Author's note (3 Aug): Minimal changes during the rewrite.

Blaise blushes. Westbrook could not have noticed him amidst the gawping crowd in the café window, but bollocks, how embarrassing to have been caught ogling. Ducking his head, he leaves his table, the crowd immediately filling up the space, and finishes his matcha latte by the counter.

‘Mad, innit?’ The barista is shaking his head. ‘We’re used to TV stars around here—Bennet Reyes, Lee Soomi—but not A-listers like Hector Westbrook. I thought there was rather more paps today than usual.’

‘Reckon he’ll stop by for a coffee?’ Blaise smirks.

The barista laughs. ‘Bloody hope not. I’m not paid enough to handle a stampede.’

People are thronging the pavement outside, stopping in their tracks, whipping out their phones to take proof, I told you I saw Hector Westbrook today! Dodging a group of squealing omegas, Blaise checks his phone.

Thalia texts: come across the street.

can’t. hector westbrook’s fans have descended. it’s a madhouse.

wait, are you doing a movie with him?! is that why you’re here??

cross the street. iris is driving. car’s here.

Blaise scowls, and looks across the street to see Thalia waving to him. Iris must be next to her, but lost behind the crowd. They are standing between the glass doors and the photographers furiously snapping shots of Westbrook chatting with a few lucky fans. Iris’s bright red Volkswagen is parked along the street, two lots away from the entrance—and surrounded by squealing fans.

Swallowing his groan, he begins to make his way across the street.

Thalia is elbowing her way through the crowd, shaking her head at a few of the paps shouting questions at her, and he is nearly at the red car—how quickly people move out of the way of the man with a spider tattoo on his face—when he smells it: cinnamon and honey, the earthy musk of orange-red autumn leaves rotting in the forest stream.

It swirls at the back of his mind and dislodges—remembrance. Hector’s scent, wafting from beneath the terrifying tragedy mask across the table in a sterile kitchen: Gigantomakhia holds a special place in my heart too.

His head snaps up. Thalia is smirking at him, sleekly satisfied. His eyes slide away, blurring across the bug-eyed lenses of cameras and photographers yelling, Hector! Hector! Did you break up with Marina? Are you dating Farzan now? Hector; past the wide backs of the bodyguards shepherding Hector Westbrook towards the large black car in front of Iris’s; and lands on Westbrook himself.

He, sculpted by another Pygmalion, a creation so beautiful the goddess of love cannot resist making real, with his copper-brown curls, intense dark eyes, broad shoulders and chest perfectly muscled: of course, of course, who else could have been a Greek god?

How many hours has Blaise poured into this? An intimate education of the planes of Hector Westbrook’s face and body, reimagined for scenes of romance between Achilles and Patroclus, who is inevitably based on the actor who plays Patroclus in the movies. It does not seem to matter how closely Blaise knows the curve of Westbrook’s biceps when he is a mere photo on a screen, as realistic as the character he plays in a fantasy movie.

But the man is now standing right in front of him, flesh and bone and scent.

Those dark eyes, no longer hidden behind a heavy wooden mask, are fixed on him. Hector opens his mouth, but his bodyguard steps up, breaking Blaise’s line of sight, and Hector is pushed into the waiting vehicle, the door sliding shut on the paparazzi’s flashing cameras. Hector! Hector! Is it true?

The Volkswagen beeps, the doors unlocking, and Iris is by the driver’s door, gesturing for him to get in. He slides into the backseat. Thalia twists around from her seat in the front, her eyes green and sharp as glass, her grin wide and gloating: ‘Now, wasn’t the mystery worth it?’