thinking about how, deliberately so or not, rose just keeps getting left behind. her mother’s death. that conversation with hal—whose company she clearly enjoys, who perhaps she thought was starting to care about her—saying “if broadway called tomorrow, i would sell this fucking house, and i would never think about any of these people ever again” and the way her face falls. lyta’s choice of a false dream life with hector, leaving rose alone in the waking. gilbert’s flight from the cereal convention where he and rose were looking for jed together, not even having the time to tell her in person or give her a reason. and finally, unity’s death, for rose. i can’t imagine rose didn’t blame herself at least somewhat for that.
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it was pointed out to me today that ( for various reasons) this could all been seen as a sequence and I honestly didn’t plan for it to be that way but now I cannot unsee it! The mind works in mysterious ways ( specially with blorbo fanart).
The year is wrapping up and I’m feeling happy to all the progress I’ve made as an artist—so I thought hey let’s put this all together so I have a post to go back to and remind myself of happy tidings 🖤
a very silly story for you. johanna, dreamling's weird baby, and an accidental kidnapping (and subsequent rescue)
--
Johanna’s seen a lot of weird shit in her time. It comes with the territory. Magical shit also tends to be horrible shit which also tends to be weird shit. But even she is finding herself flummoxed by this one.
She’d broken into this flat prepared to perform an exorcism. Amateur occultist, planning to summon a demon? That’s what she’d heard, and yeah, that wasn’t going to go well. And it hadn’t—the guy was on fire when she arrived, so on fire that there was no way she could put it out or help him, though she had throne a blanket over him in a meager attempt. It was too late, though. He was charcoal in seconds.
That, while horrible, wasn’t even the weird part. The weird part was that there wasn’t even a demon, but there was a baby.
Sitting in the middle of the room, in a bird cage.
Johanna stares at it now, barely noticing the acrid smoke she’s still breathing in. Why the actual fuck is there a baby in a birdcage?
It doesn’t seem to be hurt at all. It’s just sitting there on a blanket at the bottom of the cage, clutching a little cat stuffed toy in its chubby fingers. But it’s in a birdcage. A bird cage.
Johanna goes to open the cage, of course she does—
And the moment she touches the latch she jumps back, shaking out her hand from the spark. Holy hell, that thing is warded to high heaven. That cage could probably keep a demon contained. Why is a baby warded like that? It’s just a human—
It.
It looks like a human baby.
Johanna circles the cage, more wary now. She should know better, should know that an occultist like that wouldn’t be carrying around a regular baby in a cage. Even if you’re a real sicko, you don’t need a cage to keep hold of a baby. It can’t even walk.
So it’s not a regular baby. Sure looks like one, though. Makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, that does.
As Johanna looks more closely at the wards, the baby watches her with wide eyes, sucking on its thumb. It’s actually pretty cute. It’s even wearing a star-print onesie. The wards are hardcore, though. Nothing’s getting in, and certainly nothing is getting out.
“Either you’re some fucked up thing disguised as a baby,” she muses out loud, “or you’re an actual little baby fucked up thing, which means your fucked up nightmare mummy is going to come looking for you.”
The baby blurbles in agreement.
Either way, she can’t exactly take it to the authorities. Which means she’s going to have to take the baby home, at least for now.
“Fuck me,” Johanna says, and picks up the cage.
--
The baby is silent on the drive home—buckled awkwardly into the back seat of the car—and remains so as Johanna puts the cage down on the floor of her living room. It watches her with big eyes, sucking its thumb. It doesn’t seem particularly afraid, though Johanna can’t imagine being in a cage is very pleasant, even for a baby that probably doesn’t understand what’s going on anyway.
Or who knows, maybe it does. Jo doesn’t really know much about babies’ development trajectories.
“Right,” she says, looking at it with hands on her hips. “I’m not really looking to become a mum, so we’ll have to get you out of there and back where you belong. Fuck if I know where that is.”
The baby makes a gurgling sound that could be agreement or just gassiness.
Johanna gets out some chalk and starts to draw a containment array around the cage. “Sorry about this, little chap,” she says, “but I still don’t know what you are. Better safe than sorry, eh?”
The baby is silent, watching her.
Johanna finishes the containment circle, binding it off with a final rune. It’s not so mean of a ward as the cage had. Just enough to keep the baby from exploding with power once she does break the cage open. If that’s something it can even do.
She studies the ward. “Think I can pick this lock,” she says to herself. “Take me a sec, though. Don’t suppose you want a beer while you wait?” This to the baby. “I haven’t got any formula. Or are you old enough for baby food?”
The baby just sucks on its thumb. It really does seem quite sweet. Shame about secretly being a monstrosity in a cage, and all.
Johanna works on the ward, occasionally chatting out loud to the baby. It doesn’t reply, obviously, but it listens. Johanna is feeling more invested in getting it back to its parents the longer she sits with it. Even if it is some gross creature, it doesn’t deserve to be in a birdcage. It’s just a baby.
“Good trick we met each other, my friend,” she says as she finally unravels the last bit of the warding. “Doubt that guy had good plans for his captured baby.”
She clicks open the ward.
As soon as she does, the formerly placid baby starts screaming. And Johanna realizes that part of the ward’s function had been to stop it from crying for help.
“Mama!” the baby wails, tears pooling in its eyes, little fists scrunched tight around its plushy’s legs. “MammaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!”
Its voice warbles outside the normal sound range and straight into her brain, ringing like a bell. She covers her ears, but it doesn’t help. Great, now the thing’s mother is going to show up and eat her. This is what she gets for trying not to be a total asshole for once. Should’ve opened the cage in the street and fled.
“Shhhhhh,” she tries to soothe the baby, “it’s okay—” But it’s too late. And Johanna isn’t a very soothing person anyway. It probably wouldn’t have worked, even if the room hadn’t been plunged into sudden darkness.
Johanna stumbles back, though she can see nothing. Thunder and static ripple through the air, cold wind tangles her hair. Jo claps her hands over her ears as the air pressure increases and increases and—
The baby squeals, and it sounds happy now, rather than afraid. “Mama!!”
A voice scraped from the utter depths of mental torment booms through her flat.
C O N S T A N T I N E
Ah, fuck.
“Morpheus,” she tries, because she does recognize that voice, unfortunately, “listen—”
A wall of sand knocks her backwards.
As it does, some light returns to the flat, and she can see Morpheus, looking markedly less pathetic than when she’d last encountered him, standing in the center of the living room, looking down at the baby. His eyes flash with otherworldly light. His sand rushes around him, scrapes through the binding circle she’d drawn like it’s nothing but chalk, dissolves the birdcage to nothing, plays with the baby’s curls and pools in the crevices of its onesie. Meanwhile, it flattens Johanna against the wall, wraps in winding strands of wind around her chest and squeezes.
The baby reaches for Morpheus, who kneels and picks it up. He says something to the baby, the words low and solemn but inaudible over the rushing sand, then holds it close to his chest.
Then his gaze turns to Johanna.He looks murderous. Johanna had thought he’d been pissed off about his sand. She hadn’t seen even a tenth of it.
“I guess you’re mama?” she says, past the sand squeezing around her chest. This really is just the kind of stupid thing that would happen to her.
Morpheus’s eyes are like black holes in his pale face. “Constantine,” he growls, with much of the same danger as before, though at lower volume. “I thought we had parted on neutral terms. More fool I. What grudge do you still hold against me?” The sand squeezes her tighter. “Speak quickly, for your time is limited.”
“There’s no grudge, I have nothing to—”
“Ransom, then?” says Morpheus, seeming, if possible, more angry. “You would compel favors from me by threatening a child?” He clutches the baby to his chest. It’s started chewing on the lapel of his coat. The whole picture would be kind of hilariously adorable if she weren’t on the verge of being torn apart by nightmares.
“I’m not responsible for this!” Johanna insists. “Consult your stalker encyclopedia of all minds if you have to. You really think I’m going around kidnapping infants?”
“I think,” says Morpheus, each syllable a new threat, “that you must explain why you had my daughter in a cage. NOW. And count yourself fortunate I have granted you the mercy of an explanation.”
“I literally just found her!” Johanna says. Doesn’t she deserve even a little bit of good faith? She did help with the sand and all. Morpheus’s eyes narrow as if he does not believe her. “Look. Caught wind of this amateur guy messing around with occult stuff. Thought he’d summoned a demon so I went to exorcise it. Found this baby instead.”
“And what of this man?” says Morpheus in a tone that suggests exactly what will soon become of him.
“He was practically dead by the time I got there. Burned alive.” She shudders. She still hasn’t figured out exactly what was going on there, if he’d meant to summon Morpheus’s baby in the first place—ill-advised choice, that—or if it was a spell gone wrong. “‘Fraid you’re too late to torment him.”
“Hmm,” rumbles Morpheus, with evident displeasure, but the sand finally releases Johanna and she sways, standing on her own feet again. Morpheus doesn’t apologize for throwing her against the wall. “You will show me where you found her.”
“Sure, mate,” Johanna says, sucking in a wheezing breath. “Might want to get your baby home first, though.”
Morpheus doesn’t get a chance to respond. Behind Johanna, the front door bursts open— bursts off its fucking hinges, goddammit, now she’ll have to get that fixed— and a man runs through. A very ordinary man, except that he’s carrying a sword. An actual, medieval-looking sword. And in a way that suggests he knows how to use it, too.
He looks almost as murderous as Morpheus, except that no one can quite match Morpheus’s shadows-and-cataclysm level of murder. Evidently, Johanna found the most radioactive baby in all the occult world. But at least it has people that care about it. That’s nice, she supposes.
As soon as he sees Morpheus with the baby across the room, he relaxes, sheathing the sword in a scabbard strapped to his back. “Ah, love. You found her.”
“Dadaaaaaa!!!!” yells the baby with its piercing voice, reaching for him. And the man smiles, striding past Johanna and taking the baby from Morpheus, leaning in to kiss Morpheus on the cheek as he does.
“Hob,” says Morpheus, with a little smile that finally breaks his stormy countenance. “Yes. She called for me when she was able.”
“Good lass,” says Hob, kissing the baby on the forehead, then looks warily at Johanna.
“Ms. Constantine is not responsible,” says Morpheus, and ‘Hob’—his partner? Coparent? Johanna’s not sure she even wants to know—relaxes further.
“Great. Glad we’ve established that. How the hell did you find my flat.” This she demands of Hob.
Hob reaches into the back of the baby’s onesie and plucks a small disc off the collar; he shows it to her with a little wave, then slips it in his pocket.
“Is that an AirTag?”
“We aren’t all plugged into the whole collective unconscious.” He taps the baby on the nose fondly, and she giggles, grabbing at his finger. “And you’re Dada’s little flight risk, aren’t you?”
Johanna sighs, finally flopping down on the couch now that it seems she’s unlikely to get swept away to nightmare-land. She definitely needs a beer after this. “You have a baby?” she says to Morpheus.
“Evidently,” he says flatly. So much for getting answers on that.
“Have we gone after the person who was responsible?” asks Hob. Johanna thinks he means it to come out mildly but it doesn’t, really.
“Already got set on fire, mate,” Jo tells him. “Found him like that.”
“Set on fire?” says Hob with a frown. “Was the rest of the room on fire?”
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. Which is strange.
Silently, she shakes her head, and Hob turns back to the baby. Now he’s grinning. “Did the bad man wish for power?” he says, in a baby-talk voice, bouncing the baby in his arms. “Did he? And did my little Sparkle take that literally and turn him into a lightbulb?” As a conspiratorial aside to Johanna, he says, “She loves electricity.”
“Sparkle?” she says. “She’s a baby, not a My Little Pony.”
“That is a nickname,” says Morpheus, with a sideways glance at Hob that suggests he finds it questionable at best. “She is Wish.” He says this in the same way he might say I am Dream, rather than my name is Dream.
A moment later, Johanna learns where the nickname came from, as Wish giggles and taps at Hob’s face, sparks dancing around her fingertips. Sparkle. Jesus.
“She does not yet have a firm grasp on her abilities,” says Morpheus.
Wish. Half-Endless baby. Kidnapper set on fire. Jo thinks she gets it now. She shivers.
“You have sworn to show me where you found her,” Morpheus reminds her. Sworn. Does he have to be so dramatic?
Jo sighs, but heaves herself up from the couch. “Yep. Alright. So long as you promise to keep better track of that monkey’s paw baby of yours.”
Morpheus bristles, but Hob just chuckles. “This is the easy part. Wait ’til she gets better at flying.”
He doesn’t appear to be joking. “Don’t envy you,” Johanna says. Then grudgingly admits, “She is cute, though.”
Hob beams.
Morpheus is still fixated on her. Johanna can read the demand without him having to voice it. “What, you’re gonna bring the baby along on the revenge mission?” she asks.
They both just look at her. Neither moves to take Wish home.
“Figures,” Johanna says, with a sigh. This is what she gets for not choosing a more normal profession. She opens the front door and gestures them on. “Fine, then. Let’s go.”
re: your tags on Wish origin story: I think Wish was probably an accidental pregnancy 😂 Dream got caught up in the moment and just kind of... forgot... that that was possible for him.
The idea of a six hundred year old guy and an eternal eldritch entity having an unplanned pregnancy is just hilarious to me. They both definitely know better and this could definitely have been avoided.
Hob: you didn't tell me we needed eldritch birth control
If you haven’t read @zigzag-wanderer ‘s fic What the hell is a ‘kirtle’ anyway? you absolutely should! It’s got such a unique narrative voice and it’s really very sweet!!
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(i had a whole plan in my head but then didnt touch this for weeks after the sketch and i honestly dont think we’re getting further on this one so im posting it)
It is with very mixed emotions that I present to you
Grave
The final story in the Matthew the Emotional Support Raven series.
Matthew visits his own grave and finds himself in need of some emotional support.
Thanks to @quillsorceress for giving this a read and @aquilathefighter and @kulapti for being my go-to bird experts and answering a totally necessary and vital question about raven anatomy.
Inspiration from this picture. If you follow me you've seen a bunch of @raven-photos 's raven photos under my corvid posting tag, but you should follow them too because they post tons of lovely stuff.
You can read the whole story below the cut or over on AO3. The AO3 version includes a mushy authors note about this being the end of the series, which I won't duplicate here, but I may put some additional thoughts in a reblog later.
~~~
Matthew felt the air pressure in the cemetery change. He hung his head with a sigh.
“Did you need something, Boss?”
“I need only to know that my Raven is well,” Lord Morpheus said from behind him.
“Yeah, you know me,” Matthew said. “Ball of corvid sunshine.”
“Matthew.”
“I haven’t even been gone that long,” Matthew groused.
No response to that. Matthew sighed again and looked around at the gray headstones and dewy grass, sparkling in the morning light.
“How did you find me? You’re not in my head.” He thought for a moment. “Lucienne ratted me out, didn’t she?”
“Lucienne informed me that you had asked for your book. She was concerned for your mental state.”
Matthew huffed. “Do dreams have ‘mental states’?”
“Yes,” Lord Morpheus said simply.
Matthew hung his head again and took a deep breath, then reflected that he wasn’t alive and probably didn’t need to breathe. Which was what had brought him to this cemetery in the first place. He gestured to the headstone in front of him with his wing. “Well, there it is. In all its glory. My grave.”
There was, in fact, no glory. It was a completely unremarkable gray headstone with a curved top. His name and the dates of his birth and death were carved on it, nothing else.
“Why have you come here, Matthew?” Lord Morpheus asked quietly.
“You don’t know? You can’t just read my mind?”
“Not while we are in the Waking.”
“Inconvenient,” Matthew muttered. He ground his beak. Matthew knew that none of this was the boss’s fault. He had made perfectly clear when Matthew first met him that he hadn’t been the one to turn Matthew into a Raven. Matthew shook his head. “I died a year ago.” He turned to face Lord Morpheus. The boss was standing ramrod straight, hands shoved into the pockets of a black pea coat.
“This is not the anniversary of your death, Matthew.”
Matthew flapped his wings. “I know that. I just… started thinking about it. And then I realized that for all the times I’ve come to the Waking, I never saw what my grave looked like.”
“Now you see it.”
“Yeah, and I’m dead in there!” He turned to stare at the ground in front of the headstone. “Like my body - my body that I had my whole life - is just down there. Dead and rotting.” He shivered. “It’s not like I ever took particularly good care of it, but it’s still weird! And that’s before you even get to the fact that I’m a fucking bird.”
“I thought you enjoyed being a Raven.”
“I do!” Matthew said quickly. “This isn’t about that. It’s just… look, one minute I’m an alive human and the next minute I’m a fucking bird and Lucienne is telling me to go follow you and then I’m trying to get you to not throw me out on my ear and then we’re dealing with Constantine and then we’re going to Hell and then you’re fighting the asshole who had your ruby and then I’m spying on Rose and then I’m running errands and delivering messages and meeting all sorts of weird people and- and beings and then…” Matthew breathed out in a rush. “I don’t know. I guess I never really stopped to think about the fact that I’m dead. Like really properly dead. With my body rotting in the ground.”
“Do you feel ‘really properly dead’?”
“No! I don’t feel properly anything! That’s the problem!”
Lord Morpheus kind of folded himself up so that he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing Matthew. “You were not expecting to die? When you were human.”
Matthew closed his eyes and shook his head. “I wasn’t that old. And I didn’t exactly have the greatest lifestyle… certainly not what would be considered ‘clean living’ by any stretch. I guess that’s why I had a heart attack… but no. I wasn’t sick or anything. I wasn’t expecting to die.”
Lord Morpheus nodded solemnly. “Most of my past Ravens had been ill or injured or old when they died. Their deaths were much less surprising than yours. And they joined me during… much less chaotic times, when I… shaped the process of them becoming dreams myself.”
Matthew snorted. “Yeah, I know. I’m the unwanted Raven. You don’t have to remind me.”
“You mistake me, Matthew.” Lord Morpheus frowned. “Deliberately, I think.”
“No, I just… you know what I mean.” Matthew looked away from him.
“As I stated,” Lord Morpheus said a bit huffily, “in the Waking I cannot see your thoughts.” They were both quiet for a moment before Lord Morpheus continued. “My intent in bringing up other Ravens was to comfort you with the notion that the… discomfort you are experiencing is understandable, since your transformation to Raven occurred under less than ideal circumstances.”
Matthew tipped his head to the side, looking up at him. “How did I become a Raven if you didn’t make me one?”
A tiny smile on Lord Morpheus’s lips. “Another indication of the frenetic pace of your first year is that we have never talked of this.” He shifted into what Matthew considered to be his ‘storyteller voice’. It was a little deeper, more hypnotic. “I confess that I do not know for sure, though I have my suspicions.”
Matthew would have liked to stay silent but felt an inexorable pressure to ask, “What suspicions?” Must have been the force of the narrative or something.
He was rewarded with another tiny smile.
“It is my suspicion that my sister, Death, selected you… for me.”
Matthew would have frowned if he had lips. “How were your other Ravens selected?”
“The souls of those who die in their sleep linger in the Dreaming until my sister collects them and passes them to whatever afterlife awaits them. When the time comes for me to select a new Raven, I select a soul that… feels right, and begin the transformation process.”
“What if the person doesn’t want to be a Raven?”
It was Lord Morpheus’s turn to frown. “Do you not wish to be a Raven, Matthew?”
Matthew clicked his tongue. “Now who’s mistaking who?”
Lord Morpheus inclined his head. “If the person does not wish to be a Raven, then it will not last. They will move on to whatever is next for them and I will select a new Raven.”
Matthew considered that, but quickly decided that he didn’t want to think too much about whatever was next. “So Death picked me.”
“Yes, I believe so. It is possible that once I had returned to the Dreaming it… automatically selected a random soul and performed the process without my guidance…”
Matthew knew there was more to that sentence. “But?”
Lord Morpheus looked at the headstone. “But. You are too well-chosen to have been a chance selection… and.”
“And?”
“Even if the pain of Jessamy’s murder had not convinced me that I did not want another Raven, I think it unlikely that I would have chosen you.”
Matthew glared at him. “I know that the next thing out of your mouth is going to make that a less shitty thing to hear.”
Lord Morpheus rolled his eyes. “You are well aware how this story ends, Matthew. I would not have chosen you but sometimes my sister knows me better than I know myself. She collected you when I was preoccupied with the Hecate and saw what I would not have seen: that you… were exactly who I needed as my Raven. And then I suspect that she gave the Dreaming a very strong suggestion to perform your transformation.”
Matthew had Death to thank for his current gig. Just add that to the pile of things he didn’t know how to feel about. But. There was the rest of what the boss had said.
Matthew dragged a talon through the grass. “So… you don’t wish you had a different Raven? Someone… I dunno. Dignified or clever or something.”
Lord Morpheus drew himself up and his eyes blackened from their normal Waking world blue to the night sky. “I am Dream of the Endless. I am older than this universe. I suspect I possess enough dignity for us both.”
Matthew was not entirely sure that age and dignity were that closely related but kept quiet as Lord Morpheus continued.
“As far as cleverness… you are perhaps not familiar with great works of poetry or philosophy, but I have never had a Raven who was more skilled at putting others at their ease, or soothing wounded feelings. Anything you lack in courtly manners is more than made up for in kindness and sincerity.” Lord Morpheus sighed and shook his head. “I would not have chosen you, Matthew, but I would have been a fool. You are exactly who I need as my Raven, especially after my imprisonment. My sister saw that, and I am immensely grateful to her.” He held out his hand. Matthew stepped on and was brought into his embrace. “I am sorry that your death was unexpected and jarring for you, Matthew. And I am sorry that the beginning of your tenure as my Raven has been so chaotic. But I cannot bring myself to be sorry that you died when you did, because that timing brought you to me.”
“Oh, Boss,” Matthew sighed.
“So yes, your human body is moldering in that grave. And yes, you are a ‘fucking bird’. But I very much hope that you will remain a ‘fucking bird’ for a very long time to come.”
Ravens, Matthew learned, were not capable of crying. He pressed his head against Lord Morpheus’s chest as Lord Morpheus began stroking his feathers. “Yeah. That sounds good.”
For the emotional prompts, maybe Dreamling and “When did you last sleep?” 🥺🥺
Also, you are fabulous, I hope I write like you when I grow up.
Bless you, this is very sweet of you.
[This is in the same universe as this one, if loosely.]
Dream looks fucking awful. His skin is waxen, deep shadows lying under his eyes. His clothes are still pristine, but there's something about the way they sit on his frame that's less purposeful than usual. Hob's got used to seeing his eldritch friend -- boyfriend, he reminds himself -- in all sorts of states over the last year or two, but this is absolutely the worst he's seen him, including when Dream had sloped into the New Inn after being captured by demons mucking around with summoning circles and arcane locks.
"Love?" he asks, sitting up straight on the sofa, taking off his reading glasses. Dream had materialised next to the fridge as Hob was marking second year essays, and he'd have been delighted to see him even without the nightmare of sixteen essays all answering the same question about the Crusades. As it was, he'd been over the moon.
His joy had been curtailed, though, when he'd noticed how tired Dream looked.
They've been learning, ever since the incident with the demons four months ago, what it is to be in a relationship with one another, stumbling together. So Hob knows that Dream craves care, even if he does not believe himself deserving of it, much less that it is something he can ask for. And Dream has learned in turn that Hob is only too willing to care for him.
"Have I come at an inopportune time?" Dream asks, that velvet voice sounding rough and rubbed the wrong way. He gestures to the pile of marking on the coffee table. He holds himself looser than usual, loose enough that Hob can see the desperate hope in his eyes.
Hob is never going to send him away. Especially not when he looks like this.
"Nope, the Third Crusade can wait. Said Henry II."
Normally a line like this would at least get a smile from Dream, who enjoys pretending he isn't amused by Hob's jokes. Today, nothing.
"C'mere," Hob says, swinging his legs down from the sofa and patting the cushion next to him.
Dream makes his way over, coat fading from his body and re-materialising folded neatly over the back of one of Hob's dining chairs. He's in the black skinny jeans that Hob knows are far too soft to be crafted from anything other than dreamstuff, and a long-sleeved black jumper, and his footsteps are silent on the carpet, despite the ever-present boots.
He sits down next to Hob on the sofa, and it's only then that he realises just how exhausted his boyfriend looks.
"Christ, love, when did you last sleep?"
Dream frowns at him. "I cannot recall."
It's been two and a bit weeks since they last saw one another in the Waking, though Hob's felt Dream's presence in his night-time adventures enough times to not feel the absence too much.
Dream doesn't need to sleep, he insists, a little like a child that refuses to accept that it is tired.
What Hob has learned, however, through several conversations that strained his brain's ability to handle existentially- and ontologically- distressing things, is that for Dream sleep is a little bit like a system reboot. He doesn't need it, but he does much better if he allows himself this "indulgence" once in a while. Hob thinks of it a bit like when he actually shuts his poor, aged Macbook down instead of leaving it on standby for weeks at a time.
Hob's grown to savour the particular pleasure of finding Dream asleep next to him in his bed. It is different for Dream, when he sleeps: he describes it as being the waves rather than the wind that blows them, one of those simultaneously oblique and utterly transparent metaphors Dream favours. He is able to wander in his own realms with less of the vantage of the creator, though apparently it is hard for him to ever truly walk the Dreaming as a mere dreamer.
Dream can also only too easily be roused from such sleep by the call of his own realm. Hob wonders if it is that call which has kept Dream away, away from Hob and away from his own rest.
"Oh, love," he says. "What's going on with you?"
Dream has not quite settled into the sofa, back still too rigid for Hob's tastes. "There have been. Many claims on my time." His lips pull down. "I am sorry that I have been away from you, my lover."
"Don't worry about it, love. I'm asking on your behalf, not mine."
Dream still looks perplexed by such remarks, but Hob's got time. He'll learn sooner or later. "I have been. Attempting to provide comfort. There is... much suffering in the world, of late."
He's not wrong. War in Ukraine, what feels like a global cost of living crisis, nightmarish transphobia on the rise, refugees drowning in boats in the hope of a better life... Christ, some days it's all he can do not to just go back to bed and wait for a better day.
But Dream, Dream who is made of thoughts and hope and fear -- for him it must be so much worse. He has remarked upon it once or twice, only when Hob has pushed him to.
So of course Dream's drowning himself in work. Fuck knows Hob does the same, not least because his students need him to keep showing up, the kids who work part time in the New Inn need him to keep showing up, and Hob needs himself to keep showing up. It's what he's always done.
"Oh, darling," Hob says, noticing how Dream's shoulders relax a fraction at the endearment. "So you've been running yourself ragged trying to make dreams for everyone?"
Dream nods. "It is. Difficult. I am. I am finding it difficult. To create dreams that match the need for comfort." He frowns, pale hands in his lap. Hob knows those hands have shaped universes, have handed quills and chisels to the greatest artists of every age, but right now, they need a hand to hold.
So Hob takes one slender hand between his own square, scarred palms . "God, I can't imagine."
Dream's head is still bowed over his lap, but his free hand comes to stroke over the back of Hob's knuckles. Dream has seen the beauties of a billion years' existence, but somehow he still treats Hob's battered, farmboy-turned-mercenary's hands as the greatest wonders of all. "It is. Impossible. To meet the collective unconscious' need for succour." His voice trembles, just slightly, but Hob's spent centuries learning to read him. "I am trying. But I cannot."
His shoulders hunch inward. "I want to help them. The dreamers."
"C'mere," Hob says, opening his arms, because they've made enough progress that Dream doesn't feel the need to relitigate whether or not he is allowed to want comfort for himself. Dream goes easily into his arms, allowing Hob to pull him tight against his chest and recline back into the sofa. "I know you want to help, darling, and I'm sure you are helping."
"It is not enough," Dream says, cheek pressed to Hob's chest, still clad in his work shirt. "It is not enough."
Hob planes a hand down Dream's back, knowing the exact amount of pressure to soothe. It's a little like being in a relationship with a gian, overgrown cat. "Dream, love, you're allowed to take a break."
This is something they haven't been able to agree on, not yet. But Hob's got time to work on it. "It is my function--" Dream begins, but Hob doesn't let him finish.
"Alright, let's for a moment consider you only to be defined by your function, alright?" It's not a view to which Hob subscribes, but sometimes you have to lose a battle to win the war.
Dream nods, wild hair tickling Hob's chin.
"Right. Well, in that case, it's important you keep the ol' dream-machine ticking over, in tiptop condition, right? If you're going to be spaffing out dreams every ten minutes --" He ignores the fact that Dream doesn't even respond to his crude phrasing, ignores how much this tells him about Dream's state of mind. "You need down time. You can't have a horse do forty miles in a day for a week and expect it to keep going. Same thing with you."
He can almost hear the cogs clicking in Dream's labyrinthine brain. "You believe... that rest is important to my functioning?"
"Dead on. Everyone and everything needs down time."
Dream nods, slowly. "Then. I shall rest. With you. If that is pleasing to you."
Hob cuddles Dream close. "Can't think of anything I'd like more right now, duck."
Dream settles against his chest properly, and Hob feels the tension slowly melting out of his slender limbs. Hob finagles his phone out of his pocket, using it to adjust the Bluetooth speakers and start one of the softer playlists he knows Dream finds soothing.
For a while, Dream lies with his head on Hob's chest, his body nestled between Hob's legs. The sun starts to set, the room slowly filling with orange-gold light. The music plays quietly, and Hob never stops stroking Dream's back, considering the gift it is to have such a creature in his arms, considering the pain this millennia-old being has endured.
"It hurts," Dream says softly, still tucked up against Hob's chest. He weighs so little that Hob thinks he could breathe too hard and send him flying.
"What does, love?"
"The dreamers' pain. I feel it. Like it were a sickness in my own blood, spreading agony through every vein."
Hob knows Dream does not have veins, except in some extremely vague metaphysical sense. Perhaps that is why it hurts most: if your blood vessels are made of metaphor and song, it makes sense that they would be all the more vulnerable to the miseries of the mind.
"I know, duck," he says, like he can possibly comprehend what it is to be Dream.
Somehow, even as Dream reminds him of his essential inhumanity -- his existence as an entity beyond comprehension -- it only confirms to Hob that Dream is a person, a person beyond his function. How else would he feel so much?
And while Hob's human mind can only do so much to apprehend the vast bounds of Dream's being, he can help the man. He can care for, soothe, love the man lying in his embrace.
"Let me take care of you?" Hob asks, and Dream's eyes open, looking up at him, before they drop away, ashamed, at first, that oh-so-human reaction that Hob can't quite train out of him. And then he nods, just once.
"Please."
Hob carries him to the bedroom, not out of any need, but because he wants to look after his impossible lover as much as any man is able. Dream doesn't say anything, just loops his arms around Hob's neck, gazing up at him like Hob's the one with stars in his eyes.
Hob sets Dream down on the edge of the bed, going to his knees to address the laces on his boots. Dream could just blink them away, but he knows Hob, now, knows how much Hob desires these simple acts of care, and Hob knows Dream likes it too, the soft little gasp it wins him like peaches at the height of summer.
"How's a cuddle sound?"
Dream nods. "Please." His voice is barely a breath.
"You comfy as you are, or d'you want jammies? Or just underwear?"
Dream bites his lip, considering. It has taken so long to get Dream to consider what he wants, and so to watch him do so is miraculous. "I would like these off," he says, gesturing at his skinny jeans, and Hob feels the warmth in his chest as Dream clearly waits for him to take them off.
Hob smiles, gently undoing the button and fly before sliding them down his legs, pressing a kiss to the inside of each knee as he pulls the jeans off. Dream shivers into the touch, letting Hob serve him with these human touches that mean so much.
"You want to get under the covers?"
Dream nods, tucking himself under the duvet as Hob divests himself of his own trousers, before joining his boyfriend in bed.
Dream eels closer once they are both under the duvet, long bare legs tangling with Hob's, arms immediately reaching for him, and Hob has to swallow back a sob at how much Dream is allowing himself to be cared for. His face tucks into Hob's shoulder, clinging to him like a lifebuoy.
Hob strokes his back again. "You're alright, love, you're alright. I've got you."
He holds Dream for what could be a geological epoch, still stroking his back, pressing kisses to the side of his head, murmuring sweet nonsense as Dream's utterly pointless breathing slows.
"I love you, Hob Gadling," Dream says.
"I love you, Dream," he replies, and Dream's arms tighten around his waist, and then he's raising his head, pressing his lips to Hob's with a desperate sigh.
Hob kisses Dream until he's panting, hands scrabbling under the back of his now-creased shirt, frantically trying to get closer. Hob slips one hand under the back of Dream's jumper, placing it between his bony shoulder blades, holding him close, gentling him.
Dream whines against his lips, pressing himself close. His cock is warm and hard at his hip, stretching the black fabric of his underwear, and Hob wants to keep him safe forever.
"Can I touch you, love?" Hob asks, and Dream nods quickly, his reply just a sigh.
"Yes."
Hob reaches down, palming at Dream with enough weight to make him gasp prettily and go limp.
"Please."
Hob wants to cry at how open Dream is in his wanting. "Whatever you want, baby," he murmurs, pulling Dream out and wrapping his hand around the shaft.
Dream shudders, eyes rolling back in his head. How could anyone think this is not a person, as he shivers and trembles under Hob's touch, back arching in pleasure, still reaching for Hob all the while?
Hob gently pushes Dream to lie on his back, then tucks himself against Dream's side, mouthing at Dream's sensitive neck. Hob works him slowly, tenderly, peppering kisses across his shoulders, chest, face, neck, everywhere he can reach, trying to imprint the image of a boneless, pliant Dream submitting to his pleasure, submitting to being cared for upon his memory for all time.
"Y're so beautiful," he mumbles, thumbing the head on one upstroke, and Dream keens so prettily. "So beautiful. Best thing that ever happened to me."
Dream moans, body bowing into Hob's touch.
"Feel good, love?"
Dream whines, then nods quickly, a tight little gesture, before it's broken with another drawn out groan that sets Hob's guts aflame.
His cock jerks, and Dream reaches for him, making to reciprocate, but Hob just whispers, "Shhh," and bats his hand away.
"Do you not--"
"I'm fine, duck, I just wanna focus on you. Just wanna take care of you."
Dream nods, then shivers again as Hob tugs at his earlobe gently with his teeth, gone liquid against the mattress. "Hob," he moans, the quiet sound rippling right through him.
"That's a love," he replies, working his hand a little faster, hearing Dream's soft sighs and gasps come more frequently, the little 'ah! ah!' noises that slip from his mouth, watching the lilac flutter of his eyelids, the pearly bite of his teeth upon his carmine lip, feeling such utter love and devotion pool in his veins that he thinks he might be transmogrified into another metaphysical creature such as Dream.
Dream himself is transformed, body a single line of want and pleasure and need being met, and he cracks his eyes open, reaching for Hob's face with one hand. "Kiss me," he pleads, and Hob is only too happy to comply.
"You gonna come, love?" Hob asks, and Dream nods, an unending series of 'ah! ah!'s spilling from his lips, and Hob works his cock the way he knows, watching the impossibly human beauty that is Dream of the Endless coming, eyes wide and startled, Hob's name on his tongue, pleasure and trust writ large on every atom of the ineffably, inarguably real body in his arms.
"I love you," Dream whispers, curling into him, this vast being fashioning himself small enough for Hob to hold.
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For the hurt comfort prompts with dreamling please: "me? Important to you? Don't joke" or "those kinds of feelings are not allowed for me"
God, his lip really fucking hurts.
They're sitting with their backs to the behind-counter shelves in a bookshop in some godawful town in fucking North Carolina, Dream's long legs stretched out in front of them, a copy of his latest book on his knee. Hob's dabbing at his split lip with a wodge of loo roll from the employee bathroom.
Outside, the protestors are still shouting. Hob can smell the reek of bigotry and anger from here.
The police have been called, but they'd advised it'd be better to wait it out until they can ensure there's an escort for Dream (and Hob, too, not that anyone would particularly care about him). So they're here for the long haul. Most of the staff are in the break room behind the shop -- store -- but Dream had taken one look at the crowd of anxious American twenty-somethings and decided he'd rather hide behind the counter.
So that's where they are, because despite the fact that it's 20-fucking-23, a bunch of violent homo- and transphobic nutjobs are protesting Dream's latest book because it has the temerity to show queer characters living happy, fulfilled lives involving sexual relationships. And some of them are probably fucking armed, because America, right?
And yes, maybe Hob shouldn't have responded to one of the lunatics on the pavement -- sidewalk -- outside throwing paint all over Dream by punching the fucker in the face, but really, what else was he going to do? It's Dream. He's never going to let Dream get hurt.
Admittedly, it might not have been the smartest move, especially given that said protestors might well turn out to be armed, but he's lucky that taking a fist to the face gave Dream enough time to get inside the bookshop -- store -- and that the single fucking police officer present had had the grace to sneeze so loudly that it spooked the fucker who'd punched Hob, giving him the time to get inside.
At least it's bulletproof glass, Hob thinks, and then snorts. Only in fucking America. God, he hates being Dream's publicist sometimes.
Except he doesn't. He really doesn't. It's the best job he's ever had, because Dream Uferlos isn't just one of the greatest writers of their moment. He's also probably the love of Hob's life.
So yeah, it wasn't really a choice, getting in between Dream and those bastards.
"Please -- please do not put yourself in danger on my account again," Dream says, sounding upset. He looks even more of a wet cat than usual, given that his hair is plastered to his skull on one side, his usually pristine all-black outfit covered in scarlet paint. The staff bathroom's sinks and paper towels hadn't really been enough to get much more than the very, very worst off.
"I wasn't going to let you get hurt," Hob says, trying to brush it off.
"I mean it, Hob," Dream says. "You are too important to me."
"Important to you? Me?" he snorts. "Don't joke about things like that."
"What in the world makes you say that?"
"You hate me. I'm just the fucker that makes sure you get to your signings and stops you insulting shitty interviewers, or at least cleans up the mess after you do insult them."
"Hob Gadling, I do not hate you, and you know this," Dream says patiently, as if he's talking to a child. And Hob does know this, but it's easier right now to pretend that he doesn't, that he's just some bloke that works for Dream, and that they aren't friends, because that will just make this whole thing so much worse.
"You probably should," Hob says, wrapping his arms around his bent legs, resting his forehead on his knees. "Fucking awful job of being a publicist that I've done."
"Hob, you are the only publicist I can work with. You know this. You are not responsible for the contingencies of fate and human awfulness that lead to things like this."
He's being so nice to Hob -- so nice, when he doesn't deserve it at all -- that Hob finally lets out the sob he's been holding in.
"I let you down," Hob cries. "I should've -- I should've known--"
And then he's crying, bawling, because he was so fucking scared when that fucker came towards Dream, fucking terrified, and he regressed to the angry man he'd been when he first met Dream, ten years ago, when they were both young, and had each lost sons and wives, before Hob had learned to push himself to being something better than he'd been.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Dream, I messed up, and you deserve better than that from your publicist, let alone your friend--"
He's startled when a pair of skinny arms wrap around him. Ten years and literary success might have meant a few better dinners, but Dream's still the scarecrow-limbed fuck he was at twenty four. "Hob. You have nothing to apologise for. This was not your fault."
"I was so scared, Dream, I was so scared they were going to hurt you," he babbles, and Dream's arms tighten around him. "And I'm sorry I put you in that situation, and I'm sorry I punched -- well, no, I'm not, I'd punch anyone who tried to hurt you."
Dream has gone still.
Hob panics.
"Oh Jesus, I'm sorry, that was too much, I've made it weird, oh fuck," he blurts out, and tries to pull back. He shuts his eyes, wishing somehow he could go back to the start of the day, or better, the day he planned out this stop on the book tour, and stop them from going to fucking North fucking Carolina during a spate of fucking book-burnings.
Two long-fingered hands are holding his face. "Hob Gadling, would you please listen to me?"
Hob opens his eyes. Dream is looking deep into his eyes. He looks like a half-drowned rat, and he's so fucking beautiful it hurts. And he's smiling at Hob, this delicate, tiny thing that Hob's kidded himself for years is just for him.
"Hob, the only thing I could think of when that man came at me was you." He bites his lip. "I was terrified he would hurt you. Because you are everything to me."
Hob can only blink. "Wha--?"
Dream gives him a fond look, stroking Hob's stubbled cheek with one thumb. "You put up with my dramatic tendencies when I am finishing a manuscript. You make me drink water when I am dehydrated. You send me cat pictures to make me smile. And today, you kept me safe. As you always do."
Hob knows he's staring. To be honest, he wasn't expecting a confession like this, especially not with one of them covered in paint, the other sporting a split lip, and God knows how many stressed bookstore employees lurking in the background. "You -- you like me? Like that?"
Dream nods. "Exactly like that."
"Oh." Hob bites his own lip, closing his eyes against the tears filling them for quite different reasons. "Well. I've been in love with you since 2013, so."
Dream's eyes blaze with that fire Hob had fallen in love with at a poetry reading he hadn't even meant to attend, ten years ago.
"I am going to kiss you now," Dream says. "Forgive me if it tastes of paint."
No amount of forewarning could have prepared Dream for the startling array of feelings that would assault him upon stepping into the New Inn and being confronted by the sight of Hob cradling a newborn in his arms, head bent toward a young woman the two of them cooing quietly over the baby. Perhaps it makes no difference that he had none at all.
Hob would have mentioned a wife, surely. A partner. Whatever his relationship is. He would have.
Except that Dream had reacted badly the last time he had mentioned wife and child, and Hob is not expecting this visit, and perhaps he ought to—
“Hello, stranger,” Hob greets cheerfully, his attention diverted from the babe in his arms to Dream. He has a name, by which to call him. A choice of names, and he has chosen Dream, and Dream feels an array of ways about this as well but the strongest of them is a deep, resounding pleasure that with a selection of Dream’s many names laid out before him, Hob has chosen the truest of them.
“Come and meet my granddaughter,” Hob adds.
Granddaughter. Granddaughter?
The young woman who seems to be just a few years younger than Hob himself appears is his child?
It is perfectly possible, of course, but the risk Hob takes. And an adult child he has failed to mention?
The surprise is enough to render Dream mute.
Instead of inquiring further, he moves to sit on Hob’s other side, pulling a chair up so he may look over Hob’s shoulder at the tiny baby. Hob’s tiny baby. His grandchild.
“Her name is Willow,” Hob enthuses, as though this is the most wonderful name any child has ever been given.
“She’s…” Dream begins. She is many things. Tiny. Mortal. Beloved. An accomplished dreamer with a wonderful imagination despite the scant week she has been in the world.
“Beautiful.”
This, Dream thinks, most of all.
“Melanie,” the child’s presumable mother offers her hand across Hob, who is too preoccupied with his precious burden to bother with the social niceties of introduction.
“Is it all right if I tell her your name?” Hob asks. “She knows about me, obviously.”
“Will you not be jealous if your daughter gains knowledge of a name after three minutes which you yourself did not have the use of for six hundred years?” Dream asks.
Melanie’s mouth falls open, her eyes suddenly alight.
She looks absolutely nothing like Hob, except that her smile is as bright and freely offered, and her eyes twinkle in much the same way.
“Oh, I know exactly who you are,” she says. “The mysterious stranger.”
Dream blinks.
“Practically the first thing Hob told me when we met was about you—” Melanie begins, only to purse her lips at a look from Hob, a grin threatening to break through.
Met. Met?
“Met?” Dream asks.
“When I was fifteen and my parents kicked me out,” Melanie says, the barest catch in her voice.
She has a nightmare of this incident, now that Dream looks. A rainy evening. A tearful call to a friend. The feeling of being all alone in the world. Abandonment. Fear. Monstrousness.
But then there is another dream. A smiling face, the warmth of which is familiar to the Lord of Dreams himself. Kindness. An umbrella in the rain, a hand outstretched. Hot chocolate. Safety.
Hob. The dream is of Hob.
Willow makes a sound of displeasure, possibly at being ignored.
“Shh, darling. You’re still the most interesting thing in the room,” he says. “I’ve known him six hundred years, but I’ve only known you half an hour. I’ve got so much to show you.”
Hob’s voice, thick with emotion, makes something inside Dream ache.
“Do you want to hold her?” Hob asks. “Can he hold her?”
Melanie nods. “Do you know how to hold a baby?” she asks.
“It has been some time,” Dream admits. This, Hob does not yet know. “But I do not believe it is something one forgets.”
Hob hands her over expertly, and Willow falls immediately asleep in Dream’s arms.
Melanie’s mouth falls open again. “How did you do that?” she asks.
Hob chuckles. “Of course she’ll sleep for you,” he says. “Careful, or you’ll end up splitting the babysitting with me.”
“I would consider it an honour to be charged with the care of your grandchild, Hob Gadling,” Dream murmurs, settling Willow’s tiny, warm weight a touch closer to his body, offering her human warmth in exchange.
It takes him a moment to realise Hob is staring openly at him.
“Have I said…?”
Hob breaks into a soft, warm smile. “It was just very sweet.”
Dream smiles back, without wholly intending it. “Perhaps there is something to the idea that it is possible to have a sweet dream,” he says.
Hob laughs. “Oh, I have no doubt that under all this you’re soft as marshmallow.”
Melanie excuses herself a moment, and leaves the two of them alone.
“You are a symbol of safety to her,” Dream says. “In her dreams. When she runs from the worst of her nightmares, it is to you she runs.”
Hob bites his lip. “Are you trying to make me cry in public?” he asks.
“You took her in when she had nowhere else to go. I am simply marvelling at how you always seem to have come further, in your humanity, each time we meet.”
Hob snorts. “All your fault, you know,” he says. “Started back when… do you remember Louise Baldwin?”
Dream nods.
“Aye, well, she had a couple of kids, turned out. Older. One of them already married with kids of their own. Absolutely useless husband who, I will add, copped his share of black eyes from me and eventually learned to stay away. Anyway. I married her, you know, for the look of the thing, so she’d have someone who could decently take care of her. Moved to the country for the fresh air and space and so no one’d know who we were. Had a little family again. She didn’t last long, but I set the kids up as well as I could. Took care of them until they were ready to fly the nest.”
Now it is Dream’s turn to stare.
“Then it just. Sort’ve became a habit,” he says. “Fought in the Great War. Couldn’t do it again when the next one came around. Let the greys show through, carried a cane around and let myself limp a bit more than I would’ve. Bought a big place in the country, took in kids from London during the Blitz. That was… obviously there was a war on, but it wasn’t so bad, having a house full of them. Running around the place.”
Dream pauses to picture Hob surrounded by children, being dragged into games and endlessly harassed and smiling all through it, as he is now upon recalling it.
“I’ll be the first to admit that the sixties, seventies, and half the eighties are a bit of a blur,” Hob says, grinning. “Got to fall off the wagon occasionally, keep things interesting, and I hadn’t had a really good messy phase in a century. Pulled myself together for you, of course,” he adds, this last part gently. Hob knows why Dream was not in attendance at their last scheduled meeting, and in any case had blamed himself the entire time, and harbours no ill-will.”
“Anyway. Somewhere along the line I became the go-to contact for kids that needed a place to stay and a safe adult to be around for a while, but who couldn’t have any paperwork involved because they’d just be sent back. I suppose you know the kind of kids I mean.”
“I understand,” Dream confirms.
“Some of them only needed a couple of nights, a week or two, maybe a few months to get themselves sorted. I see most of them occasionally. Keep in touch.”
“But Melanie is different,” Dream says.
“A few of them were,” Hob says. “Melanie got herself caught in a dress and lippy when she was fourteen,” he adds softly. “Her dad didn’t take well to it. Her mum was a bit better but couldn’t stand up to him. So. We just. Fell in with each other for a while. I gave her away at her wedding,” he finishes, beaming proudly. “With any luck, this one’ll let me do the same. If she ever gets married.”
“Are you marrying my daughter off already?” Melanie asks, returning to her seat beside Hob.
“Mm,” Hob teases. “This one here’s in the habit of cradle robbing for his brides. Fairies, can’t trust ‘em.”
Dream wrinkles his nose. “I am no mere fairy.”
Hob chuckles beside him. “No, but you are ridiculously easy to get a rise out of,” he says, warmly. “I think you have to give her back now.”
Dream blinks. He had all but forgotten about the child in his arms.
Once she is handed back to her mother—she will be fast asleep for some time yet, a gift to both of them—Dream misses the weight, and the warmth, and the soft wash of simple dreams filled with new wonder.
Hob says his goodbyes, and returns with a happy sigh and a wistful look in his eyes.
“Would you ever have another?” Dream asks, suddenly curious. “Your own flesh and blood?”
“Not yet, anyway,” Hob says. He pauses a moment, looking carefully at Dream. “You?”
Dream’s eyes widen. “How did you—?”
“I’m not going to pry,” Hob says. “You’re welcome to tell me on your own time. Just. Couldn’t miss it. One dad to another.”
“I would like to share those memories with you,” Dream says. “One day.”
“I’ll look forward to it. In the meantime,” Hob adds. “I was serious about that babysitting. Drop in for baby cuddles anytime I’ve got her.”
“I will endeavour to make myself available,” Dream says, already fashioning in his mind a host of suitable infant dreams, just for his newest friend.
I've just seen a post saying that since even if Dream look like an human he isn't one, therefore he doesn't do anything like a human and for example he can't eat real food...
And no I'm confused because I was actually sure that if Death could eat an apple Dream could definitely do as well, he just doesn't need to eat human food and didn't want to eat THIS apple because he was too busy moping and feel sorry for himself?
Like, I naively thought these "people" were divine entities who could do pretty much what they wanted, not E.T. or man-made robots with restricted abilities, the key word being "want" of course.... I always interpreted the apple scene, and later, the meal scene with Destruction and Delirium, as Dream not being interested in connecting with humans through what they eat, while Destruction and Death are...
I don't think the food is the problem. It's the people he's sharing the food with—and more importantly, the interaction he's having at the moment the foods were included.
The way I see it, he might consider eating or sharing foods with others as a social/bonding activity and probably one of the little ways to show his love more than a need to sustain himself or just something to enjoy
Hence he feed things and people a lot
Such as pigeons
His sister
Hob
Tried to offer that to Nada (which of course backfired)
But he refused foods on occasions where he's displeased with the people or the interaction he's having at the moment
Hence the apples, "I do not want a grape", him throwing a feast for his guests but not joining them at the dining table.
And this puny king of men who tried to offer him wine after summoning him as one would a servant
Or His Brother who tried to lighten the mood up despite knowing full-well why they came
Or Nuala who summoned him when he was in the middle of something
The way I see it, sharing foods/drinks with others seems to be his way of conveying "I want this interaction to be pleasant" and refusing food to mean "I am not pleased with this interaction and I have no wish to prolong it. Do not try to appease me because you cannot."
Hence why the moment his meal with Delirium started being unpleasant to him, he stopped the activity immediately
And why he drank the coffee when he's finally willing to have a real conversation with Destruction
At the very least, he seems to associate foods and drinks shared with other people with comfort and connection, thus if he feels uncomfortable and/or unwilling to connect with the other person, he would refuse it or not partake in it
So I think whether or not he would eat with you depends on how much he likes you and how much he's enjoying the interaction
And if he does associate foods and drinks in general with comfort and connection, that might also be the reason he was starving straight out of the glass prison
For the emotional prompts can I ask for dreamling with “For someone who’s always comforting others, you sure do a shit job of letting yourself be comforted.”?
(I love your writing!!)
"C'mon, sit there and we'll warm you up," Hob says, drawing a blanket off the arm of the sofa. It looks... soft.
"I do not. Need to be warmed up, Hob Gadling," he says, and even to his own ears he sounds tired.
"Hush," Hob says, ignoring him. For some reason Dream does not mind Hob Gadling's lack of regard for his station. He supposes it has its benefits. He cannot imagine Destiny spends much time being offered large bowls of assorted snack foods by his favourite human, while sharing a slightly too small sofa, and being introduced to the wonders of streaming television.
It is as the blanket settles around his shoulders that he realises Hob Gadling is his favourite human being. By some margin. And this realisation is something akin to struck upside the head.
The blanket is very soft.
Somewhere amid the sensation of warmth draping about his body and the recognition of what Hob means to him, a mug of something steaming has been placed on the coffee table in front of him. "Hot chocolate. Put marshmallows in for you and all," Hob says, sitting down on the sofa next to Dream. His friend's weight slightly displaces Dream, drawing them together, like the potential well of a planet. He does not mind this either.
He reaches for the mug. It is the raven-patterned one that Hob always gives him on his visits, except when his visits are close enough together that Hob has not yet washed it up from his last one. This has happened more often in recent months, and Dream has come to love the expression of guilty joy on Hob's face when he realises there is still a mug from last time waiting next to the sink.
"Thank you," he says slowly, inhaling the rich scent. Hob has spent so much time learning what Dream will enjoy eating and drinking, always offering him new delicacies to try, always providing those he knows Dream does favour. Hot chocolate with marshmallows is one such thing.
"Always good when you need a bit of comfort," Hob had said, and Dream remembers this as he cradles the mug between his two hands.
"You think me in need of comfort, Hob Gadling?" he asks, and Hob shrugs.
"You turned up looking like you'd lost a fistfight to your best friend," he says, as if this is enough of an explanation.
"You are my best friend," Dream says, without meaning to.
"Oh. I'm -- Christ, Dream, I'm touched. You're my best friend too." And Hob gives him that smile that had so disarmed Dream of the Endless, King of the Nightmare Realms, Prince of Stories, as he descended from his lofty castle to meet with humans.
Dream nods, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. It is delicious. Hob makes it thick, with real chocolate shavings -- "powder's just not the same, trust me" -- and the taste never fails to warm his spirits.
"Well, anyway, you turned up looking... looking like you'd been through hell."
"I have," Dream says, and Hob narrowly avoids slopping hot chocolate into his lap.
"Fuck, you have got to stop dropping shit like that on me when I've got liquids in my hands."
"I apologise."
There's a brief pause. "You were in Hell? Again?"
Dream nods.
"Christ. Do you... do you want to talk about it?"
Dream shakes his head. "I do not. I do not wish to burden you."
"Dream, you're never burdening me. I asked. and I care if you're alright. S'part of the whole best friend thing, y'know?"
Dream pauses, considering. If he were to talk to a person, Hob would be his first choice, he realises.
"I was summoned. Against my will."
Hob hisses. He knows enough of what has transpired in Dream's life over the past century to understand the import of what he is saying. "God, no. Were you -- did they hurt you?"
Dream shakes his head again. Sometimes it is easier to not use words.
Hob huffs out a breath. "Okay, that's good. What -- what happened?"
"I was. Summoned. By a knot of demons with access to power they ought not to possess. It took. Some days to free myself."
"Oh, Dream." Hob Gadling's sympathy jolts across his nerves even as his care soothes them. "I'm so sorry."
"It is nothing," Dream says, wanting to claw his way out of the blanket and disappear in a swirl of his sand, wanting to crawl under the blanket and never leave.
"It's not nothing," Hob replies, and Dream realises he's angry. But not with Dream, strangely. "God. I wish I could have --"
"There is nothing you could have done. I was able to free myself. A little creativity is all it required."
Hob is looking at him with such sadness and softness that it sets this too-corporeal flesh trembling. "You don't have to downplay it, my friend. You're -- you're allowed to hurt, you know that?"
Dream does not know how to respond to this. In his experience, acknowledging his hurts has only ever led to the suffering of far more than him.
"I am not a person. I do not require--"
"For someone who’s always comforting others, you sure do a shit job of letting yourself be comforted.”
This halts Dream for a moment. He thinks of explaining it away as the effect of being in this too-human body, slowing his vast mind.
It is not.
"I am not -- I am not always comforting others," he says, hearing the confusion in his own voice.
Hob looks at him as if he is very foolish. "You are literally the embodiment of dreams and stories. You are the original comforter. Your whole thing is bringing comfort to the minds of those suffering."
Dream opens his mouth, then realises he does not have a counter-argument. He settles for drinking some more of his hot chocolate.
"Just... you don't have to talk about it. Not if you don't want. But if it'd help... I don't want you to stop yourself talking about if it'd help." Hob's voice is gentle, a balm. "You're my best friend, and I always want to help. Even when you think you don't deserve it."
Dream nods, slowly.
"And if you just want to sit here and drink your hot chocolate, that's fine. We can do that too."
Hob's presence is calming. It is the reason Dream came to him, after his ordeal.
For a long moment, they sit there in silence, sipping their hot chocolate. Dream allows himself to be warmed by the soft blanket, the rich drink, the ease between them.
When he speaks, his voice is rusty. "Hell is cold."
"Yeah?"
"Very cold."
Hob nods, and Dream knows that he can keep speaking, or stop. Hob will be here regardless. That is one of the many wonders of Hob Gadling, and it is one which has nothing to do with his immortality.
"It reminded me of. Before."
Hob does not need a translation. He appreciates that communication is so simple between them.
"I'm sorry, Dream. I really am."
Dream nods, taking another sip of his hot chocolate. "Thank you."
They are quiet again. After Dream's mug has been finished, Hob makes to stand again, presumably to fetch more, but he finds the thought of him leaving is too much to bear.
"No--" His hand shoots out, touching Hob's bare forearm. Hob always rolls his shirtsleeves up. His skin is warm beneath Dream's palm. "Stay?" He pauses. "Please?"
A series of emotions passes across Hob's handsome face: sympathy, sadness, hope, affection, care.
"Alright, Dream." Hob settles back onto the sofa.
"You still cold?"
"A little," Dream says. He is lying. He is cold, still, though considerably warmer than he had been. That is the virtue of visiting Hob Gadling. He cannot fail but be warmed by his friend's heart.
"C'mere," Hob says, reaching his arms out. They have hugged once before, when Dream returned from his last trip to Hell, when Hob was so delighted to see Dream return after all that he forgot all their previous, unwritten rules.
Dream had been quietly disappointed that Hob had returned, after, to their original way of interacting.
So he allows himself to be enfolded in Hob's arms. He is warm, so warm it draws a little gasp out of him, and he cannot help but wind his own arms about Hob's back. It is harder for him, given the encumbrance of the blanket, and he is sure he must look a fool.
He finds he also does not mind this.
Hob is warm, and strong, and safe, and Dream feels the cold finally begin to ebb away. It has begun to rain outside, and the sound is not that of heartbreak and agony: it is safety, and peace, and understanding.
When they part, it is with a rueful noise from Hob, rubbing at his shoulder. "Sorry, this one's always a bastard in wet weather."
Dream shakes his head. "You have nothing for which to apologise."
There is another long pause, easy, as the rain outside falls in a tranquil rhythm.
"Thank you, Hob. For caring for me. For allowing me to come to you like this."
Hob places a hand on his knee. "You can always come to me, Dream. Always."
Dream finds himself laying his hand upon Hob's. "Always?"
He looks down at their hands, feeling Hob's gaze, and the gentle pressure of his dearest friend's hopes and dreams against his awareness. And then he looks up, meeting the warm brown eyes he found over six hundred years prior.
"Always," Hob says. "If you wanted."
Dream feels the corner of his lips curve up, and then he leans across to press his lips to Hob's.
He will see it replayed many times in the dreams and daydreams of Hob Gadling's long future, their first kiss. Dream, draped in a blanket like a cape, their hands overlaid on Dream's knee; two empty hot chocolate mugs sitting on the coffee table; the rain drumming contentedly against the window.
But for now, Dream allows himself to have this moment, this soft kiss, sheltered in the careful embrace of the spring rain and the certainty that is Hob Gadling.
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Follow up to my fake marriage prompt fic (part one here) - and there's still more to come! It's taken me a while because life, sorry about that.
Pairing: Hob x Dream
Rating: Explicit
Characters: Dream of the Endless, Desire of the Endless, Hob Gadling, Matthew the Raven, Lucienne of the Dreaming, Mervyn Pumpkin-head, Death of the Endless, Delirium of the Endless
Warnings for this chapter: none that I can think of! Please read the warnings on chapter one if you are starting this fic.
*
The logistics of a not-wedding between an immortal human and his unlikely friend (an eldritch horror who occasionally wears the guise of a man), is entirely beyond Hob’s comprehension. All he knows is that Dream will have to come and collect him in a couple of hours, and that in the meantime, Matthew is on babysitting duty.
Having survived a shower and shave, Hob has spent a vast portion of the day since Dream’s pronouncement just pacing about like a caged lion.
“What do you even wear to a ritual of protective stewardship?” he wanders aloud, voice sounding rather whinier than he’d hoped. Dream has been rather careful to call it things like that – a fealty, a claim of sanctuary, whatever other flowery bullshit he can come up with to avoid saying I have to marry you so people stop trying to literally fuck you to death.
“Uh, I dunno. A tie?”
“Right. A suit, surely?”
“I… suppose so.”
Hob represses the urge to ask what Matthew thinks Dream will be wearing. Probably shitkickers and a streaker coat, like always.
“You seem a little tense, buddy, if you don’t mind me saying,” Matthew offers.
“Yeah, that’s an accurate assessment of where I’m at right now.” Hob fidgets, going to his wardrobe and having a rifle through its underwhelming contents. He’s not sure why his dumb animal hindbrain hasn’t got the memo yet that this is fake, but his heart flutters every time he even thinks of Dream coming to – what, whisk him off?
“He said the ceremony is in the – the Dreaming, right?”
“I… think it’ll be there, yeah. On the fringes where the two worlds meet. He said he needs to be the place he’s most powerful.”
Hob nods, picking up a mustard yellow tie, considering, and then realising it’s foul and discarding it. He tries for a shirt instead – white? Or is that somehow bridal? Should he pull out the tux he only wears at the fundraising gala for the university? He’s probably got the bow tie somewhere… Christ, what is he thinking?
“It’s just so people stop trying to hump you when you answer the door,” he tells himself, grabbing the white shirt and the most recently pressed suit that comes to hand – dove grey, and well-fitting.
“The boss will probably look like a Greek god,” Matthew muses, apparently thinking along similar lines. “I wouldn’t try to compete.”
“I just want to… it doesn’t seem right to go in my pyjamas, y’know?”
“Sure, sure.” Matthew nods. “You’ll look great, champ.”
Maybe some of the inane nervousness is rubbing off on him, because he hops on the spot for a few moments before fluttering up on top of the wardrobe door, starting to poke through Hob’s ties with his beak. “What about this one?”
It’s not dissimilar from the suit, maybe a little darker, with a slight sheen to it. Hob takes it from his proffered beak and nods. “Thanks.”
After putting on the shirt and trousers, he decides nothing can be done for the hair – in dire need of a cut, which he had booked before the fuckening occurred and since cancelled – and having exhausted his distractions, he resumes his pacing.
He manages to waste some time putting on cologne and trying to tame his hair in the bathroom mirror before finally, he becomes aware of someone behind him.
“Looking good, darling.”
The purr is so familiar it vibrates in his marrow, and Hob spins so fast to see Desire sprawled in the empty bath that he cricks something.
“You-!” he says, gripping the side of his neck automatically. He was aiming for accusatory, but he lands rather more in the realm of ‘high-pitched surprise’.
“Moi,” Desire agrees. They’re in a gold body suit with spike studded shoulders, marabou-trimmed heels kicking in the air. “I’m here to give you some advice.”
“Oh, that’s very considerate of you,” Hob bites, rolling his eyes.
“Trust me, you need it.”
“You need to get fucked, honestly.”
“Honey, don’t tease me, not after last time.” Desire gives him a guileful little smile. “But no, this one is actually… going to make your life easier, not ah… harder.”
“I strongly doubt it, but all right.”
Desire sits up in a smooth movement, lashes fluttering. They have gold leaf on their eyelids. They really are beautiful.
“My older brother can be a bit of a pill,” they reason, “takes himself too seriously, y’know? No room for levity in his world, but he’s got such a wild heart…”
“Is that why you’re always fucking with him?” Hob says dryly. “Best way to get someone to loosen up, right, to make them deeply paranoid?”
After some consideration, Desire shrugs one elegant shoulder. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve been too down on him. After all, some of his relationships have caused him… genuine pain…”
Hob isn’t exactly sure where this is going. He listens with his brows knotted, watching Desire. It’s hard to do anything else.
“He has… the potential…” they say finally, almost reluctantly, “to be happy. And he can never let himself. In the past, I’ve relished his unhappiness. I’ve manufactured it. But… recently… I’ve been seeing something different in him. He’s lighter, now. Gentler.” Their golden eyes, somehow more dazzling in their ensemble, gaze into the middle distance for a long moment, like they’re talking to themself. Hob realises that they’re genuinely experiencing… something like regret. Or a close approximation.
“I still don’t understand why you’re here,” he admits.
Finally, the yellow eyes flick back to him. Desire smiles.
“I’m here to give you a wedding gift,” they whisper.
“I don’t really want any more gifts from you, but thanks for the thought.”
“You’ll want this one. Come here.”
They beckon him with a perfectly manicured fingernail, and despite his hesitation, Hob can’t stop himself from leaning toward them. He startles when they lean up out of the tub like a siren, but they simply cup their hand around his ear and lean in to whisper.
“My brother came to see me after our little tryst,” they breathe, “and he was furious, coming undone, rabid for the thought of you becoming mine. Under all that protective, righteous rage, do you know what I could smell on him?”
“What?” Hob can scarcely get the word out. The slithering voice in his ear has shivers racing down his spine: truly, Dream’s sibling lives up to their name.
“I could smell… desire.”
And then they’re gone. Hob is left hunched over the edge of the bath, heat in his cheeks and an uncomfortable vibration in the pit of his stomach that has all his nerve endings aroused in far too many ways. The last word spins around in his mind. He knows Dream’s sibling did not mean their own name. He’s not sure if he knows exactly what they did mean, though.
“Hob? Are you all right in there?” Matthew, his little bird claws clicking on the laminate flooring outside the door.
Still breathless, Hob straightens at once and opens the door.
“Sorry, yeah. Peptalk,” he lies.
“Good timing. The boss is here.”
“What-?”
“Yeah, in the kitchen. It’s… I think it’s time to go.”
Heart in his throat, Hob leans out of the bathroom and peers down the hall. Through the open doorway, he can see Dream’s silhouette in front of the kitchen window, a Hellenistic sculpture cut out of pure night.
“Time to go,” Hob repeats under his breath. “Okay. Time to go.”
Turning his attention to Matthew, he holds an arm out, smiling when Matthew delicately alights onto his forearm. “Come on then.”
In the kitchen, Dream looks like something from a fairy tale. His appearance seems altered not just in dress – there’s a softening to him that makes Hob think of fresh snowfall; winter branches. His hair seems wilder, longer, but his eyes are warm. He is wrapped in what can only be described as gossamer, some chiffony drapery that clings to his outline and drapes off his shoulders and hips. At his throat, his ruby gleams in the deep plunge of the wrapped neckline. Hob can see his pale skin glowing through the fabric, but that tile of white skin is enough to render him completely heedless of anything else in existence for a moment.
Hob is the most ordinary man in the universe, and somehow this being, this perfect creature, has found enough to like in him that he’s willing to chain himself to him for eternity. Just because of a little curse.
“Nice day for a white wedding,” he quips, before he can stop himself.
Dream’s lips – though it is subtle – seem to twitch.
“Any more adventures in my absence?” he asks pertly.
“I decided that I would rather eat a couple of cold egg rolls than risk getting frotted into the carpet again, so no.”
“Centuries of experience, finally culminating in some wisdom.”
He must be in a relatively good mood: Hob rarely hears him joke, much less tease.
“You had to rub off on me eventually,” he huffs, then turns pink. All this talk of animal instinct has him mindful of every word he says – at least after the fact.
“I only hope you remain free of my influence in every other aspect.” Dream gives him another gentle smile, and then offers his arm. “If you are ready, we will go.”
“I – yes, yeah.” Hob takes his arm, Matthew hopping off his other to take his place on Dream’s shoulder. “I’m nervous, is that stupid?”
“I do not think it so, no.” Dream looks over at him, and the deep shadows that usually hide his eyes recede in the sweet autumn sun, making them sparkle starlight blue. “I am… also apprehensive.”
“We’ll be okay though,” Hob says. “I trust you.”
He doesn’t think he’s imagining that the word seems to trigger some surprise in those bright eyes. Dream visibly swallows, and then looks down.
“Not much wisdom accumulated, then,” he quips. Something, despite his light tone, speaks of genuine worry. Hob cannot stop himself from squeezing his arm.
“Hey. Trusting you is the only clever decision I’ve ever made. Honestly.”
Dream allows their gazes to snag once more, and then nods. “You are too generous with me, Hob. I should not like you to let me get greedy for your good nature.”
Hob is about to say something in protest, but something tugs low around his navel as they lurch into motion and he has to concentrate entirely on holding on – and not throwing up.
*
Their location doesn’t entirely seem to be what anyone was expecting, and Hob can’t help looking around at the little island, eyes flitting over cherry trees with startling red blossoms, and a sweet Grecian temple nestled amongst them. It seems quite stranded in the middle of nowhere, deserted but for Dream, Matthew, and a few other solemn figures that Hob doesn’t recognise.
“Hob,” Dream murmurs, leading him toward the people gathered at the base of the temple steps. “Let me introduce you. This is my eldest sister, who you have had the pleasure of meeting before – if only briefly.”
The woman who greets him has cheerful, mischievous eyes, and she is petite, and dressed all in black. Her earth-toned skin gleams in the setting sun, and around her neck a silver ankh shines. She is beautiful, and terrible. Hob knows her at once.
“Hello again,” he breathes, bowing his head.
“Hello, Hob Gadling,” Death sings. Her smile is wide and open. “My blessings for you both. I wish you well.”
“Do not,” Dream says, quickly. “Please.”
Death does not seem nonplussed by this request, instead just dipping her chin to Hob.
The next sibling steps forward, her hair a whirling palate of colour that moves like ink dripped into water. One side of her head is shaved and red. She has heterochromatic eyes, freckles, and a dazed smile.
“I love weddings,” she murmurs, the words like a secret whispered to him, “they’re so beautiful! Though – not the last one we went to, maybe. The one where Orpheus-”
“My sister,” Dream says, tone brooking silence, “it is not a wedding, it is a ritual. And please, do not invoke my son.”
“Sorry,” she says, hair wilting a bit. Then she brightens again. “Are we all going to take our clothes off and dance under the light of the moon?”
“Maybe you and I could do that in a bit, Delirium,” Death reasons.
“Can’t hurt to try it now. Say, do you know what the word is for when you can tell something is going unsaid, but you don’t know what the unsaid thing is, and you think that if you said it then everything would feel better but the other people around you think it would make it worse?” She seems to direct this to Hob, and he does some mental gymnastics to keep up with her rapid-fire musings.
“I’m afraid not, sorry, love.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’ll think of it.” She smiles at him softly. “Congratulations again on your wedding!”
With a sigh, Dream tugs him further along. “Hob, this is Lucienne, the librarian to the library of all things, and the Dreaming’s most loyal servant.”
Lucienne is elfin, and serene, and her glasses flash when she bows her head to him. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Mister Gadling.”
“Pleasure.”
“This is Mervyn, the… janitor,” Dream follows up, drawing Hob’s attention to what appears to be a scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head, complete with overalls and gardening gloves.
“The Dreaming has a janitor-?” Hob starts.
“What, you think a vast kingdom of Dreams just maintains itself? Naw naw, that’s all Merv, buddy.” Voice a surprisingly deep bray, Mervyn crosses his skinny arms inside his too-big shirt.
“I am sure Dream is very grateful for your service.”
“I am more grateful when it is done quietly,” Dream mutters. Beside them, Hob thinks he sees Lucienne and Death smirk. “Lucienne, I believe we are ready.”
“Very good sir.” Hefting a large tome on one arm, Lucienne steps up between the pillars of the hilltop temple, and gestures for Dream and Hob to stand before her. She gives Hob a long moment of eye contact, until he nods, and then she opens the book.
“You are all here to bear witness,” she says, addressing the collected guests, “do you swear to observe?”
“I witness,” Death says.
“I witness,” Merv follows, along with Matthew.
“… I witness,” Delirium adds quickly.
“Then we will begin.” Lucienne looks down, and begins to read.
Hob isn’t sure what the words mean – or if any of them are a tongue that could ever be conceived of by human minds, or heard by human ears. He feels them like the thrum of waves in his chest, but he knows by looking at Dream that they are profound, and mostly that they are for him, not Hob. Every now and again, he nods his chin solemnly. This is no wedding, true enough. It is a most sacred oath, and Hob sees with alarming clarity that Dream has every intention of keeping him safe above all things.
As she reads on, Lucienne’s voice seems to rumble with a bassline that makes the very ground beneath their feet tremble. In turn, Dream too seems changed by them, his starlight eyes gone black as the deepest corners of nowhere. His hand is still clasped on Hob’s arm, and his fingertips seem to shimmer; grow claws where before they had some semblance of humanity about them even in their perfection. A sudden wind rages across the hilltop, grabbing Dream’s robes and hair and tossing them wildly.
Coat tails flicking, Lucienne keeps reading. Hob daren’t look away from this little pocket of sound between them all, but he feels suddenly conscious of a constricting band under Dream’s fingers; a surge of heat between their skin.
“Make your proclamation, Lord Morpheus,” Lucienne says finally, and waves begin to lash at the cliffs of the island as if clamouring for Dream, spraying foam around them.
Somehow cutting through the galing wind and crashing waves, Dream speaks. His voice is a slice of cathedral silence.
“I, Dream of the Endless, Shaper of Form, am in my Kingdom, where my heart beats its fiercest,” he intones, “I am witnessed, and before you all, I proclaim stewardship of Robert Gadling. No other shall touch him, not pain, not curse, not death. When I am strong, and when I am weak, he will be under my protection, and a tenant of my realm, on my honour. Witness me.”
“You are witnessed,” Lucienne murmurs, and the others follow.
The wind and sea cry their protest a while longer, until finally, they begin to quiet. Dream’s eyes start to shine blue once more, and his robes flutter to fall about his legs as before. His formally beast-like hands are now neat and delicate, and he turns to Hob with the beginnings of a smile playing about his lips.
“The mark on your neck is gone,” he observes quietly, and Hob lifts a hand to touch at once and finds only familiar skin.
“It worked?” he asks, and Dream bows his chin.
“I hope so,” he murmurs. Then he looks down. “Still, I have something for you.”
Hob’s heart leaps up into the back of his throat. He’d been so enraptured by Dream he hadn’t even really thought of himself as being involved – but now he remembers he’s the subject of all this. He watches with wide eyes as Dream lifts the ruby on the chain around his neck and somehow reaches into it with elegant fingers as if it were a pool of water held together somehow in a baguette cut. When he extracts them, he is holding-
“A ring?” Hob asks, confused. The band is gold, and set with a blood red drop of ruby, like Dream himself had pricked a finger and smeared it on the metal.
“It is to mark you as a tenant of the Dreaming,” Dream tells him, “A sort of – steward of the realm. Of me. Would you… find this irksome?”
“What? No! No, of course not.” Hob’s heart is like a hummingbird in his chest, especially when Dream takes his hand in his own and lifts the ring to slip over his ring finger – exactly where he might if they really were married. “I – it’s… it’s the most precious thing I can imagine. Really. I’m not worthy of you.”
“You are mine,” Dream tells him. Again, his voice is surprisingly gentle. “You need not prove yourself worthy, only know I see you as such. You are, above all…” The pause seems longer than strictly necessary. “Very dear to me, Hob Gadling.”
He doesn’t know what to say, so he just squeezes his hand shut around the ring and nods hard.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“You are welcome. Now, should I take you home?”
Hob looks around, strangely moved by all this; by the nagging feeling that all of this means more than Dream is letting on.
“Maybe you could… show me around a bit,” he hedges instead, and sees Dream’s pleasure register as a smile.
“I should like to show you my realm, yes,” he murmurs. “First, I must attend to my sisters, and then I will join you. Does this please you enough?”
“Perfectly.”
“Very well. Lucienne, please would you escort Mister Gadling to the throne room?”
“Certainly, my lord.”
Watching him glide off toward his sisters, Hob can’t help feeling somehow disappointed at the turn of his back, without really knowing why.
“You didn’t even kiss!” Delirium is scolding Dream already, probably to his complete horror.
Watching, Hob feels the familiar weight of a raven settle on his shoulder.
