#we're back! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

just-j-really · 1 month

Text

Unsolumates, part five:

Masterpost

“Have you found your person yet?” Morpheus asks. “Your- not your soulmate?”

It’s been a little over two months, since Hob and Audrey broke up. Somehow ‘getting dinner with Morpheus just after’ had turned into ‘additional drinks’ had turned into ‘brunch, a few days later,’ and now Hob doesn’t think a week has passed since the breakup that he hasn’t seen Morpheus, at least briefly. Morpheus has carefully avoided the subject of soulmates, of romance entirely, for the entire nine weeks, and Hob is a little ashamed and a lot grateful.

They aren’t… whatever they were, before. Hob still isn’t sure if ‘whatever’ was ‘experiment and mad scientist.’ He’s doesn’t really care, though, because whether or not he used to be Morpheus’ monster, he doesn’t think he is anymore. Not after two months of regular, friendly pleasantries and coaxing Morpheus into talking about the play he’s working on and Morpheus listening to him wax poetic about his new flat and its in-unit laundry and actual decent heat.

So it feels perfectly easy to say, “Haven’t really been looking for ‘em,” even if it aches a little. Morpheus looks a little startled by the admission, so Hob adds, “Morpheus. I just spent fifteen minutes explaining what I had for breakfast yesterday, I would have mentioned if I were seeing someone.”

In his defense, it had been a good breakfast. A breakfast worthy of fifteen minutes of conversation. He might have to steal Gwen’s soulmate solely to get her pancake recipe.

Morpheus stares at the table, twisting one cuff of his coat in his opposite hand. “But you’re certain,” he says to the table. If he were anyone else Hob would say he sounds hesitant. “You will look for them. Eventually.”

This means something to him, Hob realizes. Something more than research, or mad science, more than curiosity. Means something on a future-altering bone-deep soul-defining level.

The thought drops into Hob’s mind, like a dead bird dropped into his lap by a pet cat that genuinely thinks it’s being generous, that Morpheus’ soulmate may be dead. It would explain the coat, which he hasn’t taken off even though the White Horse is boilingly warm tonight. Would explain why Hob’s only ever seen him in sleeves that go down to, often past, his wrists. Scarred-over soulmarks don’t look terribly different from ordinary scars, at least not at a quick glance, which means that any suspiciously soulmark-shaped scar tends to draw prying glances and effusive pity, and people with actual soulmark scars do their best to hide them.

It would explain a lot about Morpheus, actually, from the distant intensity with which he’d approached the whole soulmate thing to his complete ignorance of how even normal dating works to the delicate way Will had gone about inviting him to his wedding, asking if Hob thought he was overstepping at least six times in the process.

And oh, god, Hob’s been staring at Morpheus’ arms like an asshole, hasn’t he? He consciously draws his eyes away from Morpheus’ sleeves, which means he ends up looking into his eyes instead. His eyes are so blue, a shade Hob isn’t sure how to describe as anything other than ‘pretty,’ somehow light and intense and warm all at once.

Mesmerizing, maybe. Hypnotic.

The truly off-putting combination of the disarming blue of Morpheus’ eyes and Hob’s own scramble not to think about dead soulmates is, possibly, why he says, “I’ll make you a bet,” before his brain has caught up with his mouth, or even finished trying to come up with synonyms for ‘blue.’

“Hmm?” Morpheus asks. His expression is cool, but there’s a teasing glint in those ultramarine eyes that goads Hob on.

“That you can keep asking me that, as long as you want, and one day the answer will be ‘yes, and we’re very happy together.’” Hob finishes off his drink, sets his glass down with just enough force to punctuate the challenge. “I’ll even stake something on it. You could shave my head.”

“Why would I want to shave your head?” Morpheus asks. His expression is still entirely bland, but his eyes- azure- are dancing.

“That’s not the point,” Hob informs him, leaning in. He might be a bit too enthusiastic about the idea, but he’s a little giddy for no specific reason, just a good day and good company. “The point is that I don’t want you to, and I’m still willing to bet on it because I’m going to win.”

“Fine,” Morpheus says, rolling his eyes, “I’ll take the bet.”

Hob can see right through him, though. More to the point, he can see the way Morpheus is biting at his lower lip, completely ineffectively hiding a smile, and he’s powerless not to smile back.

At first, Hob thinks Morpheus is going to take this bet as seriously as their initial Whatever That Was. The first thing out of his mouth, the next time he and Hob meet for drinks, is so have you met your person yet? And Hob says not yet, and Morpheus asks if that means he’s won, and Hob informs him that a ‘not yet’ is not a ‘no’ and also did Morpheus expect him to find the love of his life within a week? He is not the lead in one of Will’s plays, why would he do that.

For someone who looked so smug when he asked Hob if he’d won the bet, Morpheus looks- almost equally satisfied when he learns Hob hasn’t experienced a whirlwind six day long romance.

But he lets it drop, after that, and they fall back into their new-old pattern, and all is right with the world.

“You know I nearly drowned once?” Hob asks.

In hindsight, it’s not a thing he should have asked while leaning out over a large pond because he swears that’s an ancient, sunken paddleboat in the middle of it and he wants a better look. Morpheus grabs him by the shoulder and yanks him backwards almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, as though past near-drownings make Hob more susceptible to a watery grave.

“In a wave pool, yes,” Morpheus says, steering Hob away from the water’s edge. They’d been on their way to a museum, but Morpheus, for unknowable and mysterious reasons, had decided they should detour through this park on the way.

“Oh, no, after that,” Hob says, still craning his neck for a look at the sunken maybe-paddleboat. “I was like- sixteen? Got stuck under a boat when it flipped.” They reach the gravel path leading away from the water, and Morpheus lets Hob’s arm drop with noticeable reluctance.

“Just how many times have you nearly drowned?” Morpheus asks, as they trudge back toward the main path through the park.

“Uh. Two?” Hob replies. “The wave pool doesn’t count.”

“The fact that you think that is not reassuring,” Morpheus informs him, and will not budge on the issue no matter how much Hob tried to convince him that it doesn’t count as drowning as long as no one calls an ambulance.

The argument lasts them the rest of the way through the park, on a meandering route that doubles back on itself at least six times, across city streets to the museum, and through the queue for tickets. At that point Hob concedes. Not because he is wrong. He is not wrong, the other times didn’t count, but he has accepted the reality that he cannot possibly convince Morpheus of this fact.

Besides, the lure of keeping up a stupid argument shrivels and dies the moment Morpheus directs them out of the lobby area, past signs for the Theater Through the Ages exhibit, his eyes practically glowing with excitement. Hob doesn’t know what could have withstood the thrall of watching Morpheus stare at an old manuscript, a soft smile on his face. He wants to see Morpheus look this happy every day. He wants to be the reason for it.

He wants to soak in that expression for as long as he can, and that one he manages, trailing Morpheus through the exhibit like a lost puppy, absorbing exactly nothing of the room they’re in or the helpful signage or the contents of the cases. The windows could look out on the surface of Venus and there could be a sea monster in the corner giving directions and Hob would be none the wiser.

It takes Morpheus a while- Hob’s not keeping track of a stupid thing like time- to stop being dazzled by the exhibits and notice that Hob is dazzled for other reasons, but when he does he- crumples, just a little.

“You’re bored of this,” he says, as though this is an established fact Hob’s been politely not mentioning this whole time.

“No!” Hob says, “I’m not bored at all, just-” and then, thankfully, his mouth grinds to a halt before it can say any of the things his brain wants to. “A little lost?” he finally mumbles, once he’s managed to shove aside oh god please smile at me again and or climb me like a tree and actually have a conscious thought.

If nothing else, ‘lost’ has the benefit of being true, if not The Truth.

“Oh,” Morpheus says, somehow crumpling even further. A nauseous wave of self-loathing washes over Hob, for causing the light in Morpheus’ eyes to shrivel in on itself, he should have said all the stuff about oh god please smile at me again because at least that would be better than this-

“What’s that one about?” Hob says, a half step too loud, pointing at the nearest old book in a glass case.

He is, in hindsight, extremely lucky that he managed to point at a display and not a fire extinguisher.

Morpheus looks startled- Hob isn’t sure if that’s due to the words themselves, or just the volume- but turns to the case, Hob mirroring him, and begins to explain that it’s one of the few surviving volumes of a medieval playwright’s work. The explanation is stilted at first, Morpheus glancing over at Hob every few seconds as though expecting him to have turned away in disgust, but the smile slowly creeps back onto his face as Hob nods along, occasionally nudging at him to explain more.

It's Hob’s accomplishment of the year, maybe, coaxing that smile back to life, and he hangs onto Morpheus’ words like they’re oxygen as they meander through the rest of the exhibit.

The why of it all doesn’t phase him for the next several hours, because he doesn’t have time for intense self-examination. Not with Morpheus’ presence turning his mind into a dizzy slush, like his brain is made up of sunshine and honeybees and a persistent, thrumming notice me notice me notice me. Not with Morpheus failing to look aggrieved as they wander through a gallery of paintings, Hob critiquing each of them based on the presence of action and interesting animals.

Not when Morpheus grabs them each a drink at the museum café, giving Hob the chance to sneakily buy him a magnet from the gift shop, not when he looks so surprised when Hob hands him the little gift bag.

It’s only when they part ways that Hob catches himself smiling at his coffee cup, and the name Murphy in scratchy handwriting on the sleeve.

Well, shit, he thinks.

It had been easy, before, to let the tiny crush he’d been nursing wither and die. But now Morpheus is feeding it, refusing to let Hob pay for his own coffee and listening to him make stupid jokes about art history, and it has, accordingly, roared back to life, made itself comfortable in Hob’s heart.

#dreamling #my fic #unsoulmates au #we're back!

63 notes · View notes

hannahssimblr · 3 months

Text

“Come on! Come on! What are you doing, Christ sake!”

I stop running and bend over my knees, wheezing, lungs tasting of blood. I spit onto the frosty grass and wipe my mouth, “Sorry sir…” I pant, “Tired.”

“Get yourself together, Turner,” Doherty roars, “your fitness has gone to shit. You hear me? Absolute shit.”

“I know, sir.”

“What’ve you been up to over the Christmas? Eating sweets I’d say. Drinking pints and eating a load of chocolates, was it?”

“I’m seventeen, I can’t have pints,” I point out, “legally.”

“Ah shurrup you,” he comes closer to berate me more while the other boys run circuits of the pitch, “You need to go on a proper diet, start hitting the gym.”

I wheeze out a thin laugh, “you calling me fat, sir?”

“I’m not calling you fat, I’m calling you unfit. If anything you’re too skinny.”

“Nah, I’m all lean, functioning muscle.”

“Well in that case I want to see ten more laps of the pitch. Prove it.”

It’s freezing. Light rain glitters under the floodlights and frost glazes every blade of grass on the field. I watch the other boys round the corner at the back of the pitch in a puff of their collective warm breath and sweat. I’m sweaty too, but still somehow cold, my hands like bricks of ice frozen to my wrists. Parents of the others line up behind the wire fence waiting to collect them.

“Respectfully, sir,” I say to Doherty, “There isn’t time left tonight.”

“Why do you have something smart to say about everything? You can stay until you’re done, it doesn’t matter how long it takes you because I can wait.”

“I have plans.”

Plans, Turner?” He says, as though I’ve admitted to having head lice, “What kind of plans would you have on a Tuesday night in January?”

“Very important ones,” I say vaguely, to which he purses his lips and hums with discontent, “This is more of it now, excuses, excuses, as always, isn’t that right?”

It’s painful to straighten up. I puff out a lungful of air, “Sir, I’m just so unfit. I think I’ll have to call it a night.”

The laugh he coughs out is lost in the sound of the team as they pass us in a thundering herd, “chancer,” he says, “you better have yourself together next week, Hit the showers.”

“Thanks sir.”