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There was something about the pain of heartbreak that refused to let go of its reminders no matter how many years passed since the first thrust of it. Every time Hob left a drinking establishment between 1889 and 1989 into a rainy night, he felt a stab of fear in his chest that his Stranger would make good on his threat to not return for their centennial reunion, so scornful of Hob's companionship that he'd forgo it evermore for the sake of his stung pride. Every time he walked into a rainy night between 1989 and 2022, the stab was even sharper, the pain refined with his knowledge that he'd gone and fucked everything up for real by naming his Stranger a friend, by reaching for more than he deserved and ending up with nothing at all.
Tonight, though, it's 2022, the warm night rumbles with thunder above the hammering of rain, and the stab he feels aching in his chest is hot and painless; when Hob leaves the New Inn it's with his Stranger beside him, a stranger no longer, named and known and here of his own free will. Morpheus looks undiminished despite the rain plastering his dark hair down, soaked far past the point of the last time Hob had seen him in this weather; he doesn't hurry through the downpour, but keeps pace with Hob, who's in no rush to part ways with the friend he's missed so badly, dragging his feet with reluctance to pass into the parking lot and probably back out of each other's lives for longer than he'd like.
Lightning brightens the sky and lights up the pale face that Hob's been staring at for the past couple of hours, Morpheus's eyes colorless and star-bright in the flash, the water sheering his alabaster skin catching the burst of light and making him look as fey and dangerous as Hob knows he is. Hob's gaze lands on full lips slightly parted to taste the rainwater, and that hot stab running through him twists, stealing his breath and what little discretion he has left.
"Something I've been waiting to do," Hob says, feeling it only right to warn Morpheus before he reaches up to frame that porcelain face between his hands and plants a thirsty kiss on the Endless he's been saving since that last rainy night they'd shared. He'd been hoping so desperately that pointing out his Stranger's craving for Hob’s company would lead to a much closer companionship that night in 1889; all of the yearning that's ever pained him in the years since sears him from the inside out when he finally discovers the texture and taste of lips that have haunted his daydreams for centuries, desperate to be quenched.
Morpheus goes still for a second, until the thunder rolls in to match the bolt that had highlighted him so beautifully, a rumble that brings him alive in response: his mouth cool and fresh as rainwater when he opens to Hob's hopeful tongue, his hands clutching at the soaked cloth of Hob's jacket to pull the man closer. When Morpheus draws a ragged breath between their mouths, Hob half-expects that to be the end of that, but his friend surprises him with a kiss in return, slow and deliberate and softly lingering like the last wisp of a sweet dream upon waking. The hard rain slows, as well, not that it matters much when they're both already soaked through.
Hob isn't sure whether the ache in his chest would come out as laughter or as tears if he gave it free rein, but Morpheus presses his aristocratic hands against Hob's chest to guide him until his back hits the wall of the New Inn, all the windows dark above them, and the ache dissolves as he's kissed again and again, as if Morpheus has been saving kisses for him as well, as if the rain is washing away the pain of heartbreak that took up residence inside Hob on that night so long ago. Somehow Hob feels every year of his life but also feels like a giddy youth, making out outside a pub with the pretty fellow who's prototyped every attraction to a man he's felt since the fifteenth century, too riled up already from just a few kisses and the strong hands holding him to the wall. "Please," Hob mumbles against Morpheus's lips, "please, just—" and pulls him in, presses a thigh between slim black-clad legs, finds his arching hips matched by the pressure and pulse of Morpheus's rolling into him. "Please, love, Morpheus."
Those rosepetal lips skim back to Hob's ear, mouthing at the hair hanging wet and limp under Hob's temple. "You beg sweetly," Morpheus says, his voice as low and rolling as thunder as he grinds against Hob's thigh, "but you need not beg for what I'll gladly give you who are dear to me."
Six and a half centuries of sexual expertise, but that's all it takes to undo Hob this time: a handful of kisses, a little rain-soaked dry humping, and to hear himself named dear to the one he's longed for so long and so desperately. Pleasure cracks through him like lightning, bright and searing and like nothing he's ever felt before for all his experience; the thunderous rumble of Morpheus's groan in his ear doesn't register as a natural consequence of the bolt that went through Hob until he realizes that he's taking most of his friend's weight from lean legs gone shaky as Morpheus rubs against him in the last shivers of satiation.
"Fuck me," Hob whimpers, an expression of wonder more than an actual request, "do you know what you do to me?"
"I would learn," Morpheus murmurs, "if you'll permit me the freedom—"
"Fuck me," Hob repeats himself, emphatic and decidedly as much request as wonder this time, "I'm taking you home with me and out of these wet clothes and then you can have whatever freedom you need to learn, my love." The space in his chest where that stab of heartbreak used to linger is occupied now with thunder-rumble and cool pale hands and hot dark kisses, but there's still so much room to fit Morpheus there where he has belonged all along, all the wonder and mystery of him that can be divined tonight or in the (hopefully innumerable) nights that lie ahead of them together.