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It had started because Hob had a bit of a thing. That was reasonable, he thought. You couldn’t live for six greedy centuries and counting without accumulating a few things. Exhibitionism (fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, naturally); corsets and heels (eighteenth century); goths (late twentieth century). And so on. Perfectly normal.
But this, this was the oldest Thing. His ancient Stonehenge of a Thing. His perfectly-preserved bog body of a Thing. If he was the oldest human, then this was the longest-lived Thing. It was dry-aged, cask-aged, new-aged. It was underpainted with mysterious fluids and had provenance papers that would make the men at Sotheby’s blush and adjust themselves at their desks. It was worn as soft as the Shroud of Turin, and as wrinkled and delicious as a new Judean date from a resurrected 2,000-year-old seed. It was the leitmotif of all his lust and desire. If the British Museum ever did an exhibition on the history of Things, they would steal it and put it on display.
It was a thing that felt, momentarily, like defying death, back when it had still been all around him. It was a thing that made him feel like a small god, a righteous god, and, with the encouragement of ale, made him the sort of man who would loudly slag off the notion of dying at all to anyone who’d listen. It was a thing borne of the exact same greed that made him stubbornly want more than his share of life in the first place.
Seemed only fitting, then, when Death had listened, and her brother had looked at Hob, scornful and distant as a star and worse beautiful, that it was this thing that would eventually drive the both of them into mutual ruin.
“Hob,” said Dream. He was wild-eyed, writhing, and panting. He looked like a saint having a divine vision. His hair was mussed and he was wearing a lovely cable-knit sweater and blue cotton pants, and his bare legs gripped Hob like his life depended on it.
“Yes,” urged Hob. “Yes, darling, come on.” He pulled Dream’s hips closer, leaning in to to lick the sweat off his neck, to feel the pulse thudding beneath his tongue.
“I’m going to-”
“Good,” he said, and scraped his teeth against the twitching outline of Dream’s carotid artery.
Dream’s head tipped back, and he came, hard and shuddering, pale fingers digging stinging marks into Hob’s shoulders. Hob felt the wetness slowly soaking through Dream’s pants, as Dream caught his breath, wrecked. Hob glanced at his watch. It hadn’t been five minutes since they got in the door. He beamed.
That thing.
Giving a lover pleasure, to Hob, felt secretly like the most selfish possible act. The way they moved, the glorious, ridiculous, undignified things they did and sounds they made, the life of it, the way he could make them so beautiful, was allowed to watch, was able to even make them forget the whole world for a moment. That he could stoke someone’s hunger until it felt like a mirror, as wild and unfettered as his own. Bringing someone off like a thief in the night, stealing something just for themselves, between all the long hours of the day.
Of every trade he’d plied and hobby he’d tried, nothing matched it. Not in act, not in reward. And after six hundred years, he’d gotten unfairly good at it.
It had only been called a quickie for the last 50 years. Hob liked to think he started a trend.
“That was the last pair,” said Dream, looking down at his own cock in reproval.
“Sorry,” said Hob, not meaning it one bit. “We’ll do the laundry tonight.” Dream went off to the bathroom and Hob stared up at the ceiling and groaned. The problem was that Dream was newly human, newly sensitive, and it was going to destroy them both.
He could look at Dream from across the room and Dream would blush. He could whisper in his ear and Dream would shiver. He was a man whose entire sexual id was built around the concept of undoing his lovers, and now his husband, once a creature capable of inhuman restraint, was reduced to a house of cards in a stiff breeze. He was walking through the Waking world already nearly undone. It was ambrosial. Addictive.
They would keep their distance, trying, in vain, to get through a breakfast or an hour of reading together or a single damned conversation, and Hob, smitten, unthinking, would drop his gaze to Dream’s gorgeous lips, or brush his knuckles—and Dream, as sensitive as a seismograph, would swallow thickly, and say Hob, and Hob would say, yeah, fuck, okay—and then they would stand up as one, and Dream would be moaning and coming before either of their pants were off, before they’d even made it to a flat surface, sometimes.
Dream wandered back out into the living room in a pair of Hob’s grey joggers that hung low around his hips. He was glowing.
“Why,” said Hob, a little strangled, “why would you do this to me, my love?”
“There was nothing else,” said Dream, shrugging. Then he registered Hob’s reaction properly and raised his chin a little, defiantly, as a flush spread down his pale chest, past all the gorgeous new dark chest hair. Hob curled his hands into the sofa. It was fine. His husband was beautiful, and perfect, and now trembled with pleasure like a quaking aspen when Hob so much as kissed him, and it was fine. That didn’t mean he needed to kiss him all the time. Or get him off about it.
They managed ten minutes of distracted conversation about what to make for dinner before Dream, under Hob’s arm, had moaned piteously and said, “No, I can’t.”
“Oh, thank fuck,” said Hob, as Dream pushed him down and crawled on top of him, and murmured every way in which Hob was terrible: he was warm, and smelled good, and his hands, and it wasn’t fair, how did humans get anything done. Hob had meant to get down and suck Dream’s cock and swallow the mess for once, he really did, but then Dream made a noise when Hob brushed his mouth across his nipple, and he’d forgotten everything in service of making Dream make more of those noises, until Dream, looking down at him in furious wonder, narrow hips twitching against his belly, had cried, yes, yes, Hob, and collapsed bonelessly on top of him.
“Maybe you’ll build up a tolerance,” offered Hob cheerfully, after dinner. Dream had gotten off on Hob’s leg, with nothing more than a hand in his hair and Hob whispering how soft, how his he looked in Hob’s flannel pyjama bottoms.
“Really,” said Dream, dryly. “A tolerance. To you.”
Hob preened a little. Looked at Dream, in his lovely sweater and a pair of dayglo orange running shorts, and shrugged, grinning. “I suppose we could just buy you more things to get dirty.”