Author's note (14 Aug): MAJOR edits to the dialogue between Blaise and Hector here too! But the main plot point remains the same.

The hallway outside has the same homey, but designer vibe as the rest of the house. He pauses curiously at the foot of the stairs, hearing tinny music: Hector has forgotten to turn something off. Glancing over his shoulder towards the dining room, he bites his bottom lip and starts climbing up.

There is a door ajar, with the tell-tale blue glow of a laptop coming out from under it. He pushes it open, and—gawps.

The room is fairly small for a townhouse this size, with an entire wall taken up by bookshelves, which are absolutely stuffed with books. In stacks around the lone armchair under a reading lamp and the antique desk are more and more books. The room is suffused with Hector’s woodfire scent and old paper.

The laptop is on the desk, its screen still awake, probably because the Bluetooth mouse keeps jigging it to life. He closes the Spotify app, smirking at the Toxic Remedy song playing, and a Tumblr dashboard comes up. He notices the first post—Empire of Chains fanart—before he sees the account’s avatar, and jerks back, as if stung.

He knows this avatar. He had squealed for two whole days last week when Sibyl has private-messaged him, commissioning a Cephalus artwork from him for his avatar image on Tumblr. It is the emperor wearing his golden crown, staring straight at the viewer with tearful eyes and a savage smile, it is the emperor who knows he has lost it all.

This is the artwork Blaise created.

This is Sibyl’s avatar.

Blaise smells the alpha before he hears him at the door: the acrid smoke and soot of a burning forest. He stares blankly at the tall figure, a sharp paper cut-out of shadows and slanting light from the hallway.

‘What are you doing?’ Hector’s voice is even.

Blaise flinches, his heartbeat ratcheting up, thoughts wiped out by blinding shame. He was snooping, plain and simple. There is no excuse: he could have gone back to dinner, tell Hector his music was still on, but he was … curious.

They talk a lot about manga and TV shows and fandom and music, but that was just the surface, he sees it now. Who is the man who sits in this room, writing a novel about the destructive romance between an alpha and omega?

Blaise would not know, and he would not ever now: he has trampled all over Hector’s privacy, an unforgivable transgression, especially for any celebrity. His eyes flicker to the doorway behind Hector; he wants to run, the instinct to cower before an irate alpha. Sorry sticks in his throat, and he swallows past the swelling of emotion, licks his dry lips, trying again: ‘Sorry, I’ll just—’

His eyes land on the framed drawing above the cluttered desk. It is his artwork, the one that went viral a month ago: Cephalus and Nireus bound to each other by chains, the emperor’s expression tearful even as he holds a dagger to Nireus’s throat, and the slave defiant and snarling, claw-like nails tearing bloody strips from Cephalus’s torso.

The very first piece Sibyl retweeted, garnering him enough attention and demand that he began selling prints of it—one of which Hector apparently bought.

‘I—’ the alpha clears his throat, stepping into the room. ‘I would have told you eventually.’

‘What?’ Blaise tears his gaze away from the framed art, looking dazedly at Hector, whose face is in the light now.

He reads the other man’s distress clearly enough, but he cannot interpret it. Why should Hector look so fucking guilty? It is a shock certainly, to discover that one of his favourite web novels was written by A-list celebrity Hector Westbrook, but nobody was meant to know whom Sibyl is anyway, and who is Blaise to Hector Westbrook to expect the revelation?

‘I wouldn’t tell anyone,’ Blaise says. ‘Don’t worry. Nobody would believe me anyway. There was music playing, and I heard it from downstairs, and I only wanted to stop the music, and your Tumblr was just there …’ He trails off, his excuses soft and meaningless on his tongue. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll show myself out. I’m sorry, mate, I didn’t mean to …’

Hector has not moved, his wide-eyed gaze fixed on Blaise. The air is still and heavy with a forest’s musk, like gnarled old trees taking no notice of the small animals that scurry between its roots. It is like being swallowed whole.

‘Are you apologising?’ Hector asks incredulously. ‘You do realise what this means? I’ve known you are wyldfyreart for ages. I know the kinky art you draw of Nireus and Cephalus. I’ve seen the Gigantomakhia pieces with my face. I know you have a tattoo of my face on your thigh. I’ve been lying to your face, mate, I’ve been pretending all along.

‘So, why are you apologising?’

Blaise’s face is burning. ‘And? What do you want? Drawing porn is not a fucking crime, is it? It’s not like I took those pervy photos of you! They’re online! They’re out there for everyone’s taking. And it’s not really your face, who gives a shit? It’s Achilles, not Hector Westbrook. It’s not about you! What do you want me to do now? Rip my skin off?’

‘What? What are you—’

‘The world doesn’t revolve around you, Westbrook. My tattoos are not for you. I do them for myself, because I love Achilles and Patroclus, and they are fictional characters, which—yeah, granted, might be weird—but I don’t care. You can’t shame for what I love, even if you are ashamed of being a fanboy. That’s on you, Westbrook, and I don’t care what you think!’

His chest is heaving, and he blinks away the hot tears smearing across his vision. The alpha’s famously handsome face is cold as marble carved by ancient Greek sculptors blessed by their gods, but there is something fragile about it, like time wearing the stone down.

‘You’re not making sense,’ he finally says. ‘I think we’re talking at cross-purposes here.’

‘Well, I don’t know what you want. Do you want me to be embarrassed for being wyldfyreart?’

‘No! It’s not about that! I am in awe of your talent and your art and how you pour so much of yourself in what you create. You’re amazing. And I’m not ashamed of being a fanboy of—of anything. There is nothing shameful about loving what you love. You’re not hurting anyone.

‘And the tattoo of my face on your body—bloody hell, do you know what you’re doing to me? No, I … Like I said, I’ve been lying to you. Don’t you get it?’

Blaise stares, bewildered: Hector isn’t mad?

‘I … it doesn’t matter?’ he says slowly. ‘I can understand why you would want to write anonymously on the Internet. I create art anonymously too. It’s fine, you didn’t have to tell me. I don’t think you lied. Yes, it’s fucking mortifying to know that you know about my Gigantomakhia art, but if you are truly all right with it …

‘And you retweeted my art, you drove traffic to my pages, you’ve been helping me. Do you know how many prints I’ve sold of that?’ He gestures to the drawing framed on the wall. ‘A hundred and twenty-six. That’s a hundred and twenty more than the previous month. You’ve been helping me, mate.’

After a beat, Hector huffs a laugh, like the breath has been punched out of him, thrusting a hand through his hair. ‘You are too forgiving, mate. You scare me—do you treat everyone like this?’

Blaise flushes. ‘I’m not really. You should be short with me for—for coming in here. I cocked up; I was snooping—’

‘It’s fine,’ Hector interrupts with an impatient shake of his head. ‘I trust you. I would have liked to show you this room anyway. I spend most of my time here after all.’ His expression is soft; his dark eyes has not left Blaise’s face. ‘I was rather afraid you would not want to have anything to do with a liar, after you find out I’m Sibyl.’

He steps closer, close enough that Blaise must look up to hold his gaze, that damned alpha physique. His scent is thick, golden honey sticky on Blaise’s lips. Oh, he is properly sober now—nothing like a proper guilt trip to sober him up—but everything is slow and hazy: Hector raising his hand, brushing his knuckles against the curve of Blaise’s cheek, and the heat, the shiver that spirals from his touch.

‘No,’ he whispers. I could never want to have nothing to do with you.

But Hector flinches, taking it for a rejection, because they are only friends, they both know this, and someone is calling for Blaise: ‘Blaise? Hector? Where are you? Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ and Hector is drawing back with a placid smile.

‘All’s good between us then? I’m glad,’ he says. ‘Come on, I’m about to make tea for everyone.’

He is perfectly polite when Cas demands to know where the two of them had been, demurring until Blaise cooks up some story about a stomachache, and Hector laughs with the rest as he should, admitting that he would certainly need to air his washroom later, still the flawless host. He is hospitable to the very end of the night, when he walks them to the front door.

‘Good night,’ he says to Blaise, his trademark cheery smile fixed in place, and Blaise hesitates, unable to shake the feeling that he has missed something. ‘Let me know when you lot have gotten home safe. Maybe we can have a Sunday roast next time, like Cas suggested.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ Blaise’s mind is turning up a blank: Hector said he was not mad … didn’t he? ‘Well, good night. Thanks for having us.’

Hector nods. ‘See you, Blaise. It was nice meeting you, Cas, Talon!’

Blaise opens his mouth, shuts it, and returns Hector’s tight-lipped smile. Hector is being perfectly nice: what has he to complain about, when the alpha is not even angry at him for snooping? He had better take whatever he could. He joins his family on the pavement, and looks back just once to see Hector close the door behind him.