#dreamhob

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A week after meeting his mysterious stranger for the first time in far too long, Hob is still giddy with happiness. His students see it, he knows, and it's impacting how well his lectures go, but he can't bring himself to care.

His thoughts keep drifting to that smile, the damn smile that erased any and all resentment he may have felt for being stood up in 1989.

So naturally, his dreams have drifted in a more positive, if dark and mysterious, direction. He dreams of his stranger almost every night, whether he remembers it or not. The times he does remember lighten his step for hours on end, contentment buzzing in his heart every time he remembers that his stranger said they would meet again soon.

And meet again soon they do, although not how Hob envisioned it.

He had picked up lucid dreaming quite a while ago, so any dreams he had tended to be a reflection of whatever he had thought about before bed. This time is no different.

The bed underneath him is warm and soft, the stranger in his arms relaxed and smiling. They're both still dressed, unlike some other dreams Hob has had, but he's content with that. The closeness is enough, more than enough.

Conversation isn't particularly prevalent in these dreams, the man and the miracle happy in the quiet moments they carve out for themselves. The few sentences they do exchange are ones Hob treasures more than the life he so cherishes. This time is no different.

Really, Hob should've caught on sooner.

Brown eyes gaze into diamond that had softened into coal, and his stranger spoke.

"You still do not know my name, Hob Gadling."

Hob tilts his head.

"No. You've always seemed a bit beyond names." He smiles, a similar tug pulling at his dear stranger's lips.

"Dream." The man murmurs, a vulnerability Hob hasn't seen before painting the words with light. Confused, Hob chuckles.

"Yes, I'm quite aware I'm dreaming."

His stranger shakes his head.

"My name, Hob."

Hob blinks.

Then narrows his eyes and sits up.

"Wait, I'm dreaming. So did my brain just... make up a name for you? I mean, it fits, but it's not real, is it?" His confusion only amplifies when he sees the amusement in his stranger's - Dream's? - eyes. "What?"

"There is no such thing as 'just a dream', Hob. This isn't imaginary, I'd have thought you knew that by now."

Before Hob can formulate a response, Dream leans up and presses their mouths together gently.

The smile he gives Hob is so fond that his heart hurts. What hurts more, however, is the sound of his alarm as it jerks him from his slumber.

"Hob," Dream says, not for the first time, in a deeply pained tone. "I simply do not see why this rigmarole is necessary."

"It's necessary because I say it's necessary, you joyless git." Hob dulls the sting by leaning over to plant a kiss on Dream's cheek, adjust the 2024 cardboard glitter crown from Tesco that is perched atop the dread dark head of the immortal King of Dreams and Nightmares, and throw an arm over his shoulders -- all of which Dream suffers with the tense, bristled wariness of a cat suddenly subjected to excessive snuggling. "Plus, there's going to be a general election this year -- fucking finally -- and the Tories are going to get thrown out on their kleptocratic arses. Good as any reason to celebrate, if you ask me."

Morpheus mutters something under his breath that Hob can't understand but doesn't sound particularly complimentary, but for once in his eternal-ageless-stubborn-bastard life, decides not to press the point. He's already been horribly traumatized by enduring the New Year's Eve party and being forced to socialize with Hob's friends from around London and the South East and colleagues from Goldsmiths and all the other strays he's picked up over the years (indeed, very much like Dream himself). All right, socialize might be a stretch. More like lurking ominously with a single glass of prosecco and giving the other guests a fright when they come round the corner too fast, but at least he hasn't run screaming into the night or huffily evaporated into the Dreaming never to return, so Hob is going to optimistically count that as a success. Besides, it is tacitly agreed between the two of them that Hob's love language is cheerily bullying Morpheus into taking part in normal human courtship activities and Morpheus's concession is to act like this is the worst thing to ever happen to him in literally eighty billion years, but still grudgingly put up with it. Baby steps, Hob thinks, taking a swig of his own bubbly and looking back at the television. Baby steps.

It's already the New Year in Oz and the rest of Down Under, and five hours off yet in New York, where they're still greasing up the ball drop in Times Square, but it's just about time in London, the fireworks over the Thames are all set to go, and Hob and the ten other people in his flat (hardly an excessive number, not that you'd know it from Morpheus's face) lean forward in eagerness. The bloke on the BBC leads a countdown, it rolls over to 00:00:01 GMT, 1 January 2024, and everyone lets out a boozy cheer, raising glasses to salute each other and making more please-God-help-us jokes about the Tories. Hob, meanwhile, turns to Morpheus, who gazes expectantly back at him with those luminous, star-flecked eyes, and leans in to kiss him -- quickly, chastely, nothing to make the silly goose come over in his melodramatic conniptions all over again. "Happy new year, darling."

Dream huffs, but he does look slightly pleased. (It's a subtle art, reading his expressions, and to the untutored looks no different from "mildly constipated," but Hob still knows his Stranger well.) "Happy new year, Hob Gadling," he allows, after a long moment. "I still do not understand why you feel it necessary to celebrate all this. Have you not seen so many that it is no longer special?"

"See, that's exactly why." Hob should get up and refill the pigs-in-blankets tray, as there is evidently nothing that British academics love more and it has been descended on like starving vultures, but he doesn't feel like it, not yet. He grins at Morpheus instead, lowering his voice, not that there's much risk of anyone overhearing. "A bloke born all the way back in God's Year 1356, and I'm still here, ringing in the fucking year 2024? That's a bloody miracle, you ask me. And with you, no less? What else would I want in the whole world?"

Dream's expression melts a little, despite himself. A faint pink flush climbs into his elegant ice-sculpted cheeks, and he huffs. "You are quite the flatterer, Robert Gadling."

Hob Gadling is a history professor who has the terrible habit of getting himself into shit situations, the newest one being hit by a car while walking to work and ending up in the hospital with some pretty serious injuries. After surgeries and stuff, since he has no family and doesn't want to bother friends looking after him, he gets an extra long stay in observation, and the only spare observation room happens to be near the pediatric ones. His doctor is Dr. Teleute and she's the best, they hit it off really well, even if her first experience was him drugged to high hell and badmouthing all doctors in general.

Dream is her little brother and an author, mostly children's books, but he has more adult (re: mature, not sexual) novels under his penname Morpheus. Every so often he'll go to the hospital and go around room to room, reading to the kids. Hob overhears him and as Dream goes to pass his room, jokingly calls out, "What, you're not going to read to me?" and gives Dream the biggest puppy dog eyes.

He's joking, of course.

Dream freezes in the doorway for a long second, awkwardly because he's fucking great with kids but this is a whole ass adult and he has no idea how to answer this. Not that he looks uncertain, he's way too stoic for that. So he just...

Walks into the room and asks, "Which book would you like? I have one about a raven named Jessamy, one about a wyvern, pegasus, and griffon guarding a king's castle, and one about the world's best librarian."

Hob wasn't expecting to get that far. He chooses the wyvern one because it sounds awesome. And it is! He genuinely enjoys it, and Dream enjoys telling it to an adult and still having the story thoroughly appreciated.

He keeps coming back to read the kids, more often than he would usually just because Hob confesses that's bored as fuck and it's nice to have some company and someone to talk to, and he brings different book options for Hob to pick from. They end up talking too, and Hob eventually admits that he likes hearing Dream read from the other rooms because he's really great with the kids. Super patient and chill, always answers all their questions even if the question is utter nonsense, and it reminds Hob of when he had his own son.