THE COUNTERFEIT OMEGA

The good thing about lying face down is that nobody can see your expression. Shen Yu had been counting the threads in the pillowcase for a while now, a pale grey linen with a stitch pattern he knew better than his own palm, and somewhere above and behind him Gu Chengzhou was breathing through his teeth. “Say something,” Gu said. “Double it.” The rhythm didn’t stop, but it changed. A hitch, the kind you’d miss if you weren’t listening for it. Shen Yu was always listening for it. “Double what.” “This month. The transfer.” He turned his cheek against the linen so the words came out clearer. “I said double, Mr. Gu. You heard me. Don’t make me say it twice with my face in a pillow.” A short laugh, more air than sound. Gu’s hand settled at the small of his back, wide and warm and slightly damp, and Shen Yu stared at the headboard. Dark walnut. Someone polished it with lemon oil every Tuesday, and by Thursday night the smell had faded to something almost sweet. It was Thursday. The air conditioning hummed behind the wall, and the river outside the glass was a long smear of lights he had never once turned to look at. “What for?” Gu asked. “For me.” “That’s not a reason.” “It’s the only one I’ve got.” Silence, except for the bed and the hum. Then Gu said, “Fine,” and Shen Yu felt something in his chest, quick and ugly, like a missed step on the stairs. It was too easy. It was always too easy. A man who owned half of Haicheng’s shipping lanes should have haggled, at least once, just to feel like himself. He filed the thought away. Money didn’t ask questions. That was the whole point of it. Afterward, Gu lay on his back with one forearm across his eyes and his chest rising slowly. Shen Yu eased himself up on his elbows and swung his legs off the mattress, the left one last, the way he always did. The knee had a grinding stiffness after nights like this. The cold floor made it worse. He sat on the edge of the bed for exactly three seconds, waiting for the ache to settle into something he could walk on. “You didn’t eat,” Gu said, from under his arm. “I had dinner.” “You had three crackers. Manager Wen told me.” “Manager Wen should mind his own tray.” Shen Yu stood, reached for the robe on the chair, and tied it with more care than it needed. “Omegas watch their figures. You like me thin. Or you like the shape of me, whatever. Same thing.” Gu didn’t answer. When Shen Yu glanced back, the arm had come down and grey eyes were on him, steady and unreadable, the way they got when a contract had a clause nobody else had noticed. Then Gu looked at the ceiling. “Go clean up,” he said. The bathroom was bigger than the room Shen Yu had grown up in. He shut the door and locked it, and the fan came on automatically with a low mechanical sigh. Under the bright lights his face looked like someone else’s, which was the idea. Hollow beneath the cheekbones. Skin so carefully tended it had a faint shine, like fruit in a shop window. He’d spent forty minutes that morning on it. Toner, essence, two creams, a mask he’d paid too much for. His stomach rolled and complained, and he ignored it. He peeled the patch off the back of his neck with two fingers, slow, because the adhesive took skin with it if you rushed. The air hit the gland and the smell came up all at once, the one he spent a fortune hiding. Sharp, mineral, unmistakably Alpha. He held his breath and worked quickly. Fresh patch from the foil packet. Press, count to ten, smooth the edges. Then the spray, two pumps at the throat and one at each wrist. Peach, mostly, with something faintly floral underneath that had never smelled like a flower in its life. Chemists in a factory outside Suzhou had made it, and it was keeping his sister alive. He checked the mirror. Checked again. Then he reached behind the towel rack, where he kept the cane folded into three sections like a tent pole, and set it against the sink. He didn’t use it in the penthouse. Not when Gu was awake. A man in a lace robe and a lovely, convincing scent could be forgiven for walking a little carefully, but a cane told a different story, and nobody paid ten thousand a night for a different story. He ran the tap and washed his hands for longer than they needed. The water was nearly too hot. Somewhere down the hallway Gu’s phone buzzed on the nightstand, and buzzed again, and Shen Yu paid it no attention. Gu had a hundred calls a day. When he came out, Gu was sitting on the edge of the bed in a clean shirt, undone at the collar, the phone in his hand. Shen Yu paused in the doorway with the towel still around his neck. Something was off, and it took him a second to place it. Gu wasn’t scrolling. He was only holding the phone, the screen lit against his thumb, and his jaw had set in a way Shen Yu hadn’t seen in two years on Thursdays. “Everything all right?” Shen Yu asked. He made his voice light and a little bored, the Omega voice, the one he practiced in the shower. “Fine.” Gu turned the phone face down against his knee. Too fast. “Business.” “At midnight.” “Business doesn’t sleep.” “Neither do you, apparently.” Shen Yu crossed the room and lowered himself onto the bed beside him, the left leg carefully straight. He stretched his arm out as if to take the phone, just to be annoying, the way a bored kept man might. His fingertips never reached it. Gu caught his wrist, not hard, and held it for a moment. Then, in the quiet, the phone buzzed again against the fabric of Gu’s trousers, and the light bled through the gap between his knee and the screen. Shen Yu didn’t mean to look. He did anyway. Three lines of preview text, small and white against the black, and above them a name he had only ever seen once, on the back of a framed photograph at the very bottom of a drawer he had no business opening. Jiang Mian: I land Friday. Please don’t tell anyone yet. I want to see your face when you see me. Gu’s thumb moved over the glass and the screen went dark. Shen Yu smiled. He kept his teeth just slightly showing the way he’d practiced, and his hand stayed loose in Gu’s grip. Inside the robe, against his ribs, his heart had started to hammer so hard he was certain, absolutely certain, that Gu could feel it through the mattress.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​