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hardly-an-escape · 21 days

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what's in a name? | Dream/Hob | 9300 words | rated E

this is my submission for @designtheendless's 3K commission giveaway: a Dreamling fic based on their fanart above!

tags: alternate universe - human, photographer Hob Gadling, artist Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, model Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, strangers to lovers, snowed in, only one bed, light dom/sub, oral sex, face fucking, anal fingering, anal sex, anonymous sex, Dream of the Endless is a horny little weasel, and Hob is no less of a horny little weasel, brief Princess Bride references, alcohol consumption, impulsive decision making, callous disregard for the geography of northern California, they go from 0-60 because they’re both nuts, neither of them are in a great place but they do make each other better rather than worse

Hob is on an ill-fated road trip through California. He’s making his way slowly down the coast toward Los Angeles when, trapped by a snowstorm in a small town near Mount Shasta, he meets a mysterious stranger in a diner. They share a night of anonymous passion – but when the sun rises, Hob finds that he can’t just leave the stranger behind…

this story developed partially from Picture Perfect, one of my Fluffbruary 2024 fills. I also incorporated some of designtheendless's other suggested image prompts, so do make sure you check their original post! and thank you so much for extending the deadline, it meant I had time to get my CHBB fic submitted before pivoting to finish this... and even so I'm still barely getting it done in time just because of who I am as a person :D

Hob leans forward over the steering wheel, brows furrowed as he peers through the driving snow at the street ahead. The windshield wipers are going like mad; he’s seen a plow or two out, but they seem to barely be making a dent, so traffic has slowed to a crawl. Which is, frankly, for the best, since the weather is bad enough that only a true nutter would be out in it at all.

Well… nobody’s ever accused Hob of being sane.

His GPS instructs him to take the next right and informs him that his destination will then be on his right. He can just make out the neon sign through the thick flakes: Townhouse Motel. “Vacancy,” it says below the old-timey script, blinking on and off. In the distance, the sun is just beginning to settle behind some mountains that he’s sure would be beautiful if they weren’t hidden behind such inclement weather.

He pulls in the driveway. The lot is nearly empty, so he parks right next to the office door and jams his winter cap on his head before hurrying through the flurries.

The bored teenager behind the front desk barely looks up from the reality show playing on her tablet as she runs Hob’s credit card and gives him his door key – an actual, physical key. Room 1389. He decides it’s not worth it to ask why the room number has four digits when the motel has maybe a dozen rooms total.

He does ask if there’s somewhere nearby to get a bite to eat and a drink.

“There’s a diner across the street and down a block,” the teenager says, “but they don’t serve booze.” Then, finally looking up, perhaps seeing the bags under his eyes and his generally downtrodden demeanor, she relents. “There’s a liquor store about two blocks past that. You can bring stuff back to your room, I guess. It’s not like anybody is going to ask questions around here.”

That, Hob thinks as he heads back outside and moves his rental car a little closer to his door, is obvious. There’s a general air of neglect clinging to the motel, and indeed to the whole street, from what he can see: the buildings are a little more weatherbeaten than can be plausibly explained by a cute vintage aesthetic, and at least one storefront seems to be permanently boarded up. The recession has clearly hit Northern California just as hard as it has the rest of the United States.

What a time to be playing tourist. What a time to be – well, he won’t think about that right now.

His room is clean, at least. Someone, at some point in time, has made a half-hearted attempt to decorate it with a seaside theme. The bedlinens are various shades of blue, rather than your typical beigey-white. There’s an unfortunate painting of a mermaid hanging over the outdated television, and a slightly less unfortunate painting of a lighthouse above the bed. The bathroom wallpaper has little seashells on it.

Hob leaves his camera bag on the desk and his duffel on the end of the bed, grabs his wallet, turns his collar up against the cold, and heads back out into the snowy evening.

The diner is, as promised, only a short walk down the street, but Hob is shivering by the time he gets there. The wind cuts right through him – silly British man that he is, he thought California would be warm, even in winter. He hadn’t really reckoned with unpredictable mountain weather, or with the cold front that was chasing him down through the southern end of the Cascades. The weatherman on the radio had been calling it “freakish.”

A little bell tinkles merrily when he pushes open the door. A waitress calls out a greeting, tells him to sit wherever he likes and she’ll be right with him. There’s only one other person in the diner, a slender man dressed all in black who is hunched over a cup of coffee at the counter. He glances up and immediately back down as Hob stomps the snow off his boots and takes an empty booth far enough away from the front door that he won’t feel the rush of cold air if anyone else comes in.

The waitress bustles over, bringing him a cup of coffee without even asking. Hob wraps his fingers around it gratefully. He doesn’t normally drink coffee this late, but it’s been the kind of day that calls for it: so cold, so uncomfortable and distressing, that the sturdy ceramic mug is exactly what he wants. The bitter note of slightly burnt coffee is tempered by the cheap, artificially flavored vanilla creamer he only ever uses at this kind of greasy spoon diner. He breathes deep and feels something inside him start to thaw.

When the waitress comes back with a menu, he warms up even more. She is middle-aged and comfortable, nice and no-nonsense, the sort of person with an indeterminate American accent who could have come from anywhere: Illinois, or Florida, or five minutes down the road. She recommends the olive burger with fries, and a side of fried pickles, because they’re the best in the county, and then her excitement simply bubbles over.

“I’m just so darn tickled to have two Brits here in the same night!” she enthuses. “Oh gosh, is that okay? Can I call you Brits or is that rude?”

“No, no, it’s fine!” Hob laughs. “Two of us, eh? That is a coincidence.”

“I know, right? Okay hon, lemme just get your order in and I’ll be back to warm up your coffee in a sec.”

She bustles away again, and Hob looks curiously at the man at the counter. He must have heard her comment, but he hasn’t turned around, or indeed acknowledged Hob in any way since he came in. He shrugs mentally and turns away to look out the window at the thickly swirling snow. It’s dark enough now that streetlights have come on, casting cones of light in which the flakes dance like a very slow sodium-tinted tornado.

He wishes he had a book. Or a crossword puzzle, or one of those packets of crayons they give to kids at restaurants. Something to keep his hands occupied and his mind off of everything that was threatening to consume it, off of the last few days, off of her –

Then the man from the counter slides into the booth across from him.

“Hello,” Hob says.

“Hello,” the stranger says. His voice is surprisingly deep and resonant, coming from his slim frame, and he looks to be in his late twenties, perhaps a few years younger than Hob. He is very pale. His dark hair is sticking up rather wildly and his eyes are a cold, clear blue that reminds Hob of the way the sky had looked this morning, before the clouds had descended.

“Who are you, then? Aside from a fellow Brit?” asks Hob.

“No one of consequence.” He’s lugging around a small backpack, which now rests on the bench beside him.

“I must know,” Hob says in a very bad Inigo Montoya accent.

“Get used to disappointment,” the stranger says with a smirk, and Hob laughs.

“Oh, we’re going to get along just fine,” he says, holding his hand out across the table. “My name’s Hob, yes that’s my real name, and yes, it is a long story.”

The stranger shakes his hand briefly. His palm is warm from cupping his coffee cup, but the tips of his fingers are cold. “Pleased to meet you, Hob.”

“And do you have a name, stranger?”

“I do. Several, in fact.”

“Any of them for public consumption?”

The stranger shrugs. “Will you forgive me if I maintain a certain level of mystery?”

Hob shrugs too. “That’s your lookout, mate. No skin off my nose.”

They chat. About the weather, and how odd it is, and how different to England. About books – the stranger appears to be a voracious reader, and Hob had loaded up an old iPod with audiobooks in preparation for a lot of driving, which sparks a lively debate on the merits of printed books vs reading aloud. In the midst of this, Hob’s food arrives, and he is derailed momentarily from the conversation by an overwhelming need to unhinge his jaw and stuff as many chips into his gob as humanly possible. The stranger watches in amusement.

“Hungry?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Hob says, muffled by his burger. “Been driving pretty much all day and I didn’t really want to stop, so…”

He’s suddenly self-conscious, very aware that the man sitting across from him is slender and willowy and dressed all in black, and that he himself is very much… not that. Dressed for comfort and warmth in slightly baggy jeans and a flannel shirt and his puffy jacket balled up on the bench beside him. But the stranger seems unbothered, simply smiling slightly and snagging a fried pickle off the plate between them, which Hob had invited him to share moments after it had arrived.

They are good; crispy and salty and uniquely American. Hob is certainly prepared to believe they’re the best in the county.

“So are you staying here in town, or is that shrouded in mystery as well?” he asks, once he’s slowed down a bit.

“I’ve been staying in a cabin up the mountain, a little way out of town. With my family.” He said the word family as though it is faintly dirty. “One of my siblings thought it would be good for us to get away together. But I have found it… trying.”

“Up the mountain, eh? Are you going to be able to get back in this?”

Hob tips his head toward the window. It is very dark now, and the snow is falling more thickly and wildly than ever. A crease appears between the stranger’s eyebrows.

“To be honest, I had not thought that far ahead.”

“Do you have much experience driving in the snow?”

To Hob’s surprise, the stranger actually blushes, just a gentle stain of pink across his cheekbones. “I… walked.”

“You walked?”

The waitress, stopping by the table to warm up their coffees, echos Hob’s surprise.

“Oh, honey,” she says. “In this? How are you fixing to get home?”

“I was planning to walk back,” the stranger says with some asperity. “But I admit I was not anticipating this kind of weather.”

“Let me check on the roads for you,” the waitress says kindly. “Which cabin did you say you’re at? My brother-in-law lives up that way, I’ll give him a call. I’m sure we can find you a ride.”

She goes back behind the counter and picks up the phone.

“I’m happy to give you a ride,” Hob says quietly. “If she thinks it’s safe.”

“You do not have to do that.”

“‘S okay. I want to.”

“Bill? It’s Jan. I have a question for you,” says the waitress.

Hob realizes, suddenly and with some surprise, that it is quite true, that he is not just being polite: he does want to help this mysterious stranger, who talks like a 19th-century Byronic hero and dresses like a college goth. His stomach is doing the tiniest little swoop every time they make eye contact, and he doesn’t want it to stop.

The waitress calls over to him.

“You got four wheel drive, hon?”

Hob thinks about the little Honda Civic in the motel parking lot. Thinks about mountain roads and snow. Shakes his head no.

Scraps of the waitress’s conversation float across the diner and Hob takes another bite of his burger.

“– well they’re foreign, Bill, they don’t –”

He snickers just a little; can’t help himself, really, because the waitress is just so kind and helpful and also clearly more than a little bit befuddled by their presence in her diner. These two Brits, total strangers, so unalike one another – and yet here they are, sharing a booth and a plate of fried pickles, five thousand miles and change away from home. He exchanges a look of camaraderie with the stranger and eats some more chips. They’re good too.

“– and tomorrow? What’s the overnight –”

After another minute or two the waitress thanks her brother-in-law and hangs up the phone. Her face is serious when she comes back to their table.

“Well, boys,” she says, “I don’t think anyone is going anywhere tonight. Bill says it’s pretty bad up there, and only getting worse. The plows aren’t even going out yet on account of the snow’s still coming down so hard, it doesn’t make sense to try and clear anything. You going to be able to find a place to stay?” she asks the stranger.

He looks at Hob. “Did you mention a motel?”

“Yeah, the Townhouse?” Hob says, and the waitress nods along. “I don’t know for sure if there are rooms available, but it didn’t look like the parking was full.”

“Probably not, this time of year,” interjects the waitress. “It’s a fine place, and Paulie can certainly use the business. I’ll bring your checks by in a minute, guys.”

She leaves them again. Her sensible sneakers squeak against the floor tiles as she walks.

“Thank you again for your offer of a ride,” the stranger says quietly. “That was very kind of you.”

“Course. I’m just sorry you won’t be able to get home tonight,” Hob says.

“It is my own fault. I should not have behaved so impulsively. But my siblings…” The man frowns. “As I said, they can be difficult. I would have done something regrettable, had I remained in the house.”

Hob waves a hand. “Ah, it happens to the best of us. Especially around family. You should hear some of the fights I’ve had with my sister, we can scream the paint off the walls when we get going.”

“Indeed,” the man says darkly.

“I’m glad you did come to town, though. It’s been kind of nice,” Hob says tentatively. “Having someone to talk to tonight.”

“Indeed,” his stranger repeats. But this time one corner of his mouth lifts in a tiny smile. “It seems to have worked out in my favor.”

Hob smiles back. “So, are you really not going to tell me your name?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Fun, eh?” Hob glances down at his own hands, folded on the table, back at the stranger. “Is that what this is?”

The stranger smirks. He leans forward and plucks another fried pickle from the plate. He opens his mouth, sticking out his tongue just a little bit farther than necessary to pop the slice into his mouth. He chews, and smirks some more, and gives Hob an unmistakable up-and-down appraising glance, and underneath the table he presses one ankle against Hob’s instep.

Oh. Hob feels a surprising but not unfamiliar spike of arousal in his gut. So that’s where this is heading – has been heading, since he pushed open the door and the stranger had glanced up at him. Had he blushed, when his eyes met Hob’s? Or is he applying more detail to that brief interaction after the fact, now that he thinks he knows what his stranger is thinking?

And when had the man become his stranger?

“I see,” he says, and presses back against the bony ankle under the table.

Ten minutes later, they’ve settled their bills – his stranger had apparently eaten a club sandwich before Hob had arrived, and he’s weirdly relieved that the man has consumed something more substantial than coffee this evening – and are gearing up to head back into the cold. Hob is zipping up his coat when he realizes the other man appears to have only a thick black hoodie and a knit beanie (also black, of course). He glances out the window, where it’s still snowing pretty hard, and raises an eyebrow.

“You going to be okay in just that?”

“You said it is only a couple of blocks? I will be fine. I tend not to feel the cold. And,” he adds defensively, “when I originally walked down the weather was not quite so… inclement.”

“If you say so,” Hob says as he opens the door. The waitress calls out a good night and he waves to her over his stranger’s shoulder. Wonders, just for a moment, what she thinks of the fact that they’re leaving together, or if she will ever think of them again at all. They step out into the snowy evening. “The girl at the motel said there’s a liquor store down the street. Mind detouring there? I was thinking of picking up some whiskey, or something. Something to keep a man warm.”

The man chuckles and they head down the street. It’s not until they’re away from the diner windows that he takes Hob by the elbow and gently draws him just outside the circle of a street lamp.

“Surely,” he says, voice low, stepping into Hob’s space, “there are many ways for a man to… keep warm.”

And he kisses him.

His lips are warm and dry, a little chapped. It’s a simple kiss, a chaste one, just their lips touching and the barest pressure of the stranger’s belly and chest pressed against Hob’s, swathed in layers of winter gear. It lasts for a heartbeat, two, and then the man steps back with a hum of satisfaction.

“Oh?” says Hob, giddily. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Obviously,” responds his stranger.

“Well, I don’t know, mate,” says Hob as they make their way down the street. He resists the urge to link their arms together. “Maybe you play footsie with every guy you meet in random diners in Northern California.”

“Perhaps.”

The liquor store is a brief respite from the wind and the snow. Hob selects a mid-range bottle of whiskey and they trudge back to his motel room. The snowflakes and the streetlights and the swirling wind make everything feel more than a little bit surreal, like something out of a dream or a fairy tale. The two of them could be adventurers, explorers, wading through an arctic wasteland in search of shelter. The mountain looms behind them, dark and mysterious, like a great castle or some monstrous beast.

“Do you mind if I take a shower?” asks his stranger, kicking off his boots dropping his backpack by the desk. “I’m afraid I did get rather sweaty, hiking down earlier. I wouldn’t mind cleaning up.” His gaze, beneath his long eyelashes, feels heavy and significant.

“Go right ahead.” Hob gestures toward the bathroom. “I’m just going to nip down to the lobby and get a bit of ice.” He retrieves the ice bucket from the desk, brushing close to his stranger as he does. The brief contact jolts him back to the real world. They’re not in the arctic waste; this handsome, ethereal man is here, in his motel room. He is pulling off his somewhat sodden hoodie and draping it over the back of the chair, and sniffing dubiously at the sweater he wears underneath it. He is real.

Hob waits until he hears the shower turn on to slip out the door.

Although he has his moments of cluelessness, Hob is not a stupid man. He knows where this is going. He recognizes the signs, the coy little dance they’ve been doing around each other for the past two hours, and no, he’s not a stupid man, but if he were a better one he might be able to resist the temptation of falling into bed with a beautiful stranger who won’t even share his name.

But there’s something about this man. Hob wants him. Already can’t resist him. Wants to wrap him up and keep him warm and kiss his collarbones and, yes, wants to fuck him, wants to feel him shudder and moan and wants to watch his cheeks flush and his head fall back in ecstasy. He hasn’t felt like this for a long, long time, and now it’s come out of nowhere to slam into him and hook into his gut, this wanting.

He throws a few scoops of ice from the machine in the motel lobby into the bucket and goes back to the room.

He’s kicked off his boots, unwrapped one of the shitty plastic cups, and poured himself a couple fingers of whiskey by the time he hears the shower shut off. There’s the usual shuffling noise of towels, a brief blast of the cheap hair dryer mounted to the wall. Then the door opens and the stranger emerges, and Hob is slammed from the real world right back into a surreal dream.

The man is even more beautiful without his clothes on: Hob would compare him to an elf or a fairy prince, but he’s too busy choking slightly on the spit that’s suddenly flooding his mouth at the sight of long, slim limbs, a narrow waist, and a temptingly well-defined Adonis belt that disappears under the cheap motel towel wound around his hips.

There’s a long moment of silent eye contact. Hob’s leaning up against the desk, cup cradled in one hand. His face heats as he watches his stranger’s eyes travel slowly down the length of his body and back up, pursing his lips slightly. His mouth is very pink, with the kind of full bottom lip that’s made for nibbling on, and the rest of his skin is as pale and smooth as… well, as snow, with just a touch of redness from the heat of the shower spreading across his chest.

Hob downs half of his whiskey without even thinking about it. He can’t look away. He can’t think, can’t even blink. He’s afraid that if he does, this vision will disappear and it’ll just be him, alone, a saddish man alone in a motel room with a bottle of booze and a bag of expensive camera equipment, and then who knows what will happen?

His stranger gives him one of those tiny half-smiles, suggestive, not quite a leer, and stalks across the room toward him.

He widens his legs and his stranger steps in to stand between his feet. He takes Hob’s drink out of his hand and tosses back the last swallow of whiskey before setting the plastic cup aside. Then he hooks one finger into the collar of Hob’s flannel shirt and pulls him into a kiss. His mouth is a study in contrasts: warm from the whiskey and cool from the ice, soft tongue and sharp teeth. They sink briefly, gently, into Hob’s bottom lip, and Hob pulls the man close against his chest and returns the favor.

The kiss is turning wet and messy when the man pulls back far enough to start fumbling with Hob’s shirt buttons. He’s pulled the tails of the shirt out of Hob’s jeans and has it about halfway unbuttoned when a phone starts ringing.

It’s not the room phone – it’s coming from a pocket of the man’s backpack.

“Ignore it,” he mumbles into Hob’s neck. “We are busy.”

The phone rings three times; four times. The stranger has finished with Hob’s shirt and is pulling the tee beneath it out of the waistband of his jeans by the time it finally stops.

His fingers are toying with Hob’s belt buckle and ghosting over the seam of his fly when it rings again.

The stranger groans audibly.

“Do you think,” Hob says with the carefully deliberate cadence of the very turned on, “that your family might be worried about you?”

“I do not care,” his stranger grumbles, and sinks gracefully to his knees.

Eventually the phone stops ringing again.

He’s worked Hob’s belt and fly open and is nuzzling into the opening of his jeans, nosing at the base of Hob’s cock through his underwear and Hob is panting, his stranger’s hot breath so close to where Hob wants him most – when the phone rings a third time.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” snarls the stranger, and stands.

He fishes a slightly battered-looking BlackBerry out of an outside pocket of his backpack and stabs at the call answer button.

“What.”

He turns away, so all Hob can see is the furious, stiff line of his stranger’s back. He can’t hear the other half of the conversation, and he doesn’t think he wants to; every fibre of the man’s body radiates anger and discomfort and perhaps a little bit of shame. Hob adjusts himself discreetly, rezips his jeans, and tiptoes over to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Obviously I am alive. I am fine.” A pause. “I took a walk.” Another pause. “Yes. Yes, I know what time it is. No, I am assured that the roads were too bad to make it back to the cabin. I am in a motel room in…” He looks over to Hob. “What is the name of this place?”

Hob supplies the name of the motel, and that of the town as well, just for good measure. The man relays the information into the phone. There is another long pause.

“That is none of your business. Shut up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. And if you speak to me like that again I will hang up the phone.”

There is another, longer pause, during which the stranger’s face grows progressively redder. He is very deliberately not looking at Hob.

“No. I said no. I will arrange for my own transportation in the morning. I –”

The person on the other end of the phone must say something truly outrageous, because his strangers eyes bug out in a way that looks almost uncomfortable.

“Do the entirety of the known universe a favor and crawl back into whatever slime hole you emerged from and leave me alone,” he hisses. “Goodbye.”

Hob can’t quite muffle a snort at this crowning line. Siblings.

His stranger hangs up the phone with a vicious jab of a button and slams it down on the desk; then seems to reconsider, retrieves it, and shuts it off entirely before throwing it into his backpack. He sighs, a surprisingly tired sound.

“I will have another drink, if you don’t mind,” he says. “And then I would like it very much if you would fuck me. Please.”

Hob’s cock, which had been feeling distinctly neglected, gives a twitch.

“I think that can be arranged,” he says. “Are you –”

The stranger waves a dismissive hand. “I am quite sober enough to have sex with you. And I could easily afford my own room, if that’s a concern. I am here because I want to be.”

“Glad to hear it, but that actually isn’t what I was going to ask,” Hob says mildly.

“Oh,” the man says. A faint blush rises on his cheekbones. He scoops up the whiskey bottle and uncorks it, taking an unceremonious swig. The towel hangs dangerously low around his hips. “What were you going to ask?”

His stranger pauses with the whiskey bottle against his lips. Hob watches the long line of his neck work once, twice, as he swallows, and figures he may as well put his cards on the table.

“I was going to ask if latex condoms are okay. For when I fuck you into the mattress in a minute here.”

The man clears his throat. “Oh,” he says again. “Yes. Latex is fine.”

“Good. Anything you don’t like? Hard boundaries?”

He pauses. “I do not enjoy being choked. Or having my hands restrained in any way. But I like… I like it a little bit rough. It feels good. To be used.”

Hob leans back on one elbow. “Is that what you want me to do? Use you?”

“Yes.”

The word drops into the quiet room like a handful of snow might drop off a tree branch – soft and muffled and sending the same delicious shiver down Hob’s spine.

“I can do that.” Oh, yes. Hob can use this beautiful man, if he is offering himself up to be used. “C’mere, then.”

His stranger walks slowly across the room to where Hob is half-reclining on the bed, feet still planted on the floor. He kneels between Hob’s legs and runs his hands slowly up and down his thighs from knee to hip. “And you?” he asks. “Your boundaries?”

Hob considers. “I’m with you on choking, not a fan,” he says. “I’m not big on pain, generally, but I can give it to other people, if they need it.”

“Alright.” His hands are still rubbing up and down Hob’s thighs, a slow, hypnotizing rhythm. When he speaks again his voice is thick. “Would you consider the preliminary negotiations to be concluded now?”

“Don’t you have anything better to do with your mouth than spout off like a horny nineteenth century robber baron?” Hob counters.

His stranger smiles, a proper smile that crinkles the corners of his blue eyes, and unzips the fly of Hob’s jeans.

In short order he’s pulled them open and pushed Hob’s boxers down just enough that he can get his cock out. He’s not quite hard, not yet, but he gets there quickly between his stranger’s gentle, surprisingly soft hands and the way he immediately buries his nose in Hob’s pubic hair and breathes deeply as he looks up through his eyelashes.

Then he opens his mouth, and wraps his tongue around the head of Hob’s cock, and Hob’s brain makes a noise like radio static.

Oh, he is good at this. Unfairly good. Supernaturally good. He teases Hob for long, long minutes, working up and down his shaft with light touches of just his lips and tongue, ducking down now and then to mouth gently at his balls, until Hob is twitching and swearing and straining, perched on the edge of the bed. When he finally has mercy and takes Hob’s cock fully into his mouth, it is barely a relief. He is so wet, so hot, and he sinks down on Hob with no resistance, no trace of a gag reflex. Before he can stop himself, Hob’s hips jerk forward that final fraction, and suddenly his stranger’s nose is brushing his pubic bone and his throat is contracting around the head of Hob’s cock.

He’s expecting the man to pull back, to splutter in indignation, but instead he makes an encouraging noise and squeezes Hob’s thigh before folding his hands almost primly in his lap.

“Fuck,” Hob mutters. He makes an experimental shallow thrust into the tight, wet heat of his stranger’s mouth. “Really?”

His stranger can’t nod, not with Hob’s prick in his mouth, but he moans. Hob feels it vibrate all along the length of his shaft and has to stifle a whimper of his own. He sinks one hand into the soft riot of the man’s hair, still a little damp from the shower, and cradles the back of his skull. The bone feels sweet and finely formed in his hand.

“You want me to fuck your pretty face?” he asks, soft and just a tiny bit mean. “Yeah? That’s what your mouth is good for, isn’t it?”

He thrusts again, in and out, and the stranger’s eyes roll back a little in his head, so he does it again, and again. Soon he really is fucking his face, not too hard but deep, fingers tightening in his stranger’s hair as his eyes fall nearly shut, narrowing to crystalline blue crescents.

Hob pulls back briefly to let his stranger breathe. Runs his thumb along his bottom lip, dripping with spit, before he pushes back in. He doesn’t stop until he can feel the first tendrils of orgasm beckoning to him; but as tempting as it is to keep going, to empty himself into this perfect mouth, he’s made a promise. And Hob is a man of his word, so he pulls the man off his cock by the scruff of his neck. He makes an obscene noise as he goes, and another thing string of saliva dribbles from his puffy mouth. His eyes are slightly glassy as he looks up at Hob.

“Get up on the bed, baby,” Hob orders gently.

When the man stands up the towel is just barely clinging to his narrow hips, and his erection is stiff and straining against the terrycloth. He’s so hard, Hob thinks wonderingly, just from having Hob’s cock in his mouth for a few minutes, and his own prick throbs in sympathy.

“Hands and knees,” Hob says, and the man crawls up on the bed. The towel falls away as he goes, languid but obedient, so that he’s entirely naked when Hob positions himself behind him. The contrast between Hob’s clothes and the other man’s nudity is delicious – Hob’s rough denim against the man’s soft thighs, Hob’s hairy wrists poking out from worn flannel as he runs his fingernails along sharply elegant shoulder blades.

He allows himself one long, gentle caress, from the nape of his stranger’s neck down to the shallow dimples in the small of his back, before he grabs at the man’s buttocks and unceremoniously spreads him open.

His hole looks surprisingly loose and relaxed already. Hob runs the pad of one thumb over it.

“Were you prepping yourself in the shower?” he asks, delighted. He presses gently and the furl of muscle gives, just a little, pink and fluttering.

“Hng,” says his stranger, shuddering. “Yes. I thought – I thought about your hands. Oh. I liked the thought that you were just outside the door. While I had my fingers inside myself.”

“Impatient little minx,” Hob says fondly. He kisses one of the lovely knobs of his stranger’s spine and pinches his backside for good measure before pulling away. “Stay here.”

He has to dig down to the bottom of his duffel bag in order to find the box of condoms and the little travel sized bottle of lube. He’d felt a little self-conscious when he’d packed them back in his flat in London – like he was presuming something – but then again he had been preparing for a supposedly romantic road trip with his girlfriend.

He’s glad, now, that he has them.

His stranger has remained on his knees, pitched forward to rest on his elbows, face pressed into a pillow and cock hanging heavy between his legs.

“Good boy,” Hob praises, and runs his hand along the man’s flank. “Beautiful. Oh, darling, I’m going to make you feel so good. And then you’re going to make me feel so good, aren’t you? You already have,” Hob coos, drizzling lube directly onto his arsehole. “And I know you’re going to keep being a good boy for me, aren’t you?”

Before the man can answer, Hob slips a finger inside him, right up to the first knuckle. He’s rewarded with a whimper and the feeling of his stranger pushing back against him, silently begging for more.

And then not so silently. “More,” moans the stranger. “Fuck. More, please.”

Hob strokes his finger in and out, petting the velvet inside his stranger.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ll get more.”

He tries to spend as much time torturing his stranger with his fingers as his stranger had spent torturing him with his mouth, but by the second finger he finds his resolve dissolving like so many snowflakes on warm skin. The man is making such wanton sounds, and his knees skid wider and wider on the slippery motel bedspread, opening him inexorably to Hob’s hungry eyes and questing hands.

“Oh. Oh,” he says. “Oh, yes, fuck,” he moans. No more well-crafted phrases or erudite words; the only thing dropping from that perfect mouth are noises, guttural and breathy by turns, only half-muffled by the pillow his face is smashed into.

“Please,” he begs, “please, in me, I – please, I need –”

Hob obliges.

He’s pretty sure he’s never been harder in his life as he shoves his jeans down around his thighs and rolls the condom on. He has to do it one-handed, clumsily, because some frantic corner of his brain is convinced that if he lets go of the stranger’s hip then the man will disappear, between one blink and the next, and this whole night will turn out to have been some snowblind fever dream.

But his stranger stays where Hob has put him, desperate and writhing, begging for Hob’s cock, and when he finally pins the man down to the mattress and pushes into him, that first hard thrust is enough to silence both of them.

The room is utterly still for a heartbeat, and then another, and then one more, until Hob pulls out in order to thrust in again and his stranger wails and then Hob is fucking into him in earnest, fucking him hard, until the sound of their skin slapping together almost drowns out the sounds his stranger is making beneath him.

Almost.

His stranger moans and pants, and Hob answers him, thrust for thrust and moan for moan, Yes and Ah and Christ and Fuck, fuck me, use me, yes. He grips his stranger by the hips, so hard that his fingers leave little white divots behind when he shifts his grip, so hard that he worries he might leave bruises, and still the man pushes back against him and begs for more.

He comes, when he finally comes, untouched, rutting gracelessly against the mattress. Hob stills, grits his teeth, not wanting to overwhelm the other man as he seizes in pleasure, but his stranger continues to move against him, if anything even more desperate, even in the throes of orgasm.

“Don’t stop,” he gasps, “don’t, oh God, fuck me through it, don’t stop –”

So Hob hauls him up and pushes him down, one hand on his waist and one shoving his chest down into the mattress as the man’s hands scrabble at the sheets and he sobs and Hob pistons into him until he empties himself, until his prick is oversensitive and his stranger is twitching around and beneath him, and the room is finally quiet.

Then Hob takes the condom off, knots it and tosses it towards the wastebasket. He rolls them both away from the wet spot with only middling success, but he’s too tired to care. He shucks the rest of his clothes off. He is boneless and spent, and his stranger is inserting himself relentlessly into Hob’s personal space. They lie there for a long, long moment, sweaty and panting, until their breathing starts to even out and the desperate closeness has receded into normal cuddling. Hob presses a kiss to his stranger’s sweaty temple and marvels at his luck.

“I realize I neglected to ask you why you find yourself in Northern California,” his stranger says, tucked against Hob’s side, voice drowsy and hoarse. “Do you care to share?”

“It’s a long story,” Hob says. “I was – well, I am – on a road trip. With my, ah. With my girlfriend. Well. Ex-girlfriend, now. Actually.”

His stranger tenses slightly, and Hob doesn’t blame him; he knows how it must sound. “It sounds like there is a story there?” the man says, almost tentative.

“Yeah, we… we came over together, about two weeks ago. We flew into Seattle, were planning this whole big trip, right down the coast and all the way to Los Angeles. See the redwoods, do some wine tastings, the whole bit. I’m a photographer, I was thinking I could turn the whole trip into a photo essay, maybe even a book.” He sighs. “Then she heard about this yoga retreat, ashram sort of place. Bit culty, I don’t really go in for all that, but she absolutely had to check it out, so we did. Two days later, out of the blue, she tells me our chakras are misaligned and gives me the boot. Turns out Guru Todd Thingummy, who ran the retreat center, was very aligned with her chakras. As well as other, less… metaphysical things.”

There’s a sound from the vicinity of Hob’s armpit that he realizes with delight is a snort. The snort blossoms into a chuckle, and then his stranger is laughing, a frankly horrible honking sort of laugh, shaking in Hob’s arms with it, and Hob laughs along.

“I’m sorry,” his stranger gasps. “I shouldn’t – I shouldn’t laugh at you. It’s just… Guru Todd.”

“I know!” Hob snickers. “You can picture him, right? White boy dreadlocks and a fucking… shell necklace. Utter tosser.”

“I feel like I’ve probably met someone almost exactly like him, truly.” Eventually his stranger’s horrible laugh subsides. He shifts against Hob, playing idly with his chest hair, curling it around one finger. “In a way, I am also escaping a recent ex. She was the first person I dated after some… difficult experiences I had about a year ago. But in the end I was far more invested in the relationship than she, and she became. Uncomfortable. With my ardor.”

“She’s a bloody idiot then,” Hob says automatically, and his stranger looks up, startled.

“Do you think so?”

Hob briefly considers backpedaling. Don’t come off like a madman, he thinks to himself. Not when he’s finally talking to you. But there’s no hope for him. “Well, yeah. I mean, I’d say your ardor is my favorite thing about you so far.” He lets one hand drift down and gives his stranger’s arse a cheeky squeeze, and is rewarded with a squeak and another snort.

“You are kind to say so,” the man says, and interrupts himself with a yawn.

“It’s true. I… I’m really glad I met you,” Hob says honestly. Too honestly. He can’t help himself; the man is just so beautiful, mouth kissed red and limbs loose, fucked out and soft everywhere he’d been hard and prickly before.

Hob still doesn’t know his name.

“I’m glad I met you, too,” the man says softly.

Hob snuggles them both down into the lumpy motel pillows and pulls the blanket up firmly around their shoulders. The wind blows outside, he reaches up to switch off the lamp, and they fall asleep.

He wakes in the night and stumbles to the bathroom to take a piss. When he comes back, his stranger has starfished out and is taking up a full two-thirds of the bed, sleeping like a stone. Hob manages to reinsert himself into the remaining third and then simply lies there for a long few minutes, looking at the other man.

The skies must have cleared, at least a little, because there’s a few strips of moonlight filtering through the blinds. The pale light turns his stranger into marble, a work of art; he practically glows against the blue sheets. Hob’s fingers itch for his camera.

“You’re going to fuck me up,” he whispers. “I’m going to wake up next to you and never want to leave, and it’s going to fuck me up so bad.”

The sleeping man does not respond, of course; doesn’t even stir. Hob lies there, and gazes at him, until he slips back into sleep himself.

When he wakes again it’s fully morning. The sun is that peculiar thin shade of blue that you get on very cold mornings, but when Hob peeks out the window, the sky is clear and the snowplows have clearly been out making the rounds. He tries to tamp down a sudden feeling of disappointment.

He gets a drink of water, and when he returns to bed his stranger is stirring. First one blue eye opens, then the other.

“Morning,” Hob says.

The man hums and stretches luxuriously, rolling from his belly to his back. The sheets fall down around his hips, revealing one elegant hipbone and a tempting glimpse of dark curls. His pale skin practically glows against the blue sheets in the morning light.

“Enjoying the view?” his stranger asks, and his voice is rough with sleep and slightly hoarse.

“You could say that,” Hob says. He puts one knee on the bed, reaches out to run a hand lightly down the long, lean line of the man’s thigh. “God, you’re… you are so beautiful.”

“Come here to me,” the man says, beckoning to Hob.

Hob ducks his head and kisses up the ladder of the man’s ribs, takes one pert nipple gently between his teeth.

“Can I take your picture?” he says suddenly. “Not in a creepy way. I can even keep your face out of it if you like, I just… there’s something about you, in this light.”

“I don’t mind,” the man says.

Hob’s heart leaps.

A few minutes later, he’s gotten his camera out and adjusted. The room is so quiet, so still, that each click of the shutter sounds almost sacrilegious. He shoots in black and white. He thinks the sheets will show dark, almost black, and the man’s skin will show light and luminous against them. His stranger poses like a dream, languid and biddable, moving here and there on the bed, wherever Hob arranges him.

“You’ve done this before,” Hob accuses. He’s kneeling above the other man, shooting straight down, and his stranger has one arm thrown over his face so only one eye is visible. “Posed, I mean. You know how to move for a camera.”

“I have,” the stranger admits. “Mostly for life drawing classes, though I imagine the principle is more or less the same.”

“Incredible. Are you an artist, then?”

“I suppose.”

Hob tugs the sheet a little lower, so that it’s just barely covering the stranger’s prick, which has plumped up a little – whether from the attention of Hob himself or of the camera, he’s not sure, but it’s one of the sexiest things Hob’s ever seen. The neat patch of dark hair blending into the dark sheet. The gentle swell beneath it. His mouth waters.

“You suppose?”

“I find it difficult to call myself an artist. To claim that title. But I make art. If that is the same thing.”

“Hmm. I reckon so.”

Hob pulls the sheet another fraction of an inch lower. He can feel himself getting distracted. The itch he’d felt to photograph the beautiful stranger, now mostly satisfied, has transformed into an altogether different kind of impulse. He takes one more shot, barely paying attention to the framing. Catches himself licking his lips.

“Hob.”

“Yeah?”

“Put the camera down.”

He hastens to obey.

He’d pulled his boxers back on at some point last night, but they do little to hide his arousal as he slides under the sheets and slots himself in behind his stranger, rubbing his nose in the riotous bedhead and kissing his neck as the man tilts his head to one side to give him better access.

“I like how you say my name,” Hob murmurs. He grinds against his stranger’s narrow arse and reaches around to make a loose fist around his hardening cock. “You’re really not going to tell me yours, are you?”

“Mine?”

“Your name.”

“I –” The man’s breath hitches as Hob tightens his grip, stroking slowly up and down. “I haven’t – decided yet.”

“Well,” Hob says against the smooth skin between his ear and his shoulder. “Let me know what you decide.”

They writhe together under the sheets for a few minutes, until they’re both fully hard, until Hob’s chest is slightly tacky with sweat where it’s rubbing against the stranger’s sharp shoulder blades. He’s grunting, underwear pulled down, making quick little thrusts in the crease of the other man’s thigh, sticky and warm and so good.

“Fuck me again,” his stranger says. “Please.”

“Don’t be a madman,” Hob chides. “You’ll be so sore.”

But he doesn’t say no. And he slides a finger between the man’s arse cheeks and pets over his hole, still a little loose from the night before.

The stranger twists his neck around to look Hob in the eye. “I don’t care. I want you,” he says. “I want to feel it.”

And Hob tries his best to be a good person, he really does, but when confronted with this bald-faced desire he is only, after all, a man. So he mumbles Fuck, okay, yeah, okay against his stranger’s shoulder, and tears himself away to retrieve the lube and a condom. He fingers him open, as slowly and as carefully as he can bring himself to do it, and rolls the condom on, and he fucks him again. Face to face, this time; one knee hooked over his elbow, and long arms clinging to him like a drowning man, and panting, open-mouthed kisses that are as much simply breathing the other’s breath as they are real kisses.

The stranger comes first, his beautiful face screwed up in ecstasy, and Hob follows him over the edge mere seconds later.

The other man falls back into a doze almost immediately, drifting off as soon as Hob has disposed of the condom and wiped them down with a handful of tissues, but Hob is buzzing with too much energy to lie back down. He cleans himself up, splashing water on his face and brushing his teeth quickly, before dressing quietly and creeping down to the motel lobby to look for breakfast.

There’s a coffee machine, a few muffins – prepackaged, not fresh – and a rather sad fruit bowl with some mealy-looking apples. He assembles what he can and shoves some creamers and sugar packets in his jacket pocket. He asks the bored teenager at the front desk (a different one than the night before, although bearing a distinct family resemblance) about the weather report, and learns that although it’s supposed to stay cold, no more precipitation is in the forecast. Then he goes back to the room.

His stranger stirs again at the rush of cold air when Hob lets himself back into the room.

“I come bearing provisions,” he says, setting the coffees on the bedside table and dropping the rest of his meager bounty in the man’s lap.

“Foraging for our survival?” he asks dryly.

“Something like that. It’s slim pickings out there, I’m afraid. But hey –” he picks up a muffin and wiggles it “– chocolate chip!”

His stranger snorts and mutters something about being spoiled.

Hob is very careful not to say anything about how he’d like to spoil this man very much, actually, for the foreseeable future and possibly beyond that, because Hob has so longed for someone to care for, and because this man so obviously needs it. Hob eats his muffin, and very carefully does not say anything reckless or emotional.

They finish their motel snacks, and drink their coffees (Hob’s with a little creamer and one sugar; the stranger’s with no cream and an absurd amount of sugar). And eventually Hob broaches the subject that’s obviously hovering between them.

“So,” he says. “What do you want to do now? I’m still up to give you a ride to your cabin, if that’s what you want. The roads are supposed to be cleared by now.”

“I suppose I should,” the stranger says, fiddling with his styrofoam cup, not meeting Hob’s eyes. “I did tell my sibling that I would return in the morning.”

“Okay.” Hob clears his throat. “Alright then. Whenever you’re ready.”

It takes them another hour to leave the room. Hob showers, and then his stranger decides he needs to rinse off as well, and then there’s a frustrating search for car keys that turn out to have been kicked or dropped halfway under a bedside table at some point the night before.

Then the stranger stops Hob in the doorway with a hand on his elbow and kisses him, long and slow and wordless, before they step out into the brilliant snowy sparkle of the late morning.

The drive is very quiet. The stranger directs Hob out of town and along a rather steep road that winds up the thickly forested mountainside. It’s certainly not a road that Hob would have wanted to drive in last night’s weather, and even with clear skies and plowed roads he takes it slow, acutely aware of the grip of the rental car’s tires on the snowy highway.

Only one time does the stranger wince and shift uncomfortably when Hob cannot avoid a bump in the road. Hob smiles, and swallows his smile, and deliberately wrenches his mind away from the vivid memories of just why his stranger might be wincing and shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

His stranger is silent, except for when he briefly tells Hob when and where to turn. The farther they drive up the mountain, the stiffer he becomes, until he’s gripping the seat with white knuckles and his mouth is one firm line.

Hob doesn’t think it’s the wintry roads that are making him so tense.

They pull over, eventually, at the base of a long driveway. Through the trees Hob can see a large house – not really a cabin by any stretch of the imagination, but built of logs, and with a wisp of woodsmoke floating up from a picturesque brick chimney. They both gaze up at it through the trees. Hob puts the car in park but doesn’t turn it off.

“Well, here we are,” he says.

“Indeed,” his stranger says, and his voice sounds tense and slightly strangled. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Hob waits for him to open the door and walk away.

The man does not move.

A minute stretches by, and another, and another, and still his stranger has not opened the car door.

Hob dares to hope.

“Come with me,” he says suddenly.

His stranger looks up, startled.

“I mean it. Come with me. Go get your stuff and we’ll just. Drive away. Go down the coast, find somewhere it’s actually warm. Or don’t even get your stuff,” he adds hurriedly, aware that his voice is sounding increasingly unhinged. “Say the word and I’ll just turn the car around. We’ll go. Anywhere you want, just… come with me.”

The man looks at Hob with an unreadable expression for a long moment. “You know nothing about me,” he says finally.

“I know I like you. A lot,” Hob says. “I know last night was one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time, maybe one of the best nights of my whole life. I know I’d regret it if I didn’t at least ask. So, I’m asking. Come with me.”

“I haven’t even told you my name,” says his stranger. “I could be a serial killer.”

“You could be, yeah. But I don’t think you are. I think… I think you just want someone to want you.” Hob reaches across the gear shift and briefly touches his stranger on the cheek. The man’s eyes flutter closed and Hob doesn’t think he’s imagining the way he leans ever-so-slightly into the gentle touch before he looks down. “I want you.”

There’s another long silence, punctuated only by an occasional call from the chickadees flitting through the trees.

“My name is Morpheus,” he says to his hands, clenched in his lap. “But some people call me Dream. People – people close to me. Call me Dream.”

Hob smiles. “Can I call you Dream, then?”

Dream nods. “Let’s go,” he says. Hob’s smile widens.

“Want to get anything from inside?” he asks.

“No. I think not,” Dream says. All of a sudden it’s like the tight strings of his body are loosened: he leans back in his seat, crosses his ankles, looking relaxed for the first time since they’d gotten out of bed. He lolls his head to one side and peeks at Hob and his face looks fey and happy in the afternoon light. “I believe I have everything I need for now.”

Happiness wells up in Hob’s chest, a rushing feeling like a mountain spring swollen by melting snow. He puts the car in gear and reaches over to take Dream’s hand.

“Right then,” he says. “Let’s go.”

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#dreamling #the sandman #my writing #designtheendless

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