A/N: Set before Tam starts going out with Afia and is still 'terminally single'. For time-scaling, let's say after 'hiya love', but before the Vic burns down. This is my first time writing from Tamwar's perspective because I thought it'd be an interesting challenge, and because the Tamwar/Syed relationship has been one of my very favourite things about the past year. It turned out not to be that much of a challenge, it was just a lot of fun to write, but I guess you can be the judge of whether I pulled it off or not. Hope you enjoy!
These were the ways in which Tamwar's life wasn't worth living:
The social event of his week was being granted a pity drink in the dingy local by his brother.
Said brother's boyfriend had tagged along, which had somehow resulted in him being the tag-a-long, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a brothers' night out and Christian should be the third wheel in this set-up.
There were several girls staring over at them. Tamwar didn't know if they were looking at Syed or Christian, but they definitely weren't looking at him.
"My gay brother is better at picking up girls than I am," he said, dejectedly.
"No, see, they know I'm with Christian," Syed said, putting Christian's arm around his waist loosely. He apparently missed the fact that the girls' faces fell with disappointment. "So I'm not a threat."
Tamwar gave him a scathing look for the total missing of his own point. "And I am?" he asked, with a note of incredulity.
"Every man's a threat, Tamwar," Christian said, in a tone of voice that made Tamwar feel like he should go stand somewhere else. Or tell him to get a room, if Tamwar had been the sort of person to tell people to get rooms. Even if he had been that sort of person, he'd basically be telling Christian to get a room with his brother and that was eighteen different kinds of disgusting.
Syed elbowed Christian in the ribs. "Will you pack it in?" Syed said, but his voice was all high like it was when he was happy, so Christian took the chastisement for what even Tamwar could tell what it was- flirting. Tamwar, as he contemplated slipping away, doubting they'd even notice, wondered why he'd ever thought this was a good idea. Then he remembered that Syed had conveniently forgotten to mention the minor detail that Christian would be joining them and it suddenly made sense. Tamwar wondered if the slip had truly been deliberate and he was trying to get the two of them to bond, because if that had been the plan, it was failing miserably, or if it had been a last-minute decision as he decided he simply couldn't bear the very idea of detaching himself from Christian for a single night.
He'd missed part of the conversation, but he did notice the way Christian was leaning way too close to Syed and practically sharing his oxygen. "I just find it amusing that you're giving your brother tips on how to pick people up with some of the lines you've tried on me is all."
"Do you really want a who's said the cheesiest lines to who competition? Because, trust me, I won't 'win'."
"Let's call it a tie," Christian whispered, and Syed smiled up at him like he'd just discovered the cure for cancer or something. Sometimes Tamwar looked at Christian hard and tried to see what exactly it was that Syed found so amazingly wonderful about him that he was worth being shunned by family and community alike to be with. Christian was good-looking, which was apparent to anyone with eyes, and he didn't seem like bad guy, but beyond that? Tamwar really didn't get it. Considering Tamwar had spent most of his life thinking that his brother's type was Amira, it wasn't surprising that he found the shift from that to Christian incomprehensible. It wasn't just that, though. Christian and Syed seemed so unsuited. If personalities were a scale, Christian and Syed were on opposite ends of it. He knew opposites were supposed to attract and all that but, still. Tonight was the perfect example. Syed was happy, but he was calm, almost peaceful, while Christian was happy and he could barely stand still, constantly chattering on, practically hopping on the spot with excess energy. It was kind of irritating, if Tamwar was being totally honest, which he wouldn't be, because calling people irritating was rude, even when they were as he and his desecrated Pokémon cards had learnt the hard way when he'd informed Auntie Bushra of the fact several years ago.
Tamwar watched them moon at each other for a couple of more moments before he rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, okay, when you're done with... that, can you help me?"
Syed's head snapped towards his brother as if he'd forgotten he was there. He probably had. "Tam, you've got to stop treating girls like they're a foreign species, okay? Seriously, there's nothing that turns someone off more than practically screaming 'I don't know how to talk to you'."
"Except when talking's unnecessary..." Christian added, most helpfully.
"Shut up," Syed hissed.
"Are you ever actually going to get around to giving the poor lad some advice, Sy, or are you going to leave it to me?" Christian asked, stretching out and cracking his fingers. Tamwar felt his heart fill with dread and felt his fight or flight response kick in. He definitely wasn't going to fight.
"Well, if you'd shut your mouth for three seconds, then I would. And I'd sooner let you give Tamwar pick-up advice as I would let him get in with a cage of tigers." And with that sentence, Syed proved that while he was clearly more than a bit mental to have fallen in love with Christian Clarke, he hadn't completely taken leave of all of his senses.
"What?" Christian asked, mock innocence coming out of every pore. "I think I did all right for myself." And then proceeded to give Syed a look up and down that Tamwar was striking from his memory forever. He had a feeling he'd be talking about tonight with a therapist some day.
"Yeah, I don't think Tamwar wants to wait another twenty years, thanks, Christian."
"Well, practice makes perfect and all that," Christian said in the tone of voice that made Tamwar want to crawl into a cave and never talk to anyone ever again.
"Seriously?" Tamwar burst out. "You're actually... you know, I think I'd rather die a virgin than continue watching you..."
"What?" Syed asked, looking genuinely bemused. That was when Tamwar realised this was what they were like all the time, and Syed had just acclimatised to it so much that he didn't even really realise what they were like. They were the worst type of loved-up couple- the sort that were so nauseatingly loved-up they didn't even realise that they were.
Syed made a show of looking around, as he realised what Tamwar problem was. "Is Roxy not here somewhere?" he asked. "Oh, there she is. And is that vodka in her hand?"
"Are you encouraging me to drink?" Christian asked, his tone a mixture of confusion and a kid allowed to bunk off school.
"Yes, yes, I am. If it'll stop you trying to traumatise and/or corrupt my little brother."
"Anything to keep him out of the dressing-up box, eh?" Christian threw over his shoulder as he practically ran toward the other side of the bar, with an almost ridiculously camp wave. "See ya."
"I can't believe you told him about that," Tamwar said accusingly.
"What?" Syed asked, his expression all wide eyes and innocence in a way that was uncomfortably familiar. "You're supposed to tell your boyfriend everything."
"That'd work better if you also hadn't told a bunch of randoms at my birthday party last year. And you probably told him before he was your... you know." He wasn't being a bad brother by being unable to say the word 'boyfriend'. At least he hoped not. It was just weird. He'd thought for so long that Syed was straight, and now he had a boyfriend and, okay, it'd been months now. He should've adjusted or whatever, but he just couldn't, quite, not completely. He'd accepted that Syed had a boyfriend and that boyfriend was Christian and none of that was a problem, but that was different from being able to say it out loud. It was one of those things that were perfectly acceptable in his head, but when spoken aloud, they took on a different meaning, somehow.
Syed, thankfully, didn't seem the slightest bit fazed by his inability to say the b-word. Tamwar still felt bad about it, though, especially since Syed probably was a bit stung by the obvious omission, but he was better at hiding his feelings than most people. Syed threw his hands up in admission of guilt. "Okay, you've got me. Anyway, flirting. It's an art. Or a science. Actually, I think a science is more accurate. It's like a formula."
"Mix a few more metaphors there, Syed," he replied.
"Anyway, it doesn't matter. What I'm trying to say is it's all predictable, or it can be. You follow a set of rules, and..." he said, clapping his hands together loudly, making Tamwar jump. He heard a couple of girls behind him giggle. Sexy and suave, that was Tamwar Masood all over. "Number one, confidence. This is where you fall down, Tam. You just assume girls are gonna reject you..."
"That may be because they always do..." he chimed in.
"...because you have this... defeatist attitude, Tambo. They don't reject you because you're not worth their time, they reject you because you think you're not worth their time, okay? Girls hate lack of confidence."
"And blokes too, going by your choice in... Christian."
"See? It's true. You think Christian ever had a problem with this sort of thing?"
He'd rather not think about Christian pulling or whatever at all, but, thanks for the mental image, Syed. "Well, yeah, but it helps that he's... you know." He mimicked huge biceps and looked around to make sure no-one was looking.
Syed grinned broadly at his Christian impression. "Hey, look, Tam, I'm a weed. I always did okay, because I told girls what I thought they wanted to hear, but I had nothing invested in them, not really, so I wasn't concerned being rejected by them. With Christian, I was rubbish. Seriously. The thing is, you get nervous, tongue-tied, around people you really like or you think you could maybe really like one day. Everyone does, it's not like you're alone."
"I really don't need to hear about your attraction to Christian..." he murmured.
"That's not what it's about, Tam," Syed assured him. "I just mean, I know what you're going through. Look, imagine what it was like for me, okay, going after him, with everything else that entailed? Put your situation in perspective, Tambo. Anyway, you know the first thing I said to Christian?"
"Do I want to know?" Because he had a feeling he really, really didn't.
"He said his name was Christian," Syed said. "So, naturally, my response was 'Muslim'."
Tamwar found himself staring open-mouthed at the brother whose smoothness he'd always envied and admired in equal measure. Even though he knew now that that Syed had been about as real as his mum was around Bushra, he still couldn't quite shake off the image that had been branded onto his brain since childhood. He was the socially awkward one who made bad jokes, while Syed had been the one with the looks who had always had just exactly the right thing to say and everyone, especially those of the double X chromosome variety, had always liked him. Things were different now, but it was hard to shake off almost two decades of a relationship dynamic. "You didn't."
"Oh, I did. Ask Dad." He paused, and made a face that was some mixture of emotions that Tamwar didn't have the time to identify before his face was relaxed again. "Okay, on second thought, don't. But I did. Then I complimented him on his handshake, and he thought I was being homophobic."
He stared at Syed for a moment trying to figure out how the hell complimenting someone's handshake- and who complimented someone's handshake anyway?- was homophobic. "...okay..."
"But I'm just saying, it's not easy for anyone. Just because you think I'm... whatever... it was only easy for me with girls because I never cared what they thought of me, really, and there weren't any nerves because of that."
"So you're trying to say I should make out I don't care about girls?" he asked after a moment of blinking hard and pushing his glasses back up his nose.
"No! No. Of course not. I'm just saying... you can't let the doubt, the nerves, that lack of self-confidence take over. Just think, hey, screw the consequences, I'm going for this. If you don't do it sometimes, you'll never be happy."
"Okay," Tamwar said, because he was pretty sure that was Syed's thought process before things started with Christian and while it had worked out for the pair of them eventually, he wasn't sure following their example was exactly good advice.
"Never start with a compliment. You'd think, but no. It just transmits this 'I am flirting with you' message from the off."
"You don't want the person you're flirting with to know you're flirting with them? That... makes sense."
"Exactly! It just makes you seem desperate. Just act all casual, make small talk, you know? And don't go on about all your clever stuff. Odds are, they won't know what you're going on about, and no-one likes being made to feel dumb. That said, when you're talking, drop the odd long word in here and there. People like clever, they just don't like clever-and-showing-off-about-it."
"Right," Tamwar said, because that was what people said when someone else was talking too fast and lobbing information at you without giving it a chance to sink in.
"If it's going okay... and you'll know, because she'll be making direct eye contact, and not, you know, blinking out 'Help Me' in Morse Code..."
"I don't think you can really bli..." Tamwar tried to cut in, to stop the ramble.
"Speaking of, don't correct them, ever, okay? Just let them say Frankenstein when they mean the monster. You're back to the showing off thing," he said. "And, oh, make sure you do compliment them. Just not right at the start. Make sure it's going okay first, though. And, anyway, what I'm saying is if it's going okay, just ask for... maybe a date's too much, but a number? Texting is good. Texting gives you time to think, instead of blurting out the sort of random crap that comes into your head when you're nervous."
He said a final "OK" to give the impression he was listening.
"And don't try to be funny," Syed warned starkly, before he realised that was probably insulting. "I mean, do... one of the things I love about... what I'm saying is a sense of humour is attractive, you know? But... some sense of humours are an acquired taste, let's say. I mean, I think you're funny, but I've known you for twenty years. A stranger might not get it. So just save it for the third date or something, okay?"
"I thought you lot weren't supposed to go for pre-marital sex," Christian said jovially, suddenly there.
Syed rolled his eyes. "I was talking about jokes."
"If Sy's anything to go by, the Masood sense of humour is a bottomless well that never fills," Christian said, speaking directly to Tamwar for what seemed like the first time all night. "You did that stand-up thing with my sister, though, right? I bet that was... interesting. She's... uh, 'hilarious'. You know, growing up, I always introduced her as 'Lesley, comedienne'."
Tamwar was kind of stunned that Christian remembered that, and bizarrely touched, though he probably remembered it for Jane over himself. "Lesley?"
"Lesley's her real name. Well, she changed it officially, I think, so Jane is her real name, now. But Lesley was her birth name."
"And what was yours? Did you change it for irony reasons?" Syed asked.
"Actually, my original name was Chastity. I changed it to lessen the irony."
"Roxy not keeping you entertained?" Syed said curtly.
"Nah, all she does is whinge about being back in the working-class gutter with the rest of us mere mortals. You're much more interesting."
"Get off," Syed replied, playfully pushing the arm coming towards him away.
"Maybe later." He whispered it, but had clearly learnt to whisper in the middle of a hurricane, and Tamwar heard it perfectly. And, yeah, it was official, he wanted to die. He wondered if he'd somehow managed to acquire an invisibility cloak without noticing.
"At this rate, you'll be lucky if you're not sleeping on the couch. No, floor. The couch is far too comfortable considering how uncomfortable you're making Tamwar."
"Am I making you uncomfortable?" he asked Tamwar.
There was a moment of silence, because what did you say when the person who was making you uncomfortable asked if they were making you uncomfortable?
"Well, he's hardly going to say 'yes', is he?" Syed asked.
"Why not?"
Syed sighed in a voice that Tamwar well recognised from his childhood as his how-can-you-be-this-dense tone. Sometimes, Syed and their mum weren't all that different. "Because you are making him uncomfortable!"
"He'd just tell me," Christian said, rolling his eyes. "It's not like he's going to hurt my precious little feelings."
"Christian, people in general make him uncomfortable. You... it was like you were specifically designed with embarrassing Tamwar in mind."
"Hey, you know what makes me really uncomfortable? People talking about me like I'm not here." Okay, so he didn't actually say that out loud, but he was tempted to as Christian and Syed continued to have an argument about whether or not he was feeling awkward. Instead of talking to him directly, because they were both mind readers, apparently. He had a sudden urge to escape to the toilet. He doubted they'd even notice he was gone.
He was wrong. Not two minutes later, Syed was watching as Tamwar awkwardly washed his hands in a pretence of having had an urgent need to relieve himself without announcing it. "Hey, Tam. Sorry about Christian. He's just..." he paused, pinching the bridge of his nose, as he sighed, "trying to be funny. And he says my sense of humour is bad."
"Look, it's fine," Tamwar replied, tightly. It was fine, really. It made him uncomfortable, sure, but it wasn't like it was the end of the world or anything.
"Christian's uncomfortable. This is just what he does when he's uncomfortable. You know how most people just blush and go silent when they don't know what to do in a social situation? Yeah, that'd be too harmless or something for him. He just overcompensates for feeling inadequate when he doesn't quite know how to act around people. He doesn't know people like you, really. I mean, except me, I'm probably more like you than any of the people he's used to hanging around with. And he can say whatever he wants to me. I think he's sort of trying to help by joking around about us being a couple, you know? Like, playfully disarm you... oh, I don't know. The way Christian's brain works sometimes is beyond me. And I mean, being like that around you is the worst possible thing to do with someone like you, but..."
Syed got an odd look on his face that made Tamwar frown. "What?"
"Just warning you I'm going to say something that's going to have to reaching for the toilet bowl. Lucky you picked this venue," Syed said, grinning as he glanced around their less-than-pleasant surroundings.
"Thanks."
"I care about..." He stopped, shaking his head. "I love him so much, and now... I'm free. After a year of hiding away and pretending and acting, I'm allowed to show it. And I guess Christian feels the same, too. Probably more than me, because he always wanted to be able to and it's the way he is, too, y'know? So him... he just doesn't want to hide any of us away, anymore, you know? And neither do I."
Tamwar felt a stab of guilt at his discomfort. Being able to be so open with Christian was making his brother happy and here he was pissing all over it? He'd been the one to tell Syed to embrace this element of Christian in the first place. "Syed, it's not... I'm not asking you to hide anything. It's just weird for me, okay?"
"I know. And... I'm just taking this amazing thing you're doing for me and taking a mile when it's only comfortable at an inch. I know how difficult it must be for you with Mum and Dad and..."
"I just want you to be happy," Tamwar blurted out. And he did, he really did. Syed deserved it, after everything. He wished Syed could be happy at home, and Tamwar didn't have to deal with everything on his own, but he knew that could never happen. If Syed had been at home, he couldn't have been happy. Tamwar could have him at home or he could have him happy, and he knew what he'd rather have. "Whatever that means, I'll do it." He meant because happiness is in short supply in our family, but he thought that it'd be mean to mention that. He didn't blame Syed for his parents' unhappiness, but he knew Syed would blame himself, and there was quite enough blame heaped on him by their mum and dad without him piling it on without even meaning to.
"I want you to be happy, too. This was supposed to be about you and me, I know... I just brought Christian because..."
"The invisible rope tying you together would snap?" Tamwar retorted.
"Hilarious," Syed said with good-natured sourness. "No. It's just, you're... you're, well, the two of you are pretty much the only two people in my life now, and I want you to get along."
"Do you and Roxy get along?" Tamwar asked.
Tamwar saw Syed's face blanch. "...totally. She's, like, my best friend."
"And you just threw up in your mouth a little bit."
"Okay, I'll grant you that. It's not the same. Roxy's... you know..." he trailed off searching for the appropriate words, "not my sort of person."
"And Christian is?" Tamwar asked, baffled. Roxy and Christian seemed like flip sides of the same coin to him, while Christian and Syed were entirely different currencies.
"I know he seems... I know what he's like, okay? But he's a good person, Tam. Do you really think I'd have done everything I did to be with him if he wasn't?"
"Of course not," Tamwar said, and then shrugged. "Though maybe you're just an appalling judge of character."
"That's probably true," he said. "I just get to see him all the time, you know? I know what he's really like underneath everything everyone else gets to see. So the other stuff... I'm just used to it, I barely even notice. It's like that when you find that person you want to be with. It's... it's not like their flaws disappear, and sometimes they drive you mad, but it's what makes them them, you know, and you wouldn't have them any other way."
Tamwar nodded. "I know. I get that. You know, I still love Mum and Dad, despite... you know, everything. I know it's not the same..."
"Me too, Tam," Syed said, cutting off Tamwar's attempts to qualify his statement.
"They do miss you, y'know. It'd kill them to admit it, but I can tell," Tamwar said. "Especially Mum." It was funny, growing up, Tamwar had always envied how close his mum and Syed had been. She hadn't loved him more, exactly, just differently, but Tamwar had resented it all the same. Now, all their closeness caused them both was more pain, and it was certainly hard to be jealous of something that caused nothing but pain.
"Not as much as I miss them," Syed told him.
"Well," Tamwar said, after an awkward silence which he supposed should be filled with a hug of brotherly reassurance or something, but he didn't feel quite right hugging his brother in the grotty Vic men's toilets, "Christian'll probably think there's something up with the Masood bladder as well as our sense of humour if we don't get back out there."
As they returned to the bar and Christian's whole face lit up as if Syed had just returned from a three-year tour of a war-torn country, not a ten-minute sojourn to the toilet, Tamwar realised that, when it came down to it, he didn't want tips on how to pick up girls. He didn't want textbook. He didn't want a list of rules and regulations and ways to react. He didn't want to play a part. He just wanted to find someone and fall in love. No games, no subtle deceptions, no three-second delay to make sure whatever he was about to say wasn't too nerdy or inappropriate. When it came down to it, all he wanted was someone to look at him the way Christian and Syed looked at each other.