Chapter Text
Omaha, Nebraska is nothing like London.
It is small, for one. The streets seem strangely bare, populated mostly by single-horse carts and wagons, very few of them covered. The weather allows for this: the sky is an endless, perfect robin's egg blue, with nary a cloud to be seen and the sun hanging like a shiny gold coin directly overhead. It is hot, and Morpheus dabs at his forehead with a handkerchief, the only one he was able to pack in his haste to flee England. It comes away damp with sweat, and he stifles the inborn urge to feel shame at his lack of control. There is still a very large part of him that insists he ought to be...more put-together. More composed. More elegant. All of the things that society omegas, even male ones, are expected to display. He swallows, and forcibly reminds himself that it would be best to cease thinking of himself as an omega at all, at least until it becomes absolutely necessary.
Better to think only on the present. To wit, Omaha.
Morpheus steps down off of the platform and into the dusty street, waiting for a cart and mule to pass before he proceeds at a leisurely pace down the way. The key, he thinks, is to make himself appear as though he belongs here. To go on with nonchalance and grace. If he does not appear concerned, then no one will have any cause to stop and question him.
He walks for a time, putting as much distance between himself and the railroad station as possible. Sweat dapples his forehead, and this time he does not dare to dab it away. Fear has slipped icy fingers around his throat, and eventually Morpheus must stop, pausing before a bench that is set out front of a general store. He sits, and sits as he has been taught to do: neatly, legs crossed at the ankles, displaying neither aggressive machismo nor simpering femininity. A perfectly neutral statue of a man, hopefully overlooked by all who pass him.
He wonders how fast his father will be able to put out his feelers, an entire ocean away. He wonders how many telegraphs have already been sent, winging their way across the Atlantic on their invisible wires. He wonders how much his father would pay to have his recalcitrant omega son, one who has courted scandal not once but twice before, back beneath his thumb. Or if the trial of Mssr. Wilde will have finally swayed him to cut ties entirely.
Much wondering, and little knowing. There is only going forward. He has been given the opportunity to change, or else to suffer a fate worse than death in the process, and Morpheus intends to seize the chance with both hands. He has stagnated too long under the weight of form and function, and for the first time in his life he is...free. Free to do as he wishes. To live as he pleases.
But first, he must get as far from his father as possible.
Dust has gathered on the shiny, black tips of his shoes by the time that Morpheus feels well enough to continue his journey, though where, specifically, he is going he does not know. As far from the railroad station as possible, he supposes. He has a bit of money left, though much of it had been spent on the tickets from New York to here, as well as on food and lodgings during his long journey. He has a few pieces of jewelry which he is hesitant to try and pawn in a place so small as this, for fear that their worth will not be properly recognized. Beyond this, however, he is effectively penniless – he certainly does not have enough money to continue along the rails, and besides, the stations along the way are where his father would look first. America is a large country, but Mssr. Chronos Sanfin's influence extends even wider.
There is a hotel down the street, one St. Nicholas Hotel by name, which seems a likely place for him to find lodgings for the evening. It is not very large, consisting only of three available rooms and a small common area, but the fee is cheap enough, and Morpheus is too tired from his long journey, and from many days of anxiety verging on terror, to complain about a lack of fanciful amenities. What is most important is that the hotel is possessed of a private bath, with heated water besides, and Morpheus is eager to hand over the extra dollar required to access it. He has not bathed properly for a week, and he is sure he looks a fright. Oscar, he thinks wryly, would be ashamed of him.
But Oscar is not here. Oscar was on trial, and has been imprisoned, for the simple crime of being himself. For daring to court the attentions of alphas, male alphas, as opposed to settling down with a woman of any sex, as is only proper.
Even in his own mind, 'proper' has been infused with a tone of scornful dismay. Yes, it is proper for a man to marry a woman, no matter his secondary sex. It hardly matters what the woman is, so long as she is the one who bears children, and never mind that alpha women almost always have difficult pregnancies. Never mind that omega men are just as capable of bringing life into the world. No, it is proper, as the Good Book says, that men should lay with women, and what makes a man is not, apparently, what lies between his legs or whether or not he can bear children, but whatever it is that society tells him.
"Sir?" the proprietor of the St. Nicholas says, and Morpheus shakes his head slowly.
"Thank you," he murmurs, and the man inclines his chin, the barest of nods required to still indicate the least modicum of respect. Unclear if it is because of his dress or his accent; Morpheus has been sure to apply neutralizing scents, to better hide his omega status, and so he does not think it is that. The man starts to turn away, and Morpheus clears his throat. "I beg your pardon...if I wished to procure a guide to take me west, where would I find such a person?"
"Just take the railroad," the man says. He pulls a bundle of papers from beneath his counter, busily sorting through what looks like the week's mail. "It'll bring you right to San Francisco."
"The fare is $65," Morpheus demures. He has, after tonight's stay, a mere thirty dollars to his name, plus whatever he can fetch for his jewelry. "I was hoping for...a cheaper option."
The man hums softly. He shuffles through his mail. "Probably one or two wagons still heading out west," he says. "Not as far as all that, though. I reckon you could find someone going to Lincoln and then go from there."
"And where is Lincoln?"
"'Bout fifty miles or so."
Morpheus chews his bottom lip. To say that he is averse to the idea of hitching his way across the country is putting it lightly. Far better, he thinks, to find a single guide, one with whom he can build camaraderie and trust, and thus feel more secure in the knowledge that they will hesitate to turn him over to his father's waiting clutches. For he does not doubt that Mssr. Sanfin will want him back, if only to try and mitigate the scandal of his once-divorced and still unmated omega son gallivanting across the pond so close to Oscar's trial. People will begin to talk. People will begin to think that he has, perhaps, followed in his unwise friend's footsteps, taking up with rough alpha men like a common harlot.
No. No, that won't do.
"I would prefer a single guide, if at all possible," he says softly. "If it is a matter of money..."
"Begging your pardon, sir, but the clothes off your back are worth more than some old Union fellows in this town make in a year. It's only that you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who isn't using the rails these days, at least for that distance." The man tilts his head back, looking up at the ceiling and the single, gas-powered light, which swings gently back and forth in a breeze so faint that it can only be seen, not felt.
"There are a few mesteñeros in the area," he finally says. Morpheus catches a whiff of his scent as he lowers his head and leans forward over the counter: beta, male, mated. On the train car he had been too nervous, too caught in his own mind, to pay much attention to the smells around him. Now he wonders if he has made a mistake in wearing neutral perfumes, for this man certainly does not seem to have use for them.
Then again, he is a beta. He has no reason to present himself as anything other than what he is.
"Mesteñeros?" Morpheus repeats, sounding out the foreign word slowly. He has always been good with languages, but this one is so steeped in lingua franca that he can make only the vaguest guess as to its meaning.
"Sure, mustang drivers. They come up from Texas sometimes, following the herds. Just depends on the season, but I think one or two of 'em is staying at Miss Henrietta's boarding house. Two blocks north and one east of here. You might inquire there, and see if any of them are heading that far west."
It is Morpheus' turn to incline his head, with far more deference than he had been afforded himself...though perhaps it is merely a regional quirk, for the proprietor has been forthcoming and helpful enough in all other respects. "Thank you," he murmurs. "I will be sure to heed your advice. Now...about the bath?"
The man grunts, and fetches from a hook on the wall a ring of heavy iron keys. "I'll pull it for you," he says, and leaves Morpheus alone with his small valise.
He goes to his room, firstly, to unpack. There is...precious little to unpack. A few books, light, easy to carry, mostly poetry. A second suit, which he intends to keep clean and unworn for as long as possible, as well as two shirts. He had only been able to bring the shoes he currently wears, as well as his single handkerchief, and from inside one of his socks he very delicately removes the jewelry he had been able to squirrel away: a pair of opal earrings, a gift from his now ex-wife before she had taken their son and removed herself from Britain; a ruby brooch which he had purchased with money he had made himself on the sale of his first chapbook; a gold bracelet, which he had intended to gift to Nada, before she had decided that their love was doomed to fail.
Of all of them the ruby brooch is the most luxurious. The facets make the gem shimmer like a bead of blood, and he had always thought he looked particularly handsome with it pinned to his breast. With some regret, Morpheus tucks the whole lot gently back into their ignominious hiding place, replacing it all in his valise. The only other thing that he has to his name is the clothes he currently wears and the thirty dollars and some change stuffed into the front pocket of his other pair of trousers. Enough to purchase him a train ticket closer to California, but not enough to get him there. And if he got that far, only to fall short...then what? Rely on his meager haggling skills to try and get a decent price for his possessions? He has never been that sort of society man. Oscar had always been the more loquacious of them, more charming, more personable. He had made as many friends as he had enemies, while Morpheus had always seemed to collect only tragedies.
It had been great fuel for his poetry, but, admittedly, a terrible time for him.
Perhaps, he thinks (with no small amount of desperation), he might be able to make the journey on his own. Surely there is a place here where he can purchase a map, and while he has never made an extended overland journey himself before, people have been doing it with very little prior training or, indeed, any forethought at all for thousands of years. He supposes he could use the last of his money to purchase as cheap a nag as he can find...
Morpheus' mind turns back to his horse riding lessons of childhood. Those had all been well-trained, well-behaved thoroughbreds, of temperaments suited to the teaching of young men and women. He also, he realizes, had not been in charge of caring for them afterwards. Horses eat hay, any child would know that, but how much hay, and how often? Presumably at least once a day? Do horses require regular bathing? He had observed the stableboys brushing the horses down after a day of riding, the short, stiff hair scattering into felt-like clouds around the stables, but he cannot recall if they had ever so much as thrown water over the beasts.
"You will end up dead in a ditch," he tells himself firmly. Admitting it is a sting to his pride – he has always taken great pleasure in his self-sufficiency, more so than many omega men are allowed, or even allow themselves, in this day and age – but he grips the sheets of the bed until his knuckles turn white, and then the moment passes. He is not well-suited to this sort of lifestyle, and he must account for that. He will do as the hotel's proprietor had suggested, and go to the boarding house tomorrow. At least if he employs a guide, that will be one more person that stands between himself and his father. Hopefully.
"Sir?"
There is a light knock at the door, and Morpheus forces his fingers to unclench. He straightens himself up, smoothing out his shirt and jacket, though he leaves his tophat upon the bed. After a moment of consideration he tucks his valise between the headboard and the mattress. It is an imperfect hiding place, but better than beneath the bed or in the chest of drawers, which would be far more obvious.
"Bath's ready," comes the voice again, and Morpheus gives his things one last look over before he goes to refresh himself. He judges them as hidden as they are going to get and, nodding to himself, answers the door.
The bath is as simple as he had thought it might be for the price of one dollar, but there is soap provided, as well as a scrubbing brush and a towel with which to dry himself, and Morpheus spends longer than he ought simply sluicing the warm water over himself, enjoying the feeling of being clean. He washes fastidiously, sparing only a brief thought to re-applying his perfumes afterwards – he has precious little to work with, and it would be best, he thinks, to apply them tomorrow, before he goes to meet a potential guide. He does not know what these 'mesteñeros' will think of an unaccompanied omega, regardless of sex, making their way across the country, and he wishes to start things off on the correct foot. Maybe later, if he finds his guide agreeable, he will tell them the truth...or they will learn it regardless, once he runs out of his perfumes.
Bathed at last, and having taken the time to fully wash and dry his hair, which has always been both his most striking and his most pleasing feature, Morpheus retires to his room, despite how the sun still hangs high in the sky. Summer has come to the Americas, and Omaha is nothing like London: with no clouds or rain to provide shade, there is nothing to block the light that will last well into the evening.
With little else to occupy his time until tomorrow, Morpheus takes a seat on the bed he has rented, retrieves his valise from between the wall and the mattress, and pulls out his copy of Browning's Asolando.
+++
He falls asleep long before the sun actually sinks below the boundless horizon, and when Morpheus wakes it is to the sight of the most spectacular dawn colors he has ever seen, streaming through the dusty glass of his tiny window like ribbons of rainbow-hued silk. For a moment he is too transfixed to do anything about it, and then, with a feverish energy that he has not felt since he first met Wilde and his supplicants, he hauls himself from his bed, unconcerned, for the moment, with the wrinkles that have pressed into his suit. He is too busy clawing through his valise for paper and pencil, coming upon the single journal that he had managed to pack before he had fled. It's a quarter-full already, bits and pieces of doggerel and partial thoughts, yet all of it seems meaningless compared to the sunrise he is witnessing now.
Dawn is a symbol of rebirth, he thinks, and spends the next several minutes scribbling down as many words as come to mind, revelation and reborn, lustration, metamorphosis. He scrawls down colors, trying to capture the precise shade of scarlet, not quite like blood from a wound but more alive, somehow. If one could view the blood as it pumps through the veins, he thinks it would be the color of this sunrise – if one could somehow see into the living heart of a man he thinks it would look like the first dawn seen by one finally free from a lifetime of shackles.
After fifteen minutes of furious writing, Morpheus sags back onto his bed and allows himself the luxury of simply looking. What he has cobbled together here is not poetry, but it has the potential for it. He prides himself on his mastery of words, on each carefully-chosen syllable, and so he will examine what he has chosen later, when he has had further chance to think.
He does not wish to rush it. Perfection requires patience, and he is no stranger to perfection. His chapbook had made him actual money once he had published it, where so many others had been simple vanity projects; one of Oscar’s friends – a queer, macabre fellow with a face like a hatchet – had told him that he had a keen eye for the grotesque, that Morpheus had captured in his poetry a sort of torment that was more commonly found in illustration. It had seemed quite the compliment at the time, when all of Morpheus’ contemporaries were focusing on the banal and the pastoral, or else the newest eroticism coming out of France. Les Chansons de Bilitis had been a great favorite of their little group, and Morpheus had enjoyed the titillation of it – not because it had depicted women enjoying each other sexually, but because, to him, the character of Mnasidika had seemed so powerfully in control of herself. Possessed of her own sensuality, an omega woman allowed to comport herself with alpha sensibility.
The eroticism had not been what he had wanted to write, however. In truth, this is not what he usually writes. ‘Renewal’ is not a theme he has given much thought to. His previous poems had focused on stagnation, on captivity, on the chains of modern society. Not…whatever this is.
Hope, maybe.
He lingers for a long while, watching the sun rise, the fantastic colors of it slowly smoothing out into the more common yellows and golds and yet more endless blue sky. There are clouds dotting the horizon this day, massive, white cotton things like tufts of lamb’s wool, and it is with their shadows casting through the dirty window that Morpheus rises properly and performs his morning ablutions.
The hotel’s proprietor is kind enough to lend him the use of a razor and shaving mirror for the price of a nickel, and though it pains him to part with yet more money on something that seems so frivolous, neither is he able to resist. He has not been able to shave since the onset of his journey, and two weeks is enough time for even an omega to develop something of a beard.
Once he has made himself presentable and applied his perfumes, Morpheus dons his tophat, takes up his valise, and thanks the man behind the counter before he leaves.
“Good luck to you,” the man says. He is just as engaged in other matters this morning as he had been the previous afternoon, this time busily and efficiently notating something on a piece of paper, and does not seem inclined to give Morpheus any further advice. Resigned to the fact that he is once more alone – as Gershom had been, a stranger in a strange land – Morpheus nevertheless tips his hat in farewell, and then proceeds outwards into the sunshine.
The city is bustling this early in the morning, with far more carts taking up space in the streets. Deliveries being made, travelers preparing to leave, men in rugged jeans riding their horses down the straightway, on their way out of the city, perhaps to attend to sheep or cattle. Morpheus realizes he knows very little about what people do in the Americas, and what he does know is now tinged with uncertainty. He had assumed that a place such as Omaha, so small compared to London, would be dangerously uncivilized, and most especially for a man such as himself, unmated as he is. Yet even as he walks he catches the whiff of passing scents, mostly of alphas and betas, yes, but more than one omega, and even some like him. He strolls by the scene of a house being built, and working amongst the lumber and the dust he spots a middle-aged man, tow-haired and clean-shaven, with the long, lean build of an omega who has never borne a child. He works the same as the other men surrounding him, despite the fact that he smells so distinctly different. No one seems to care. Perhaps he is wed already, and need not worry about how he is seen by his fellows.
Or perhaps things are different, here.
Bolstered by this thought, Morpheus picks up his pace and in short order finds himself standing before a ramshackle, low-slung building nestled between a bar and a barber. Boarding House has been scrawled, in clear but untidy handwriting, on a plank of wood hung just beside its door. It is just past eight in the morning now and, heart rising in his throat, Morpheus doffs his hat and holds it against his chest as he enters.
The inside of the building is much cooler, shaded and with the faint smell of dust and horses that permeates everything in the city. The door opens into a main entryway that has been repurposed as a combination reception and mess hall, with several tables shoved against the furthest wall and a hallway leading deeper into the building, presumably to the rooms themselves. Three men sit at the tables, talking animatedly amongst themselves as they sip from steaming tin cups and devour stacks of griddle cakes and sausages. The smell makes Morpheus’ stomach rumble ominously; he has not eaten since yesterday, when he had purchased his last meal aboard the train. Even that had been light fare, both because he had been too anxious to consume much else, and because he had not had the money for more.
His entrance causes the men to pause in their conversation, three pairs of eyes lifting to regard him. Morpheus tentatively ducks his head and tries not to look directly at the men, only belatedly noticing that there is a fourth person in the room: an older, colored woman sitting on a stool, darning a sock and apparently waiting for him to notice her. When their eyes meet she smiles, lovely and bright, a thousand wrinkles appearing on her weathered cheeks like cracks in ceramic glaze. Morpheus is struck, again, with the urge to reach for pencil and paper, to try and describe the precise joy of her gaze, and the way that she has swept her long, braided hair back and up into a kerchief to keep it from interfering with her work.
He swallows instead, taking a step closer and inclining his head again, deeper, this time, for he thinks this must be the ‘Miss Henrietta’ that the hotel’s proprietor had mentioned.
“Good morning,” he says. “I was told I might be able to hire a guide, here. I am traveling west, and I find myself without the funds to continue my journey by train. I was hoping I might find someone willing to accompany me to California.”
He can hear the spaces where hesitation colors his words with ever present anxiety and his pride rankles; he has always had difficulty comporting himself during moments of high stress, tears always ready to spring to his eyes at the slightest hint of emotion, either good or bad. His eyes, this time, remain blessedly dry, and the woman on the stool ceases her darning and studies him intently.
“You’d want to talk to the cowboys over yonder,” she says, tilting her chin towards the three men, who have all resumed their breakfast and conversation. Morpheus has no choice, now, but to look at them: two of them smell very strongly, alphas in the prime of their lives, one with thick, dark curly hair and shoulders like battering rams and the second a man with hair so orange it would put shame to the grim-the-collier that had grown wild on the lawn of his father’s estate, ever the bane of their gardeners. The third man is slightly darker-skinned but with straight, deep brown hair, and he is no less rife with muscle but significantly more subdued in scent. All three of them pause once more in their conversation as Morpheus approaches their table, and he is suddenly glad that he had chosen to wear his perfumes this morning, because the way the men look at him is considering.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he says, and feels slightly mollified when the one who seems to be the most gregarious, the ginger-haired man, lifts his cup in salute. “Are any of you, by chance, heading west?”
The three glance at each other. Several looks are exchanged, a shrug, and then the redhead says, “Jim there’s heading back down to Texas in a day or two. Me and Roy are headed up to South Dakota. What was that you said about the train?”
So they had been listening. Morpheus worries the rim of his tophat, turning it in a slow circle against his chest.
“The fare is…steeper than I had anticipated,” he says. All three men make agreeable noises. Empty pockets, he thinks wryly, are a unifying factor across all nations. “I have money to pay for my own horse, and am a fair rider…” Not quite a lie, but these men do not need to know that Morpheus was a fair rider when he was eighteen, and it has been another ten years since.
The men exchange further glances. The darker-skinned one, with the lovely brown hair, sucks his teeth.
“How you thinking of paying for a guide?” he asks, and Morpheus’ heart, which had taken up residence in his throat for the past several minutes, plummets abruptly into his stomach. He does not think he will be robbed in broad daylight, here in the middle of Miss Henrietta’s boarding house, but if he reveals that he is carrying more than three-hundred dollars’ worth of jewelry upon his person the chances will no doubt escalate.
“I have my means,” he says, and hopes that the men will leave it at that. Thankfully, they seem more interested in returning to their meals than in ferreting out Morpheus’ secrets. The brown-haired man shrugs.
“Could take you south,” he says, not unkindly. “But Texas is as far as I go.”
“What about Hobsie?” the other alpha speaks up. “He’s been out to Sacramento, hasn’t he?”
“Sure, but where’s he headed now?”
“Who fucking knows,” says the redhead, and all three men chuckle. “Wherever the horses are, s’pose. You know his type.”
The hotel’s proprietor had mentioned mustang runners, Morpheus thinks. He swallows. “Would this gentleman be what you would call a ‘mesteñero’?” he asks, and the redhead nods.
“Mustang runner, yeah. He’s driven cattle with me before. Good man. Goddamned insane, but a good man.”
“Insane?”
“Sure, you have to be to break mustangs. Don’t suppose a gentleman like you’s ever been bit by a horse?”
“I have never had the pleasure,” Morpheus says dryly, and this makes all three men laugh again.
“Mustangs bite worse than regular horses. Vicious bastards. Hob must do all right with ‘em, though, ‘cause he brings them in docile as you please. Good quality horses, too.”
“And where might I find this…Hob?” Morpheus asks. This is beginning to sound like his best chance at reaching California, and if he must travel for a time with a man described as ‘insane,’ but also good at his job, well. Perhaps a bit of insanity will further insulate him against the reach of his father.
The largest alpha, who has thus far been the quietest, jerks his head towards the hallway leading back into the building. “Still asleep,” he grunts. “Lazy bastard.”
“He was out late,” the brown-haired beta says.
“Yeah, stargazing, he said.”
“Dipping his wick, more like. Anyone else visit the Burnt District last night?”
“You really think I have ten dollars to spend on tail? I don’t care if they have the prettiest girls this side of the Mason-Dixon, doesn’t change that my hand’s free.”
All three men burst into raucous laughter, and Morpheus judges this as good a time as any to slip away. He passes Miss Henrietta on his way towards the hallway; she has picked up her darning once more, but inclines her head as he sidles by her, giving him tacit permission to continue. Already, he thinks, he has encountered more genuine kindness here in America than he had ever been privy to in London. He had enjoyed his time in Oscar’s salons, attending his fetes, meeting his friends, and it had been the closest he had ever been allowed to be himself…but often it had felt as though he were balancing on the edge of a knife. A single wrong word said in unfavorable company would have been enough to ruin any of them. Had ruined Oscar, eventually. Morpheus shudders slightly as he slips down the hallway; all of the doors are open, and the rooms empty, save one, which he approaches and knocks upon.
“Sir?” he asks. There is no response, and so he knocks again. “Monsieur Hob?”
Still no answer, and so Morpheus, chewing his lip and without further options, gingerly pushes open the door and steps inside.
The smell, as is so often the case when he is possessed of all his faculties, is what he notices first. The room is suffused, not with the smoky, pungent scent of an alpha, but with a far milder odor which he immediately associates with fresh-cut grass, spring breezes, new lumber. Bright and thrilling scents that bring to mind open plains and wide, cloudless skies, with no hint of storms on the horizon, scents that speak of possibility and, dare he say it, hope. Words tumble like river rocks through his mind as he tries to catalog all of them, and then he lays eyes on the figure lying prone in the room’s only bed and all of his carefully-considered words, his perfectly-chosen syllables, all of his poise and his good breeding, flies out the nearest window and launches itself into the sun.
The man in the bed is beautiful. Not beautiful in the way that many omega women are beautiful, primped and petite and dewy, nor beautiful in the way that he has sometimes thought of particularly well-developed alphas of all sexes, when he has admired strong shoulders and cleft chins and, if he has been especially daring, well-sculpted buttocks. This man has a cleft chin, yes, and from what Morpheus can tell his shoulders are handsome enough, but the beauty of him is a more natural and becoming thing; he is like the sunrise that Morpheus had seen that morning, some force of personality that shines through in his scent and his countenance, even now while he sleeps. So powerful is this force that Morpheus barely notes the man’s actual appearance until he has passed several seconds staring in open awe.
He is, perhaps, in his thirties, and most definitely a man, with the shadow of stubble on his cheeks and on the aforementioned cleft chin. He is wearing a light-colored felt hat pulled down low over his eyes to block out the sun streaming through the single window, and so what Morpheus can see, primarily, is his mouth, which is thin-lipped but very pink, and his ears, which are moderately larger than average but dearly-shaped, and his nose, which is aquiline and sharp as a blade. He is dressed in the fashion of many cattlemen, in a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms and dust-stained dark denim trousers; his boots hang just over the edge of the bed, made of sturdy, worn brown leather, and a pair of button suspenders hang loose off his shoulders, draped on the mattress like coiled snakes.
By all measurements he is, as they say, nothing to write home about, and certainly not so riveting as to have captured Morpheus’ attention so thoroughly, and yet he cannot take his eyes off the man.
A shiver runs through him, and two things happen simultaneously:
The man on the bed groans softly and begins to wake, stretching his legs out and allowing his shirt to ride up from where it had been tucked into the waist of his trousers. This exposes his belly, which is much paler than his forearms, padded slightly with a layer of fat over dense, shifting muscle, and with a thick trail of dark hair leading from his navel down into his trousers.
Morpheus feels a curl of heat bloom deep in his belly, and an abrupt and abruptly mortifying sensation of slickness between his legs.
Then the man groans again, and reaches up to tilt the brim of his hat away from his eyes, and so Morpheus does not have time to contemplate the appropriateness – or lack thereof – of his sudden and blindsiding desire. He is once again riveted by the sight of the man, who now begins to sit up, to yawn and to stretch and to scratch his belly beneath the hem of his rucked shirt. He blinks at Morpheus, seeming momentarily confused, and then his gaze sharpens; he has very keen eyes, Morpheus thinks, feeling, for a moment, as though he has contracted some sort of fever. Keen, and warm, the sunlight dappled over him bringing out many shades of brown in his irises, rich loam and amber wood. His hair, too, is limned golden in the light, though as he leans forward Morpheus sees more properly that it is a very dark brown to match the trail of hair on his belly. He has heavy, thoughtful brows, which furrow slightly as he studies Morpheus, and as Morpheus studies him, and for long seconds they do nothing more than stare at each other.
Then the man swings his legs over the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his hat set to a boyishly-charming angle on the back of his head.
“Hullo,” he says, and for a brief second Morpheus is transported back to London, for he hears in his accent the broad vowels and the softened ‘h’ of home. Then he is brought painfully and quickly back to the present when the man continues, “Help you, sir? Think you might have the wrong room.”
It is not quite a London accent, Morpheus realizes, but something adjacent to it. The vowels are not the same; he sounds, in some ways, like a softened version of the men in the other room, and especially the darker-skinned man with the black hair. He does not know enough about local dialects of the Americas to judge from whence the accent comes.
He is stalling. He is focusing unduly on other things while the man awaits his answer, brows raised inquisitively. Better to think on almost anything other than the simmering warmth in his belly, the uncomfortable awareness of inside. Morpheus clears his throat.
“I…do not believe so,” he says, gratified that his voice neither cracks, nor do the words lose themselves on his suddenly-leaden tongue. “I am seeking a guide to take me west, to California, and was told a Mssr. Hob could possibly take me.”
The man hums to himself. He has made no further effort to rise from his bed, and so has positioned himself such that he looks up to Morpheus, still with his hat tilted, and the overall effect is that of a penitent prostrating themself before a priest. This realization does nothing to help the flutter of want, deep and low in his core.
“Dunno what a miss-your is,” the man says, “but I’m Hob. Could just take the train, you know.”
Why, Morpheus wonders, must everyone question my reasoning? He blows out an exasperated breath; thankfully, his moment of frustration is enough to cool his ardor as he says, “The fare is too steep. I have money for a horse, and other means by which to pay my way, but my journey by rail is unfortunately at an end.”
“Other means,” Hob echoes, brows furrowing. His eyes cast up and down Morpheus, sliding over his shoulders and his waistcoat and the dust-covered tips of his shoes, finally coming back up to look him full in the face. Then Hob pushes himself off the bed, standing and stretching some more, and yawning hugely, showing a good many of his teeth, all of which appear to be in fine condition if Morpheus is any judge. He chastises himself for a fool – there’s no earthly reason to be examining Hob’s teeth. It’s not as though the man has any purpose save for as a guide, and potentially as a barrier between Morpheus and his father, should it come to it.
“Well,” Hob says, and hitches one of his suspenders over his shoulder, and then the other, doing so with such casual ease that it is immediately apparent as to how often he sleeps in his work clothes. “S’pose that’s fine. You can come with me to the stables and pick out a horse. If you haven’t already.”
And then, the matter apparently settled, Hob turns his back to Morpheus and begins gathering his things from where they have been scattered around the room: a gun-belt from the single, small table (complete with a revolver), boot spurs left behind the door, a pair of leather chaps that had been shuffled partially beneath the bed. He dresses himself in these casually, as though he hasn’t a care that Morpheus is still in the room. For all intents and purposes, the conversation appears to have ended.
“That’s it?” Morpheus asks, stymied, somewhat, by how…easy it had all been. “You don’t wish to negotiate a price? Ask questions?”
“Not really,” Hob says, almost unbearably cheerful. The spurs jingle as he slips them onto his boots. “And would you tell me if I asked?”
That is…a fair point. Morpheus had intended to mask the purpose of his flight for as long as possible. Indefinitely, in an ideal world. He bites his lip as Hob turns and faces him once more, now appearing every inch the rough and tumble cowboy.
“Everyone’s got something,” he says. “They’re running from something, or they did something, or said something, or someone else did or said something…See? Something. So, I don’t mind you being my dark stranger so long as you don’t mind me.”
Feeling a bit dizzy with this whirlwind of emotions, Morpheus asks, “And why would I mind you, Mssr. Hob?”
Hob pauses in the midst of reaching past him for the door, which had fallen partially shut during their initial conversation. This places him close enough to touch, and most certainly close enough to scent properly: he lacks all the characteristic odors of an alpha, yet even now, after several minutes of exposure, Morpheus finds himself inhaling deeper than he ought in order to catch more of the fresh-hay scent of him. A beta, he thinks, and then Hob smiles at him, and he thinks of nothing else.
“Well, I’m going to live forever, aren’t I?” he says, and, with that mysterious proclamation, he pushes past and disappears down the hall, leaving Morpheus standing alone, shell-shocked, and still distressingly slick between the legs.