"You tried to persuade me into writing your autobiography by making me think you were retiring," Rahul repeated, to grasp his head around the idea. "You faked a retirement."

"I didn't think it through," said Virat quickly. "I just said whatever came into my mind—"

"It's not funny," said Rahul in a deadly-quiet voice.

"That's cause it wasn't meant to be a joke."

"You just said it was a joke!"

"I mean—I said I'm going to retire, that part was the joke." Virat was still evidently saying 'whatever came into his mind.' "But me making up the joke to get you write my autobiography wasn't meant to be a joke."

Rahul's eyes narrowed to slits.

Virat scrambled out of bed and had managed to back away two steps before the storm broke out.

"AND THE JOKE PART WAS REAL FUNNY, WASN'T IT?"

Virat backed away a few more steps, till his foot hit the table. That gave him a bright (read: stupid) idea.

He held up a stray sachet that had escaped Rahul's notice earlier. "Milk powder?"

"Milk powder?" Rahul demanded. "You're offering me milk powder as apology?"

"That's what you and Ro do when either of you is upset," said Virat meekly.

"YOU ARE NOT RO."

Even under the circumstances, Virat felt a twinge of indignation. "Oh, so you guys have inside mollifying stuff now—?"

"SHUT. UP."

"Yes," said Virat hastily. "Yes, I did."

"NO, YOU DIDN'T!"

"Rahuliya, I'm sorry—"

"DON'T USE THAT NAME EVER AGAIN," shrieked Rahul, looking deranged. "YOU HAVE LOST ALL CLAIM TO THAT NAME!"

Now Virat was getting desperate. He could not lose claim to the name 'Rahuliya'—he'd rather lose claim to the person than the name—

Though some unseen force like sense stopped him from voicing that thought aloud.

"I'll write your biography if you'll forgive me," he tried to say.

"I DON'T NEED A BLOODY BIOGRAPHY AND SURELY EVEN YOU KNOW YOU DON'T DESERVE TO BE FORGIVEN."

Rahul leapt out of the bed, too—Virat backed away still more, and flattened his back against the wall—but Rahul's intention didn't seem to physically hit him, because he refused to spare Virat a single glance further and pulled open the door with a crash, stalked out, and pushed it closed with a louder crash.

Virat unstuck himself from the wall and rushed to reopen the door (without a crash).

"DO NOT FOLLOW ME," bellowed Rahul's voice beyond it.

Virat jumped ten feet into the air and actually felt scared to step out.

Maybe he'd go after fifteen minutes.

Yeah, that seemed a good idea. By that time, Rohit would've fed Rahul milk powder and calmed him down, and Virat could make an impressive entry to declaim a dramatic speech about how much he loved his 'first kiddo' and everything would be alright.

__________________

"What's all the shouting about?" Shreyas asked sleepily, opening his door and peering out.

"OUT OF MY WAY."

Shreyas woke up in a hurry and saw a red-faced Rahul taking huge steps down the corridor. If he looked closely, he could probably see the steam blowing out of his ears, too.

"Rahul, what—?"

The next instant, Shreyas was shoved 'out of the way' violently, and stumbled. By the time he'd straightened up, Rahul was stomping away from his room.

Shreyas took the very sensible call of not following him and persisting with the question of what had happened. Surely Rohit bhaiya or Virat bhaiya would deal would it.

He'd much rather go back to sleep.

That seemed infinitely the safer option.

__________________

The second unfortunate person to encounter a rampaging Rahul was Yashasvi, who had been attempting to sneak into Shubman's room to propose sneaking out of the hotel altogether, because even after the dinner outside, he felt at a loose end.

He caught sight of Rahul and gave a guilty start.

Then he did some quick thinking. Rahul bhai was really good at reading expressions, and always guessed when they were up to some mischief, so he'd better start acting right away.

He put on a jaunty expression as Rahul neared him. "Hi, Rahul bhai, what's up?"

There was no answer, though the stomping didn't stop.

"Rahul bhai!" Yashasvi raised his voice. "Did you hear, I asked—"

"WILL YOU BE QUIET FOR GOD'S SAKE!"

Yashasvi's jaw dropped.

Rahul bhai went off without another word of expression.

A terrified Yashasvi ran for Shubman's room to cower and stammer out, "Rahul bhai's so mad at us!"

"Why?" asked Shubman. "How? We didn't even do anything—yet."

"I—I—I—" Yashasvi could hardly get the words out, his teeth were clattering so much. "I don't know."

Shubman gave his head a comforting pat.

"I'm sure he's not mad at us. Don't worry—whatever made him mad—Virat bhai and Rohit bhai will sort it out."

__________________

Jassi, always used to sharing a room with the calmest guy in the Test squad—earlier, Jinks bhaiya, now, Rahul—wasn't at all accustomed to banging of doors and thunderous footsteps.

His surprise when Rahul came in doing both was part of the reason he tried to be funny (which was not a good idea).

"Are you trying to scare us all into performing better next match so you don't have to do all the batting and 'keeping single-handedly?"

Rahul looked up and met his eyes. Jassi—like Virat a few minutes ago, though he didn't know it—actually backed away.

"Sorry—" he began automatically.

"SORRY? SORRY? WHAT ARE YOU SORRY FOR?"

This uncharacteristic tone and the bloodshot eyes compelled Jassi to ask—stupidly, again—"You're not drunk, are you?"

"DRUNK? YOU WOULD ACCUSE ME OF BEING DRUNK WHEN THAT SCOUNDREL—THAT—THAT SCOUNDREL—" At that point, he went incoherent.

Jassi spoke up bravely, though all his instincts screamed at him to run for cover.

"Which scoundrel?"

Rahul groped around and found a brass box on the shelf. As it went flying past Jassi's head a moment later, Jassi decided it would have been better to run for cover.

__________________

Not long after, it struck Virat like a bolt of lightning that Rahul had said the hotel was out of milk powder. Rahul's room was out of it. Rohit's room would for sure be out of it, too.

Which meant Rohit didn't have the requisite means to calm down Rahul!

Virat gathered up all the sachets in his room and ran to Rohit's.

"Rohit—Rohit—"

A petrified gasp of Virat's woke Rohit from deep sleep in the blink of an eye.

"What happened, Vi?"

"Did you talk to Rahuliya?"

"No, what happened? Virat, what happened?"

"I can't tell you," blurted out Virat. "But please go and talk to him."

"What—?"

"And take these." Virat thrust a bundle of milk powder sachets into Rohit's hands and took flight.

__________________

Jassi could not express in mere words how glad he was when the door opened and he saw Rohit bhaiya's shoes stepping in amidst Rahul's frenzy of dismantling every decorative item of the hotel room and throwing them about. So far, none of them had hit Jassi, but that was hardly any comfort—he hadn't dared to emerge from underneath the bed for the past fifteen minutes.

"Rahul?"

"WHO IS IT?"

"Um, me, Rohit."

"WHOEVER IT IS, GO AWAY. AND TAKE JASSI WITH YOU."

"Where's Jassi?" asked Rohit.

"Here." Jassi called from his hiding spot. "Please take me with you, Rohit bhaiya."

Since Rahul had stopped hurling things for the time being, it must have appeared like a ludicrous situation to Rohit bhaiya.

His legs came closer to the bed and knelt down. Then Rohit bhaiya's face appeared, brows creased deeply. "What on earth are you doing there?"

"GET OUT, BOTH OF YOU."

Rohit motioned at Jassi to come out and turned to Rahul, asking in a very calm voice, "C'mon, Rahul, tell me what happened."

"YOU GO AND WRITE YOUR BEST FRIEND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY FOR HIM!"

Jassi, in the process of crawling out, hit his head against the bedstead. "Ow! Wait, Virat bhaiya's writing an autobiography?"

"NO, HE'S NOT. WILL YOU GET OUT OR DO YOU WANT SOMETHING MORE THROWN AT YOUR HEAD?"

That was too much for Jassi. He gave Rohit bhaiya an apologetic+grateful glance, turned tail and ran out of the room.

_________________

Rohit waited till Jassi was safely out of the way before reaching out to catch Rahul's shoulders with the simple, blameless intention of getting him to sit down.

That turned out to be impossible, because Rahul flailed and threw his hands off.

Rohit took it in his stride.

"What's this about Virat's autobiography? This is the first time I'm hearing about it..."

"The great Virat Kohli wants to write one on himself." Rahul, to Rohit's relief, had lowered his voice to a volume that was still loud, but no longer eardrum-shattering. "But literature, it turns out unfortunately, isn't his forte."

"Yeah." Rohit nodded. "A well-known fact."

"He wanted to make me write it."

"Which you, naturally, refused to do."

"Naturally," said Rahul. "What would you have done?"

"Refused."

"And he told me he's retiring after this series."

Rohit's heart stopped beating.

"Which was a lie—" Rahul said hastily, and Rohit's heart resumed beating. "—to manipulate me. He pretended to change his mind because he didn't want to hurt me and made me write the stupid foreword of the stupid autobiography."

"Wow," was all Rohit could say.

"See?"

"You're still lucky," said Rohit bracingly. "He faked the news of a terrorist attack on RCB's hotel to prank me once."

Rahul's eyes widened in horror. "He pulled it off well enough that you believed it?"

"Yeah."

Rahul appeared to be out of words just attempting to imagine the scenario.

"See," he said finally, full of venom. "See how he treats the people he loves. He doesn't deserve us at all."

Rohit wondered uneasily if his plan had misfired. He offered Rahul a milk powder sachet very casually—Rahul accepted—and tried to control the damage.

"No—no, Rahuliya—it's just his way of, er—"

"Showing his love?"

"No—just his way of getting the devilry out of his system. He's full of it, you know."

"Yes, I know," said Rahul grimly. "Someday—someday, I'll get him, and he'll regret this, you'll see."

"We'll get him together," said Rohit.

Rahul gave him the ghost of a grin.

"So, will you go and, um, tell Virat you forgive him?" asked Rohit.

The grin vanished off Rahul's face and was replaced with an expression more like baring teeth.

"AFTER ALL I TOLD YOU—YOU DARE TO—YOU DARE SUGGEST—"

"No, no!" said Rohit, desperately. "I didn't mean—"

"OUT!" screamed Rahul. "OUT!"

Rohit's courage gave way and he found himself following Jassi's running footsteps out of the room.

"IF ANYONE KNOCKS ON THIS DOOR TONIGHT, I WILL—I WILL—"

Before he could complete the terrible threat,Rohit called behind him in a small voice, "I'll make sure no onedoes!" and fled.