#the circle of mutual enablement/spiderman-pointing-at-spiderman continues

[qqueenofhades]

*coughs* you should write something about 1389 hob and dream fucking nasty behind the white horse

Hob Gadling has had, to say the least, a bloody strange afternoon. At this point, he's more or less written it off as some sort of demented jest, the sort of thing you boast about when you've had a few too many tankards of ale and your mates about you to impress, and -- well, it was odd that the stranger knew his name without being told, but perhaps he's been in London longer than it seems, and learned it elsewhere. And the promise to meet a hundred years from now... well, they laughed. They all laughed. Hob laughed. It was only the stranger who kept looking at him as coolly and calmly as if he actually meant it. He's not a bad-looking bloke, if a bit pale, peaky and vaguely resembling an anchorite shut up in a church wall for years without seeing another living soul and becoming decidedly spooky as a result. Has he been shut up in a church wall? Seems like a waste.

Still, the others are making jokes about Hob's newfound immortal grandeur and aren't paying attention; they're pounding on the table and shouting at the wench to bring more wine, and for some reason, Hob feels anxious, as if he needs to run after them and double-check that he actually heard what he thought he did. So he gets to his feet, jostles through the trestle tables, the stools and chairs and boots and swords and stacks of logs for the great fire, past the spot where Chaucer is now explaining something about a lecherous miller, and out into the muddy forecourt, trampled with the hooves of horses and the paws of hounds, the footprints of the servants fetching more water and handing down arriving visitors, and spots the two of them about to vanish down the Thames towpath -- or somewhere else, though there's nowhere else to properly go, out here beyond the city walls. He doesn't have to say a word. He could just count it as some lighthearted tavern-banter and forget it.

Instead, never being one to do the sensible thing when the adventurous one could suffice, Hob bellows, "OY!"

The pale man and the dark lady stop in their tracks and glance 'round at him, and he waves in vigorous demonstration of the fact that he wants a word. The man seems unwilling to comply, but the lady gives him a smart shove in the ribs, and he huffs deeply and sweeps toward Hob. He still looks exactly like the Devil would in human form, as if he's strolled off the page of an illuminated manuscript depicting the temptation of Jesus Christ in the desert: dark hair, stormy eyes, a ruby like the fires of hell, that black robe and alabaster skin, something rare and strange and otherwordly that might burn Hob if he touched it. Sounding deeply impatient, he says, "Aye?"

"This way." Hob leads him around the corner of the White Horse, to the troughs and kailyards in the back, splattered in mud, rainwater, the midden-heap, and thick clumps of torn-up sod. Once they're alone, he says, "Were you just... having me on? Back there?"

The stranger stares at him icily, but with a hint of deliberate, goading challenge. "I don't understand."

"You knew my name. You said that we would meet again, one hundred years from now. How would you know that?"

"It is of no concern to you. Do you want it or not?"

"Oh," Hob says, leaning against the wattle-and-daub wall and flashing his most rakish and charming smile. "I do. If that's what's on the offering here, m'lord. But I just wanted to be clear on whether, if it was a bargain, some sort of boon was expected in exchange."

The stranger's eyes move down him slowly, taking him in from head to heel. Hob hasn't washed in a while, aye, and his hair is long and scruffy and his beard isn't much better, and his cloth is poor enough to make any bloody nobleman, besotted of their stupid sumptuary laws, to run away screaming and clutch his marten-trimmed cloak for comfort (no ermine, unless you're royalty). But he's tall and strong and straight-bodied, has a longsword strapped around his waist and walks with the confidence of a man who knows how to use it, has all his own white teeth and a smile that folk tend to melt for, the very smile he is employing now. The stranger's pale cheeks turn the faintest hint of pink, like the first flush of sunrise on Midwinter-morn. Then he says, "You need offer me nothing. The bargain is made, and will be kept."

"Certes, m'lord?" Hob takes another step, close enough that they're suddenly nose to nose, and the stranger flinches slightly. "Nothing?"

"Are you..." The stranger looks as if he cannot possibly comprehend this utterly bizarre behavior. "Do you think I want something?"

"You came to talk to me," Hob points out. "You were the one who seemed willing to act as if my fool wish was real. Why is that?"

The stranger's gaze drops deliberately to his lips. Then it flicks back up to his eyes. "Because," he says, "I'm interested."

"In what?"

"In whether you'll be begging for death in a hundred years' time." Again that oblique, goading look. "I think you will. My sister believes that you will yet surprise us."

"I'm a surprising man," Hob says smugly. "You'll lose."

"If you say so." The stranger folds his arms, either in petulance or in an attempt to stop Hob in his tracks. Either way, it doesn't work. "I say you've no idea what you're.... asking for."

There's an unmistakable seductive burr in that voice, so incongruously deep for a Devil who looks as if one strong gust might blow him away, and Hob feels it down to the toes of his battered boots. "What say," he murmurs, almost against the stranger's mouth, close enough to feel the other's breath on his cheek, "that I did?"

The pause that follows is even longer, crackling at the edge of potentiality and possibility, and -- Hob doesn't know exactly what he's doing, but it's not the first time he's pursued an assignation with a handsome gent out back, out of sight. His first meeting with Wat, may God assoil him, was, after all, almost like this, and for all his standoffishness and snobbery, the stranger hasn't bothered to actually step back. Lucifer was the most beautiful of the Almighty's angels, before he fell. Is this exactly what Hob is about to do? Sell his soul to the Devil out behind a tavern, as the bells are calling Vespers? Or sell something else, if it gave him the chance to live forever?

"I should go," the stranger murmurs. "My sister awaits."

"Sure you won't give me something to remember you by? A hundred years is a long time, m'lord. If I grow that old, I might forget."

"Oh." The stranger's eyes flick up to meet Hob's again, feral and thunderous and threatening to devour Hob altogether, body and mind and soul. "I don't think you will."

Another instant -- a frozen, endless instant -- and then it snaps. The stranger seizes Hob by his grimy tunic, shoves him back against the wall, and Hob, and it please you, does plenty of seizing and shoving in return. The kiss tastes like weak English wine, nothing so good since they lost Gascony and its lush vineyards (perhaps that is why the Black Prince, while he lived, sought so ceaselessly to retrieve it?), like woodsmoke and ash and wind and summer, like the blood where they've bitten each other's lips and are in fair danger of breaking each other's noses. Hob closes his eyes and pulls the stranger closer, wrapping his arms around him, making sure that there is no doubt, that when the time comes again (if indeed it should), they will know each other at once, by scent and sight and touch, by sense and speech and taste. Hob Gadling would do far worse than to kiss a beautiful man as if all the world was ending, if it gave him this gift of eternity. And for a moment, for a blinding, lightning-struck instant, he thinks, It's real. It's real.

They kiss in a grappling, struggling, stubborn ferocity, both of them trying to get the upper hand on the other, until Hob pulls his mouth back with a bit of a jerk and goes to his knees, pulling the frankly excessive flourishes of that black robe aside and fumbling to find if there are anything resembling breeches below it. He momentarily thinks the stranger is going to stop him, but he doesn't. He jerks at Hob's hair and growls something that sounds like do it if you dare -- and then Hob tugs the laces apart and draws his cock out, pale and hard and perfect as a Roman statue, of the kind that they still sometimes dig up in York. He takes it into his mouth, wraps his lips around the shaft and sucks slow and considering and deep, and the stranger utters a low, shivering whimper that Hob, once again, feels to the back of his spine. It is wet and raw and too fast and too slow at once, it is like a dream of the sort that wakes you arched and clutching and in need of changing the bedclothes -- Hob closes his eyes and licks, moves his tongue with a devilish little flick, and takes it deep, to the back of his throat, sucks down, and --

The stranger loses himself with another maddeningly deep half-growl, half-moan, tugging at Hob's hair again, almost losing his balance, shuddering from head to toe as his pleasure (or something like that) washes through him like a tidal wave. Then, slowly, as if neither of them are entirely sure what has just happened, he pulls back, as Hob turns his head and spits. The stranger laces himself up again, steps back, and says, desperately trying not to breathe too hard, "You -- you need not have done that. It was -- crude."

"What sort of thing is that to say to a man who's just made you forget your own name?" Hob cocks a dark eyebrow. "And by the way, I don't think I caught that myself?"

The stranger stares him dead in the eye for a full five heartbeats, just to make it very plain that he heard and does not intend to answer. Then he whirls around, cloak swirling, and takes his leave. Hob hears his footsteps striding away, fading, and he leans back against the wall, suddenly rather weak-kneed himself. Fuck. Well. Fuck.

This is going to be a very interesting century indeed.

-------

"Well?" Death says, much too sweetly, as she is badly stifling a smile. "Did you go.... talk to Robert Gadling?"

"Yes," Dream says with tremendous, dogged dignity. "We spoke. That is what happened. Nothing else, by the way. Except for speaking. Which we did. Thank you very much."

(Death of the Endless smirks like a cat in cream all the way back home.)

(It is really terribly irritating.)