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With hindsight, it should have taken him less time to put two and two together.
But then, he’s been far too busy being impressed with Andy’s cooking.
The man really knows how to cook. And he’s hit the ground running, right there, in the New Inn’s little kitchen, going to work with what’s there, which isn’t much.
There’s cucumbers though, which he skins and halves with alarming alacrity and then douses in salt and sugar, and then, when the whole mess is marinated and soggy, crushes them with the flat of the chef’s knife and a feral grin before chopping them up roughly and tossing it all with oil and garlic, and Hob can’t remember ever having had cucumbers worth appreciating, but fuck these are.
Not to mention the gut-level joy of watching Andy produce what would become his - and the New Inn’s - signature dish within a matter of days.
He handles the knife like he’s been friendly with bladed weapons for centuries. And that, in all honesty, is what should have tipped Hob off.
But no, he’s been far too busy being distracted. And being amazed at the man’s easygoing nature, and oh by all the saints the food. The food. The finger-long meatballs with the lamb and the pepper and the sheep cheese in them that Andy offhandedly remarked he’d picked up in Bosnia during the war, and it’s only much, much later that he lets slip that he meant the one against the Turks -
Yeah.
And he seems to genuinely like working here too. Or just being around people. And Hob.
He’s taught Meret how to make the cucumber salad, and gently straightened her sinewy wrists and told her to go at it, let it all out, and the grin on her face five minutes later, hands spattered with sweet and salty cucumber innards and eyes shining with five different emotions at once, would almost have been apt to make Hob jealous, but no.
One smile from Andy, wide as a mountain range and just as craggy, and Hob’s ready to want to go climb the man.
He has, on several memorable occasions. And he has, on several even more memorable ones, sunk to his knees, sometimes right there in the kitchen or behind the bar after closing time, lips sticky with the latest culinary experiment of Andy’s, with honey and chili flakes, with vinegar and smoked tea, with cake batter containing unlikely spices, and he’s chasing the flavor with the tip of his tongue, all around Andy’s thick fingertips, bathing in that rolling-thunder chuckle, and when one of those hands fists in his hair and tilts his head back it’s all he can do to just open himself up, and be all throat, all need and hunger and abject worship because, surely, this man is one of the old gods who just has randomly decided he wants to work in his kitchen and occasionally fuck him brainless right there on the no-longer-clean floor, on those nights where they don’t make it upstairs to the bed, that is.
Hob still can’t believe his luck.
Like the day that Andy had taken one look at the single-serving cups for the orange butter that went with the Unlikely Spice Cake and then had returned the next morning with a small army of mismatched pottery vessels the size of egg cups that he confessed to having made, at the expense of sleeping, because the man had a fucking kiln in his back yard and a zest for life that outmatched even Hob’s own, and also went really well with orange butter.
Orange butter, for the record, works as lubricant, and one of those tiny pottery cups is just enough to ease Andy’s eager girth into Hob’s even more eager body.
Also, Andy writes poetry on slow days, and when Meret snatches his scrap paper from him and reads one out loud and then laughs at it, the idea takes shape all by itself, and that next Friday night, Andy gamely loses the first New Inn Poetry Slam to a nineteen-year-old mumbling about orgasms, and then, later that night, proceeds to give Hob orgasms until mumbling poetry is all he’s capable of doing, blissfully, utterly wrecked.
Wrecked. Even that should have been a clue.
The whole thing has even coalesced into a bit of a reputation for the New Inn - smashed cucumber salad, poetry slams, meatballs from the war, and they haven’t had a slow night - or day - since the Times’ Sunday supplement picked up on the joke and wrote a favorable little blurb somewhere halfway down a column about themed pubs and how their theme was, in the words of the writer, ‘as refreshing as lovingly destroyed cucumbers’, but he has to admit the final piece of the puzzle only falls into place that one Saturday afternoon when his Stranger, finally, decades late, wanders in the door.
And apologizes. And smiles, and yeah, Hob can’t help smiling back because this feels like a victory, a vindication, an unmitigated joy, an addition to a life that’s already been so full and so rich in recent years, with new friends and old mates, with Meret and now her little one, and, of course, with Andy.
Andy who, wordlessly, appears from behind the bar and places a glass of almost-black wine in front of his Stranger, and Hob watches in amazement as the Stranger looks first at the glass, then into the depths of the wine, and then at the tiny ginger hairs on the backs of Andy’s fingers and then slowly, slowly, up the forearm and the chest and the throat and into the face that is still as a statue, frozen in anticipation.
“Brother,” the Stranger murmurs, dipping his head slowly, the ghost of a smile flitting across his lips. “Destruction. I must admit I wasn’t expecting to find you here of all places.”
Oh brother, Hob thinks. Two of them?! Destruction?
Well, he adds to himself, it’s been a good run. Six-hundred-odd years and here we all are. And there’s wine and cucumber salad and some fucking amazing memories. How bad can it get, right Gadling?
How bad indeed. The blush he feels creeping up his face as Andy sits down next to him and lays one heavy arm around his shoulder and places a bristly kiss on his cheek… yeah, that’s nothing to what’s happening on his Stranger’s - Andy’s brother’s - face.
The man is suddenly, brutally, in color. And it looks weird as hell.
“In case you were about to ask,” Andy says, with a voice the size of a glacier, “the answer is still no. I’ve found my peace, brother. I’ve found my calling.”
The Stranger’s answering smile is almost a smirk, almost enough to hide how tired he looks at this unexpected display of tenderness, of romance even.
“Yes,” the Stranger admits softly. “Can’t fault your choice of human. You’ve found yourself a good one.”
“That I have,” Andy replies, pride tingeing his voice. “And you? You look famished.” He holds up a hand, forestalling a retort that he must have seen coming. “I know you say you’re not given to eating human food, but seriously. Try these. Made with just the right blend of violence and love. Just enough to not quite be human food.”
The Stranger picks up a chunk of cucumber with his long pale fingers and examines it, then hesitantly puts it in his mouth. Silence reigns for an excruciatingly long moment, then the Stranger nods. Swallows. Reaches for another piece.
“There’s a good little brother. You’re gonna need the nourishment. We’ve got, what, a couple of centuries to catch up on?”
“I’ll need a glass of wine too,” Hob suggests, weakly, head still spinning, or spinning again, just like the first time he and Andy met, and for a second he’s wondering if he’s still concussed and this whole thing has just -
“Hang on. This… this whole thing hasn’t just been a dream, has it?” He frowns more, because for some reason, that, that thing he just said, makes Andy laugh.
“This thing,” he guffaws, pointing at the Stranger, “yeah, he’s been Dream all along. And he still looks like he needs a coupla nights of good sleep. Can’t pick your family, can you now?” He winks. “But you can pick your poison. Red, white, special?”
Hob knows to stay away from the special tonight, because that usually comes in colors that shouldn't even be legal in wine and usually ends up with him on the floor begging for more (not more wine, more of whatever Andy is willing to dole out with those strong hands and that loud mouth and that amazing cock), so he says red, because he feels very red right now, blushing and also flayed open like raw meat.
“Right. One red coming up.” Andy bends down to whisper in his unlikely brother’s ear, loud enough for Hob to hear. “No shenanigans while I’m not looking. This one’s precious to me. And I don’t want to miss any of the stories either so… be a good brother, Dream, will you?”
And, to Hob’s amazement, his Stranger nods, with a tired kind of dignity that is fascinating.
Hob can’t wait to hear the stories.