#ok i added this as a reblog to the og post too but buns insists i post it myself for tagging purposes and she knows better

[cuubism]

Déjà vu, Déjà connu

[AO3]

based on dreamlings' post

I’m here because… I’m interested.

The words circle Dream’s mind. A spiral of questions with no answer. Interested. Interested. Hob’s hands on his hips. Hob’s mouth along his throat.

In me?

No, Dream thinks. Hob’s fingers inside him, pressing buttons untouched for centuries with the brutality and care of an experienced lover. Yes, yes, maybe, yes.

--

1503.

Dream lies in bed, afterwards, loose and languid. Looking up at the dark wood paneling of the ceiling, the fine grains and whorls of it. Contemplating.

Hob settles back on the mattress beside him, laughs. “I’ve never seen someone thinking so hard after sex.”

“Perhaps I am grading you,” Dream says, and Hob laughs harder.

“Oh, yeah? What score’d I get, then? ‘Cuz I’ll tell you, I never been to proper school, but I have a pretty good bedroom education.”

Dream’s lips tip up in an unwitting smile. Hob is looser, like this. Free and charming, when he does not know who Dream is. Does not think he is a demon, or the devil come to claim his soul. Just a passing traveler in an inn.

Dream had not intended to run into him. He had not intended to see Hob at all until their next scheduled meeting ninety or so years from today. He had come to the waking world for a quick errand, hunting after an occult artifact he’d heard might be in the area.

He’d draped himself in a different form than usual so as to leave less of a trail. Not so different from his usual shape, still lean and angular because it felt right to be barely of flesh, to slip into the shadows between things. But his hair was shorter and lighter than when he’d last seen Hob, his eyes a muted brown, face softer.

Dream did not take much note of his own appearance, most of the time, but Jessamy had advised him to tone down the drama, so Dream had—again to borrow her words—shaved off the more striking edges of his form. Made himself more nondescript.

And then—leaving an unproductive meeting with an artifacts dealer who did not have what he needed, and frustrated for it – he had stumbled into Hob. Hob, who wore this era well, settled into his immortality in the decade and a half since their meeting. Whose auspicious printing trade seemed to be treating him nicely. 

“Whoa, now,” Hob had said, steadying him by the arm as they brushed past each other. They had never touched before, and Dream had stared at the point where Hob’s hand held him. Hob had looked him up and down un-subtly. “Haven’t seen you around here before, have I?” 

“I am just leaving,” Dream had said, making for the door of the inn. 

Hob hadn’t blocked his way, but he had called out. “Sure I can’t convince you to stay for a drink?”

And Dream—he had been frustrated. The waking world made him itch at the best of times, and to have his time wasted to boot—

And Hob was—interesting. Dream was loath to admit this, but his company at their last meeting had been engaging. Left Dream wanting to know more in a way he usually did not, with people.

He should have left. Instead, he had stopped. “If you are buying,” he’d said, because he’d felt it was a more human response than entertain me with your stories, Hob Gadling.

He had turned back just in time to see Hob’s brilliant grin. “Pretty thing like you?” he had said. “Anything you want.”

This, Dream had thought, as he’d followed Hob over to a table, was a Hob closer to the one he had first encountered in 1389 than the one he’d last seen. Rakish, confident, swaggering. Then again, Hob had walked into their last meeting thinking Dream intended to claim his soul, so Dream supposed he could forgive him the break in self-assurance.

The ease of him in that moment drew something in Dream towards him, like a moon caught in planetary gravity.

He had not given Hob a name, and Hob had not given him his, though of course Dream knew it. Secrecy, anonymity, half-hidden glances caught in firelight, words half-spoken and left hanging in implication. This was not a scene, a moment, Dream had experienced outside of stories. But, like a story, it had drawn him in, caught him in the web Hob had unintentionally spun around him, just with his presence. 

Not much felt new to Dream, but this had. He had never been propositioned over a drink before. He had never been eyed up over ale left untouched, unspoken thoughts so bare in the looks laid upon him. He had never been led into the dark corner of a tavern, and felt up with such daring familiarity, or pulled upstairs to a shadowed bedroom, and fucked slow and good like he was not just a casual lay but a lodestone. 

He had never taken a human lover. Every lover in Dream’s past had known who he was, what he was. 

He had never been treated so casually, moved around so easily, his lover ignorant of the dangers of him. And he had never been looked at with such regard by one who did not know his station. For Hob’s looks were by turns heavy and playful but never, never casual. Did he treat all his lovers thus?

Dream should not have allowed any of it. He had thought so, to himself, over and over. Hob kissing up his neck—I should not allow this—Hob tangling a fist in his hair and pulling his head back—I should not allow this—Hob pushing inside him—I should not allow this—Hob kissing him so tenderly afterward—I should not—

“You were adequate,” he tells Hob now, and Hob laughs, raucous and loud. 

Dream has allowed it, and now he remembers why he should not. Because now that he has had it, he craves it, the weight and heft of Hob’s body, and his sweet lips, and the heat of him. Hob has surprised him with his care and carefulness and consideration. He is greedy, yes, for life and for sensation, and he takes, yes, but he also gives. He gives and gives. 

“Tough crowd,” Hob complains, goodnaturedly. His look upon Dream is fond and indulgent. “Do I at least get to retake the exam?”

“Have you studied?” Dream asks. He drags a hand down the muscles of Hob’s arm, feeling the warmth of his skin. 

Hob leans in and tugs on the lobe of his ear with his teeth. “I’ll make a study of you as long as you let me.”

It has been long, very long, since Dream has had a lover. The singular attention is blinding.

“Do your best, then, and perhaps there will be a reward if you pass,” Dream says, and Hob flows back on top of him. There is experience in every movement of him, and it’s intoxicating.

Do not allow it, Dream thinks. Once inside, it will latch, as all his lovers have, and he will be caught, even if only in his own mind.

Hob’s hands catch under his jaw and tip his head up into a kiss.

He allows it.

--

“I feel like I met you before,” Hob muses, after, a hand to Dream’s jaw. Familiar, so familiar. Dream doesn’t deny him. “But I definitely would have remembered.”

Dream’s pulse flutters despite himself, and he’s not sure if it’s concern over being recognized or something else. “Would you?”

Hob scrutinizes him. “For sure. But. I don’t know, it’s not coming to me, so maybe I’m just imagining things.”

“Maybe so,” Dream agrees.

Hob’s lips twist in a wry smile. “So helpful, you are. Maybe this, maybe that. I see you, mysterious figure in the night.”

“Mysterious?” Dream echoes. This form is far more human, more mundane, than his usual shape. He has kept himself very contained within the bounds of reason.

Hob taps his forehead. “You’re all question marks. Bet you like it that way.”

“Maybe so,” Dream says, and Hob laughs. And Dream feels a burst of fondness for him, for the way he takes things in stride, his generosity in so easily allowing Dream his secrets, his endless joy in life displayed at their last meeting and even more brightly now. 

“Maybe maybe maybe, ” Hob says. “Maybe I’ll run into you again sometime?”

“In your dreams, perhaps,” Dream says. Hob chuckles like he’s made a joke, but Dream is not sure that he was not serious. He could… find himself wanting this. He could find himself starving for it. Hob drags a hand up and down his arm, light but proprietary, and Dream shouldn’t let him do that, but he does not pull away.

“Telling me to dream about you isn’t going to help me let you go,” Hob says.

“You would hold on so tightly after only one night?” Dream asks.

“You don’t get more nights if you don’t hold on,” says Hob.

No, Dream thinks, as he steals away later that night, slipping out from under Hob’s arm in the darkness to return to the Dreaming. No, I suppose you do not.