So I've seen these screencaps of Tom Sturridge talking about what he thinks about the Endless as a whole and it just SCREAMED at me that this is the kind of analysis Hob would make and put together when none of the Endless themselves have. So here's this half-baked snippet that comes somewhere in the early/middle of a fic where Dream and Hob have continued meeting and are close enough friends that Dream tells him about all the rest of his siblings, maybe even introduces Hob to a few of them.
"Huh," Hob says as he sits back in his seat on the couch, staring into the fireplace for a minute and resting the tumbler of whisky in his left hand on his knee. The logs crackle and pop softly as Dream watches Hob watch the fire. He supposes that his friend might need some time to process all of what he has just learned. It vastly expands his understanding of the universe, no doubt.
"Well, that's a neatly wrapped bundle, innit? Makes so much sense."
Dream sits up straight on his side of the sofa and stares at Hob. "What?"
He turns in his seat to face Dream, curling one leg under him. "All you Endless. Separated you are all your functions, but together... You're love. It's rather poetic really." He finishes off his drink and puts the empty glass on the coffee table.
Confusion, true lack of understanding, has never been something that visits Dream often. "Excuse me?" He can feel how tightly his brows knit.
Hob's eyebrows, on the other hand, rise high up. "Love. All of you and your siblings, together, as a family, represent love." When Dream's jaw just falls open Hob continues. "There's nothing stronger than love. Love is a delight, certainly, but can also drive you well into delirium, drive you totally mad. And obviously heartbreak is its own special category of despair. Not to mention that, in my experience, it is the loss of a great love that brings someone the lowest, to the true pits of despair." He starts gesturing as he speaks, tilting forward excitedly, as emphatic and confident in his analysis as Dream is completely stunned by it. "Love, even when it is not romantic or sexual love, always includes desire for something: a person, a community, a feeling. And what destroys someone more thoroughly than love? What else other than love allows people to piece the world back together after destruction?"
As Hob approaches Dream's place in the sequence, the King of Nightmares feels his insides squirm and twist... only to be drawn out further.
"Love is often talked about like a destiny, a fated meeting of souls, two halves meant to be together. And death, well," Hob swallows and looks away from Dream for the first time since he started his little speech. "Love is made all the more precious by the knowledge that it, too, can die. Not to mention that, sometimes, the embrace of death is its own kind of expression of love. As for dreams..." When Hob meets Dream's gaze again he is very much blushing. But he doesn't look away. "Well, for those who have loved, isn't one of their nightmares always losing said love? And what thing or creature or person doesn't dream of experiencing at least some form of love? I can only imagine, if flowers dream?" He makes it a question and pauses.
"They do." Dream whispers.
The warm light flaring in Hob's eyes, his gentle smile at confirming that tidbit, like it is the most pleasant of discoveries, makes Dream feel almost... dizzy? Is that what this is? He lists forward with it, towards Hob.
If he notices the movement, he doesn't show it. But Hob's voice, when he speaks again, is softer and more lovely for it. "Splendid. They do. Yes, ah, I assume if flowers dream it is, at least sometimes, of the Sun?" Dream nods, speechless at how his friend is making these leaps. "To a flower, what is the warm embrace of sunlight, but a kind of love? And does it not dream of that love when it is gone? Yearn for it?"
Their knees touch and Dream's whole form ripples with the surprise. When had they gotten so close? But Hob doesn't look away, so neither does Dream.
"What is being in love if not a dream?" He can feel Hob's breath ghost across his face, but still the human doesn't stop speaking. "Being in love... isn't it a dream of the destined finding each other? A dream of the death of loneliness? A dream of being willingly and utterly destroyed by just a kind word or a sweet smile from your beloved?"
Hob's nose almost brushes Dream's, but he pulls back just a fraction at the last second. There is a fire in his eyes now, hotter than any that might burn in a fireplace, and Dream is nothing short of captivated. Further, Hob is no longer speaking in the hypothetical; Dream can feel how he now is speaking of his own dreams.
"A dream of being desired? A dream of being someone worthy of feeling despair over? What is being in love if not a dream that brings you to the most joyful, delirious extremes of delight?" His head tilts to the side, inviting Dream even closer. So close.
"Tell me, Dream of the Endless," and oh how Hob saying that name makes him burn, "how well do you know love? Does it live within you? Right now? As it does me?"
"Hob," slips out from Dream's throat as a moan before their lips brush. It is a temptation Dream has no will to resist.
They crash together, hands cradling necks and jaws and faces. Dream surges up into Hob's lap, suddenly ravenous for him, only to have Hob push back, toppling them over so that he has Dream on his back beneath him on the couch. The whole time their mouths never part.
Has this been here all along? Just waiting for Dream to notice? Has Hob been waiting for him all this time?
They kiss and writhe and grasp and their bodies fit too perfectly together for it to be a coincidence.
Or maybe it has been Dream waiting for this? Waiting to be craved like this? Waiting be seen like this?
Hob pulls away, panting, holding himself up on unsteady arms. "Dream. I need to know. Before I lose myself in this. Because I will, if you let me... You don't... Do you love me only because I dream you do?"
"You, Hob Gadling," he says with fondness, cupping his cheek, "are out-thinking yourself. Your dreams are only a billionth of a billionth of a fraction of all the dreams that make me."
"So I can't coerce you in some way? Intentional or not?" He leans into Dream's touch.
Ah. There is the crux of it: Hob doesn't know if what Dream feels for him is real.
"No, my sweet Hob." How he shivers above Dream at that pet name is delicious. "I am here purely by my own free will."
"And I'm not dreaming?" He smirks even as he says it.
"No," Dream chuckles. "You are most definitely not dreaming right now."
"Oh," Hob says, relief palpable. "Brilliant."
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