Chapter Text
1789
Johanna Constantine is still down on her knees, her eyes rolled back in her head with just the white showing, whispering to herself, caught up in a vision that seems to trouble her greatly. Her thugs are lying on the floor unconscious, knocked out by Hob’s military-honed reactions, no longer posing a threat. Adrenaline is coursing through Hob’s veins and his hand smarts from the punches he delivered, announcing the onset of bruised knuckles.
Next to him, the Stranger, as Hob calls him for lack of a better name, looks calm and unbothered by their interruption and the threat that had been posed. His blue eyes briefly watch the effect his spell, or whatever the hell he had been doing, is having on the woman, before he raises them to look at Hob, a familiar, amused expression on his face.
“You need not have come to my defence,” he chides gently, as if maybe, whilst it hadn’t been necessary, he had kind of enjoyed Hob taking care of things and playing the hero. Certainly, the man, whoever he is, and isn’t it a tragedy that Hob still doesn’t know after all this time, can hold his own and isn’t defenceless nor delicate, no matter how posh and fair-skinned he always appears.
“Clearly,” Hob says, enjoying the stranger’s expression of amused satisfaction. “Still, I didn’t want to be drinking alone here in a hundred years’ time.”
The dark-rimmed eyes narrow for just a fraction of a second and the Stranger smirks, slowly. His gaze makes heat sizzle through Hob’s veins, a pleasant shudder that runs up his back and makes the hair at the nape of his neck rise. It’s probably why he’s brave enough to suggest the following.
“I don’t suppose you care about finding another pub tonight?”
”She might have told others about our meeting. You are not safe.”
“I’m perfectly safe,” Hob protests, not trying to feel affronted by the Stranger’s lack of confidence in him. Hadn’t he just proved that he could perfectly well take care of himself? Besides, he wasn’t able to die anyway and, well, there had been several occasions in the past where he had put that incredible fact to the test. Also, he doesn’t want this to be goodbye for another hundred years. “I’ve rented a room nearby. I have a good bottle of French red, and I don’t feel like drinking alone. What do you say?”
It’s kind of a desperate attempt, especially because the Stranger usually isn’t very tempted by food or drink, only occasionally sipping on a beverage like he doesn’t have the taste for it, but Hob doesn’t want to cut their evening short, and the Stranger was so close to revealing his name to him, before they were so rudely interrupted by Lady Constantine.
The Stranger seems to mull this over, briefly glancing down as though Hob’s suggestion has to be given serious consideration, which makes the moment when he looks up through his dark, long lashes and fixes Hob with his perpetually amused expression, all the more dramatic. Hob’s breath hitches and he swallows down the spit that has been collecting in his mouth. He can’t remember when he first acknowledged to himself that he was attracted to this impossible, mysterious man, standing before him every hundred years in pitch-black clothes, but it must have been at least 200 years ago. The thrill it gives him whenever the Stranger looks at him like he’s interested in what Hob has to say is better than most thrills that can be found living his life - and really, life is fantastic.
”Lead the way, then,” the Stranger breathes, and Hob feels like he’s standing on the edge of a very steep cliff, staring down at the churning sea, excitement coursing through his body and making him short of breath.
With a curt nod, not trusting himself to speak, he turns on his heels, expecting the Stranger to follow.
*-*
Hob has rented a small, two-room suite in a nearby lodging house that caters to a wealthy clientele, while he’s in town. With his current trade there's no reason to find permanent accommodation. For the past hundred years he’s been moving from one place to the next, not settling anywhere for long. It has suited his lifestyle and has made it far less likely that he’d be looked on with curiosity for not ageing a day.
In the sitting room, he pours them each a glass of dark red wine, while the Stranger stands by a small sidetable next to the settee and leafs through the book Hob left there after his early morning reading. It’s a beautiful edition by a poet-painter called William Blake; a collection of poems, illuminated with artwork. It caught Hob’s eye a couple of days ago, when it was being sold by a fine art dealer as one of only a few copies, printed by the artist himself. The poems are strange and mystical, some of them allegorical, but Blake’s method of adding illuminations to his work, the likes of which could be found in old Latin monastery texts, is extraordinary. Hob may have left the printing business two centuries ago, but he still has a love for beautiful books. Working in William Caxton’s printing workshop in the 1490s was educational and eye opening - he had taught himself to read using Aesop's Fables, one of the first books Caxton had put into print.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he now says, as he steps closer with two glasses of wine in his hands, the sound of his steps swallowed up by the plush carpet.
The Stranger slowly straightens and turns, and Hob realises that he moved too far and they are standing too close now. Between them, Hob’s hands are awkwardly holding the glasses of deep red, swirling liquid, its bouquet, full of berries, plums and vanilla notes, tickling his nostrils. The Stranger’s grey-blue eyes drop down to Hob’s hands.
”You got hurt,” he says in that deep, low voice Hob never forgets, not even when they haven’t seen each other in a hundred years, and he takes the wine glasses out of Hob’s suddenly shaky hands, setting them down on the little sidetable next to the abandoned book.
“It’s but a scrape,” Hob protests weakly, but then the Stranger’s cool fingers close around his hands, lifting them up for inspection and he forgets to breathe for a moment. The Stranger’s warm breath fans over his bruised knuckles as he takes in the raw skin, and Hob wonders hysterically if he’s going to bend his head and kiss the bloody knuckles. No, of course not, he chides himself.
“Who are you? What’s your name?” he rasps out, desperate to break away from the moment, but somehow unable to withdraw his hand.
The Stranger’s eyes lift from the perusal of Hob’s scraped hands and there’s the sardonic smirk again, like the Stranger has been enjoying keeping Hob on tenterhooks for centuries. He had been about to reveal his identity in the pub earlier, Hob is sure of it. He had opened his mouth to answer, but then that blasted woman had stepped into the room, effectively cutting him off before he could uncover the biggest mystery of Hob’s long life.
”Wouldn’t you like to know,” he murmurs, and his hands are warm around Hob’s fingers where he’s still holding them between their chests.
“Yes. Yes, I would!” Hob says frantically, frustration starting to rise in him, both because of the Stranger’s incessant teasing and smug smirk, as well as because of the unbearable closeness that makes his knees weak. “For 400 years you’ve left me hanging, evading my questions, time and time again, leaving me wondering who you are and what your intentions are, whether you’d just leave me to die if I didn’t please you or if I’d ever see you again after the last time-” it rushes out of him in a barrage he might find embarrassing any other time. “How cruel can one being be, leaving their fr-”
”Shh,” the Stranger says and there’s the brief press of his finger against Hob’s lips. “It wasn’t my intention to be cruel,” he says kindly.
“Then tell me!” Hob demands, almost shouts it in the Stranger’s face, agitated now.
”You need to calm down.” More of that fond amusement, slowly driving Hob insane.
Hob laughs hoarsely, because that is him being calm. The Stranger hasn’t seen him when he’s not calm. He pulls his hands to step away, but the Stranger holds on to one of his wrists with astonishing strength.
”You need to calm down,” the Stranger insists with a look in his cat-like eyes that speaks of rising annoyance and when Hob opens his mouth to protest again, not wanting to be told what to do like a misbehaving child, he huffs out a vexed grunt, fisting his elegant, long fingers in the fine silk of Hob’s embroidered waistcoat and shuts him up, effectively so.
His lips are surprisingly warm and soft, but the kiss is bruising, his mouth demanding. Hob gives a startled gasp and it is exploited, the Stranger nipping on his bottom lip and pulling him closer still. The logic of how this is supposed to calm Hob down is escaping him, but so are a couple of things right now, to be honest.
They come apart, Hob panting into the Stranger’s face like he’s been running. “Your name,” he blurts out, overwhelmed, and the Stranger’s eyes soften.
”Dream,” he says, his half-lidded gaze still settled on Hob’s mouth, as if now that he’s tasted him, he’s already keen to come back for seconds. ”... of the Endless.”
“Of course it is,” Hob says stupidly, because his higher brain functions are not working the way they should. He should be dissecting what he has learned, rejoicing that he finally has an answer, however mysterious it is. All that he can think about though, is the way Dream is still holding onto his waistcoat and how his lips just tasted, like something dark and rich and utterly addictive. How he wants to be kissed like that again, kissed and crowded back against some surface, horizontal or not, he’s not picky. How he wants Dream’s pale hands on his skin, everywhere.
Dream leans forward, bringing his mouth close to Hob’s ear and breathes, his warm breath washing over Hob’s neck, ”Just because I want to hear you say it… when we do what you just thought about.”
“Can you… read my mind?” Hob asks, but it comes out feebly, because Dream is nuzzling his neck, wayward strands of his wild hair brushing against sensitive skin, his lips trailing a ghost of a kiss behind Hob’s ear, where he’s most sensitive.
”Nothing so… mundane. I know your fantasies… and daydreams,” Dream whispers, and then his tongue laps shockingly across Hob’s skin.
Hob trembles, his already weak knees almost buckling as arousal shoots through him. “Not a… a devil then,” he manages, reaching for the lapels on Dream’s coat, burying his fingers in them to have something to hold onto, “but… a Lord of Dreams?”
Dream hums against Hob’s neck, pressing a line of kisses beneath his cravat, before pulling back. ”Enough revelations for now,” he rasps, uncurling his fingers from Hob’s waistcoat and reaching for his hands instead. ”I have a dream to make real.”
It might just as well be a whimper that escapes Hob, as he allows himself to be pulled along towards the bedroom.
*-*
Dream undresses him slowly, like he’s committing to memory every second of peeling Hob out of his clothes, but he shucks his own off like they are offending him. Hob can’t remember an instance where someone else took so much pleasure in removing his clothes from him. Dream slowly unbuttons Hob’s waistcoat with his elegant, pale fingers, one ivory button after the other carefully threaded through the buttonhole. He brushes away Hob’s linen shirt and pulls off his cravat and places another licking kiss against Hob’s revealed collarbone.
Around them, the floor is littered in fabrics, the softer, warm, earth tones of Hob’s ensemble mingled with the pitch-black silks of Dream’s wardrobe. Beneath his clothes, Dream’s skin is as pale as snow, just like his face and hands. The flames from the fireplace lick an occasional yellow warmth over his limbs. He’s lean, almost too thin, but there’s nothing soft about him except his pretty face - every muscle is defined, carved as if in a Master’s workshop, filled with purpose. He’s unblemished like a newborn, a sharp contrast to Hob’s tanned, rough skin, with its numerous silver lines of old scars that won’t ever fade.
Dream’s lips on his skin are meticulous, but he hasn’t kissed him on the mouth again, and Hob reaches out and buries his hands in Dream’s hair, surprised at the softness of it, tugging, tugging, until Dream lifts his head from where he had been mouthing Hob’s chest. His eyes are dark, the pupils so large that the stormy, grey-blue around them is nearly drowned out and there’s something bright in the depth of them, something dangerous and ancient.
At Hob’s pull, Dream surges in for a kiss, like he’d forgotten lips could meet like this but then suddenly remembered, with enthusiasm. Hob slips his hands around Dream’s narrow waist, groaning when their bodies meet, Dream’s thin frame brushing against his. In his breeches, Hob is hard, and from the way Dream’s trousers are tenting, he is too. When Hob tries to take control of the kiss, angling Dream’s head to his liking so he can slip his tongue past his lips, Dream gasps out between their mouths, before pushing forward, fighting him for dominance. It’s heady and arousing and he tugs at Dream’s hair as they sway back and forth with the push and pull of the kiss.
When Dream pulls back, his pink mouth is a shade darker than usual, lips swollen and flushed, and his lashes are dark smudges against pale skin. Rose tints his cheeks, the first colour Hob has ever seen on them. It’s Hob who crowds him back against the bed, but Dream who spins them around and shoves Hob onto the sheets, crawling upwards with feline grace. More kisses, deep and wet and Dream’s body rolling into his. Hob digs his fingers into Dream’s sinewy back and holds on, getting lost in it, in the need and the heat.
They’ve been kissing for a long time and Hob thinks he could happily spend the rest of his long life doing nothing but this, but then Dream reaches for his breeches. When they seem to not be doing what he wants them to do, resisting his removal of them by stubbornly clinging to Hob’s legs and getting tangled up with his stockings, Dream huffs out in anger and tightens his jaw with a rather stubborn expression, resulting in the simple vanishing of Hob’s breeches and stockings.
“Who are you - really?” Hob breathes, amazed by this new show of ability. Is there anything the man can’t do?
”I told you,” Dream says, a smirk playing around his lips, ”I’m of the Endless.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Hob mutters, rolling his eyes. Still playing games, Dream is infuriating. “Who are you? What are you?”
”I can be anything I like.”
Dream’s expression is slightly smug, before he seems to reconsider his words, tilting his head thoughtfully. ”I can be anything you like, for that matter,” he adds slyly, and his eyes seem to darken further as he looks down at Hob, sprawled out beneath him, naked and aroused, despite his mild irritation.
If Hob weren’t already hard, those words would have done the trick, but then Dream leans down and kisses a line from his belly button lower, along the hairy trail, and Hob fists the bedsheets in a tight-knuckled grip, arching his back. When Dream lifts his head and looks up, he’s still smirking, obviously very much amused by Hob’s need for him. The bastard is practically hovering over Hob’s cock, stalling.
”I could be young, with a fair face and plush lips, or a woman, with subtle curves and soft breasts,... I could be your whore, … or a blushing virgin, anxious but eager, …”
Before Hob’s eyes, Dream’s features seem to shift as he speaks, changing subtly, softening, rearranging. It should be alarming, but Hob has seen and heard so many strange things tonight, and oh, right, he’s still hard and unfulfilled, that he can’t really muster up the surprise Dream’s transformation probably warrants.
”... I could take you as a dog, or conjure you a second lover,...” Dream muses, obviously quite taken with his own suggestions as he spins stories, decidedly proud of his own creative imagination, and Hob bites his lips and hisses with need, watching him shift and change.
“I want you as you are. As you want to be,” Hob huffs out, overwhelmed, and Dream stops, his features slipping back into his impassive, normal expression, haughty, square jaw and glinting cat-eyes.
He shrugs, briefly arches his eyebrows, and leans down to unceremoniously take Hob into his mouth.
“Fuck,” Hob swears, and wonders, if despite his immortality, he maybe won’t survive the night.
*-*
Hob has no time to recover from his orgasm, before Dream pulls one of Hob’s legs up and to the side to expose him, his teeth capturing his pink bottom lip as he looks at the hidden place below Hob’s bollocks. Hob is relieved he took a bath today before going out, wanting to look his best when meeting up with the Stranger, but even so his breathing is speeding up under Dream's gaze. It’s been a while since he lay with another man, even longer than that since he’d let someone fuck him. It probably won’t ever not be strange.
When Dream looks up from perusing Hob’s furled, tight hole, his heated gaze softens.
”Is this still your fantasy, Hob Gadling?” he asks gently, like he’s sensing Hob’s hesitation, and maybe he is, the sneaky creature.
“Could you just finally fuck me?” Hob says with a bravado that is a little bit for show, because between Dream’s legs, the evidence of his arousal is slender, but long, just like the rest of him, and with not having done this in half a century or more, Hob isn’t sure if he can relax enough for this not to hurt.
Dream’s mouth twitches. “No need to be crude,” he chuckles, ”but of course I can.”
Dream has the courtesy to rub a questing thumb over his pucker, but still Hob flinches at the first touch. Dream’s eyes on him have that same heavy-lidded, amused expression he usually likes to wear in Hob’s company, like he finds Hob endlessly fascinating for some reason, but his pupils look blown and dark once more, glinting, making him seem otherworldly. One long, slim finger slips into him, slippery as if with oil, and God knows where that came from, but Hob has no time to enquire about such trivial matters, his eyes fluttering closed as Dream explores him, humming softly.
The touch of Dream’s fingers is quick and efficient, and Hob spares a thought for how maybe, just maybe, Dream’s patience is running out now, too, and isn’t that a thrill, to know that someone as unknowable as his centuries-old friend wants him like this. They shift around, Dream crawling up between his legs, all long, pale limbs and marble skin. Dream’s mouth is back on him, his tongue pushing past Hob’s lips as his cock presses in behind his balls. Once more, there’s urgency in Dream’s kiss, a hunger, and Hob lifts his arms and fists one hand into Dream’s hair, holding on as Dream breaches him.
A groan tumbles from Dream’s lips as he slides in, breathing against Hob’s mouth, and it’s the first such sound he’s made tonight, but Hob thinks it might be the best sound in the whole universe. His groan makes Hob forget about the slight discomfort of entry, sparks something low in his belly, a flame rekindled, a flame that turns into a wildfire, all-consuming, when Dream starts moving. There’s strength behind his movements, in the coiled, hard muscles of his back, in the rock-hard buttocks that flex when he thrusts and which Hob runs his free hand over and it steals Hob’s breath away. Hob’s hard again, his cock rubbing against Dream’s hairless stomach. It only occurs to Hob now that Dream has no pubic or body hair, except for the shock of wild strands on his head and his dark eyebrows, like he simply forgot that normal people have hair all over their bodies.
The thought flees when Dream sits up and hauls Hob into his lap like he’s a plaything, and okay, this too is arousing. The new angle makes Hob pant and whine, and when he opens his eyes, Dream is staring at him, open-mouthed and slack-jawed, hungry and somewhat bewildered, infinity swirling in his eyes.
“Oh God,” Hob moans, and digs his hands into Dream’s upper arms, holding on as Dream rocks them, thrusting upwards and burying himself in Hob’s body.
”Not a god, nothing so simple,” Dream says, and it would be annoying in its self-satisfaction if his voice wasn’t a raspy growl, breathless and affected.
“Oh shut up, will you,” Hob mutters without heat, and it makes Dream smile in a slow, charmed way, like he enjoys Hob’s insolence.
Hob’s body feels like liquid heat, and his orgasm is building rapidly, a tension that starts in his toes and lights up his insides, that leaves him bearing down on Dream, angling his hips so Dream’s cock rubs the place where Hob aches the most. He’s starting to tremble when he reaches down for his own cock, but Dream’s hand is there before he can wrap his own around it, and Dream envelops him with warm, sure fingers.
Dream’s other hand has found its way to cup Hob’s cheek, long fingers half-buried in his hair. Both their hair ties are long gone, a sacrifice to their lovemaking. He’s looking at Hob with his dark, wide eyes, panting softly now. Hob moves harder in his lap, wants him to lose it, to cry out with pleasure, to give up that calm facade, to growl and scratch and bite like a wild animal, just as gone with lust as Hob. He wants to shatter the careful, collected image Dream has built of himself, wants to get to the core of him.
He leans forward, nips at Dream’s open mouth. They kiss, or rather try to, but Hob is breathing too hard as the pleasure rises, licking up his legs and building, building, building, until it explodes outwards, the wave of it rolling through his whole body, brutal and all-consuming. When he opens his eyes again, he finds Dream is still watching him, fascinated, rolling his hips for another moment, before he stills, shaking, a hoarse, long-drawn groan falling from his parted lips.
No screaming then, but the way Dream’s eyes roll back is gratifying. Next time, Hob thinks, next time I’ll make you scream. He pitches forward, eats that groan from Dream’s lips and slides his hands into his inky hair, which falls wild around his pale face.
*-*
He wakes up the next morning, feeling well rested, his body aching as he stretches on the bed, alone.
Hob doesn’t remember much after coming, perched in Dream’s lap. He thinks they kissed some more, he thinks they talked, Dream’s voice low and amused. He has a vague recollection of Dream maybe, possibly putting his tongue to use to clean him up, everywhere - but, eh, that might belong in the realm of fantasies and maybe is not based in reality.
Perhaps, he thinks, looking around the room, taking in the way last night’s clothes are folded carefully over a chair, it was all a dream after all. Perhaps, he came back here, after meeting his Stranger, alone, drinking a bit too much because the prospect of not seeing him for a hundred years left him feeling melancholic like it always did.
When Hob sits up, something soft falls from between the sheets and he blinks, looking down at the black silk-ribbon that had held Dream’s midnight-black hair together. He picks it up, wraps the silk around his fingers, brings it to his mouth.
When he packs later in the day, for Liverpool, where a ship waits for him, he puts the ribbon into the inside pocket of his waistcoat, where it rests, close to his heart.
A hundred years, then.