Chapter Text
I just wanna sing until I die
So sing it
You are never gonna get
Everything you want in this world
First things first
Get what you deserve
When I wish upon a star
No telling I'd walk out this far
It came when I learned how to face myself
And I'm still deciding if I'm something else
I'm a million different people all the time
But there's only one of me to get it right
First Things First | Neon Trees
Hob moved into the attic of his inn during the 2020 summer, concluding it saved both money and time. Once the establishment had permission to reopen he put it on listings like Airbnb because sometimes post-pandemic, the crowd wasn’t just there. Not that he’d fault the people. Just because he didn’t get affected didn’t mean others wouldn’t. So a few people stayed on the first and second floors. They came and went. The kitchen and the bar were on the ground floor. The days passed as they always did. Hob graded his students’ papers and checked on the bills and the pantry and the plumbing. He taught his kids enthusiastically about all things history whether or not the curriculum mentioned them. (Many a time he has been reprimanded for that.) He made a lot of social friends but made sure he was never around when pictures were clicked.
He hadn’t forgotten the advice of the one and only friend of his. He could be captured and tortured if he wasn’t careful.
Often, Hob would look up when the bell rang and the door opened. An endless number of people stepped in and stepped out save that one man. The Not Devil. The Not Friend.
Hob would call him The Other Immortal except now he knew better. There were more than two of them.
Each time he would look away, not sighing, wondering if he’d ever stop hoping for that man to step on his threshold the way he still hadn’t stopped being in love with living.
Hob knew deep down as he went about his work that he could never give up on the friendship that resulted in him becoming a better man.
.
Then on one such nondescript day, the bell above the opening door rang again and he didn’t look up. Not till the steps approached his table and Hob knew without even looking up who it was. His very emo-looking friend in period-appropriate clothes.
It wasn’t his sudden arrival that surprised Hob but that the former referred to him as a friend and smiled at him. He sat down on the chair opposite to him - an action very familiar to them both - but what was new was that Hob could tell that even if little some burden had been lifted off him.
However, Hob didn’t think he’d ever find out.
*
Content with the fact that he had met his friend, he wasn’t expecting to see him again so soon.
*
Only six years or so had passed since that day. Hob was checking all the locks and bolts of his Inn that night when the doorbell rang shrilly in the middle of the it. Not expecting any guests but always ready to receive more, he didn’t think much of it when he opened the door.
To his utter surprise and delight, his Not Friend was standing at his doorstep, drenched in rain, looking like a pathetic wet cat. His glare felt ineffective as he growled,
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
He shouldered past him inside.
“Why, you’re welcome,” Hob said, amused but thoroughly confused. He shut the door and turned around, smirking. “What brings you here to my humble abode?” He frowned as he realized that the other man wasn’t shivering as much as he was … shaking. “What’s wrong?”
“I need a place to rest.”
“You’ve come to the right place,” Hob replied, slightly disappointed.
“Where’s your bed?”
Hob raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think you’re being very forward, mate?”
“I am not your mate.”
He turned around and sort of dragged his feet as he went inside.
“Hey-”
“Where?” He asked without looking back.
“The attic,” Hob sighed.
He was gone as sand swirled around him. Hob gaped but only because it was friend. Especially, because it was his friend who did that.
Had he seen this back in 1389, Hob would have run away in opposite direction screaming blasphemy or something. Perhaps. Maybe not. He might have come back wanting to know.
*
Twenty minutes later, Hob opened the door to his room slowly. There he was, the pale man, looking lifeless. Bloodless. He looked long dead.
Hob would have called for an ambulance had it not been for the slight twitching. His clothes were dry.
Befuddled as to why he would come here, Hob couldn’t sleep that night, concern and amazement filling him.
*
Somewhere around dawn, Hob dozed off for a bit on his chair. When he blinked his eyes open, his friend was gone. The bedsheet was unruffled.
His friend as per their usual fashion, left behind more questions and zero explanation.
*
Hob was pretty sure he wouldn’t see his friend for another couple of years, at least. Maybe another two hundred to counter balance.
Except, he turned up two days later.
Hob was arranging fresh towels in one of the guest bathrooms when a loud noise from the lower floor startled him. He grabbed a vase on the way as he tiptoed down the stairs, his heart beating at the usual pace, his past military training not quite erased from his muscles. Totally expecting a break in, he held the vase close to him for the sake of pretense. He came to a sudden halt, not believing his eyes. He dropped the vase in shock.
There was his friend with one arm wrapped around himself standing in the middle of the lobby.
“What the fuck?” Hob whispered and hurried towards him.
His friend took a shaky step towards him as well and Hob caught him instinctively.
“Morpheus,” He rasped, short of breath. Hob held onto him tighter, his heart beating thunderously. “My name.”
“Like the God of dreams?” Hob asked, his pitch higher than usual, bewildered.
Hob couldn’t rejoice in the monumental moment of his life as his friend, Morpheus, collapsed in his arms and became still.