heat seeking disapproval | parvati

[Deleted]

parvati patil macmillan

he wouldn't be beaten. he wouldn't admit that he missed his own apartment. well at least not too much. they'd been staying in shreya's apartment for the last few days. in the middle of everything they were trying to figure out whether they moved into his apartment, into hers or cut their losses and moved into something that was their own. there had been a lot of teasing coming from shreya about how spoiled he was and he couldn't deny it. there had been a visible noise of horror that had left his mouth when she'd pulled the bed down from her wall, the biggest grin on her face as she'd pushed him down onto it and the rest had been history. he had to admit that it wasn't the worst thing he'd slept on but it wasn't his own bed. that would always win out in a battle of the beds but he wasn't going to cry uncle before she said he'd suffered enough. her words, not his.

he was sprawled across that bed currently, waiting for her to return home after a late shift. he tapped his fingers against his chest as he glanced at his watch. it did amaze him a little how quickly they'd settled into something of a normal. they both worked and sometimes they both worked long hard hours so there were times they hadn't seen each other. not that they'd been married very long but it did surprise him how much he missed being around her when she wasn't there. probably because when they were together it was a mess of sharp words, quips and incredibly fun banter. he heard a noise at her door and he raised a brow a little before he pushed himself off the bed. he tried really hard not to think that if he'd been in his own apartment he wouldn't have been able to hear what was going on at his door, but the thought slipped in as he crossed the room to it.

the thought that it wasn't shreya at the door didn't cross his mind, and it probably should have. he just assumed that it was his wife on the other side of the door and he reached down to open the door, pulling it open. "did you forget your key?" he asked as the door opened to reveal, not who he was expecting. he tensed a little, his hand tightening it's grip on the door a little as he felt his guard go up. "parvati." he said, probably a little too simply as he stood there looking at his mother in law. "i thought you were shreya."

[parvati patil macmillan]

Spring 2026

Between the chaos of all of their schedules and the fact that her children were adults, Parvati didn't often drop by Sav's and Shreya's respective flats unannounced. She had had to run some errands, however, and had decided to stop by Shreya's with some additional groceries because she figured that it would make her daughter's life a little bit easier. She Apparated to near where Shreya lived, walking the rest of the distance to her door. Once she got there, assuming that Shreya was still at work at St. Mungo's, she set down the sack of groceries in order to get out her key to the door.

Parvati could hear movement coming from the other side of the door and paused as she heard the door open and was met by none other than Raleigh at the door. He must have assumed that she was Shreya at first, because he had asked her if she had forgotten her key. She hadn't, but that was beside the point; both of them seemed to realize who the other was at about the same time, though Parvati was left with more questions than answers.

"Parvati…" Raleigh's shock was apparent as he addressed her. "I thought you were Shreya."

She wasn't Shreya, nor did she know what Raleigh was doing at Shreya's. While it was possible that Shreya had gotten back from work early and had stepped out for some reason or another after that, that didn't seem to be the case. Raleigh seemed far more comfortable there than Parvati would have expected him to be.

"No…" Parvati replied, hoping that there was a reasonable explanation for why Raleigh had opened Shreya's door without her being there. "I can't say I'm Shreya." She knew that there was no mistaking her for Shreya other than after a moment or two; she had a few decades on her daughter, and they weren't so similar in appearance that they would have gotten mixed up in the way that she and Padma might have been.

@raleigh

[Deleted]

parvati patil macmillan

it felt like they'd been standing there, staring at each other for a lot longer than would be considered normal. it was almost like they were sizing each other up, both trying to work out what the other was doing there and failing in coming up with the reason as to why. he loosened his grip on the door he was standing next to and he dropped his hand to his side, hoping the light didn't glint off the wedding ring that now sat on his finger. he wasn't sure if shreya wanted parvarti to find out about the marriage any time soon and he didn't really want to overstep that mark. he'd seen shreya angry and while he didn't scare easy, it wasn't a bear he wanted to poke.

"no, i don't think you can." he said as he almost rocked back on his heels but thought the better of it. he was trying to remember the last conversation he'd actually had with parvarti but his mind kept coming up blank. at least for anything recent. his mind kept jumping back to just after his parents had died when he'd told her in no uncertain terms that she really wasn't anything to him. and thinking on that, he couldn't help but notice that he'd certainly changed that in the last few weeks. she was now his mother in law, even if she didn't know that. "she's due home soon .. but if you don't want to wait i'll tell her you dropped in?" that was a half decent way to give her an excuse to leave right? before she could notice anything different.

[parvati patil macmillan]

Spring 2026

The awkwardness of having run into Raleigh at Shreya's was only exacerbated by how comfortable Raleigh seemed in being there. It wasn't as though the two of them didn't know each other; they did, but Parvati hadn't thought that they were close enough with one another to hold much of a conversation. And then there was whatever this was, with Raleigh's awkward agreement that she was not her daughter. (She was glad that was cleared up…) "She's due home soon," he added, as though his knowledge of her schedule was helping his case much. "But if you don't want to wait," he added, "I'll tell her you dropped in?"

Parvati couldn't mask her bewilderment in her reply, nor did she try. "Oh, well… That's… wonderful that you're taking messages for her now, Raleigh," she told him. The way that Raleigh seemed guilty about something just didn't sit right with her. She hoped that her beating around the bush and the obvious question of why Raleigh was there at all hadn't somehow evaded him. The sack of groceries at her feet that needed to be put away, though, prompted her to be slightly less subtle than she had been. "And that Shreya's been, er, hosting houseguests… whilst she's at work…" That was completely normal and not at all leaving her with far more questions than answers.

@raleigh