Work Text:
November 6, 2009
Robert Gadling cannot. Fucking. Breathe.
He can"t breathe. His Stranger. What the bloody fuck is his Stranger doing at Mass in bloody Brixton at the Torture Garden Halloween Ball in...good fucking god, is that a leather harness? And an O-ring collar? And is that make up? He is. And he is and yeah, he fucking is.
Has Robert Gadling ever been this hard in over 600 years of being alive? Probably not.
It was him though. His words had been different but his cadence was the same and his voice. That voice was unforgettable, carved into his bone like runes. Asking about devotion tonight instead of death.
"Ah," he tugs at his ear as panic floods him. He hasnt seen his Stranger in over a hundred years and he stands him up and this? This is how he comes back? Without even a hello?" It"s a bit more complicated than that."
There is no sign of recognition. Not even a blink. His stranger just stares at him, with big eyes and a parted mouth, waiting and so he charges ahead because fuck it. What"s he going to do? Leave again? It"s not like they"re friends.
"What"s your name, Stranger?"
"Morpheus." Morpheus says, leaning in, warm, and...holy shit, interested. "Your friend called you Robbie, yes?"
He says this like he doesn"t know. And...maybe he doesnt.
Jesus. Jesus Christ maybe he doesn"t. He"s got tattoos. There"s a mangled lyre on his chest and glass heart cracked like an egg on his belly, spilling out a waterfall of sand and on his arm, sleeves of epic scale, a huge bird and a great ship in an astral sea. He"s never seen this much skin but nothing about his Stranger hinted at him being the kind to have tattoos, let alone such complex yet modern art as that.
And never, not once, has he ever called him Robbie. Always Robert. Or Hob. He was Hob for his Stranger. "Morpheus." He has a name now.
If this is in fact his Stranger after all.
It might not be.
But those eyes. That face. That voice. He has missed that voice so much. He doesn"t know what brought that voice back to him but he doesn"t give a fuck. He smiles and it feels a little unhinged.
"Yeah. Robert. I have a lot of nicknames. That"s just one of them."
"Not a fan of Bert," Kyle says helpfully. Hob kicks him, hard, under that table. Kyle hisses and he threatens murder with his heel on Kyle"s shin.
"Fucking who would be," Niall calls from across the smoking patio, the twat.
"I think you can call me Hob, if you want to. Would you like to join us?" He wants, so badly, to sit across a table, from that face, and hear that voice again. He tilts his head and hopes he looks inviting. "I could explain what I meant. Or." Hob knows he"s blushing but Morpheus is in a harness and leather pants and a fucking collar. You don"t wear that, here, and not expect offers, at least. He can ask. You never get anything if you dont try, he"s learned that in his long life. It can"t hurt worse than watching this man walk away in the rain, being turned down now. This might not even really be him. His Stranger would never, he"s sure. Would he? He doesn"t know. But he wants to touch that skin, kiss those lips. He always has. So. Fuck it. Fuck it he"s never been wise. Hob is tugging his ear again, because he can"t stop himself but he is also jumping, leaping into the breach because he offers, "We could step away and talk somewhere else, just the two of us."
Morpheus thinks about it. It is a visible thing, the way the consideration works it"s way across his face. It happens in microexpressions, a twitch of brow, a twist of lips, but Hob can see it, the same way he could always see it in his Stranger. God"s blood, it is identical. How can it be the same if it"s not him? How?
Morpheus seems almost frustrated when he says, "If you have an idea, I would be open to discussing your understanding somewhere else."
No way. No goddamn way that worked. It"s never worked before. No approach, no offer, no invitation has ever worked. Hob has to physically fight with himself to keep from punching the air but he can"t stop the smile that colonizes his entire face, turning him into a grinning idiot. He"s on his feet in an instant, coming around to stand at Morpheus"s side with all the gentlemanly care he"s ever learned in any age.
Morpheus stares at him, wide eyed and waiting, and Hob looks back and for a moment, he"s just another bloke, waiting to get started with a sub in a scene, and then the face hits him hard, and he isn"t. He isn"t because of this face. This face. He has missed this face. But this face imposed on this setting is just...its so odd. Because it is different. Sharper maybe? Grittier? Certainly hungrier, Hob thinks as he studies him. God, but he wants to state every hunger and every need.
Morpheus"s head tilts, the way Hob imagines the bird on his shoulder might if it were curious. "What?"
"Can I touch you?" Hob asks, hoping like he hasnt in over a hundred years.
Morpheus rolls his eyes and scoffs. "I"ve approached you at a fetish club. I should think the end result of our interaction is a bit of a foregone conclusion, isn"t it?"
Oh, there he is. There he is, the pompous prick. God, he"s missed him, the great tit. "Perhaps at G-A-Y but this is Torture Garden. There"s bloody great signs on every wall about the rules." And Hob won"t break that, not here, not even for his Stranger.
"So?" Hob asks and wiggles his fingers between them.
Morpheus"s eyes dart around, a little too fast, a little too and that very much isn"t the Stranger. That is something else. Hang on, Hob thinks as he watches Morpheus bring his bottle of water up with a slight shaking hand and take a long, long drink. Hang on, is he high? Can Whatever-The-Hell-He-Is get high? How would that even work? He can"t be can he? That doesn"t make sense. So maybe it isn"t him? Could he have a doppleganger? Or some kind of human avatar?
"Consent, Morpheus. Can I?" Because whatever he is, he is waiting and he is flushed and he is very interested. But still. Scene protocol stands. Also, Hob is not going to lay even a finger on this man? Whatever-The-Hell-He-Is? Until he has permission. Lady Johanna"s face tormented by horrors from her past will never leave him so long as he lives.
Morpheus takes one more long gulp then pulls the bottle from his lips. He looks surprised. "Oh." Then he smiles in a way Hob has never seen before, like the sun pushing through clouds. Morpheus"s smile lights his entire face, making his eyes glow bluer than the sky. "Yes."
He reaches out and puts his hand on Morpheus"s shoulder. He"s never touched this skin before, never felt it but he"s imagined it so many times. It"s more real than he imagined. Less soft, more imperfect. He has hair on his shoulders, little bumps of pores and pockmarks but still supple and soft. Hob has just long enough to think that he could touch it forever when Morpheus lets out a long, shuddering sigh at the contact. He wavers on his feet, just a little, into the contact, into Hob"s hand before he melts like butter, giving over to him in a way he"s only had the neediest of sub"s do for him before. And at such a nothing touch?
Fuck and he"d thought he was in love before. He is never going to come back from this.
Right.
He knows how to do this. He trained in the Old Guard in San Francisco in 196-bloody-5 and he financed and co-ran a dungeon in Greenwich Village in the 70s for fucks sake. He was an accredited (and largely ignored, god they did not listen to him nearly enough) consultant for fucking Cruising. He can keep his shit together in a scene. Even if the boy in his hands, quite possibly, his Stranger. If his Stranger is, in fact, a gorgeous touch-starved sub encased in leather.
"I"ll ask too, if things are alright? If they"re not, just find a way to let me know?" He begins to trace steady pattern, up and down, back and forth and around a steel loop that holds the straps together. Steady and even, like a metronome, Hob sets a time with his touch and Morpheus hums in pleasure under his breath and leans in. He sways into the touch, already distant, already on his way out. He is so beautiful. He"s so easy. It may not be him. The Stranger was never easy, not once and Morpheus is soft as wet clay in his hands. "See, that"s good." The little smile that appears is just a quirk of lips but it"s there. Ah. Right. It"s like that. Hob can work with that. "You like that. Brilliant." If they were closer, if they were somewhere else he"d punctuate that with a kiss. Soon maybe? Once he"s set the parameters. Then he"ll kiss this beautiful creature as much as he wants. "But if you don"t like it, and I ask, for fuck"s sake, don"t say that you do. Tell me the truth. For me. It"s a rule."
Morpheus turns his head to look at Hob and he"s back, all of a sudden, fully present. That"s a little sad but important for this. So Hob can"t be too disappointed.
"You have rules?" He asks, curious and hopeful.
"Of course. Don"t you?"
"I have…" As Hob watches, he lifts his plastic bottle of water and holds the curved base into his eyesocket for a cold compress. "So many rules." He sounds exhausted and beaten down by this, as if weighs a thousand tons and has crushed him for a million years.
Hob thinks of the rules that he was always taught govern the fae - never step into their circles, never give them your true name, do not eat or drink in their realm, do not accept their gifts without an equal exchange, do not make bargains you cannot repay, remember that they must always speak the truth but they can and do deceive. He thinks of the stories he heard when he traveled further abroad, about fox women with stolen tails and flesh eating spirits and how important it was to get home before dark and doors to the underworld and ghost markets. He thinks of all the things his Stranger never told him and how the only rule he was ever given was to live his life with the choice to live or die so long as he met his Stranger once every hundred years, but how even that was a choice.
Yet here stands Morpheus, looking destroyed by rules, yet wanting them, needing them, and so human.
And so maybe he isn"t Hob"s Stranger.
Probably he isn"t. But it doesn"t matter. It really doesn"t. He is beautiful and he wants Hob to take care of him, to take him, so he will. He wants to.
Hob sides his hand up along the path of the harness to the back of the collar and hooks his fingers in. He tugs and pulls back against Morpheus" throat hard enough so that breathing puts pressure against the leather. It makes him drop his hand and his eyes go huge and his lips part, excited and expectant. Oh, yes, Morpheus wants this very much.
"You can let me make the rules for now," Hob offers.
"Will you?" Morpheus asks and he sounds just shy of pleading. There"s a shimmer in his eyes, not tears, not yet, but a few pushes could get him there. God, he"ll be fucking gorgeous when he cries.
"If you like."
"Please."
Hob steps forward and hooks a finger from his other hand into the ring of the collar. Everything, absolutely everything in Morpheus goes slack, a marionette with it"s strings cut. Yeah. He is going to fuck this pretty thing absolutely boneless. "Alright then. Rule one, Morpheus, tonight, while we"re together like this, you let me take the lead. That means that if I tell you to do something, you do it, okay?"
Morpheus nods dumbly and sinks a little farther, goes a little blanker. He"s still there, but it"s as if everything is shutting down but essential processing units. Hob"s never seen anyone go down this fast in his life.
"Beautiful." He lets go of the back of Morpheus"s collar so that he can caress Morpheus"s cheek with the backs of his hand.
Morpheus sighs, and no, Hob decides, he doesn"t care if this is his Stranger or not. He really doesn"t. Not when those eyes look at him like that, like he is the center of the universe. He only saw those eyes six times. If this time those eyes belong to someone different? How would he even know? They were never close enough for him to be sure. But now they look at him like this, like he is the fulcrum on which the world turns and he is not strong enough to turn it down. He never claimed to be good. He isn"t going to try to be now.
"Thank you, lovely. Now then, come with me."