Author's note (14 Aug): Dialogue has been heavily edited.

‘And this, I got from a visiting artist from Korea—isn’t it positively gorgeous? You need a medical license to tattoo, can you bloody imagine? Most of them tattoo illegally. This is a norigae, a good luck charm, with gingko leaves and cherry blossoms.’

His phone buzzes, and he looks at it reflexively and blinks, surprised, at the time—12:13. Bloody hell, how is it already past midnight? It is a message notification from Cas: where are you??? you said you’d be home.

Empty cans litter the table—Talon’s entire stash of beer in the fridge—and Blaise’s T-shirt is hanging around his neck like a scarf, as he shows off the norigae tattoo on his left ribcage. Hector, his knee knocking into Blaise’s, has lowered his head for a closer look, and glancing up, he asks with a lopsided grin: ‘Good luck in what?’

Thoughts come warm and lazy through Blaise’s pudding-soft mind: Hector leaning rather close against the adjacent edge of the table, his forearm muscles bunching beneath his jumper; the sweetness of thick caramel and cream palpable in the air; dark eyes scouring the map of his skin, reading Blaise like a book.

He has been prattling for hours, it feels like. What has he heard from Hector today? His favourite flower is the black hellebore—bloody metal, innit? Black flowers—during an examination of the flowering vines on Blaise’s arms, and he is obsessed with dragons: I firmly believe there are alternate universes, there are too many probabilities in this world for there not to be, and in one of those universes, there must be dragons and dragon-riders, and my alternate self would be one, I’m sure of it, and Blaise could not stop laughing at the idea of Hector Westbrook, a dragon girl, the alternate reality of a horse girl.

Yes, but besides that, does he know which uni Hector went to— is it on his Wiki page? —or if he even went to uni?

‘What did you study in uni?’ he blurts.

Hector blinks, baffled. ‘Why?’ He adds with a smirk: ‘You could google it.’

‘Don’t be a prat,’ Blaise says. ‘I’m only … well, I’ve been talking about myself all night. I’m tired of listening to myself. You talk now.’

‘But I like listening to you,’ Hector protests. ‘It’s like taking a guided tour in a museum, hearing the stories behind your tattoos.’

‘Don’t encourage me. I really could go on forever. I love talking about art.’

Hector’s gaze is warm. ‘Go on then.’

‘Unfortunately, we don’t have all night. Cas texted, asking where I was.’

‘Oh, bollocks! Is it already twelve? Blimey, I’ve been keeping you.’ Hector rises to his feet, starting to gather up the empty cans. ‘Let me give you a lift home. Eddy, my driver, is still on call.’

‘Oh, yeah, cheers, mate!’

He remembers he wants to hear from Hector in the middle of the story he is telling Hector about Thalia’s first tattoo to commemorate the first big role she received in The Two Queens, as they are dumping the empty cans and pizza bags into the trash bags. He closes his mouth with a clack of teeth, and glares at the alpha.

‘You did that on purpose! Asked me a question to get me going, hoping I’ll forget, did you?’

‘Forget what?’ Hector laughs, walking towards the back, pushing the door open to the alley.

‘Forget that you didn’t answer my question! What did you study? In uni? Did you go to uni? I read it somewhere, an article, Twitter, that you had gone to uni.’ Blaise holds the door open, shivering in the chilly night air, watching as Hector stuffs the garbage bag into the can.

Hector snorts, dusting his hands, nudging Blaise back into the shop. ‘Don’t you know by now that those articles are bloody fake? Especially those so-called exclusive tell-all’s. Stupid, ridiculous rubbish. Everything—everything—about us is manufactured and polished and packaged in the best way to sell us to our fans.

‘Nothing about us that you can see in the public eye is ever real. Nobody actually wants to know the real you. They want the fantasy. They want the Hector Westbrook they imagine me to be.’

In the dim lighting in the narrow corridor between the back door and the pantry, Hector’s bared teeth gleams in a snarl, and the air has gone all acrid again, a smouldering fire. Blaise, staring at him, hears the thunder-beat roar of his heart, blood pulsing hot beneath his skin.

‘Do you like being an actor?’

He flinches even as the last word leaves his mouth. That sounded fairly antagonistic, did it not? Oh, where is his natural omega ability to soothe an angry alpha, like in those fairy tales where a rampaging hero starts destroying more than he should in his righteous fury and could only be calmed down by an omega princess? He is no princess.

Hector stares, silent for a heartbeat, two, three, and he breaks into a sudden, wry smile, the smoke dissipating in the air. ‘It isn’t about liking it or not. It’s something I do. I suppose it’s about getting attention when I first started, and I had only planned to get a role in Gigantomakhia. I didn’t expect all this …’ He shrugs. ‘I studied literature.’

‘Oh. Oh, that makes so much sense,’ Blaise says, delighted.

‘What does that mean?’ Hector leads the way back into the pantry, where he starts putting the plates and forks into the sink.

‘How you analyse Empire and Hollow City and Gigantomakhia. Blimey, so you’re a lit nerd!’ Blaise chortles, pushing him away from the sink. ‘Oh, just stand there, you tosser. You’re the guest, aren’t you? The next time we’ll have dinner at your place, you can do all the washing you like.’

Hector relents, leaning against the counter with a wry grin. ‘All right, all right. I could cook us dinner—I do a pretty good beef bourguignon.’

Blaise lights up, pausing in the midst of soaping up the plates. ‘Thalia and I love beef bourguignon. We’ll take you up on that, mate! Who would have thought, Hector Westbrook can cook? Come on then, what other secrets have you been keeping from the gossip rags?’

The dark-haired man gives him a mock accusing look. ‘Careful, any of this goes out, I’d know it came from you.’

‘Oh, you’d thank me when the morning shows start having you on, showing the world how to make a ruddy breakfast sandwich. “Put bacon on toast just so, that’s right, George, good man.”’

Hector sniggers. ‘A breakfast sandwich? Why, are you planning on staying the night?’

They both realise the insinuation in his words at the same time: Hector smirking, not taking his eyes off Blaise, the crisp smell of burning leaves hanging off him. Blaise turns away, swiping his wet hand across his hot face, placing the dishes on the rack, asking brightly: ‘Well, is Eddy here yet?’

If Hector’s driver is surprised to be picking him up at Ironworks Ink, he locks it behind a blandly genial expression, smiling politely at Blaise, as he holds the door open.

‘Eddy knows the fastest route to anywhere in London,’ Hector says.

‘You know that’s adorable, Hector Westbrook being a shite driver,’ Blaise smirks. ‘Makes you just like one of us, doesn’t it? Although your dubious taste in cartoons could have been an indication.’

‘Excuse me, Moon Falls is a classic! It is obvious your education in cartoons is sorely lacking.’

Blaise shakes his head. ‘Spent most of my childhood playing knights and castles in the forest, if you’d believe it. We grew up in Farnham, down in Surrey. Cas called it physical training, but it was really an excuse for us to beat up the neighbourhood boys, who always tried bullying Thalia and I for being omega.’

‘And I would suppose the two of you showed them what’s what.’

Blaise shoots him a sharp grin. ‘Wouldn’t you know it.’

‘Thalia is one of the most terrifying people I’ve ever met,’ Hector admits. ‘Don’t tell her that! I can’t believe you made me ask her for your number, mate. That was cruel and unusual punishment.’

He laughs. ‘I don’t give out my number willy-nilly to strangers, especially an alpha whose face I can’t even see, asking for my number after we shared a few drinks. You could have asked for my IG handle. You don’t ask for someone’s number unless you’re asking for a date—you could have given the wrong impression!’

‘What if that is the impression I want to give?’ Hector’s voice is low, and the streetlights slide across his shadowed face in rhythmic orange lines, light and dark and light and dark.

Blaise licks his lips, mouth dry, and tastes tart unripe apples. Not yet, something whispers. He will not repeat the disaster of giving in to the first alpha he finds sexually attractive; he is more than his ruddy omega instincts. There must be logic, there must be.

He forces a laugh, too high and too breathy even to his own ears. ‘Then I must disappoint, mate. I’m afraid I’ve sworn off dating,’ he says with a dramatic flourish. ‘I hardly have the time for that! The shop is very popular, you know, and we get walk-ins too.’

Hector, to his credit, does not miss a beat, gasping with mock outrage. ‘Oh, what? Are you one of those boring folks, who claim romance is dead and they are not the slightest bit interested in trying? Bloody hell, do you protest at romance movie screenings then? I bet you roll your eyes whenever a love scene appears in movies.’

Blaise bursts into more or less genuine laughter. ‘That is actually quite true. What can I say? The bad break-up has scarred me.’

There is a heavy pause. Bugger! He has revealed more than he should, but Hector is gracious enough to smile sympathetically and change the subject, have you seen Moon Ji-hyo’s latest web comic, and Blaise manages not to cock it up further until they slide to a stop in front of his flat.

Cas, as he had expected, peppers him with questions, relenting only when Blaise tells him Hector has invited them over for dinner, and he may interrogate Hector himself then. He texts Hector later, apologising for foisting a dinner party onto him, but Hector replies: Don’t worry, mate. Maybe you learn how to host a proper dinner party from this. We’ll fix a date tomorrow.

Blaise grins. thanks, mate, good night!!

Good night.