Some magician (offended at Hob for some reason, smug that he’s definitely about to cast a curse nearly impossible to break): I can’t kill you, fine, so instead I curse you to feel ravenous, unquenchable lust for the rest of your immortal days, unless you somehow can receive the seed of an Endless!
Hob (the Endless family bicycle for years now, has them all on speed dial and usually down to fuck him at any given opportunity, and though the curse only needs one Endless to break it, all 7 of them will probably insist on having a turn with him in order to make extra certain that he’s thoroughly cured (and if they don’t, he might)): …oh no, the horror…
AKSKDJFHS im chuckling. I'm chuckling so hard.
Hob texts the groupchat (it's called "Hobsband" of course) and he's trying to be sooo pathetic and whimpery and sad about it. He's like "hey everyone 🥺🥺 hope you're all having a good day I love you all 🥺🥺 btw I just got cursed and now I'm really horny but don't worry about me, I'm sure I'll be okay 🥺🥺" and immediately every single one of his lovers appears in his living room, all of them panicking, even Death despite her incredibly busy schedule. Hob finds himself being picked up by Destruction and carried to the bedroom which the rest of his beloved Endless argue about who gets to take a turn with him first.
About a week later when Hob emerges from his flat, battered and bruised but absolutely on top of the world. He immediately tracks down the wizard (who is obviously wondering how the FUCK Hob has managed to completely cure himself of the curse within days) and sweetly asks if he could have the curse again, please? Just one more time? It was so much fun 🥺🥺🥺
The only information Hob gets from Destiny is that whoever is accompanying him to the event will be waiting in the passenger seat of his car. There’s a certain petulant tone to Destiny’s voice that suggests it is not going to be him.
Delirium is waiting when he climbs in the driver’s side, dressed appropriately in a pretty pink dress and with the colours in her hair faded to a more respectable level – i.e., they won’t burn out anyone’s retinas. She beams when she sees him.
“Hi Hob!”
He laughs, “Hey Del, you were destined to accompany me?”
She leans in, close, like she’s imparting a secret. “There was a fight.” She tells him. “’twas funny, everyone was stood in their galleries and yelling at the other sigils.”
That does sound funny, actually, Hob can imagine them all getting increasingly irate at each other over something as simple as who gets to come with him to an admittedly boring faculty party.
She giggles suddenly and leans in even closer, pressing their noses together. “Even Death and Destiny.”
“And you?”
She scrunches her nose up. “I would have if I had had an opp… opp…”
“Opportunity?”
“Yes! Opportunity. Destiny kept speaking when I wanted to.”
Hob laughs again. “Didn’t he already know it was going to be you?”
“He wanted to change it.” She settles back in her seat and lets him start the car. “He only said it was me when he lost.”
It warms something in him to know that they were all so determined to be with him, even to the point of trying to change the Book.
“Good to know.”
They pull into the carpark and Hob is not surprised to see that there is already a reasonable number of cars present. The event did technically start almost half an hour ago.
“Alright.” He turns the engine off and turns to face Delirium. “You ready to schmooze?”
Her face screws up. “Schmooze.”
“Yeah. Don’t repeat that in front of anyone, yeah?”
She nods, incredibly serious, and Hob just has enough time to think that he might want to rephrase that to explain that while it was a joke, he also doesn’t want her referring to it as schmoozing in front of anyone, when her face breaks out in a brilliant and mischievous smile.
He grins back, holds up a fist. “Let’s do this?”
Del hits it with her own. “Do this.”
The Dean sweeps over as soon as the two of them enter, taking in Delirium – undeniably a child – with not a small amount of trepidation.
“Rob!” She says, somehow managing to incorporate both an exclamation mark and an ellipsis into her voice. “Who is this?”
He wraps an arm around Delirium’s shoulders. “Uh, this is Del, my partners’ sibling.”
“They’re busy.” Del offers, polite and reasonable. Hob wonders who gave her instructions on how to act.
The Dean’s face clears slightly, not completely, because Hob loves to keep people guessing on how many partners he actually has, and this does not at all clear anything up for her. ‘They’ could be one, or two, or in this case actually seven, but she doesn’t know that. “Oh, well it was so nice of you to join us instead.”
Del nods, seriously. “We could not let him face you alone.”
Hob manages to restrain the shocked laugh down to a snort. That is almost certainly something he said to Dream, about not wanting to face the faculty alone when everyone else would be with their partners. “She means because no one else will be.”
“Oh!” The Dean laughs as well. “I’ll introduce you to my husband at some point,” she waves a hand vaguely across the room, “unfortunately he has been drawn into a different conversation.”
“Ah, well, there’s no rush, right? We’ve got all evening.”
Del nods again, serious. “And if that falls through there is always the rest of your lives.”
The Dean cups a hand over her mouth, apparently already getting used to Del’s particular chain of thought. “Very true. It was nice to meet you.”
“You also.”
She wanders off again, probably to greet someone else, leaving the two of them hovering by the doorway and looking out across the room. Hob wonders if Delirium is going to whisper the weird hallucinations and beliefs of the people present, the same way Dream tells him their night time fantasies and Desire lets him know their waking ones.
Instead, she tugs on his arm excitedly. “Look, Hob, canapes!”
He lets her pull him over to the ‘buffet’ an admittedly poor selection of tiny foods, and watches her try one of each, accepting every time she pushes one, she particularly likes on him. It’s a new way to experience these sorts of events and he thinks that maybe that’s the point, maybe that’s why the Book decided she would be the one to accompany him.
Del bops him on the nose, pulling him out of his musings. “Thinking?”
“Yup. ‘bout you.”
She beams at him and holds up a tiny eclair. He opens his mouth and lets her stick it in, chewing obediently when she pulls her fingers back and stares expectantly.
“’s good.”
“Death says ones from France are better.”
“We’ll have to go to France sometime then.” Hob replies without really thinking about it.
The hopeful way she looks up at him in response almost breaks his heart. “Really?”
“Of course.”
He thinks she might be about to say something else, but his office neighbour appears beside them before she can.
“Rob! And who might this be?”
Del wipes her hand on her dress before offering it to Ally and Hob winces internally. Money he might have, but the dress she (or someone else) has conjured up looks incredibly expensive.
“I am Del.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Del, I’m Ally.” Ally shoots him an amused look out the corner of her eye.
“Yes,” Del says very seriously, “of medieval literature.”
The amused look becomes impressed, “Yup, you heard about me?”
Hob is very certain that he doesn’t talk about work when he hangs out with Del, which means that she must have gained this information from one of her siblings, and she’d confirmed earlier that they had literally argued over who got to accompany him, but this means that they talk about him when he’s not there. It settles something in his chest that worries sometimes they are all just humouring him.
“Lots.” Del agrees. “Hob is very fond of you.”
She softens visibly, “Well, I’m quite fond of him also.”
At the other end of the table, a waiter lays down a tray of new things and, rather than responding, Del lights up excitedly and scurries off to try one, leaving Hob to face Ally.
“Thought you were bringing one of the undefined number of partners. That’s a child.”
“I know.” Hob replies, because he does. And, sure, Del might technically be eons older than him, but she has the mind of a child – Destiny had described her as ‘not quite broken, almost shattered’ once. “She’s their sibling.”
“Which one’s?”
“Uh, all of them?”
Ally visibly processes this information. “I’m sorry.” She says in a voice that is anything but. “The undefined number of mysterious partners are… all siblings?”
“I think they have a shared calendar.”
She looks like she wants to say more in response to that, but Del reappears with two of the new canapes and holds one out to each of them. Whatever bone Ally has to pick with this weird arrangement of his apparently has nothing to do with Del because her face softens immediately, and she takes the offered food. Hob does as well.
“There are people over there who want to talk to you,” Del adds, helpfully, “I heard them talking.”
Hob follows her gaze to some more members of the faculty. “Alright, might wanna grab some more snacks, I don’t know how long this is gonna take.”
She nods and bounces off down the table, grabbing a paper plate because they might be in a fancy establishment, but G-d forbid anyone has to do any washing up.
Ally presses a hand to his arm, concern gently written in her eyes. “Rob, I’m not gonna tell you what to do with your life, but… are you sure about this?”
He looks down to where Delirium is weighing up how many of something to put on the plate and can almost imagine Dream peering over her shoulder, nose scrunched up in distaste, Death at his side laughing, the twins whispering about the people present, Destiny watching over them and Destruction watching Hob himself. He blinks and the images vanish.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Destiny doesn’t always leave him notes about the day ahead – Hob is pretty sure even doing just that is pushing the limits of his function – but when he does, the small scraps of paper all go into one box that sits just under his bed. No one else knows it’s there (well, Destiny probably does, but he hasn’t said anything about it), and he’s pretty sure one of the others is going to find it one day and make fun of him, but that’s a problem for future-Hob. Current-Hob is going to follow the advice on the paper and take the train to work instead of driving.
A quick glance at his alarm clock reveals that Destiny re-set it to five minutes early when he visited, giving Hob the time he needs to get to the station. He presses a kiss to the paper and reads the second line; it warns him that Delirium will be joining him for lunch.
