Chapter Nine
They talked through the night about nothing at all.
Colin couldn’t have said how they’d ended up on the sofa, only that at some point Diwa had put a film on, something American with a man and a woman in a kitchen who kept misunderstanding each other, and neither of them had watched a minute of it.
The television was perched on a side table that wobbled when anyone walked past, because the proper unit hadn’t been delivered yet.
The picture juddered every so often when a lorry went past on Ledbury Road.
They lay along the length of the sofa facing each other, Diwa with his back against the armrest and Colin with his head propped on a cushion at the other end.
Their feet had ended up tangled in the middle, Diwa’s bare and Colin’s still in his work socks because he hadn’t quite been ready to take them off in another man’s house.
Diwa told him about a dog his family had owned in Manila called Boyet who had eaten a chess piece once and had shit it right back out with no problems. Colin told him about Mr Singh’s daal, and what Mrs Singh did with cumin seeds that made it taste bloody incredible.
Diwa got onto the subject of a particular kind of mango that only grew in the Pampanga region and had to be eaten standing over the sink because it was that juicy.
Colin admitted he’d never had a mango that hadn’t come pre-sliced in a Tupperware from Sainsbury’s, and Diwa put both hands over his face in dismay.
Colin’s eyes closed somewhere around the bit where Diwa was explaining what a Mysore yoga class actually involved, and he meant to open them again in a moment…
Instead, he surfaced slowly, wrapped up in proper warmth.
A blanket lay over him, heavy enough that he felt pleasantly held in place.
The blanket smelled of Diwa. It was the same warm, clean alpha smell that had got into Colin’s head a fortnight ago and refused to leave since, only now it was banked in the soft wool against his cheek.
He turned his face into it and breathed in.
Then he registered that the blanket was heavier than any blanket had a right to be, and warmer in some places than in others. It rose and fell at a slow steady pace just under his ear.
His eyes drifted open and he saw that he was on Diwa’s chest, the soft grey cotton of his T-shirt rucked up where Colin’s cheek was pressed against him.
Diwa’s arm was draped across Colin’s shoulders, with a hand resting easy in the dip between his shoulder blades.
Colin had, at some point in the night, migrated the length of the sofa and tucked himself in under the alpha’s arm like a cat finding the warmest spot in the room.
He stayed very still.
He waited for it to come, the cold drop in the stomach, the lurch up his spine as his fear materialised.
But it didn’t. There was only the quiet of the room and the slow rise and fall of Diwa’s chest under his cheek.
Colin breathed him in deep, on purpose, taking in the scent of his sleep-warm skin.
His chest didn’t tighten. Instead, he shut his eyes again and let his cheek settle back into the dip of Diwa’s collarbone. He went on breathing.
He kept his palm where it was on Diwa’s chest and let himself wonder, just for a moment, if this was what other omegas woke up to. The simple fact of an alpha next to them, the pleasure of the weight of a solid body against his own.
This was dangerous, letting himself want a thing he had spent his entire adult life ignoring.
He’d been all right. He’d taken his joy from Stephen and Lysander, two whole humans he’d grown out of his own body and somehow not made a complete mess of, and that had always been enough.
He’d never let himself sit with the thought that there might have been room for more in his life.
Under his ear, Diwa’s breathing changed. His eyes opened, found Colin’s face, and he produced his ridiculous dimpled smile. There was no transition into consciousness for him. He went from sleeping to awake in the span of a single blink, eyes clear, no apparent grogginess.
Maybe the spirulina was worth gulping down every morning, if it got you up for the day like this, Colin thought with a flicker of envy, that people still on the right side of thirty had no idea what was coming for them.
“Morning,” Diwa said. His voice was a little rough at the edges. He lifted the hand that had been on Colin’s back and brought it round to Colin’s face. Before Colin had worked out what he was up to, Diwa swiped his thumb along the corner of Colin’s mouth.
“You’re a drooler,” he said, smirking.
Colin pressed the back of his own hand against his mouth and flushed.
Diwa laughed and sat up, pulling the blanket off both of them in one easy movement. He stretched his arms over his head. His T-shirt rode up, and Colin made himself look at the side table with the wobbly leg.
“Right,” Diwa said, swinging his bare feet onto the floorboards. “Up you get. You’re coming to make breakfast with me.”
Colin sat up and dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m not having that green shit,” he said. “I’ve got work today.”
“No green shit.” Diwa was already on his feet, padding towards the kitchen on bare soles. “We’re making Tapsilog. It’s a proper Filipino breakfast. Beef, garlic rice, fried egg. You’ll be set up till dinner.”
“Right.”
Colin followed him through to the kitchen, scratching at the back of his neck.
He didn’t let himself dwell on how he’d slept right next to Diwa.
Properly slept, the way he hadn’t in years.
He could feel it in the loose easy way his shoulders sat, and the fact that he wasn’t squinting crankily against the morning light.
“Apron’s on the hook.” Diwa pointed without looking up. “Garlic’s in the bowl on the counter. I need eight cloves peeled and minced. There’s a board and a knife. Off you go.”
Colin’s eyebrows lifted. “Eight cloves?”
“Eight.”
“For two people.”
“You’re right. We should really go for ten.”
Colin counted the cloves out. Eight fat ones, ignoring the request for ten, the papery skin coming off under his thumbnail. He set about mincing them while Diwa worked at the hob with a tray of beef strips that had been marinating in something dark and sweet-smelling.
He minced. The pile on the board grew. He scraped it to one side with the flat of the knife and looked at it.
“That’s the lot,” he said.
“Cool. Tip it in the pan once the oil’s hot.”
Diwa turned the gas up under a wide pan and slid in a generous slick of oil.
When it shimmered, he gestured Colin over with a tilt of his chin, and Colin scraped the garlic off the board and into the pan in one go.
The hiss was immediate and aggressive. The smell that came up was so good Colin’s stomach made a noise he hoped Diwa hadn’t heard.
“Right,” Diwa said. “Now we add the rice.”
He produced a bowl of cold day-old rice from the fridge and tipped the lot in. Colin watched him work the wooden spoon through it, breaking up the clumps, the garlic going gold and crisp around each grain.
“Stand here. Keep it moving so the garlic doesn’t burn. Don’t let it catch.”
Colin took the spoon. Diwa moved off to the next hob and started laying strips of beef into a second pan, where they spat and curled at the edges.
He came back round behind Colin’s shoulder, looked into the rice pan, reached past him, and dumped another small mountain of minced garlic in on top of what Colin had already added.
Colin stopped stirring.
“Mate. There’s already garlic in there.”
“There’s never enough garlic,” Diwa said. “This is a foundational rule in Filipino cuisine. You can write it down.”
“I’m going to be sweating that out for a week.”
“You’ll still smell incredible.” Diwa tipped a third bowl in, smaller this time, and Colin made a disgruntled sound. Diwa looked down at him and laughed. “Oh, your face. Your face, Colin, I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“Just keep stirring.”
Colin kept stirring. The rice was turning a deep gold, properly fragrant now, and he had to admit to himself that it smelled better than anything he’d made in his own kitchen for a long time.
Diwa flipped the beef, plated it onto a wooden board, and started cracking eggs one-handed into a third pan, the shells coming open against the rim with a small clean tap.
“Right. The vinegar.” Diwa reached up to a shelf and brought down a small jar of clear liquid with several whole bird’s-eye chillies floating in it. He set it on the counter beside Colin with a flourish.
Colin looked at the jar. Then he looked at Diwa.
“What’s that for?”
“You dip the tapa in it. Just a tiny bit. It cuts through the richness, it’s the whole point of the dish.”
“There’re chillies in that. Whole chillies in vinegar. I told you yesterday that I take it mild.”
“Then just take a tiny dip, Colin. The vinegar’s the main event. The chillies are just hanging out in there, giving it a little flavour. You barely taste them.”
Colin folded his arms across his chest and gave Diwa the same flat look he’d given the consumer unit on the morning they’d met.
“I’m getting you a side of soy sauce as well,” Diwa said, cracking the last egg into the pan. “Calm down. I’m not trying to kill you.”
“You sure about that?”
“Reasonably sure. You’ve still got a shelf to put together for me on Friday.”
The eggs spat in the pan. The garlic rice sizzled under Colin’s spoon. Diwa’s shoulder bumped against his on the way past as he reached for the salt, and Colin didn’t move out of the way.
When Diwa slid the plate in front of him, Colin understood that he was about to have a problem with his own kitchen for the rest of his life.
The garlic rice sat in a fragrant gold mound, the beef glossy and dark and curling at the edges, the egg with its yolk still wobbling after Diwa had set it down. He picked up his fork, and the first mouthful did something to the inside of his head that no marmite on toast ever had.
“Christ,” he said.
“Mm-hmm.” Diwa was already eating, dipping a strip of beef into the chilli vinegar without looking. “Try the dip.”
Colin eyed the jar. The chillies were floating in there like little red threats. He speared a strip of tapa on his fork, lowered it to the surface of the vinegar, and tapped it once in the briefest possible kiss against the liquid.
Diwa watched him with his mouth pressed into a line.
Colin put the strip in his mouth. He chewed. He waited for the chilli to ambush him, but the pain didn’t come. There was a sharp clean edge of vinegar against the richness of the beef, and underneath it, a slow gentle warmth that built at the back of his tongue and settled there without any drama.
It was annoyingly good.
He didn’t say so. He stabbed the next strip and brought it to the jar, and this time he held it under for a proper count of two, letting the vinegar coat the meat and one of the chilli seeds drift loose against it.
Diwa’s chewing slowed. He tipped his chin in a small approving nod, and Colin felt the back of his neck go warm in a way that had nothing to do with the chilli.
The heat reached him on the second bite. It came up the sides of his tongue, settled at the roof of his mouth, and his eyes watered a fraction, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It made the whole mouthful, with a heaping forkful of garlic rice, sing. Diwa, the smug bastard, had been right.
Colin did not give him the satisfaction of saying so. He just kept eating.
He cleared his plate in the time it took Diwa to get halfway through his own, and ran the last of the rice through what was left of the yolk because leaving it on the plate would have been a crime.
He sat back on the stool, looked at the smear where his breakfast had been, and felt sorry it was gone.
“I’ve got a job to head off to.”
“Now?”
“Yup. An end-of-lease clean in Knightsbridge. I’ve got to get there in an hour.”
He took the plate to the sink and rinsed it before Diwa could tell him to just leave it. His jacket was on the back of the sofa where he’d dropped it last night, and he shrugged it on as he walked back through the hallway, picking up his bag from the floorboards.
Diwa had followed him out and was leaning in the doorway with his hair still sticking up at the back and his bare feet on the cold boards.
“I’ll see you,” Colin said as he let himself out. The cold morning air came up off Ledbury Road to meet him, and he walked towards the bus stop with the taste of chilli vinegar still on his tongue and the promise of those three words sitting warm in his chest.