Previously in this series.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d know how to play cricket. You’d own matching sweaters, which you’d wear when his and your families got together for a game.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d make breakfast together in a well-coordinated dance: he’d set out the eggs and butter up the pan while you put in the toast and set out the plates. Then you’d switch places — you would grab a pan to fry the eggs while he got out jam and grabbed the toast as it came out of the toaster. As he made the coffee, you’d take a second to butter up the toast before you returned to the pan. He’d be smothering the toast with jam while you added the fried eggs to the plates, and you’d be pouring coffee while he got out the orange juice, sriracha sauce, and utensils, before you both sat down. All without saying a word.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you would come up with amazing couples’ costumes for Halloween. But they would be ones that also worked independently, so you wouldn’t have to stick to the other person’s side all night.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d always fill up every page of your sketchbooks and notebooks and journals. You’d stop worrying about the pages of dialogue that doesn’t come out quite like it sounded in your head, or the drawings of feet that look more like hoofs with little corn niblets on them.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he wouldn’t mind you going on about the technobabble in Star Trek. “Come on, ionospheric interference again?” you would say. “Positively tricky things, ions,” he’d reply, with a smirk that would make you want to hit him in the face with a pillow. Lovingly.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d slyly refer to that one thing he does as “the Cardassian neck trick.”

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he’d be the diplomat to your blunt talker. Together you would be excellent at negotiations, whether you were discussing a car payment or the price of earrings at a bazaar in Turkey or charming the sales lady at Anthropologie. “Are you kidding me? $150 for this dress?” “Now, darling, they probably work very hard for that money. Feel how soft this is.” “Not soft enough, dammit!” “Forgive my partner. It really is a lovely piece though. Is there anything you could do?” Somehow, with Sid, it could be done. Even at Anthropologie.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you would convince him to hire a lawn-mowing service that uses goats to spruce up the grounds around his cottage. “Goats?” he would remark, one eyebrow raised in amusement. Yes, goats, you would say, explaining how it’s much better for the environment than regular mowing, but secretly just hoping to introduce the idea of goat adoption by inches. Eventually you would convince him to adopt one of the lawn-mowing goats, the adorable grey one with the black spots. And maybe also the brown one with the white saddleback pattern, like a Corgi. And another grey one. You’d totally take responsibility for taking care of them, and would actually figure out how to make a decent goat cheese, which you’d send out to friends in perfectly shaped herb-dusted pucks, all wrapped in brown waxed paper.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he’d see you reading a book and ask about it and you’d tell him what it was about, not really paying attention, too immersed in the prose. The next day, you’d see him reading his Kindle and you’d nudge him. “Oh, it’s the book you were reading the other day,” he’d say. “I wanted to see what took away your attention. This is good, though, isn’t it?” It would become a pattern: your book club made of two.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d be visiting a random ruin in Europe one day and end up that night with a klatch of random tourists drawn to your combined presence, a group gradually assembled as you and Sid walked through the city. You’d drink prosecco and discuss technological law and international entities. “Robots!” you’d insist at one point, your eyes gleaming. “But wouldn’t robots just try to overpower humanity?” a Polish painter would ask. “No, see, she’s onto something,” Sid would say. “Robots don’t need power over us, anyway. They’re going to live forever and watch us all die.” “That’s right,” a concert pianist from France would chime in. “They’ve already got power.”

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he’d be charmed by your not-so-secret Tumblr devoted to fandom ships, fanfiction, and fanart. “I don’t see why they have to be so coy about it these days,” he would say, referring to a slash pairing. “I’d thought that’d be the one thing that wouldn’t carry over.” You nod, knowing he’s still sore that Garak/Bashir came this close to happening before being thrown over for no good reason. You’d send him some really silly Harry Potter fanfic to cheer him up.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, whenever you flew out to visit him in some foreign country where he was shooting a movie, he would make sure there was a field guide to the local birds resting on the pillow of your hotel bed when you arrived. And a gigantic bottle of wine.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d never let on that you never quite got around to watching Syriana.

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he would ruefully admit to your friends over dinner that the Dornish storyline in Season 5 of Game of Thrones was a hot mess. You would get into a bit of a lather on his behalf (“what could he even hope to DO with that writing?”). Afterwards, in a spot of silence on the way back home from the restaurant, he’d squeeze your hand appreciatively and whisper, “Vengeance. Justice. Fire and blood.”

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d tweet about how odd it was, the way people got so shy and silly around you when they met you two together, as if they were blinded by your combined brightness. “Oh my God, you are a liar,” Sid would say, reading the tweet over your shoulder. “No, sweetheart, it’s true, it’s very odd for me,” you’d answer primly. “‘Blinded by your combined brightness’? Darling,” he’d say, meeting your eyes. “You have many fine qualities, but modesty isn’t one of them.”

If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d always wake up first in the morning. It’s not because you’re really gung-ho about being a morning person now, it’s that there are goats to feed. You’d come back as dawn inched in through the bedroom windows and wake up your boyfriend, who would, in the most gentle and loving way, let you know that you have goat crap in your hair. But you wouldn’t mind; it would just come with the territory.