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By the time 1989 rolls around, Hob is tired.
The world moves faster now than it did, full of flashing lights and cars and loud music and crowds, and yet, that quickening pace makes every second tick by ever so slowly. He can practically feel the sands of time trickling through him, hour by hour, day by day, decade by decade. It’s been six-hundred years, give or take, and the grains ought to be eroding away at him by now. Instead, they slip through like he’s a sieve.
It’s exhausting, the twentieth century. Between the wars and Modernist poetry and fucking credit scores, he thinks it might be nice to sleep for a century.
(It’s terrible, truly, but sometimes he reads those articles about the victims of the sleeping sickness and he’s just a tad jealous of the way time passes over them instead of through. He always feels guilty after that thought and donates generously to the research on waking them up. There’s new technology on the rise, and he’d be loath to let anyone waste away in their dreams.)
Anyway.
It’s 1989, and Hob can feel the exhaustion dig deep into his bones as he settles into his usual spot at the pub. He’s already doing the math on what it would take to buy this land. The demolition sign outside shook him more than he could have anticipated. He’s understood that the world will continue on and crumble around him for quite some time, but for some reason, he never expected the White Horse to be part of that.
He’s got a decent amount of gold and cash hidden away; it’d be nice to preserve something from his first lifetime, something that he doesn’t need to pay to see behind glass at a museum. It’s not like he’s got much else besides the knick-knacks he’s boxed away, carefully avoiding sun exposure.
He’s not even sure if he’s still got his oldest, most constant friend.
Yeah. Buying the White Horse will be nice. Just in case that friend decides to pop by more than once a century after today.
God, Hob hopes he shows today.
(And fuck, he realizes for the umpteenth time, he still doesn’t even know this man’s name or who he is or what he is. It’s a thought that has haunted his nightmares for centuries — what if he is some type of devil? What if Hob’s traded his soul? What if this is all just a dream and he’ll wake shortly in torment, tortured for the audacity to challenge nature and God and Death? — but honestly, he doesn’t think the answer would change the way his skin feels hot whenever he is under the man’s icy gaze. Demon, god, or something in-between, the stranger is Hob’s friend, whether he’ll admit to it or not.)
He sips his beer and hopes it’s not obvious that he’s watching the door. It’s not worth it to get all wound up waiting for that long, lanky figure to stroll through the crowd, even if it is mesmerizing to watch. People always part for Hob’s friend as if they know, instinctively, that they are in the presence of something more strange and powerful than they could ever know.
For all he knows, his friend won’t show for hours.
For all he knows, his friend won’t show at all.
Hob tries to ignore the possibility that he’s chased his companion away, but the thought nags at him like the edge of a broadsword pressed to his throat, sharp and insistent. A century ago, Hob had thought that his companion — his unearthly, beautiful secret obsession — had been angry at the implication that he could be connected to Hob through something as mundane as friendship. Now, Hob thinks he understands better: his stranger had been afraid.
It’d been wrong of Hob to push the issue; after all, he’s lost people, too. Grief takes its toll, and it takes its damned time. If his friend is not yet ready to accept Hob’s friendship, perhaps he’ll accept an apology.
That is, if his fucking arsehole stranger doesn’t miss their goddamn meeting.
Hob is still holding onto hope. After six centuries, it’s one of the only things he hasn’t lost at least once.
By the time the pub is nearly empty and the bartender announces last call, Hob figures it’s time to throw the towel in and admit that he’s really fucked it all up this time. Maybe he’ll try again in a hundred years; maybe by then, the world will be dust. Feeling more self-pity than he has in years, he approaches the bar and takes a seat in the nearest stool.
The bartender is a pretty woman with dark skin and a kind smile, and it doesn’t seem like she’s had a customer in ages. She stands alone, scanning the pub with an affected bored expression. Despite her warm disposition, her eyes are like black holes; they reflect no light.
Well, Hob is no stranger to shitty jobs. He’s not certain about the state of his soul, but if he has one, the last service position he worked absolutely crushed it. No wonder she looks dead behind the eyes.
He slides a few coins across the counter. “A double of the best rum you’ve got, please,” he says, putting on what an ex-girlfriend used to call his most obnoxiously charismatic grin. “Neat, if you don’t mind.”
The woman levels him with a look that could annihilate armies and pushes the money right back into his palm.
“Keep it,” she says and pulls a bottle of bottom-shelf liquor and a glass out from under the bar. “This is the best we’ve got, anyway, and you seem like you’ve had a rough night.”
“Thanks,” Hob mutters and dumps the coins into the tip jar instead. He drops his grin as well, feeling appropriately called out on the despair and disappointment he’s barely been hiding.
She deposits his drink in front of him and he winces at the smell alone. That’s going to burn like a motherfucker going down. Before he can even think about ordering something else — maybe tequila, or even just playing it safe with another beer — she pats the back of his hand as if in encouragement.
“You don’t have to drink it, dove,” she says, and Christ, now he’s got to.
Hob downs the drink in one go before he can start thinking about how being called dove, an outdated endearment, makes him feel safe and comforted and warm.
The edges of the bartender’s lips quirk up. “Idiot,” she says kindly. “Just like him.”
The burn makes his head swim; he doesn’t bother asking her to clarify.
Her eyes glance once at his empty glass before she refills it with a flick of her wrist and a smirk. For a second, he thinks he sees stars in her pupils but he brushes the silly notion aside before his mind can get carried away.
“Tell me, Hob Gadling,” she says, her expression flickering with curiosity. Suddenly she’s on the other side of the bar, sitting beside him with her own drink in one hand and the other resting gently on his wrist. Hob startles at the sudden touch, unsure of how she’d ended up only inches away. “Do you often drink your sorrows away? Or is it only when he stands you up?”
Hob freezes with his drink halfway to his lips.
She shoots him a knowing, coy look.
Fuck. She knows his stranger.
The woman watches him with vague amusement as he sets the glass back down and tries to school his expression into something neutral. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s encountered someone who knew his benefactor, but it’s usually a sign that things are about to go to shit. He straightens his spine, takes a deep breath, and focuses his gaze on the whorled wood in front of him as he does his best to remain nonchalant.
It’s strange to have her eyes on him. He feels like a mouse who, until now, has managed to go his whole existence without ever being caught in a trap. Something about her is sharp, dangerous, and a trickle of fear seeps into his heart. He wonders if she can feel his pulse race under her hand. Now he’s certain that her eyes contain galaxies. He is sure that she is not quite human.
“My name,” he says quietly enough that the last few stragglers at the pub won’t overhear. He glances in her direction to watch the way she reacts. “You know my real name.”
The woman closes her eyes in bliss as she takes a long sip of her drink. “Oh, I love Corpse Revivers. Do you want to try it?” She holds out the straw to him and wiggles it in invitation. It would be adorable if he didn’t suspect she might rip out his throat with her pinky for refusing.
Hob shakes his head anyway. “No,” he says, and hopes that he sounds far braver than he feels. He knocks back half of his drink for courage. “I want to know who you are.”
She shrugs and pulls back, finally releasing his wrist. “Your loss.” She gently touches her necklace, a silver ankh that swings from a long chain, and a shiver goes down Hob’s back. There’s been a lot of talk of Satanic activity this decade, of the occult and devilish. Maybe she’s part of a cult; maybe she’s come to harvest his organs for his immortality. She grins like sunshine as she takes another sip, and that sends another shiver up Hob’s spine. “More for me, then.”
Hob swallows his fear and deigns to look her in the eye. “Ma’am,” he begins, because he doesn’t know exactly who she is or what she wants, but he figures impropriety will get him gutted quicker. “What is your name?”
She seems to think about it for a moment. “I suppose I have many names,” she says, casual and infuriatingly avoidant of the question. On the bright side, she doesn’t seem angry about his inquisitiveness; in fact, the look on her face is almost delighted. “But so do you.”
Hob can’t deny that. “What are you?” he tries instead, feeling a little bolder now.
“Oh, that question.” She dismisses it with a wave of her hand. “I hate that question. So reductive. We’re all a lot of things, aren’t we? From the time we’re born until the time we die, we are multitudes.” She pauses, amusement curling at the edges of her lips. “That is, if you die, of course.”
So she knows his stranger, she knows his name, and she knows he can’t die.
Historically, this has been a bad combination.
Time to blow this up and run.
He downs the rest of his rum — Jesus, she has a heavy pour — and slams the glass back onto the counter. “Listen, mate,” he says, dropping all pretenses of decorum. “I’ve had an honestly crappy couple of decades, and I’ve just been stood up after a century of waiting for an emotionally repressed probable-demon who, despite six hundred years of companionship, has not deemed me worthy of his goddamn name, let alone his friendship, so I’m not really in the mood for your mind games and riddles. If you’re not going to answer any questions, you can fuck right off, right? I may have a lot of fucking time, but I don’t owe you another second of it.”
The woman blinks at him, stunned into silence. Her drink sloshes over the side of the glass, but somehow, not a single drop drips down her fingers.
“So,” he says, sliding off the barstool. His hands are trembling like an earthquake. “I’ll be off, then. G’night.”
He’s only taken two and a half shaky steps before the woman laughs warmly. He turns on his heel to see her applauding, slow and earnest.
“I can see why my brother is fond of you,” she says, impressed. She’s speaking his English, the English he grew up with — Middle English, according to scholars. He wonders if she’s trying to appease him, like offering a dog a treat for a trick. “You’re so alike, so impatient. So brash. Such a temper. Of course,” she says, and the edges of her lips quirk up, “you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“Your brother…” he says, and can’t help the way his gaze floats to the doorway. The pieces are falling together, but they’re not fast enough, not organized, not clicking into place.
The woman smirks, following his gaze. “I have been called many things since the birth of the universe,” she says and suddenly, she’s beside him again, a cool hand on his shoulder as she directs him back to his seat. Her touch is gentle and soft, like warm sheets and lullabies. “But nowadays, most simply call me Death.”
It takes a moment for her words to process, but once they do, a stillness falls over Hob. All the anxiety and paranoia slows into dread as ice fills his veins. His friend, his mysterious benefactor of life, has decided that they are done, and now he is finally staring Death in the face.
The bastard couldn’t even deign to deliver the message himself. Fucker.
Hob can’t stop his voice from cracking when he speaks. “You’ve come to take me, then.”
He tries to be calm about it, tries to be serene and accepting. It was only a matter of time, of course, especially after that fight with his stranger a hundred years ago. At any rate, he’s had more than his fair share of life. It shouldn’t be hard to accept that this is it for him, that this is the end. He’s seen so much, loved so much, lost so much, and yet…
He wants to live. There’s a whole new millennium right around the corner and he’s itching to enter it.
Death is silent, but she watches him with compassion in her eyes. He struggles not to squirm under her intense gaze.
“I’m not here to take you, Hob,” she says after a moment. “I’m simply here to check in.”
He doesn’t bother hiding the relief that sweeps through his body. It’s a fifty-foot tsunami crashing into his nervous system; he couldn’t conceal it if he tried.
It’s not polite to pour yourself a drink at a bar, and the fact that Hob likes this place is just about the only thing that stops him from doing it. Instead, he sinks his head into his hands and tries to get his shaking under control. His heart is pounding and it’s all he can do to hold down bile.
“Oh my god,” he mutters over and over like a broken record, his mouth detached from his brain. “Oh my god, oh my fucking god.”
Death rubs his back until the nausea passes and hands him a glass of water from who-knows-where. The Styx, maybe, Hob thinks, a little delirious with adrenaline. Or Heaven. Does Heaven have rivers?
“It’s tap water,” Death says, apologetic as she holds the glass steady in his palm until his grip tightens enough to hold it himself. “It’s all I could find. Drink slowly, take it easy.”
Hob sets it down. “I told Death to fuck off,” he says hollowly in realization. “Oh my god.”
Death just rolls her eyes and presses the water to his lips. “Drink, Robert Gadling.”
He takes the cup with both hands and obliges, sipping slowly until the glass is drained and his nerves no longer feel like they’re on fire. Face burning with embarrassment, he turns to Death.
She’s sitting on the barstool beside him, still rubbing his back in familiar circles. Her cocktail has been abandoned; she hands him a napkin to wipe clean the tears he hadn’t realized he’d cried.
“I’m sorry,” he croaks and scrubs his cheeks dry. “I — I shouldn’t have told you to fuck off. Probably.”
Death concedes this with a tilt of her head. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve insulted my function, dove. Don’t worry about it. We’re good.”
Strangely enough, Hob believes her.
All right. Okay. So. He’s sitting at a bar with Death. No big deal. Weirder shit has happened in this pub. He met his stranger here. He became immortal. He was nearly exorcized. Once, he was propositioned by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd at the same time. Having a drink with Death isn’t that crazy, in context.
Hob takes a deep, rattling breath to ground himself and reaches for a water pitcher that’s been left by his elbow to refill his glass. “Your function,” he echoes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The bar is long empty by now; Hob supposes it’s just closed around them, no employees or customers to be seen. She leans in closer anyway, almost conspiratorial. “You asked what I was earlier, and this is it.” She shows him her necklace again. “I am Death — that is my name, my job, and my essence. My siblings and I all have our duties to the universe, and this is mine.”
Hob mulls this over. “If you’re Death, then your brother must be Life,” he muses. It’s a bit of a funny concept to think of the severe, cold man as life, but Hob supposes it’s not inaccurate to the realities of the world. Life isn’t always warm and cozy, but that doesn’t make it less exciting to experience. “You’re the end, and he’s the creation.”
Death’s eyes flash, but Hob can’t read the expression in them. “Yes, something like that,” she concedes. She sounds almost like she’s teasing him, but before he can press further, she changes the subject. “I was hoping to see him here tonight. It’s been some time since we’ve met.”
Hob shifts uncomfortably. “Well,” he mumbles. “I didn’t think he’d show, to be honest. He’s pretty pissed at me.”
Death sighs, aggrieved, and picks up her cocktail again. “Oh, I know. We all know. His temper is legendary.” She spares him a pitying glance. “I want to tell you that he’ll come around in a few centuries, but truly, I don’t think he’s ever let go of a grudge in his existence.” She rolls her eyes. “I think he’s still angry at the twins for a prank they pulled before humanity even existed.”
Hob can’t claim he’s surprised. They have met before.
Another acquaintance to mourn. This one, he thinks, is going to hurt like a bitch.
They sit in silence for a few moments while Death finishes her cocktail and Hob has another glass of water. She is a surprisingly good companion, and his head is starting to feel clearer; the panic has fizzled out, and his alcohol tolerance has been built up so significantly over six centuries that the rum just leaves him feeling warm and soft and a little more vulnerable than usual. He holds back a yawn; he doesn’t even want to know what time it is.
“Can I ask you a question?” Hob doesn’t know what’s come over him when the words leave his mouth, but Death is unperturbed. One second, she’s taking the water and pitcher from him. The next, she’s behind the bar, washing up.
Death raises an eyebrow. “Another one? Haven’t you had your fill?” she teases and ducks below the bar to rummage in the bins below. She emerges a moment later with a rag and a bottle of cleaning solution. “Let’s have at it, then. What do you want to know?”
Between wars and plagues and sheer idiotic drunken experimentation, Hob knows he should have seen the light at the end of the tunnel no less than thirty times. He stands by the statement that damned him in the first place — dying is stupid, and he’s never been dishonest when he says he wants to live.
So shoot him if he still wants to know what the limits are.
“Can I really live through anything?” Hob almost regrets asking the moment the words take form. He’s lived long enough without fear of the end, and he thinks his life has been fuller for it. There’s no reason to reintroduce that particular terror now, not when so many others have been invented in this century.
Death’s gaze is steady. “Do you want to?”
Hob doesn’t have to think. “Yes,” he says, just as he’s said it on this day every century for the last six hundred years. “Of course I want to live.”
“Then sure. As long as you want to, you will.” She sprays down the counter and wipes it cleaner than any of the actual employees have ever left it in Hob’s long life. “Just let me know when you’re ready to go, and we’ll take a walk.”
She doesn’t mean when he’s ready to head home from the pub.
Hob isn’t fully convinced. He bites the inside of his cheek, thinking. “Even nuclear war? I can survive that?”
“Yup.” Death reaches over the counter to ruffle his hair affectionately. “You little cockroach.”
Hob thinks he ought to feel insulted, but he’s honestly too exhausted to think straight. He gets to his feet, bone-tired and weary. “I don’t suppose you want to take up the hundred-year meeting, do you?” he asks, and this time, he doesn’t bother hiding his yawn. “Since your brother doesn’t seem to be interested in forgiving me any time before the heat death of the universe.”
Death shakes her head emphatically. “Oh no, dove, you’re his little project. I wouldn’t dare. Shall we?”
In the blink of an eye, she appears beside him, eyes twinkling and a shawl slung over her shoulders. Hob’s manners slip back a few decades or so; he instinctively offers her his arm as if she is a young lady he’s been tasked to escort home and not an all-powerful being/concept/entity.
Death takes his elbow graciously and allows him to lead her outside, turning off lights with just a twist of her wrist. Hob makes sure the door shuts firmly behind them.
“May I ask you a question?” Death asks while he’s fiddling with the lock, ensuring that it will stick. It’s an old mechanism, and he doesn’t want to be the reason the place is robbed at three am. “Do you really plan to live forever?”
Hob shoves at the door one last time to double-check his work and tilts his gaze up to the sky while he considers, not for the first time, what forever actually means.
The sky is dark; he misses constellations.
Sometimes he’s not sure if it’s worth it to watch everything he’s ever known slowly fade away and change until it’s unrecognizable — the stars, the language, himself. He lays awake at night, contemplating if there’s even anything left of the world he once knew, wondering what he’ll do when even this world has morphed into something new and strange.
He figures that forever is enough time to figure that out.
“Yes,” he says resolutely. “I do.”
When he turns around to face Death, her smile is proud. She presses in close and lays a hand to his cheek reverently.
“Make no mistake, Robert Gadling,” she says, solemn, and it sounds like an oath. “You may be my brother’s fascination, but you are my acolyte at heart.”
She disappears with a gust of wind and the faint smell of pomegranate.
That night, Hob dreams of stars.