#five-and-dimes

🤘Dimes

@five-and-dimes gradually it ekes closer to completion 🥺

[ make me work on one of my fics if you want ]

--

Hob treated him kindly. Hob had always treated him kindly, even when he didn’t know him. Why, then, should he not expect better from his own family? Why should he not demand better, or—

—or leave?

Somehow that was more terrifying to contemplate. But Dream breathed easier, having allowed the thought in.

Suddenly, he didn’t care who knew what. His family’s opinion of him could hardly get worse.

“I have a boyfriend,” he said, and Desire choked.

“You have a what.”

“A boyfriend,” Dream repeated. He liked the feeling of calling Hob that.

“You have a boyfriend? Where did you even get it?” Desire demanded. “Off the side of the road?”

“Yes,” Dream said, amused to think how true it was. “Essentially.”

“Wowza. Secret midnight trysts with a mysterious boy?” Desire whistled. “I’m kind of impressed.”

“I live for your approval,” Dream said dryly.

“Well, thanks for helping to make the family more disreputable. I was getting a bit tired doing it all myself.”

Dream surprised himself by laughing. “That is not my purpose in seeing him.”

“No, just a nice side benefit. Do Mother and Father know?”

“Of course not. And if you wish to preserve this… meager truce, you will say nothing.”

Desire scoffed. “Far be it from me to intervene the second you get a little daring. Keep going to have sex with your boyfriend, I’ll even help you get out of the house.”

Dream blushed. Dammit. “That’s not what’s happening.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. If I had a secret boyfriend, I’d be fucking him, so really you’re wasting the opportunity.”

“Desire.”

Desire grinned, though it was less wicked than their glee often was. “You have a picture?”

Dream only had one photograph of Hob on his phone, he’d always been too nervous to risk saving more. And either way, he hardly had access to it now. But, feeling surprisingly bold, he took out his sketchbook and showed Desire the most recent drawing he’d done of Hob.

He half expected Desire to snatch it and run to Mother, as they would have done as a child. Instead they just took the sketchbook and studied the drawing. It was a rather good likeness, Dream’s best yet. He’d gotten Hob to sit for the portrait, and had managed to capture the exact way the sun caught in Hob’s hair, and glinted in his eyes.

“Cute,” Desire said appreciatively. “Not what I thought your type would be.”

“What did you think my type was?”

“Someone more like you, I guess.”

“That would be boring,” Dream said.

Desire gave him a sidelong look. “Obviously.”

Hiii! Thank you for the ask! Here more cow!Hob/cat!Dream.

Original art by @five-and-dimes

🤘 five-and-dimes

OKAY ADMITTEDLY it does fit Dreamling very well doesn't it—? I was going to give half an hour per piece and accidently digressed way too much with this one..... whoops...? Thank you for the prompt dear 🥰💖

Dreamling || 1,174w || lowkey hurt/comfort but with ~hope

▾▾▾

“Don’t you feel anythi— fuck.” Hob stops, forcing the words back down with a thick swallow. He cannot afford himself to speak in anger, no matter how badly it burns in his veins, no matter how scourged by Dream’s aloofness he is. It doesn’t matter that he should have the right for anger. Dream is simply not a being you could, or should, be angry with if you hope to keep him in your life.

Angry or not, justified or not. Hob wants him in his life, very much.

“Dream, listen.” Hob starts, running a hand over his own face, nails scratching uncomfortably over the side of his cheek. “I get it, okay.” He really doesn’t but this is not the point “but seriously, you do have feelings, I know that you have…” his voice wavers and he gestures at the space between them, unable to voice it lest Dream would flee again. “Please.” his voice strains with the burden of it all. Wanting so much, needing so much—being forbidden from even voicing it, let alone having it.

"Emotions are a luxury I don't have time for.” Dream’s voice is deep, booming, as aloof as it could possibly get. He sounds like he’s reading a ready-made script, like he’s following the lines long since prepared.

Hob recoils, physically takes a step back, wants a distance between himself and Dream’s rejection. He should have expected it, in fact, he assumed he might get worse and yet— “Bulshit.” The short silence that follows is pregnant with tension, both momentarily silenced by Hob’s boldness. Hob is as surprised by it as Dream, apparently is.

Dream comes around first, eyebrows knotting, storms cracking in the depths of his eyes. His lips thin, the corners tug down and then he opens his mouth to deliver what Hob is sure would be either a really bad reprimand or his final words to him.

Of course!

Chapter five is actually mostly complete! I say mostly because I haven't begun edits yet, and I'm still incredibly unsure whether it's what I need it to be. But once I finish stuff for the Sandman fic exchange, I'll start edits.

A Soft Place To Land by @five-and-dimes has an absolute chokehold on me, so I thought I'd make some fanart (instead of doing literally any of the things I needed to do today).

Idk why, but somehow I'm always compelled to put Hob in green and brown... Also might have made him fatter than in the original concept (because that's what I had in mind before I saw the original art for it). I hope I did justice to Dream's smokey eyes (and feather, though it's practically invisible lol).

🤘five-and-dimes

Oh yes! Chapter five is roughly 4k words so far (and hopefully shouldn’t be much more than that), and features a: yet more misunderstandings from Dream (he’s really bad at this friendship thing) and b: Hob being Deeply Concerned while Dream brushes away his problems. Here’s a lil snippet <3

———

A hand found itself on his shoulder, a sudden pressure that made him jolt in his seat. They didn’t touch him down in Fawney Rig—the cage was always in the way. For one hundred and six years, he was deprived of something as small as touch. He never realised how much he could miss something so simple, something he didn’t let himself have even before that.

You aren’t there, he told himself again, tearing his eyes from the man who knocked over the glass, landing them on Hob. Hob stood before him, leaning over the bar so he could place that hand on his shoulder. His eyes were concerned, brow drawn together in a frown. Distantly, Dream had the urge to reach out and smooth that frown away with the pad of his thumb. It didn’t belong on the fact of one so joyful as he.

”Dream?” he murmured softly, low enough so the word was only heard by the two of them. “Are you alright? You seemed a little…distant there for a moment.”

He blinked. Hob’s face was nothing but earnest, and Dream…didn’t know how to reply to that. He could still hear the shattering of glass. His hands slipped beneath the bar, his nails digging into his palms. He let it sting faintly, a small anchor grounding him where he was. In The New Inn, at one of Hob’s workplaces. Not in Fawney Rig, where he hadn’t been for months now. He got out. He got out.

“I am fine,” he managed. It sounded like a lie even to his own ears—a little too strangled, a little too faint.

Hob’s frown deepened a little. “Are you sure, love? You can go upstairs if you need to? I have some more time here, but I’ll join you as soon as I can, unless you just want to leave entirely?”

In truth, he was not sure at all. He was even less sure that he wished to remain in the Waking—it was too loud, all of a sudden. If anything, he wished to return to the Dreaming, wished to find comfort in his own realm, no longer torn from him. But he could not. He had only been here for a couple minutes at best—not even a full hour. He could not leave now, when he had yet to offer enough of his time, and he didn’t trust himself to remain upstairs if he were to make himself comfortable in Hob’s apartment for a while.

He clenched his jaw for a moment, staring resolutely at Hob. He had a debt to repay, and he would do it. He could cope a little longer in the Waking for the sake of that debt and his friendship with Hob, even if the realm seemed to grate on him suddenly, even if a part of him could still hear Alexander’s voice inside his head and the shattering of glass to accompany it.