Christian doesn't do love, remember?

Inspired by Chryed and 10 CC's 'I'm not in love'

All Characters belong to EE and the BBC

I'm not in love. No matter what Jane thinks. Just because I didn't throw my newest pull out of my bed after the first night with him like I used to do with every other bloke in my life.

Love. Pah. How could I even consider loving someone like him; someone who puts everything else, and I mean everything, before his own well-being. Someone who hasn't got the guts to stand up and tell this woman where to stick her ridiculous wedding plans.

Well, he brought that one up on himself all by himself. After that night... that one, wonderful, awesome night. Granted, there was a certain buzz when I saw him coming into the caf the next morning. The buzz went out the window when he smiled and said "suppose there's not much to tell, is there".

I was honest when I promised him not to tell anyone, not now anyway. I'm smart enough to know that Zainab's not going to accept her son's sexuality, not now, not ever. Still, him telling me all the beautiful things we did meant nothing... it just shows how much of a mess that boy is; and how in the world am I supposed to love someone like that. I've had enough complicated flings in the past, and I don't need any more of that drama.

Maybe. Maybe there's a bit of a crush on him. A warm feeling in my stomach whenever I see his name popping up on my phone screen. My mind going blank when he smiles his lopsided 'I mustn't laugh' smile after one of my terrible jokes down the Unit. The sight of him on my doorstep, uncertain but eager to come in and make my afternoon, evening or night.

I've had crushes in the past, crushes that lasted an eternity and crushes that were over in the blink of an eye, and I wouldn't be me if I had ever refused to act on any of those crushes. With Syed it may be a bit more complicated but whenever he's lying between my sheets I know it's worth every stomach pain, every stupid stuttering, every heart ache at realizing he's gone in the morning.

Still. Just a crush, definitively not love. We are nothing more than good friends; well, good friends with nice benefits, but still, just good friends. Just because his name is the top male one on my calling list of the last few weeks... I like him, so I just like to see him, don't I? And we work together, and I certainly need him as a buffer between me and his mother. So calling him five to ten times a day seems pretty normal. I've had lesser contact with guys I really fell for.

And just because I recently started to look at his pic whenever I'm bored... I took it with my phone that day we met for a 'business meeting' in a caf somewhere in town and 'forgot' to delete it later. It's not even a naughty pic, just him looking at me from across the table with his 'stop this already' look that failed to convince even him.

He is, by far, the most beautiful thing that ever walked the earth, and I can certainly see why Amira thinks he's her lucky pull. He is.

I've always had a thing for darker guys, be it their hair, their skin, or their soul. Syed certainly has all three attributes. Dark locks and eyes, beautiful bronze skin which I'm jealous to the moon about, and a soul that has more layers than one single person can possibly have, going from lightness to darkness within the minute.

Lightness shows the most when he laughs, or just smiles, really. He can be just as silly as me; his joke about wanting to become a painter all his life took me by surprise, and there, in the kitchens of the Unit, I saw it for the first time, how his smile reached all the way up to his eyes when he realized that he indeed 'got me'.

But I also got to know his dark side. Whenever he talks about Amira, how perfect she is and how there is no place in his life for me because he's getting married and will have sixteen children by next summer...

We both know that this isn't the life he wants to life, and after our talk on the kitchen floor where he finally opened up to me about himself, and his past, I seriously started to believe that he now can be more true to himself, at least between the two of us.

Sadly, it didn't last long, just until his darker side returned, shoving the public proposal to Amira right in my face while I sat there like a fool, having seriously thought for all of a three seconds that he's going to come out there and then to the whole Square.

So, no, I cannot love someone like that. Would be pretty stupid to fall for an engaged Muslim man in the closet, wouldn't it? And my having a crush on him... nothing more than a phase. A silly phase of getting my hopes up, seeing them shattered to the ground, letting him back into my flat, my bed, my heart, just to start all over again the next day.

Every time I think I've had it made, this was the last time he played me like this, I'm gonna start hating him from now on... I see his eyes, eyes that say get me out of here whenever Amira presses herself against him in the Vic, the Unit, or on the street. Only for the split of a second but it's enough for me to notice, and to want nothing more than to be the one that saves him from her, carry him on my arms over my doorstep to a place where he can be the man I know he is.

"If you can do this... this thing I know you can do... then I'll stay the night with you. The whole night."

He said he would. After everything he's done, after his proposal to Amira and my picking up strangers who beat the shit out of me because beating up a man is easier than loving one... after all that, he saw the results of his denial for the first time, and he desperately tried to mend the chaos he caused by staying with me, inside my flat, for weeks, doing the shopping for me because I knew the minute I step outside, he is coming back, finishing his job of beating the queer to death.

And yet, against all odds I agreed to go out, cross the street to the Minute Mart to buy sugar, maybe even talk to people on the way and back... all this I was only ready to do because I can't, I won't miss the opportunity to wake up with him lying next to me in the morning, looking like a dishevelled Greek God.

When he arrived at my flat at nearly eleven pm I wanted to head straight to bed, pulling him with me all the way, not caring about any of his protests. He promised it, and I wasn't ready to let him change his mind. Not after what I managed to do for him today.

It turned out he hadn't changed his mind, he would still spent the night with me. Just not like I wanted him to. "Ramadan, remember?"

Stupid Ramadan prevented me from having the fuck of my life tonight. Stupid Ramadan brought me a night of cuddling, fondling, smooching instead, making me feel like a teenager on a class trip, feeling up his crush under the covers when the lights are out. I went to sleep as a happy man, spooning Syed from behind in the least-sexual way I could manage, the warm fuzzy feeling in my head, belly and heart never leaving.

It's because of Ramadan as well that he set the alarm to 4 am. I offered to go up with him, keep him company during his breakfast but he wouldn't have any of that.

My subconsciousness thought otherwise and I woke up with an aching bladder, half an hour before his alarm got off. After I came back from the loo I contemplated climbing back in but I was too mesmerized by the sight of him, lying flat on his belly, his face buried somewhere in between the pillow and his gorgeous mass of hair, moonlight falling through the window and on his back.

I didn't want to risk destroying this picture-perfect moment of peace by climbing over him to get back to my side of the bed so I just got a chair from the kitchen and decided to wait for him to get up.

That's where I am now, with my head resting against my hand, watching him sleep like a creep or loved-up teenager who can't get enough of his sweetheart.

The alarm goes off, and it takes Syed two seconds to woke up with a start. He turns off the noise, takes a deep sigh and crawls out of the sheets, not without giving me an apologizing look to which I can do nothing else than smile. Seeing him walking to the kitchen in his undies makes more than up for the fact that it's still the middle of the night.

Half an hour. Just half an hour of watching him sleep...

"You moved the milk?"

"No, it's where it always is; right there in the left cupboard. See?"

"Oh. Sorry, still sleeping."

I help getting his stuff together for breakfast while he prays in the next room and then join him at the table, although only for watching him eat. I really can't eat anything at that time in the morning.

We talk for a bit and I finally learn how he managed to escape his family yesterday evening. I wasn't there to see if they really believed his story about Chris from Uni but they let him go so they must be even dumber than I thought they were.

I go back to sleep while Syed goes off to Mosque for morning prayers, and when the door bell rings a few hours later, I have just been greeted with the sight of him in in nothing more than a blue towel, resting very low on his delicious hips. Damn Ramadan. How can he wander around the flat like that and expect me to keep my hands all to myself...

"Zainab... just... give me a second, will ya?"

Just Zainab. I've never thought I would ever be grateful to hear her voice but I am now. Everything's better than a squad of bullies paying me a visit to finish their job. Even almost getting caught in the act by Syed's mum, which, by itself, is pretty exciting and makes me feel more than naughty.

She wants me to go back to work. I can't, and I can't make her understand why, so I just agree to at least try. I know I won't.

"So... you're going to work, then?"

He's back, standing in front of me, and I can't help but say yes to him, and this time the image of me opening the front door, taking a step outside, then another, and another until I see his face at the Unit again isn't so scary any more, because he will be there.

"You can do this, Christian, I know you can."

I picked myself up, got a shower, put on clean clothes and started to feel like a real person again, for the first time in weeks... and the minute I stood in front of my own door the pictures were back; how I let that person through exact the same door, how I was the perfect host and how we had a chat on the sofa until he decided to show me what a sick bastard I am.

Slouching down in front of my bed, I feel my chest tightening, my breath going quicker, and the shakes coming on... I can't, not now, not ever... I'm going to stay in here, and I'm going to die in here...

"And when you get to work, I will be waiting."

But he isn't here. He's down the Unit, and he certainly don't want to spend the rest of his life coming here and do all my shopping for me, as much as I would love him to.

I'm up again, standing on my own two shaking legs. I slowly cross the flat, step by step. Hand on the doorknob. The pictures of earlier come back to my mind.

Just half an hour of watching him sleep... I didn't even think much, just sat there, enjoying the sight. And only when the alarm went off and he lifted his head up from the pillow, my daze was over, a daze I up to this moment didn't even realized I was in.

I open the door, just a bit. The floor looks the same it always had. Wider, and I see the wall of the hallway, and I can hear the buzz of the Square, making my heartbeat race a mile a minute.

Ignoring the wish to flee back into the flat with all my might, I carefully take a step outside, then another, and another, and before I realize it I'm out in broad daylight, seeing familiar faces walking by, smelling the all-too familiar smell of the chippy, hearing the familiar mix of laughter, yelling and brawling that is the Square. My Square, where I met Syed, and where I'm going to meet him again, in about two minutes...

I don't think about that guy anymore. I don't think about what happened, or who sees me walking the street now and thinks he's found his next victim. If I would, I would turn around, shut the door behind me and die within the next week.

No. I don't think about it. All I think about is Syed, and how I'm about to see him and spend the day with him, not in my crummy flat but at the Unit, working side by side like we used to do, making insider jokes and adoring each other from afar while everyone around us is clueless about the true nature of our good spirits.

I'm out on the Square, I'm alive, and I'm going to see Sy in a second. Because no matter what I told Jane, and no matter what I told myself.

I'm in love.