A Random Assortment Of Stuff

Even if you narrow it to just, say, the sweep of human history, that Death only picked a partner for Dream best suited for these few thousand years of written human history, maybe just for the lifetime of our planet, the message still holds without going all cosmic.

It means that an entirely normal person with no blood right at all, no inherent magical powers, no divine destiny, nothing to distinguish him even from the other soldiers at his table, someone who was born into one of the worst time periods to live through, living an entirely average life that would never make it into any history books except as a footnote, one of billions of people the great stories will simply forget, actually was extraordinary in a way that might have otherwise gone unappreciated but Hob would still have been here, his life still would have happened even if he never got the chance to explore the full potential of his resilience to immortality and his love of life.

If Hob's superpower that allows him to be a match for Dream is simply wanting to live so much that he can withstand the gift of immortality on a level that we rarely see in fiction, that alone is huge. Just some guy from a rainy little island with an entirely common profession of being some peasant soldier, manages to withstand the hardships of time better than immortal beings who were literally born into that existence and into the power and theoretically the supernatural comfort to polish away a lot of the day to day trials that would make living as a human for that span incredibly difficult, like hunger, and losing loved ones, and the daily grind of hardship.

Dream has all this power at his disposal, he is a being of the ultimate privilege. He can literally craft a realm for his comfort, people to be his companions who are best suited to serve him and his needs. Yes he is bound by a function but even that function is one of the richest parts of life: stories and songs and joy and sorrow. The things we toil for the rest of our life so we can carve out the time to indulge in those things. The truly great experiences. That's his job. Not saying it couldn't wear on you, only that it's not like he's Despair or Destruction or even Destiny, bound to helplessly watch all of time unfurl when you already know what's going to happen. Dream has one of the most desirable roles of all of the Endless, at least in theory. He's completed insulated by supernatural levels of privilege: powerful, male-presenting, beautiful, a literal monarch, with a kingdom of beings designed to serve him. The one inherent difficulty he might be argued to have is some form of clinical depression and of course the general traumas that accumulate over so long a lifetime. Not to dismiss it, or say he's not allowed to suffer, profoundly from this and what he's experienced, just to be clear that others have suffered from those things too without the other tools he has at his disposal. He is desperately alone and lonely too, which honestly makes it even more profound for him to have someone who wants to reach out to him.

So to say that Hob, who was not born with any of those privileges or tools, indeed, was born into one of history's most difficult centuries at a time when England was nothing more than a backwater and, yes, Hob is white and male and able bodied, etc, he does not have those privilege marks against him and that will mean more as time goes on and England rises to be a world-dominating superpower and being from there will evolve into a true privilege, but keep in mind, Hob's also from a time where his class, his birth mean he doesn't actually count as part of the "in crowd" of privileged people. He could never be part of his own government, he would not be invited to read or write or be any sort of force in the world. Until the century he was born into it was a vanishingly small likelihood someone like him could ever be more than a serf, legally bound to remain a serf no matter any ambition he might have had. If not for the extreme population loss of the Black Plague granting social mobility out of necessity, Hob could have lived and died as a serf, leaving no other record of his existence.

Instead, Hob's joy, his will to live, and his resilience to withstand eternity that he has as just one of his human qualities, puts him on a level with actual literal gods and creatures more powerful than gods. It means that there is no blood right or inherent structure that makes Dream better than him such that Hob would be inherently a poor match. It means just a guy, out of trillions, was best suited to be the lover of something as old as the universe and more powerful than a god. Because he could handle Dream's bullshit. Because his inherent joy and resilience made him a match to someone who more than anything needs someone like him who can put up with their bullshit, withstand it, look forward to seeing him, actually long for his presence in a way none of Dream's peers do.

“I could close my eyes,” Dream offers.

“Well— that might improve things,” Hob muses. “But no, I’d still be frustrated knowing I disappoint you.”

“You hardly ever disappointed me, Hob Gadling — not in any way that you couldn’t remedy,” Dream says, a smile, invisible to Hob in the darkness, curling on his lips. “I could help, if you let me.” He reaches towards Hob, but he flinches away.

“Stay back wicked witch of the East, alright?” Hob shudders and crosses his arms over his chest defensively. “What if you accidentally turned me into a frog or something? Or if it hurts?” Hob falls silent then whispers, “What if I won’t wake up again? What if—”

“Hob,” Dream interrupts him. “What do you think who puts billions of creatures to sleep every day? Who attended your dreams since you were so small you got lost in the cradle?”

Silence.

“Damn. You got me there,” Hob says eventually. “Okay, right, so how do we go about this? Are you going to throw sand in my face?”

“Nothing so crude,” Dream tuts as he crawls closer to Hob by his side. “Trust me, beloved, I’ll be most gentle with you.”

“You’re talking as if I was a maiden fair,” Hob snorts, batting his eyelashes. “I ain’t no Dorothy.”

“Why, how do you expect me to talk to you, Hob Gadling?” Dream nuzzles his neck and Hob purrs, satisfied. “Would you rather I said ‘oi mate’,” A startled chuckle escapes Hob at Dream’s intonation, the aristocratic accent a sharp contrast with the words. “‘Just hit the bloody sack already’?”

“Aye, something like that,” Hob says, trying to suppress his smile.

“Well, then get ready for disappointment, my love,” Dream deadpans and presses a kiss to Hob’s grin. He gets up then, climbing out of Hob’s messy nest of a bed with preternatural grace.

“Where are you going?” Hob asks confused as Dream crosses the room to the windows, darkened by the curtains. “I thought you’d you know— do your magic thing and put me to sleep?” It’s dark in the room but Hob knows Dream raises an eyebrow.

Dream pulls the curtains open then, revealing a scenery of a lake and mountains lush with green that were definitely not in Hob’s neighborhood before. To Hob’s alarm his bedroom also seems to have changed, suddenly looking more like a suite fitting for a monarch than a bachelor’s room in downtown London.

“Wow,” Hob grimaces, rubbing his eyes, trying to shield them from the light. “This is not our bedroom.”

“It is our bedroom,” Dream counters smugly, returning to Hob’s side in the bed (a luxorious, four-poster thing, definitely not Hob’s good old trusty piece from IKEA).

“No, man, it’s not, I’d definitely remember if I bought that candelabra—” Hob trails off then turns to Dream, who looks probably the most amused Hob’s ever seen him.

“I promised I’d be gentle with you, didn’t I, Robert?” he says, watching as realization dooms on Hob.

“Wait. Does that mean—?” Hob pats himself down as if checking that he has all limbs intact. He turns to Dream then, his eyebrows knitted. “Am I—?”