Work Text:
There were, Hob reflected, disadvantages to being the friendliest guy in the local pub, well-known to be a teacher and therefore Good At Handling People. On the other hand, he couldn't deny he'd been dying of curiosity about his presumably extremely eccentric neighbor for ages, and now he had a proper excuse to pester the man, and he couldn't deny being more excited than put upon.
He supposed that was why this had happened to him in the first place, but he was far too old to change his ways now.
Hob checked he hadn't crumpled the flyer and stepped up to the door of the stately old 18th century townhouse. Unlike the building's twin next door, where Hob lived in the ground floor flat, it was evidently still all one house as it had been originally built. The rest of the street was much more ordinary terrace houses, rebuilt after the War or later, but this one evidently still belonged to the posh old family who'd owned it centuries back.
It was occupied, according to the local gossip mill as relayed to Hob in the pub last night, by a scion of the family who was largely estranged from the rest: Morpheus Endeles, who had published some poetry and had a few art shows, all very weird avant-garde stuff, before his career dwindled into invisibility, at least as far as anyone could Google it.
Still, he lived on their street, right next door to Hob, and that meant he had as much right—and obligation—as anyone to be dragged into local events.
Hob knocked with more enthusiasm than optimism, and waited. He seemed to recall that there had been some debate, toward the end of the night, as to whether anyone had seen Morpheus Endeles, or anyone, showing signs of life in number 58 since sometime around the new year. He might be dead in there; he might have fucked off to some other family property.
Still, Hob knocked again when he got no response, only to have the door jerk open practically under his hand.
A man stood there, dressed all in black and frowning. He had pale skin and pale blue eyes and a messy shock of black hair; as he stood there with one hand still firmly on the door, open just enough to reveal himself, the other arm wrapped around his middle, dragging a soft oversized black cardigan around with it. He was barefoot.
"May I," the man said, in properly cut-glass accents, "help you?"
Hob dragged his gaze up from the man's bare toes, each of the nails perfectly painted black, to his face. Hob grinned, which didn't elicit so much as a mirroring lip-twitch from Morpheus Endeles, and held up the flyer.
"Just wanted to make sure you were aware!" Hob said brightly. "The whole street is holding a jumble trail a week from Saturday. Fair warning if you don't want to be involved, but if you do want to set up a little stall—" Hob gestured vaguely at the half wall that separated the front area from the sidewalk, "it's five pounds to the organizers to cover posters and things."
Morpheus Endeles blinked at him for a moment and then repeated slowly, "A... jumble. Trail."
"Right, you know, a jumble sale," Hob said, realizing as he spoke that he didn't know how far up the upper crust you had to go before jumble sales weren't a part of your universe.
Weren't they sort of charitable undertakings that really really posh people would see from the philanthropy angle? But maybe Morpheus Endeles was in the slice of people too posh to buy or sell at a jumble sale and not quite so burdened with noblesse oblige that he had ever patronized one.
"And, um, up and down the road, you know, so it's... a trail. If you've got anything in the place that you don't want anymore, you can just," Hob waved even more vaguely at the area in front of the house, "set it out to sell. Cheap, usually, it's not meant to be about making money, just a... community thing. And anything left from the organizing money goes to a local animal rescue."
"Ah," Morpheus Endeles said. Being hit up for charity donations evidently was something he could comprehend. "Let me see—is there a QR code?"
Hob obligingly held up the flyer, and Morpheus produced a phone, tapped a few buttons, and said, "There. Thank you," more or less at the same time he shut the door.
Hob blinked at the closed door for a moment, then shrugged and headed for his own flat next door. He'd barely made it inside before Jo texted him: MORPHEUS ENDELES JUST SENT US A HUNDRED POUNDS WHAT DID YOU DO.
Hob snorted and texted back, Asked nicely?
And that, he assumed, was the end of it.
He saw no more hint of life from number 58 over the next week and a half, and barely thought about the jumble trail. He had a little stack of his own things set aside for it—some books and DVDs he regretted bothering to move to this flat, and the mysterious set of melamine dishes that had been in the kitchen when he moved in—but he wasn't properly involved in organizing, so there wasn't much to think about.
Mrs. Singh upstairs had a folding table she was going to set out, and she had promised Hob could line his things up on the wall and they could take turns keeping an eye on the stall. The uni students sharing the third-floor flat were more likely to be shopping than selling anything, if they were awake early enough; Karim in the second-floor flat was a medical resident and Hob saw him only slightly more often than he'd seen Morpheus Endeles; Hob had no expectation of either of them showing their faces on the big day.
It was rather a shock, then, to bring out his armful of books and start arranging them along the wall, only to look up and see Morpheus peering out through the door of number 58. Hob had his hands full, but before he could decide to wave, or say something, Morpheus disappeared.
He reappeared a moment later, emerging into the daylight with his own armful of assorted items. He began neatly setting out what looked like pairs of brand-new socks, mostly black or gray but a few in bright colors. Hob turned his attention to setting his own things out neatly; Mrs. Singh had already done hers and gone off down the street to chat with someone, so there was no one else witnessing this close up. Hob was on his own.
Morpheus vanished back into number 58, and Hob remembered to go get the rest of his own things to set out, so the next time he looked over there it was already fait accompli. Next to the dozen pairs of socks were a brand new high-end coffee grinder, some sort of antique silver pot with an odd handle sticking out from the middle, and a set of three probably-even-more-antique porcelain vases that looked very delicate and very expensive balanced on the top of the little brick wall. Hob wanted to take a closer look, except that he was mortally certain if he walked over there he would somehow knock one of those priceless items to the pavement.
Morpheus Endeles, meanwhile, was setting up a neatly-lettered cardboard sign that read £1 EACH.
Hob strangled a noise of protest. Half the stuff on that wall belonged in museums, not a jumble sale—but then, why shouldn't anyone who could pay a pound have beautiful things, every bit as much as someone who'd been born to the sort of wealth that had excess Ming vases lying around the place? Hob was half tempted to buy them himself, but he knew that he would only do it for what he could make selling them properly, and that seemed like cheating, somehow.
Morpheus didn't seem to hear, in any case; he put his hands on his hips and glanced around the street, as if comparing his setup to the others. Some people had made proper stalls in front of their houses, wheeling out clothes racks and shelves to display their wares, but plenty were just setting things out on their wall-tops and steps. From where he stood, Hob could see three other £1 EACH signs.
He glanced back to Morpheus just in time to see him nodding in apparent satisfaction, obviously having decided that his offerings matched up with the rest of the street's. He boosted himself up quite casually to sit on the end of the wall beside the vases, tugging out a phone to peer down at.
Hob wanted to do something, but he had no idea what; before he could figure it out, or just charge over and start saying things, someone beside him said, "How much for these?"
They were, somehow, holding up stuff that didn't belong to either Hob or Mrs. Singh; he herded them back to number 54 to pay Kara, and then people were browsing Mrs. Singh's multi-decade collection of placemat sets and Hob had to mind the shop.
He looked over at Morpheus occasionally; no one ever seemed to approach him, but he seemed absorbed in whatever he was doing on his phone. At one point Hob heard someone over that way ask, "How much for this?"
He looked up, and saw someone holding the coffee grinder. Morpheus didn't look up from his phone, just pointed at the sign.
"No, no, I can't take it for just that!" The woman said.
Morpheus shrugged, still not looking up, and pointed at the bin.
"Oh," the woman said. "Well, if you're sure."
Morpheus tapped at something on his phone in what seemed like a quite pointed way.
The woman set down a pound coin next to the sign and took the coffee grinder. Morpheus glanced after her when she'd gone, and then looked over and caught Hob watching, and his lips quirked in the very tiniest smile.
Hob snorted, smiling back, and got on with minding his own stall; clearly Morpheus knew precisely what he was doing.
As the morning wore on, Hob noticed that some of the socks Morpheus had out for sale disappeared, one or two pairs at a time, and there were more pound coins by the sign. Hob had sold better than half the books and DVDs and exactly three melamine bowls, and had a couple of dozen little chats with neighbors and strangers. He still hadn't heard Morpheus say a word when Mrs. Singh came back from touring the trail, and at that point he walked off to have a look around himself.
He hadn't made it far—three doors down had a load of old books he just had to leaf through—when someone walked past him carrying one of the vases Morpheus had been selling. She held it tucked securely in her arm like a child, but with none of the exaggerated care that would have come with knowing just how valuable it probably was. Hob looked down to Morpheus, but he was still hunched over his phone, seeming oblivious to his wares or the little pile of pound coins in front of his sign.
Hob didn't go far after that, browsing and chatting but allowing himself to watch Morpheus and his remaining wares. A woman came and picked up one of the vases, turning it as casually in her hands as Hob would have handled his own melamine plates; she asked Morpheus a few questions which Hob thought might actually have been answered, albeit mostly in shrugs. After a moment she set the vase down, without particular visible care but also without disaster resulting, and walked off without it.
Hob missed the second vase being sold—Gilbert over the road had a surprising range of LPs set out—but he glanced up just in time to see Morpheus handing off the third. He had come down off the wall, and this time he bothered to pocket the pound coin he was given, though there could scarcely be space for it in those jeans he was wearing.
Something made Hob start walking back when he saw that, even before the buyer walked away with the vase and Morpheus took a few steps away from the spot where he had been sitting all morning, looking oddly unsteady.
Hob reached him just as Morpheus put a hand out to brace himself against the end of the wall, and found himself reaching out with both hands though he didn't quite dare to touch. He didn't really know the man, hadn't ever even really introduced himself. Still, he said, "My friend, are you...?"
Morpheus glanced over at him, and there was something faintly amused in his eyes, in the crook of his mouth, though he didn't look alright at all. Still, he said, "Robert Gadling. I am. I—"
He looked back, toward where only the silver pot with the wonky handle remained of the antiques he'd set out.
"They are gone," Morpheus said.
"Yeah," Hob said, studying his face. "Treasured family heirlooms?"
Morpheus snorted. "Certainly treasured by some of my family," he said, leaning a little toward Hob but still not touching, still not quite anything Hob dared to touch.
"But I was once punished quite—" he stopped frowning into some unseeable distance, and then said, laying the word down very precisely, as if he were setting down a chess piece, "quite viciously, simply for being too near to them. When I removed myself here to be free of my family, my mother followed, and bestowed them as a housewarming gift. I can only assume, so that I would not forget."
Hob's hands settled on Morpheus' shoulders, then, gripping tight, and Morpheus gave him a grim little smile but did not pull away from Hob's hold. "I think I would have smashed them," Hob said.
Morpheus shrugged. "Such things hold power. I could not bring myself to destroy them, but... you showed me another way, and for that I thank you. And I hope their buyers will enjoy them."
"More than you ever could, I'm sure," Hob agreed, squeezing hard on Morpheus' shoulders because he didn't think he could get away with a hug no matter how badly he wanted to give him one right now.
Morpheus smiled slightly, and Hob could see him pulling himself back together, shaking off that one moment of open feeling, resuming a mask that was probably much more normal for him. His shoulders straightened under Hob's hands, but he met Hob's eyes without pulling away, and Hob felt breathless with some emotion he couldn't name, waiting for what Morpheus would say.
The little bubble of quiet around them was shattered by a shout of, "Dreamy! Is that you?"
Hob saw his jaw tighten, nearly heard the grind of his teeth, and then Morpheus turned away with a perfectly composed, slightly bored expression. "Corin. Hello."
Hob moved quickly around to stand at Morpheus' side as the smiling blond man approached. He was dressed in pale colors that seemed a deliberate contrast to Morpheus' black, and wore dark sunglasses despite the overcast. Hob hated him instantly.
"I guess you haven't missed me at all, have you?" Corin drawled, sounding offensively American. "Got a new man? Do Mommy and Daddy like this one any better?"
"I care precisely as much for their opinions as I do for yours," Morpheus replied, but there was a faint tremor under the iciness, threatening to crack. "Not at all."
Hob saw Corin sensing weakness; he shifted his weight to step closer to Morpheus, and Morpheus saw it too, tensing up, shoulders drawing in defensively. Hob remembered the way he had looked, wrapping his arm around himself when he first opened the door to Hob, and he knew that Corin would know exactly how to cow him, would whisper a handful of words and shatter him, send him fleeing inside again not to be seen for another year.
Not on Hob's watch.
He stepped sharply between them, raising a hand to the level of Corin's chest though he didn't quite make contact. "You can go."
"Oh, can I?" Corin returned, tilting his head to make it obvious that he was looking Hob up and down, even with his eyes entirely concealed. "Can I indeed?"
He stepped in, and Hob felt the threat in every line of the man's body, and he knew with abrupt and utter certainty that it wasn't only words he'd used to shatter Morpheus. Hob spread his arms, and his hand found that silver pot, the handle of it fitting his grip like it had been made for it.
He didn't think, didn't hesitate. He wasn't an abusive bastard, but the estate he'd grown up on had taught him how to handle a bully. He didn't chat back, didn't make a show, he just rammed the silver pot into Corin's gut with all his strength, and when he reeled back Hob swung it hard into the bastard's jaw.
That laid him out on the pavement, and Hob watched the man's fists clench and knew that this was the most dangerous moment—except then Gilbert from over the road was there, none-too-gently helping him up and loudly deploring the uneven pavement, and Mrs. Singh and two of her even more elderly cronies were flanking him and brushing him off with ungentle hands, propelling him away down the street and giving him not a moment to speak, to complain or accuse.
Hob looked around and saw dozens of people, all watching Corin, all seeing him for what he was, all ready to step in if he tried to turn back. He must have seen it too, because he didn't so much as look over his shoulder before he was out of sight.
"You need not have come to my defense," Morpheus said, sounding much more assured than he had a moment ago.
Hob turned, and saw the way Morpheus was looking at him, and felt that like a much more enjoyable punch in the gut than the one he'd just dealt out. "Oh, well," he looked down at the pot still in his hand, and winced at the visible dent where the elegant curve had met Corin's jaw. "I suppose that's for the bin now."
"On the contrary," Morpheus replied, coming up to place his hands gently around it, his finger just brushing Hob's knuckles, his eye contact more intensely promising than ever. "Having seen it in a new light, I believe I am growing quite fond of it. Perhaps it has a future as a treasured family heirloom after all."
Hob held Morpheus' gaze, and smiled.
It was mad, surely, to think that what Morpheus was saying really meant we will get married and have children and they will have children and we will tell them the story of this day and How The Silver Pot Got Its Dent, but if so, Hob didn't think he was the maddest one here.
Morpheus was smiling back, holding Hob's gaze with nothing but promise in his eyes.
"Yeah," Hob said, raising a hand to cover Morpheus' on the dented silver. "Yeah, I think it does."