Chapter Text
Hob slumped at the bar in the club. Going out had seemed like a good idea, hours ago. He’d lost a few years there, after his Stranger didn’t show up for their meeting. That plus losing friends from AIDS all over… it had been a rough time. He’d done a lot of drugs. Drunk a lot. Fought with the borough council over the White Horse. A lot. But it was time to start over again. He’d tanked his life as a stock broker. He was thinking maybe history professor this time. Share some of his stories. Try to help the kids avoid the mistakes he’d learned not to make the hard way. Besides, if he could get really into the history stuff, maybe he could track down enough evidence to get the White Horse listed as a protected historical building. It was probably possible. He hoped.
Anyway. Today was the first day of getting sober again. Drinking in public was better than drinking in private, and he’d weaned himself off most of the drugs. He wanted to head into the new millennium at least clean enough to make a good showing of himself when he applied to school again. Mature student. If only they knew.
He looked out over the crowd. It was a good place, a bit more expensive than his usual. Everyone was dressed to the nines. He sighed. With a little work, he could make this his scene again. Out from the underworld and back in with the normies. Or at least, a little more normal than before. Respectable enough for a historian. How respectable did historians have to be? Were they even more boring than librarians? Well, he wouldn’t be. There was only so far a person could stretch.
A shock of black hair caught his eye in the crowd of dancers. Oh. Oh, look at that. Yes, that one was his type. He was thin, lithe even, with pale, pale skin and lots of eyeliner. Oh, Hob could just lick that eyeliner off him. Young, maybe ten years younger than Hob’s apparent age, but that wasn’t too bad. Dressed in black, and sparkling with piercings, chains, studs in his clothes and his person.
Hob sat up a little straighter. Maybe he should approach him. He knew why he was interested. He’d stopped lying to himself hundreds of years ago. This boy was his type because he resembled Hob’s Stranger. That was okay, though. It wasn’t going to be anything permanent. He didn’t even know a name he might cry out by mistake while hooking up with someone else.
But no. Nope. There was a blond, taking the young goth by the elbow, swinging him around, kissing him, pulling him over to the other end of the bar. Hob watched surreptitiously, sipping his drink, as the blond ordered drinks for both of them. The young man was hanging on him. Hob wondered why he didn’t take off his sunglasses, it wasn’t like the bar was well lit. Oh, well, maybe he’d had his pupils dilated today or something. His tailored cream suit was the perfect foil for the boy’s sparkly black. Too bad. Well. There’d be another doppelganger some other day for him to fuck.
And who knew? Maybe one day his Stranger would show up again. Maybe some day, Hob would even get to fuck him. Eh, naw, he thought. Probably never going to happen.