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So much for your promises
They died the day you let me go
Robert Gadling had no complaints about immortality. Truly, life was a gift, the world a living canvas he would never tire of both observing and painting on, over and over and over again. Part of him wondered if he would truly see it all through to the end, being unable to die and all, if he would be there to see the universe implode at the end of time.
It didn’t matter, in truth, he’d cross that bridge when he got there like he always did.
The one complaint he did have, though, some days more than others, was the lack of constants in his life. He loved how everything kept changing and he found it easy to make new friends wherever he went, but it was hard not to miss the kinds of anchors other people always seemed to have. Someone to come home to.
There had been a constant, albeit just a single one. A tall, slender one with jetblack hair and light blue eyes that rarely betrayed more than disinterest or - at best - slight bemusement at the universe itself.
Hob sighed as he threw back another pint of beer. It was 1989 and he had come to the old tavern - which was by then a classic English pub - for nothing.
He had always tried not to dwell on negatives, well aware that this sort of thing would not mix well with an undying mind. But it was hard that night not to feel guilty. It was hard not to feel like it was his fault that the one constant in his life had stormed out of it, apparently never to return. He had truly, royally fucked up this time and for just a moment, he allowed his heart to break in self-pity and regret and he did not deny how much he missed his strange not-friend of six centuries.
Caught up in a web of lies
But it was too late to know
He hadn’t realized, that night in 1889, that what he was about to say would offend the stranger, who by all rights shouldn’t be one anymore, this much. He had been driven by an unbreakable urge to swing for the fences that night. He couldn’t say if it was because the man across from him looked like a living painting more so than ever before or because he spoke of seeing Lady Johanna Constantine again, but it had at least partially been powered by the boldness that came with one pint too many.
He had seen her again, though he would never cross paths with Hob twice in a century. He had taken William Shakespeare somewhere, though he would never leave the tavern with Hob. He was, that night in 1889, five-hundred-and-thirty-seven years of age and decidedly too old to pretend like he didn’t know what jealousy was. Or attraction.
And though he might have thought in that moment about dragging his beautiful stranger out of the tavern and to a private place where they might talk and perhaps more than that - God, how he had hoped -, he had held back and, courteously in his opinion, suggested the only other immortal he had in his life wanted his friendship.
Maybe it was foolish. No, it was definitely foolish. One meeting per century with a man whose name he still didn’t know and he thought to suggest friendship? Foolish beyond belief. But if he wasn’t a stranger, yet wasn’t a friend, what was he?
He wondered, now in 1989, if the stranger had ever even told the truth about anything. Maybe he was a devil after all. Maybe he had taken William Shakespeare’s soul. And maybe he still did need friendship, despite claiming otherwise.
That, too, in the grand scheme of things, did not matter now. He wasn’t there and Hob was starting to feel drunk in addition to his disappointment and frustration. So, like any sensible man whose date had not shown up and likely never would, he went to complain to the bartender.
I thought it was you
Who would stand by my side
It hadn’t started in 1889, Hob was more self-aware than that. It started in… Well, maybe it already started in 1389 between the black smoke of the fire and the goats mingling in the tavern. The second the stranger started speaking to him, Hob wondered how he hadn’t seen him before, so striking did he look. He must be royal, Hob had thought, nobody who works a day in his life is that pale. The moment was gone as quickly as it had happened and suddenly the cough that had hung in his throat all evening was gone and he had somewhere to be in a hundred years time.
He didn’t realize what it was that he felt for the being that came to him every hundred years until 1589 when he found himself wondering if he might get away with stabbing then-Will Shaxberd right there in the middle of the tavern. But then, his stranger led the lad outside, a gentle hand on his back and right there, right then, with the small painting of his wife and son in his pocket, Sir Robert Gadlen wanted nothing more than to know what it felt like to have this very hand on his body.
His thoughts were possessed by it for months and years after that night. And every time he was forced to see a Shakespeare play - which became more and more often over the years as the bloody Bard took over the whole country - all he could think of was that this twat had felt this pale white hand that haunted Hob’s every waking hour. Was it as cold as it looked? Or was it warm as a pleasant surprise? Perhaps one day he’d know.
But he didn’t come to know, and now maybe he never would. Maybe all he had of the stranger’s touch was a dream of what it might feel like. He had dreamed of it often and intensely, sometimes so realistically that he half-expected the man lying next to him in the morning.
That was, until he’d stopped dreaming at all. Most people had, from what he heard. Though, some of them seemed to be haunted by nightmares whenever they so much as closed their eyes while others slept never to wake again or woke never to sleep again. Hob would have taken any of these alternatives over the nothingness his nights now left him with. He tried not sleeping for a while, sometime in the 1920s, but being tired without dying of exhaustion was no more pleasurable than starving without dying had been.
Thus, all he was left with for the rest of the 20th century were the shattered memories of dreams he’d once had.
And now you’ve given me
Shattered dreams
-
Feel like I could run away
From this empty heart
The day of his meeting with Hob came and went in the year 1989, seventy-three years into his imprisonment. Dream had no more way of leaving than he had had in 1916, but it was the first time in decades that he even wished he had.
You should have told him long ago, gone with him 1789, a voice inside him mocked. He did not listen. It had been right to refuse the coy invitation. He knew full well what it had really meant, that Hob had not truly wanted to go to another pub at all. But he spoke truly when he said it wasn’t safe and now he got to bathe in the cruel irony of not having heeded his own advice.
There was emptiness that rang hollow in his heart, louder than it had before and he could not stop the scene from playing in his head. Hob’s earnest eyes as he told him Dream needed his friendship. The way the rain soaked his clothes as Hob ran out of the tavern behind him and called after thim, saying he’d be there in a hundred years time.
Was he there? Dream could only wonder. He would not see him there. He would not get to apologize. He would not walk free for a long time. And if he did walk free again one day, he wasn’t sure he wanted to set foot in the waking world again.
-
Woke up to reality
And found the future not so bright
The bartender was a kindly man who listened to his troubles like any good bartender would. If he was genuinely interested in them, Hob could not tell, but if he wasn’t, he pretended well and gave easy affirmations of hope. It felt nice. Warm. Hob would talk to people occasionally about what it was that bothered him that day or in general, often more transparent about his condition than was strictly smart, but always vague enough that they would think he was speaking in metaphors.
But there was no warm conversation piece, no sympathetic smile that could have saved him from the cold panic that settled in his bones when the bartender informed him that the pub was being sold.
If his friend were to return, how would he find him? Where would he go? Was it even worth the wait anymore? It wasn’t, he wanted to think. It was wiser to move on and forget, accept that their friendship had ended before he could so much as learn the stranger’s name or feel the touch of his hand.
I dreamt the impossible
That maybe things could work out right
Hob could not bring himself to give up. “People are almost always better than you think they are,” he had told his friend in 1889 and he ought to believe his own words. And he did believe. He believed that the stranger was no stranger at all, but his oldest friend whether he agreed with it or not. He believed that if he wasn’t here now, there must be a good reason for it.
So, he set about using the skills the 20th century had forced him to acquire: He shifted some assets, he laundered some money, made sure to tell everyone he had an estranged son he hadn’t seen in a long time and bought a nearby building. He dubbed it The New Inn just for extra clarity and always made sure to hire the best staff he could find and pay them handsomely, so that there was no doubt the pub would still be running when his friend came around - and if it took until 2089.
And he sat there, day after day. Waiting, yes, but also talking to people, drinking, having his usual good time. He did not watch the door every single evening, sometimes he was deep in conversation with some of the people, sometimes he simply read papers and later browsed the internet to catch up on all the exciting things humanity had done.
2008 was a convenient year to fake his tragic death, most people were too caught up in the turmoil of the financial crash to think too much about how similar “his son” looked to him. He shaved the beard he’d long gotten into the habit of growing when he was trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t aging and he played the reluctant heir.
“Pff, my father couldn’t even manage alimony payments, but now I’m stuck with this blasted pub!” he exclaimed the first time he walked in as Robyn Gadling. He made a real show of just how little he wanted to be there. That was fun for a while. You learn to entertain yourself when you’ve been on earth for over six hundred years, after all.
I thought it was you
Who would do me no wrong
The year was 2021 and he was grading papers. In 2012 he was overcome with the sudden urge to reinvent himself a little bit - an urge he had become familiar with over the centuries. He found immortality nothing but pleasurable, but one could not remain the same for too long under this condition. Granted, he didn’t think anyone should stay the same for very long. What he loved most about humanity, after all, was how everything simply kept changing.
So, he became a teacher because he hadn’t done that before. There were, in fact, lots of things he hadn’t done before, but too many of them came with the risk of fame. He learned in the early 1600s that fame was a dangerous game for an immortal. People could see you, people knew your face. They felt emboldened to ask questions.
But as for the humbler professions, he hadn’t done teaching yet. He went for primary school English, excited to take care of children for once - he hadn’t done that on a big scale yet, either - and because he remembered, albeit faintly, what it had been like to be unable to read and the fascination that had come with learning it. He found it, in truth, incredibly fulfilling.
Of course he “came around” to loving the pub that he had, in fact, always loved and chatted away with the wait staff and bartender as “his late father” had. Pretending to be a miserable dick was fun for a bit, but it wasn’t a charade he enjoyed keeping up longer than he personally found amusement in it.
He was just looking over a few grammatically questionable answers - he loved the second-graders, they were always enthusiastic beyond their abilities which he found immensely charming - when the door of the pub opened, but he did not look up.
That was, until he realized the person who came in made for his table and stopped before him. He looked up then and his face almost ached with the smile that spread across it. Blue eyes looked down on him, dark hair played around the familiar pale face and a black coat hung around small shoulders.
“You’re late,” he said and he could not bring himself to sound accusatory.
There was a quiet chuckle, an honest-to-God smile and Hob thought he must be dreaming. “It seems I owe you an apology,” his friend said, “I’ve always heard it impolite to keep one’s friends waiting.” He did not break eye contact as he pulled out the chair across from Hob and sat down, for the first time in one-hundred-and-thirty-two years and a great warmth settled deep in Hob’s chest.
You would think that not speaking to someone that long, especially after parting on less than favorable terms would make conversation awkward, stilted, drowned in words unsaid. But it didn’t. If anything, they talked more than they ever had. The hours seemed to fly by as they spoke. Granted, it was mostly Hob speaking, but this time his friend listened to him intently the whole way through, as though he genuinely had no idea of humanity’s advancements of the past century. He did not get distracted and he only rolled his eyes twice.
They had gotten closer, in those hours, physically that is. They leaned over the table more and spoke more quietly, rationally so that the people in the pub would not hear them. Personally, though, Hob couldn’t claim anything but a need to be closer to his friend. Insolently, he thought he might even touch his hand at a point. This time, though, he vowed not to push. He would go at his friend’s pace, no matter how slow that might be. So, as he clutched his glass of beer to withstand the tension in his chest, he simply kept talking.
He was just about to go into a whole rant about how much he hated this whole Brexit thing that was going on, when his friend interrupted him and said, simply, “Dream.”
“Dream?” Hob asked, dumbfounded. His hand held onto the glass tighter.
His friend smirked, not for the first time that evening. “My name.”
“Your name is Dream?”
“It is but one of my names, yes.”
Hob had vowed not to push, so he didn’t. He nodded and he smiled widely as he did not ask the million questions that raced through his mind, and he said, “Then I am pleased to meet you, Dream.”
“Would you mind a walk, Hob Gadling?” his friend - no, Dream - asked, then. He was looking slightly down on him in that way he liked to do. Most people would have found it actively disrespectful at worst, annoyingly cocky at best, but Hob had always thought it looked beautiful.
“Sure, let’s get out of here,” he said. Hob paid quickly and if the bartender gave him a knowing look, that was something he tried not to think about. All he wanted to think about was Dream waiting for him in the doorway, his eyes positively twinkling. He hoped, he earnestly did, that he was not imagining it.
They made their way towards the river and fell in step next to each other comfortably as they walked the path beside it. “I did not voluntarily miss our last meeting.”
Hob looked at him. There was something in the way he said it that made his heart break a little. He sounded… Vulnerable. Hob proceeded with caution. “I thought so. Well… I hoped so. I’m sorry, by the way, for pushing you last time. I could tell you weren’t ready and I just…” He took a deep breath. “Having assumptions made about you is never pleasant.”
There was a moment of silence and then, a miracle. Cool, slender fingers brushed his own, even if just for a moment. Hob felt like he was being struck by lighting. He allowed his own fingers to reach out, ever so slightly, though he kept himself from taking Dream’s hand. Even one more light brush of Dream’s fingers against his own was enough to make his heart sing.
Dream was looking straight ahead. “You were right, I did enjoy your companionship. I am sorry to have made you feel differently.”
It took more out of Hob than he could ever admit to not throw caution to the wind that very second. He thought of taking Dream’s hand into his own, but also of pulling him closer, touching his hair, his face, his hips and kissing him right then and there, under the soft moonlight. But he didn’t; he breathed in and he breathed out and said, “I forgive you.”
“You do?”
“I forgave you a long time ago. Life’s too short to hold grudges, isn’t it?” Hob laughed at his own jest, one he’d long since grown fond of. Nobody he met really got why he thought it was so funny, nobody saw the irony. But Dream did, and he too gave a small chuckle.
“Are there things you don’t forgive?” Dream stopped and looked at him then and Hob could swear he saw his eyes glow in the dark. They seemed unfathomably deep in the night, and Hob thought he could see the stars within them. He was so enraptured by the sight that he almost forgot to answer the question.
“Maybe,” he managed, unsure for a moment but then his usual easy smile came back to him, “I don’t forgive the time you made off with Will Shaxberd. Oh, excuse me, William Shakespeare. ” He put on his poshest accent for the Bard’s more famous name.
Dream did not move an inch. “I did not ‘make off’ with him. We merely talked.”
“So you did not shag him behind the White Horse?” Hob bit his tongue as soon as the words were out. Too forward, and a bit too bitter, he thought. And a bit too obviously jealous after four whole centuries. “Sorry, I-“
To his surprise, Dream smirked and looked him up and down with a raised eyebrow. “You offend me, I would have found a nicer place than that. A bed perhaps. Or a secluded spot by the river.” He stepped a bit closer, making Hob’s breath catch. He was grateful he could not suffocate. Dream’s eyes fixated his and for a fleeting, heart-stopping moment he thought that maybe, maybe his friend would lean in to kiss him. But he took a step back. “But no, I did not have sexual or romantic or even platonic relations with William Shakespeare if that is your concern. Though, I did read one Gad Robling’s review of his work once, I’m sure you’d have gotten along very well with that fellow, absolutely hated all that Shakespeare wrote. Claimed that all he had was only because of a deal with the devil and well-timed dick jokes.”
Hob’s face burned. Oh, it burned so hot he feared it might burn all the way off his skull. Before he could fester in his own embarrassment, Dream nodded towards a gorgeous old willow by the riverside and Hob followed him there because if it meant that he could stretch out the time before he had to say goodbye for another hundred years, he would have followed Dream into Hell that night.
They sat down in the grass under the tree, too close for Hob’s heart to take it in stride, arms touching, though separated by long, woolen sleeves. He could not help but look at Dream, take in his profile, perfect as it was. The straight nose, the pronounced jawline, the softest-looking lips he had ever set eyes upon… He could lose himself in the sight.
“Speak your mind, Hob. If you think any louder, I might actually hear it.” Dream’s voice always sounded rough, like it had formed from the very essence of cigarettes and whiskey, but there was a softness to it now that was about to tear Hob in half.
“I’ve heard you tell me all about people you had never met, surely you know a thing or two about me,” Hob said, a wry smile on his face. He did not live in the illusion that Dream knew as little of him as he did of Dream.
Dream came ever so slightly closer and turned his head to face him. He was inches away, so close that Hob could feel that his breath, too, was cold and he saw that in Dream’s eyes a whole galaxy had its home. “I know of your wants. And your dreams. But I would like to hear you say it.”
Hob moved slowly, like Dream was a cat he was adamant not to spook. He found his hand resting on the grass and touched it, felt the cool skin, its smoothness and the nigh unbearable tenderness with which Dream’s fingers interlaced with his own. “I… want you.” He wet his lips and tried to calm his breathing. “And I would very much like to kiss you.”
It was Dream who closed the gap then, swiftly but softly and he kissed him, both urgently and tenderly, desperately and with a restraint that threatened to drive him crazy. Hob kissed him back, naturally, caution well and truly blown away by then. His free hand found Dream’s neck and pulled him even closer as they found their rhythm together. He never wanted to let go. He wanted to feel every inch of this beautiful, fascinating man that by some miraculous twist of fate wanted him, too.
Yet, after what felt like both an eternity and not nearly enough time, Dream pulled back and looked at Hob, a great pain in his eyes. “You don’t know what it is you ask.”
Hob shook his head. No, he would not let him go again. He would not let him leave again on some strange bout of a superiority complex or self pity. He took Dream’s face into his hands and looked him in the eyes with all the earnestness in his heart. “I ask for nothing,” he said, scarcely more than a whisper, “I ask for nothing but you , however you wish to be. Whatever you’re willing to give.”
Dream tried to avert his gaze, but remained steadfast. “There is not much good love in my past. Heartbreak and betrayal, yes, and passion, but happiness has never liked to stay in my presence.”
“I have had one wife in almost seven hundred years of life and only one legitimate son. I have whored my way through most of Great Britain and occasionally the continent, to be quite honest. If you take me to be a paragon of love and fidelity, you are sorely mistaken.” Hob laughed to himself. Not bitterly, but in good-humored self-deprecation. “In truth, I find the good, domestic life quite boring. You don’t live almost seven hundred years without once craving death by not living for the mess. I love the mess. And whatever mess we’d make, I wish to see it.”
Dream smiled, then, like he first had in 1389 when he had told Hob to meet him in a hundred years. Like he had again in 1489 when Hob told him that being immortal was fucking brilliant and that he loved every second. Like he had in 1689 when despite being covered in filth and mud and holding onto a piece of bread for dear life, he had said he wanted to keep living. It was a smile of surprise, of interest and intrigue and of fond bewilderment.
“I don’t get you, Robert Gadling,” Dream said, that smile not leaving his lips as Hob thought he might drown in his beauty. They kissed again.
And again.
And again. And Hob took him home that night, and they became one in his pillows. Between soft words and passionate orders, even though they had never quite understood each other, even though Hob had often had trouble gauging what it was his friend wanted or did and Dream had never quite understood Hob’s unceasing zest for life, they understood each other perfectly that night. Between passion and darkness, they found each other like they had first found each other in a filthy tavern in 1389.
And as the morning sun kissed Hob awake and Dream was still in his arms, looking at him with those unfathomable eyes of his, Hob knew that it would not take one hundred years this time and perhaps it never again would. Maybe it would take a few weeks or months most times. Maybe there would be times they wouldn’t see each other for years on end, but he knew, deep within himself that they would always find each other again - a constant in each other's infinite lives.