A couple of weeks had gone by since that sweet little omega had dropped into SeaTac Tat, and since I’d first seen the news about sickly wolf packs in the local area — enough time that I’d forgotten the impact of both. The panic and anxiety I’d felt at the thought of a resurgence of the old loss I’d felt as a teenager seemed small and surmountable now that I had shrugged it off. It probably wasn’t anything to do with the disease I’d encountered, anyway. Human news loved to gossip about wolves, but knew little about our affairs; chances were that the details hadn’t even been correct.

As for Dylan? Well. My wolf nose remembered a tantalizing scent, but the rest of me was quite content to believe that he had just been an attractive stranger passing by me, and nothing more significant than that. Slinky little omegas were ten-a-penny in the right Seattle bars. Sure, I hadn’t actually gone out to any, and didn’t want to — but if I did, I’d know exactly where to look.

That made the moment he walked back into the store all the more forceful. I’d forgotten the sharpness of his jaw, and the slight worry he carried in the furrow of his brow. I could feel a wild stirring in my chest, pushing me to go over and talk to him, or… a whole host of other ideas, far less civilized. Of course, I had to ignore the lot of them, especially since Oscar had already started smirking over at me from the other side of the room. Especially since his scent was actually even more intoxicating than I remembered.

All those flowers. Where the hell did he live?

Feigning ignorance, I kept myself turned away from him. I thought I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck, but it was Mark at the reception desk, not me.

“Hey,” said Oscar, noticing his arrival. “Hey, Jack. Look.”

“Shut up.”

At this point, I had entirely forgotten that I’d played Mark for the duration of his appointment — but I was about to remember.

“Hi!” Dylan’s voice sounded more perky and upbeat than I remembered it. Well, that made sense; today he wasn’t memorializing his dead husband, after all. It made me wonder what kind of person he might be. I could picture him being bright and bubbly, even more youthful than he actually was. At the same time, I could imagine quite a shy and serious outer layer. Either way, I liked to believe there was a far wilder creature nesting beneath — and that hope kept me hanging on his every word, even as I continued to look down at the design I was working on at my desk.

I had never really outgrown playing it cool.

“Welcome to SeaTac Tat,” said Mark. If he recognized the scent of this guest after catching it on me a couple of weeks ago, then he pretended not to notice. “I’m Mark. How can I help you today?”

“Another one?” said Dylan. Awkward, but playful. It took a lot of self-control not to turn around and try to spot the sheepish smile I could picture on his face. “How many Marks do you have around here?”

Ah.

“Just one,” said Mark, pointing uselessly at himself. “Me. I’m Mark.”

“Oh. I… Last time I was in here...”

“You worked with Jack,” Mark said. I could hear his voice pointed in my direction, and I could imagine that he was literally pointing, too. I turned my head over my shoulder, figuring that it’d be stupid to pretend I couldn’t hear. I was right. Mark was pointing — and Dylan was fixing me with a weird look.

“That’s Jack,” Mark added an unnecessary clarification. I couldn’t tell if he was doing it deliberately to mess with me, or whether he was just… reiterating. His poker face was good enough to defeat the two decades of experience I had trying to read him. “There he is.”

“Hi,” I said. It was a good thing I had developed a personal immunity to shame and awkwardness; this might be the kind of moment that I’d be seeped in it, otherwise. “Dylan, right?”

“Oh, hi, Not-Mark.”

“That’s me,” I said, turning around properly in my chair. Good thing I wore this shirt today. I worked hard at maintaining my physique, and the tight cut of my plain white tee was pretty effective at showing it off. That didn’t mean anything to me, most of the time. Unlike Dylan, who had clearly taken time to put together his outfit today, I just threw on the first thing from the laundry pile and hoped for the best. It just happened to be a lucky match, today of all days.

“I think I was busy with something else,” said Mark, by way of explanation. He frowned and pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, trying to think back. “Your appointment was with me, but I had an emergency to deal with. So when you turned up, Jack helped you out instead.” He paused. “We do that, sometimes.”

“I don’t know,” said Oscar, speaking up loud over the sound of his tattoo machine as he continued to work. “Young omega. Just his type. I don’t buy the coincidence.”

“You are his type,” Mark agreed. “Very much.”

“Alright — thank you, peanut gallery,” I said, abandoning my design to head up to the counter. “I’m sure Dylan came here for a reason, and I’m equally sure it wasn’t… whatever the past two minutes was.”

Our eyes met. There was a flash of something in Dylan’s expression, but I didn’t know him well enough to interpret it. Could be irritation — could be amusement. Could be confusion, for all I knew. I was just going to have to persist and try to make up for the mistaken identity.

Well. Stolen identity, but… close enough.

“I was actually coming to ask my artist Mark,” he said, tipping his head to one side, “to take a look at my tattoo, since I wasn’t sure it was healing right.”

“I would be happy to-”

“No problem,” I said, interrupting Mark. Dylan’s lips betrayed him, twitching into a brief smile before it disappeared again. Nice try. “Come take a seat and I’ll have a look.”

“Jack is single, by the way,” called Oscar.

“You know,” I said. “On second thought, why don’t we head out to the back again?”

Dylan gave a slow nod, adjusting his collar as he waited for me to take the lead. He seemed to be that kind of typical omega — hanging back and waiting rather than charging out in front. Oscar and Mark weren’t entirely correct. That wasn’t always my ‘type’. Over the years, I had quite enjoyed the company of bitchy power bottom omegas who didn’t act like the stereotypes at all, but something about this one had me hooked already. Something in me liked the idea of him doing my bidding, and… all the different ways that could be fun.

Maybe not the most appropriate thought for the workplace, but there it was.

“So,” said Dylan, taking a seat in the chair as I shut the door behind us — and throwing Oscar a filthy look as I did. “Should we just skip ‘Jack’ and move right to you telling me your real name is Anthony?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hands. “Like Mark said; he was busy, so...”

“You just… decided to adopt his name.”

I shrugged, taking a seat myself and leaning back in my chair. “We’re all talented artists. It was a simple job.”

“It would have been as easy as - ‘hello, Mark is busy, but I’m Jack’.”

“But not quite as easy as ‘hello, step this way’.”

Dylan folded his arms, his well-shaped brows firmly raised. “A couple of seconds ago you were sorry, and now you’re trying to convince me you had nothing to apologize for.”

I paused, caught out. “Well...”

“Well?”

“Normally,” I continued, slow and deliberate. “Normally, I would say I didn’t. But I guess you could say we had a bit more of a connection than I’d have with most of my clients.”

That gave him pause. He shifted in his chair, thinking for a moment. I took advantage of the silence to reach out for his hand.

“Let me see?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

I took his hand in mine, issuing myself with a forceful reminder that this was a professional environment. That Dylan had not come back here in furtherance of that intimacy I’d just mentioned. That it all might have been in my head, and that this might be the first he’d heard of it. He wanted me to check out his tattoo, and that was all. That being said, there didn’t seem to be much on his hand to be concerned about. The tattoo was being well taken care of. There was limited scabbing, at a stage when there usually would be — and when I ran my thumb over it, I could feel the traces of lotion that were keeping it well-moisturized.

“All looks fine to me,” I said, trying to discard all thoughts of the more romantic context that would usually be involved with touching a person’s hand this way. “What was it you were concerned about?”

“Um — it’s a little raised...”

“Sure,” I said, feeling it again. “It is a wound, don’t forget. We damaged your skin, and now it has to heal up over it. Very common to be a little raised and swollen while your body repairs it. Your first tattoo was probably the same, but not everyone notices. You’re right-handed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s probably it,” I continued. “When it was on your left hand, you didn’t notice; you weren’t using it enough to tell the difference. Now you can’t help it.” I let go of his hand — gently, but it still fell a little, like he’d been putting all his weight on me. I kind of liked that. “Nothing to worry about. You’re doing a great job.”

“Okay. Great,” he said, shifting a little in his chair. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

“No, not at all. Always come back if you’re not sure. That’s what we’re here for.”

“You’re not here to… you know. Tattoo people?”

I shuffled back in my chair again. “Sure. But there’s so much more to the job than putting needle to skin. I’m a designer — and it’s a very specific kind of design, you know? Understanding the contours of the body. Knowing how to create designs that will look good off-paper as well as on it. I’ve got to be able to read people, to make sure they’re in the right frame of mind to make a big, permanent decision. Are they drunk? High? Bipolar, and making a decision in a manic phase that they’re likely to regret? Is someone forcing them?”

“Who’d force someone?” he said. It stroked my ego to know that he was so interested; he was leaning in, eyes wide, almost like a kid.

It was the kind of audience I’d have appreciated even if he hadn’t been very cute.

“You’d be surprised,” I continued. “Guys come in with their girlfriends wanting ‘PROPERTY OF STEVE’ on their girlfriends’ backs or necks or… wherever.”

“Wow.”

“I mean… if a client actually wants that done, I guess that’s her decision. We refuse those jobs here ‘cos I figure they’re always going to be recipes for regret, if not… you know, outright abusive power plays. But we do get those requests all the time.”

Dylan shook his head, fist clenching and relaxing on the arm of the chair.

“Micah wanted matching tattoos once,” he said, absently. “Nothing like that, but...”

“Well, those are fine,” I said. “It’s just a consent issue.” If I had to guess, based on those artist instincts I’d just described to him, I would have said that Dylan had not been filled with excitement about this idea of his husband’s — but now didn’t seem the time to say so.

“It seems a little unfair,” said Dylan. “That whole stereotype about how scary tattoo artists are.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “You’d be hard-pressed to find an industry that’s as big on consent as body modification. Piercings are the same way. It’s kind of what we’re built on.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“They can be,” I said. “Sometimes they’re right on. I have a unicorn tattooed on my ass; I’d say that’s pretty accurate as a descriptor.”

“No, you don’t.”

I shrugged, folding my arms — and sure, maybe flexing them a little in the hopes that he’d notice. In all likelihood, he already had when I’d held him last time, but it couldn’t hurt for him to notice again. “Maybe. You don’t know.”

He pressed his lips together, glancing over me. I felt the familiar sensation of being weighed up. Usually, people who did this were trying to decide whether I was dangerous. The tattoos tended to give that impression to people who were fond of judging books by their covers. Since we’d just established that Dylan wasn’t one of them, I wondered what he was seeing, and what he was looking for.

“You were right, by the way,” he said at last.

“Sorry?”

“Last time. I… what you said. I think we had a connection,” he said, blushing pink. I drank the sight in, wondering what it would look like to see it spread — down over his shoulders, and the small of his back… “I think that’s why it bothered me that you’re… not Mark.”

“So it did bother you.”

“…Yeah. A little.”

I gave a slow nod. “Well. For what it’s worth, I am sorry. I wasn’t trying to be deceptive. And I didn’t know we were going to have… y’know. A moment.”

“A few moments,” Dylan ventured, though it pushed that blush right into the tips of his ears to say so. “I was pretty honest with you.”

“You were,” I agreed, holding my hands up. “I guess that’s the last part of my job I didn’t mention. Major in doodling on skin, minor in amateur therapy.”

“Well, you’re easy to talk to,” said Dylan. “Or you made it easy for me, anyway.”

“I’m glad.”

He kept staring down into his hands. For a few seconds I felt like I’d really ruined things. This was frustrating for a few reasons. Firstly, it was such a stupid reason to miss out — but even worse than that was the fact that I cared in the first place.

Hadn’t I just spent time thinking about how easy it’d be to find an omega in this city, if I wanted one? So why was the prospect of losing out on this one so significant to me?

I couldn’t answer that question, but I did know that the best way to avoid feeling shitty about it was to make up for my mistake.

“Listen,” I said. “I fucked up. You thought you were talking to a Mark, but… you were still talking to me. I was still listening. And if you’re willing to be introduced to me properly, I think I could do a lot better with a second chance at a first impression.”

He shuffled in his chair. Maybe I hadn’t been clear enough. Well… I’d never had a problem being direct.

“Let me take you out,” I suggested. “I know a couple of great restaurants around here. You could swing by after work. My treat.”

If he’d been blushing before, then I wasn’t sure how to describe him now. It looked like he’d been dipped in a factory-size vat of drag queen-strength blusher — and somehow, he was still impossibly attractive. That was practically a superpower. I wondered if he knew that.

“Oh,” he said. “I mean...”

“Unless that wasn’t what you meant,” I said. By now, the scent of his pheromones were confirming his interest in me, as if the sight of him alone wasn’t enough. Still, I was serious as death about consent. I wasn’t going to make an offer like this without offering him an out, too. “You know. If it was a different kind of connection for you, that’s cool with me. I won’t be offended.”

His eyes darted down to his hands, then back up to me. Something was going on in that pretty head of his, perhaps not entirely disconnected from his late husband. Micah, was it? He rubbed his thumb over the now-vanished tattoo on his left hand, mulling it over for a second. Then, at long last, he nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Yes. Thank you. Sure. I’d like that.”

By my calculation, that was five separate ‘yes’ answers. I couldn’t help but grin, even as he squirmed and smiled in the seat.

“Great,” I said. “Friday?”

“Sure. Friday.” He wrinkled his nose. “Wow. You’re not supposed to answer that quickly, are you? I’m out of practice at this.”

“I don’t do games,” I assured him. “Not my style.”

“Other than… pretending to be somebody else?”

“Touché.”

I stood up from the chair, offering a hand to help him stand up. I had yet to learn whether he was the kind of omega that liked to be guided and pampered, or whether he preferred to be independent. Frankly, I knew practically nothing about him. I didn’t even know what he did for a living — and I was still mightily curious to discover where in his everyday life he picked up that heady, appealing scent of nature. Still, there was something under the surface that told me this omega was one to chase after.

Maybe soon I’d find out why. Maybe I wouldn’t. Either way, it would probably be fun. I still believed that fun was the upper limit of what I needed in relationships — that there was nothing this omega could give me, long-term, that my pack and my job didn’t already provide. It sounded worse than it felt. In the end, it felt like I was choosing to see him, rather than needing him. Wanting him, rather than being pressured by circumstance.

Wasn’t that more romantic, in the end?

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” he said, standing up from his chair. “So I guess I’ll clear out now, but… Friday sounds great. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me too,” I said, shepherding him out of the room with a hand hovering just half an inch from his back. I wanted so badly to touch him. I felt like he wanted it, too; I could feel him almost magnetized back against my fingertips, but I kept my distance.

We could save that for Friday. The longer the anticipation, the better.

As the door opened, I watched Mark turn around so fast it must have hurt his neck, looking back towards the front of the store instead of at the door. Oscar was smirking down at his client’s leg. I guessed I’d have to repeat what happened in the room once Dylan left — but I didn’t mind their teasing today.

At least this time, there was something concrete to tease about.

We had a date.