Chapter Text
Walking the halls of their sweet immaculate flesh, Desire contemplates change.
It isn’t that they don’t know, of course; Desire is, after all, twin to Despair, and their hooks (while more pleasingly shaped and often alluringly baited) are also in every heart. So they couldn’t help but be aware of the shift.
It’s just that… their siblings, who cannot, after all, be said to have needs —only being alive in a very hypothetical and drearily liminal sense—and are, after all, powerful enough to satisfy most of their wants… there is little, there, that holds Desire’s interest. Not like the mortals, who spend their brief spans consumed with hungers and drives and furious motion that would put flesh-eating bacteria to shame. And yet.
And yet.
There's just something irresistible, this time.
So Desire pauses a moment to steel themselves in their gallery; ruff just so, brocade glistening, tawny eyes half-lidded and evincing not a care in the world. They would never admit, of course, to nervousness, but sticking their exquisite nose in the business of the elder three nonetheless merits… caution. Desire reaches out a single blood-red nail and gives one symbol among the six a caress.
“Sister,” Desire purrs, as though the word is a sweet rolling across their tongue. “I stand in my gallery, and I hold your sigil. Will you speak with me?”
“Hello, Desire,” comes their sister’s voice. Not chill as the depths of winter like Dream’s would be, but nonetheless cautious. “What’s all this about?”
“Dear sister,” Desire says, arranging themself on a divanlike curve of their own beating heart, displayed in a pose that would send painters and sculptors the world over to cast their tools aside and dive headfirst into their twin’s fog-choked realm, never to emerge. “While I would never dream of intruding into your bailiwick, I am nonplussed to discover that you have intruded into mine. With hardly a by-your-leave. That is unlike you, sister.”
Death actually comes through, dressed in her usual manner—in trousers and a sleeveless shirt that human fashion wouldn’t appreciate for some centuries to come, in shades of black-on-black-on-black. She raises her eyebrows, lips quirking in an expression that is less a smile and more an invitation to please be clear on whatever species of bullshit this is so she can get on with her day. Not a game player, this one; Desire has always felt that was a shame.
“Why, sister.” Desire wishes they had a rose, a red rose, to smile behind; so of course there is one to hand. Desire breaths deep of the scent of themself. “What an overwhelming honor. Can I get you anything you desire?”
“A quick end to this conversation,” Death says, rolling her eyes as Desire pats the gentle hummock of their own heart next to them. However, she sits; Desire cherishes the small victory. “I’m very busy, you know.”
“To the point, then. Whatever were you thinking, sister?” Desire asks, throwing their hands up in theatrical dismay. “Our beloved brother, and a mortal? A man, no less.” Desire smirks, casting aside the rose and lying back with a catlike stretch. “You know how tiresome he is about these things.”
A flicker, there. Not a liar either, their sister; Desire finds this something beyond a shame, somewhere in the far reaches of the inexplicable.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Death says primly. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got about ten minutes before the Plague rolls back around, and—”
“Hob Gadling,” Desire muses, and with an idle gesture conjures an image of the man himself. “Not uncomely, if you like that sort of thing. An opportunist in matters of the flesh, so I obviously approve. But he’s hardly our dear sweet brother’s type.” Desire reaches up as if to caress the image along his quite exemplary jaw; somewhere in the real world Hob shivers, remembering the taste of lost love, and doesn’t know why.
“Is that his name?” Death says vaguely. Desire is only sometimes a cat; they can, nonetheless, always smell a rat.
“Please do me the courtesy of knowing my business, if nothing else. Why didn’t you ask me? I would be delighted to assist. But a word in my ear, sweet sister, and I can–”
“No,” Death says with uncharacteristic firmness. “No, you will not.”
“Well that’s hardly sporting–”
“Desire,” Death says, with a not-actually-a-smile of her own. “I mean it. Keep that pert little nose out of this, or you will earn my displeasure, and my undivided attention. Are we clear?”
Desire makes a little moue of disgust. “You’re no fun at all, sister. But fine. Put me down as an interested observer.”
“Swear it, Desire. By the First Circle.”
“Oh really darling.”
“Desire.”
“Yes, yes, I see,” Desire shakes their head. “But, fine, if you insist. I swear by the First Circle, by the other side of the sky, that I will not interfere in any way with my oblivious older brother’s disaster romance with a strapping brigand, though it pains me to the depths of my soul and I reserve the right to find it extremely funny. Are you satisfied?”
Desire lets the image of Hob fade with a slightly sulky flourish
“Yes,” Death says. “And it’s… not what you think. I just thought he should get out and meet them, you know?”
“Meet them, hmm?” Desire says. “Perhaps we should have a little wager, then. See how long it takes before they, ah, meet in truth. Wouldn’t that be amusing?”
“That would be a little invasive, don’t you think?” Death says with a frown.
“Sister, sister; that is not by any stretch of the imagination a no. And you can’t tell me you aren’t curious.”
“Oh who am I even kidding,” Death says, shaking her head. “One meeting a century? We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t take five hundred years.”
“My petal, it will take at least a thousand.”
The moment hangs in the air, pent as the last instant before a lightning strike, or orgasm.
Death reaches out and shakes Desire’s hand.
“It’s a bet,” Death says. “Less than a millenium. If you win, I’ll be sure to mention that ‘Desire was right, I was wrong’ no less than three times during our next family dinner.”
“What a darling you are,” Desire exclaims. “If you win, you shall have… satisfaction as your reward.”
“I’m sure.”
“In a hundred years, then?”
“A hundred years. And don’t think you can have your twin or Destruction intervene,” Death warns. “Or our little sister, either. I’ll be watching you.”
Desire flutters their eyelashes. “Then I hope you enjoy the show, my dear.”
<><><>
“So who are you, Hob Gadling?” Desire whispers at the edges of his dreams. In the waking world, he turns restlessly, pricked almost to wakefulness by the straw ticking of the thin mattress he sleeps on. Desire narrows their golden eyes; he falls more deeply asleep.
“Just a man,” he says in dreams. “A man like any other.”
“Indeed,” Desire says with a delicate frown. “So why you? Why now?”
“What do you mean?”
Desire, skirting perilously close to breaking their oath, doesn’t respond, and Hob returns to his dream, never knowing himself observed. It’s a dream of love, of course, which is why Desire is there at all. Love in a sense, anyway.
“What are you doing, beloved?”
Desire, hands clasped behind their back, half-turns. Beloved indeed, twin, sister, other-self. Despair comes up alongside them, reaching out a hesitant hand; they take it, threading their fingers together companionably.
“Watching,” Desire says.
“Obviously.” Despair leans her head against their arm. “Why this one?”
“I’m asking myself the same question.” Desire purses their lips as the dream turns… urgent, flashes of breasts, of thighs spread, of the coarse feel of a man’s stubble against his jaw, an man’s insistently probing tongue, tasting of wine and wanting. “He’s a pretty one, but not a patch on Nada. Or even poor Alianore. So what does Death see that I don’t?”
“Speaking of, our sister visited,” Despair says. “Says I’m not supposed to interfere. You’re not, either.”
“I’m not,” Desire protests, as always, a bit too much. “Besides, he called me. You can’t say he isn’t one of mine.”
“One of mine too.” Despair cocks her head. “He’s known despair, that one.”
“Both at once, unless I miss a trick—ah! Yes!” Desire peers closer. Amongst the flashes of remembered conquests, one that causes a black rip of misery across the sky of Hob’s dreamscape. A young man, burning with an urgent fervor that even secondhand through someone else's recollections causes Desire’s eyelids to flutter and their heart to pause. Men want many things; desire for a better world has a unique and delicious savor.
“Wat Tyler?” Desire says, delighted. “My goodness, our boy Hob has hidden depths. I hadn’t realized…” Desire’s mouth stretches into a smile that could, with generosity, be interpreted as genuine. “If that’s his type, I can’t imagine what he’ll see in our stuffy elder brother, do you?”
Despair shrugs. “That’s your realm, not mine. All I know is that he suffers. And will, for centuries to come.” She reaches out her other hand, as if to caress the stuff of his dreams. “A new immortal… their suffering is always so…” Despair lets out a long, ragged sigh. “Satisfying.”
“You are an artist, my love.” Desire shakes their head. “Still. This will be… entertaining.”
“If you say so.”
“I do, I do.”
It’s the memory of Wat Tyler’s smile (mixed in with flashes of him speaking before an enraptured crowd, spinning out his bright and golden dreams of an England that was truly free, and the desperate little noises he made as he came) that break the dream apart, Hob waking up in his narrow bed with unshed tears in his eyes.
“Show’s over,” Despair says, disappointed.
“Maybe for you.” Desire shakes their head. “He’s going to want breakfast, in a moment.”