Big sorry for the ridiculous delay. I've had a lot on and then stupidly started another story (blame canon). Lots of you reviewed the last chapter so I wanted to try and continue. Thanks so much, it's great to hear your thoughts.

This picks up where we left off.

It must have been late; the pained weight of disobedient eye lids told him that. Midnight. One, maybe. He had banned himself from watching the clock to avoid the wakeness that tracking time meant but it had just led to blurred time, not slower, not quicker, and not the sort that slipped to comforting darkness where there was no time at all.

Insomnia crossed from worrying to annoying, Syed had concluded, when it failed to suggest its reason, when it wilfully chose to discard the bother of basing itself on an actual thought.

It was the sort of lack of thought that had disturbed his sleep the odd night in the first months at the flat, thoughts of no specific crime or singular ache, with no jagged edge or set line, but was no less heavy for that. He hadn't needed an actual thought of his mum or a conscious response to how he felt, he could still lay in the darkness bolt awake. Guilt and hurt were good like that. Then was different to now though, midnight in the north in a single bed. The difference was him. Him, the arch of his back as he spread facing away, the squash of heat and tufts of hair in a pillow chest, the wrap of his arms with the tightness that stayed even when deep in sleep. When Syed couldn't settle on those few nights of summer heat, it had been him who had ensured he had drifted off, even if he had been unaware as he snored drift asleep. The odd hour he had taken himself to the sofa, bored of even his own restless sleep and not wanting to risk being the earthquake that was needed to wake Christian, he still found himself drifting easier than now. He had known he was there, he supposed. There is more than one type of touch.

He shifted his head quickly, the violent shake of a buzz hammering the bedside table. He considered a fly and its relatives were trying to eat him, more on his way to sleep than he had suspected, but in stumbling his hand out, found the vibration of a phone. Blindly, he felt for an answer button.

"So I've been thinking..."

Syed scrunched his hand down his forehead, blinking to the voice.

"Are you going to come back with a Yorky accent? Probably not possible in such a short length of time but after the years you were there it might be lying latent. I don't want to be racist or anything, it's just I'm quite attached to your soft southern drawl...it does things to me."

He laughed gently, sense emerging to understand the lack of sense.

"Christian?"

"No, Paolo. Who do you think it is? What other men do you have calling you at 12.40?"

"None usually, but there's this one right now who's slightly odd. Why are you calling so late?"

"I thought you'd be awake. You were, weren't you? And don't say you are now, I mean before I called."

Syed paused.

"Yeah."

"I do know you, you know. That head of yours may be as mysterious as it is gorgeous but I can tell when something's wrong. I do get it."

His chest tightened.

"You do?"

"Of course I do. You're getting in a mess about the training, aren't you? Worrying about it?"

It wasn't a lie. In the thoughts with no thoughts, it could be even be true. Say it out loud and it will be that way, Syed told himself in a knowingly familiar claim. It was simpler at least, for once.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah I am."

"I knew it," Christian declared. "You were torturing yourself before you even got on the train. You are so much better than you think you are, I wish you wouldn't do this to yourself."

"I'm not doing anything, I'm just..."

Syed ran the edge of his fingers along the quilt;

"…I don't want to screw up."

"Why would you possibly think you would? Your parents may have tried their best to tell you otherwise Sy, but you are actually pretty great. All of you. Before you know it, along with incredibly loving, kind, and an arse like a peach will sit world class masseuse. You will do just fine."

"This is completely different than anything I've done before though, anything I thought I'd be doing."

He shakes his head;

"I mean I was in property and catering, and yeah I didn't want to do that anymore, but where did masseur come from? I thought it'd be interesting and good for your business but in retrospect it's bizarre. Asian males, let alone the eldest, don't end up learning about oils and stress points. They do tax law or the circulatory system."

"Which is complete bullshit, all of it. You should do whatever you want to do, whatever makes you happy. You haven't got some role to fit, Sy. You're an actual person who can pick your own."

"Don't look so worried," a soft voice whispers in his right ear. "You're fitting in really well."

Syed smiled, straightening himself up into the seat to express a sign he belongs there and gained an approving nod for the act. Louise was a junior at the company, kind, encouraging, but not someone Syed should be looking to for that. He shouldn't be needing encouragement. He was a man, a knowledgeable one, someone that had done well enough in his internship to be offered a permanent job. He must appear like a success, he had thought, a person that is offered employment, takes it because he knows he deserves it, and never looks to those on the same scale of him for help. Those sort of people were happy. They tell jokes and those around them laugh approvingly, laugh because of course it would be funny though they would do so even if it were not. They have girlfriends, beautiful ones, that they take to the theatre and expensive restaurants in which they later discuss what they had seen. They get promoted and succeed in the most important accounts and people around them care. He must look like that sort of person he thought, and he knew that if he tried with everything, looking would soon enough turn into being.

"I've been to the sister restaurant I think, in London," Syed interjected, the corporate noise dissipating to leave at least two out of six listening. "It's Valenti's, right?"

"Yeah that's right," a mildly interested voice replies. "You're a fine diner, Syed are you?"

"I try my best."

There's a laugh and Syed smiles with them, breathing in the moment. They didn't know he was a waiter at the time and they didn't have to. It was easy, he thought, as he watched two more sets of ears begin to engage. He found himself talking, continuing with where he was and just talking, half of it true, half of it something that was once attached to the truth as if they cared. He was doing it already. Three weeks into a real job and he was here, at a real business dinner and he was being respected, listened to as he talked. He was being what he should be and this him, this him was liked.

"Are you seeing anyone Syed?" a confident voice to his left enquired.

Martin, near forty, deputy head of accounts, dying his hair to avoid the greys. Syed blinked, hoping the attempt to remember every bland white face and what it was about each of them that meant they deserved to be remembered had gone unnoticed.

"Um, not really. I mean –" he corrects, "dating, obviously. You?"

"Christ, been a while. That makes me sound fucking old doesn't it?"

Syed decided it was rhetorical.

"Wife and the kids, you know."

"And the rest," chipped in a smirking Eric – balding, near retirement, office on the first floor, gut like a six month foetus oven.

"The rest?" Syed asks, unsure of whether the etiquette was pretending he hadn't heard it or pretending he'd liked the fact he had.

"The waitresses, the secretaries, the hookers…"

"Fuck off you fat twat, some of us can still get it without paying."

"You always pay one way or the other," Eric grumbles, the grimace widening as he shook out an empty bottle of red.

"Fuck Eric, it's not your wife. You don't have to dine them," Martin lectures. "They see your car, that's enough. You can have the waitress tonight. I don't mind."

"I don't know," Louise surveys, putting her eyes on Syed. "Syed might give you a run for your money."

Syed glanced up, hearing his name and a spluttered fit of mirth spilling from Martin.

"Fuck yes!" he cheers, patting Syed's back with an enthused force that makes him jolt. "That'll show the fat fuck. Wouldn't have a chance with you going after her would he?"

Syed shuffles in his seat.

"What do you say? She's got an arse right," he asks, twisting Syed's hair to the brunette within hearing distance at the adjacent table.

"I…"

"You'd have to be queer or have a shrivelled dick not to go there. Or be Eric," he adds, the joke sending him screeching self-congratulatory into Syed's ear. "I'd bend her over the table right here and give her the seeing to of her life. You would, wouldn't you Syed?"

"Well I don't know…"

Syed paused, six pairs of eyes staring half disappointedly at him.

"…Eric watching doesn't exactly turn me on."

Laughter growls around him and Syed breathed, a smile creeping onto his face. They laugh. He smiles. It's as simple as that.

"It isn't quite as simple as that."

'It's as simple as you make it Sy."

There's a silence and what Christian deciphers through the phone to be a slight tut. He opts for another tact;

"Are you enjoying what you're doing so far?"

"Yeah I am actually."

"Well there you are then, that's all that matters. And you are going to be great at it, I promise."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah I do."

"How exactly?"

"For one, I know you. For two, I've seen your hands in action."

Syed's eyes roll.

"Yeah, yeah..."

"Yes, end of."

Christian stretches, a melodramatic sigh falling.

"You're not the only one with problems, you know. Whilst you're up there worrying how to ease the pressure in big, stiff muscles, no one's here to do that for mine."

"You poor, poor thing," Syed laughs.

"I know. I might have to revert to the porn stash. Or go crazy and buy a new one. I might Google 'Asian gay masseuse' and see what I come up with."

"Am I supposed to find this funny?"

"No you're supposed to find it erotic. And guilt inducing too. You're supposed to feel terribly terribly guilty that you've shirked your duties and left me here all alone. It's cold turkey and I don't like it. I miss your hands, your lips, your eyes, your arse, your co – "

"And what do you think I'm doing? Am I not missing you? And I don't mean your witty charms."

"You've had more practice than me. You're built for discipline, have endured years of this. I'm a weakling. I need constant attention and I'm not used to not getting it."

"Well you'll have to do your best won't you? In the meantime, pay attention to yourself. You like you."

"You like me?"

"Just wait a few days and I'll be home to show you how much."

Christian smiles slowly, murmuring;

"I like the sound of that."

Syed says quietly;

"Me too."

"Sy?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll call me, won't you? If you need to."

"I'll be fine. I'm over-reacting, I need to get a grip. Stand on my own feet." 'Mix more metaphors' he can hear Tamwar inserting.

"I know I've only been doing this for a few months but I'm pretty sure that's not how relationships work" Christian adds. "There's a wings beneath your wings thing here, a carrying you when you can't walk…"

"You made that last one up."

"Point stands. We do things together. We're a team. Otherwise you're freaking out over training with no one to call and I'm Googling Asian porn."

Syed finds himself smiling, shuffling down into bed.

"It's late. We should go to bed."

Christian murmurs;

"You should be in ours."

"Soon."

Syed pulled the sheets up the chill of his chest.

"I love you. Go to sleep."

"I love you. Night baby."

"Christian?"

"No Asian porn?"

"If you wouldn't mind."