jaddu disapprovingly as Rohit tossed back the phone and stomped off to return to his beloved sleep. "Even that half asleep idiot managed to outwit you."

Jaddu raised an eyebrow.

"You can't seriously think that, Vi." He grinned. "Can you?"