Archive of Our Own

His name is Dream, though Hob may call him Morpheus if he so pleases. He does not so please, in fact, because though the name fits him, it fits him rather ill. Like a dress shirt, a button too tight, a stretched rubber band with a tad too much tension on it.

Dream fills out those crevices so unknown to Hob. It rings through the New Inn with startling clarity. It embodies his stranger so completely, so wholly, so terribly that Hob almost can’t believe he never put the name to him anyway. His friend sits across from him, legs spread underneath the table, pale skin so unblemished it almost looks transparent underneath the dim yellow lights of the pub. His eyes sparkle like the cosmos, like distant stars humanity has yet to name. His mouth is tilted up in that not-quite-smiling way of his, fond and gentle.

And Hob thinks, of course. Of course his name is Dream.

How could it not be?

And God, isn’t it formidable? Isn’t he formidable?

Something burns in his eyes and he blinks it away. He raises an almost shaking glass of whiskey to his mouth. Wets the rim with his tongue. Take a hearty sip.

“Well,” he says, grins, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Dream.”

A full-on smile dances at the corners of Dream’s mouth, and it’s the most beautiful thing Hob’s seen since Robyn.

The whiskey he drinks is cheap and terrible, a lick of fire that sears down his throat as he gulps it down. It burns like crazy, but it’s all he could find in his cupboards. Though, thankfully, it’s unpleasant for only a moment. The alcohol settles rather quickly, its familiar heat spooling comfortably low in his gut.

It’s a Thursday - and as per true Thursday fashion, it’s storming.

The rain lashes against the window with a particular kind of vengeance, the storm a hungry famished mouth that yearns to swallow London whole. Almost desperate to clean the sting of summer away. The cacophony outside drowns out the sound of the telly, flashing transparent blue and white, settled on some old rerun of Miranda.

It’s not a very eventful evening, but Hob is grateful for it. It’s been a busy couple of weeks with college starting up again, having to create lesson plans that don’t bore his students to death – or worse yet, sleep. (Dream likes to tease him about students that fall asleep during his lectures) and grade busloads of essays and homework. Those kids are lucky he likes them.

At least the biting edge of summer is gone, which is always a relief. Hob’s much more of a winter months type-a-guy. Though late September is dreary and rainy – as showcased by the weather outside – it’s loads better than the sticking humidity, and the hot pavement smell. Summer is blistering and wasp-sprouting and just all-around uncomfortable.

(Summer is late August evenings, the dead bruised faces of sons, and bloody messes of wives. It’s picking out coffins, it’s holding a still-born baby in his arms. It’s grief and pain and the smell of graveyards and the stink of flowers that clings to the priest’s robe)

Thunder rattles the building, causing the lights to flicker maniacally for a second. Hob just sighs, slinking further back into his couch.

It doesn’t scare Hob much anymore. The most it causes him is anxiety, a pounding heart, and sweaty palms. It used to be much worse, once upon a horrible time, where a simple popping of a bottle had him throwing himself on the floor in a panic.

He’s a lot better at dealing with it now. He supposes it's one of time’s many virtues, her gentle hand guiding the pain to some far away corner in the back of his mind, to fade the scars on his long-lived body so he won’t be reminded of it.

The phantom pains will probably stay forever, the horror of it more alive than dead in his memories and dreams. He lost a leg due to a mortar shell once. Those were a hellish few months.

After the second world war he tapped out. No more wars for him. When the Vietnam war began he turned a blind eye. He was still roaming London like a ghost. Lost, and so incredibly sad. Someone called him shell-shocked once – and maybe he had been. His memory of the mid forties to the late sixties are lost to time, a blank space that remains in his mind, a chasm in him that cuts deeply.

Now, though, the pain is buried underneath a layer of skin, and Hob only took jobs that were soft and needed more than soldiers.

He became a doctor for a while, and delivered a handful of babies before he had to guide a still-born out of a wailing mother’s womb, the whole situation too much like the one he went through himself. He cried himself to sleep that night and turned in his resignation the very next morning. After that, he worked as a store-clerk. Spent some years on the street with a guitar, translated some books from Old English to modern language, and became a chef in a three star restaurant.

Out of all these professions, he thinks he likes being a teacher the best. Their young minds keep him on his toes and up to date with all the new trends. It’s fun and unpredictable and heart-breaking and spectacular. No day is the same, and though it can be incredibly difficult at times, it’s exactly the life for an old bird like him.

Lighting floods the room with stark white light– a roar of thunder following soon after. It’s close to the area. Hob wipes his hands on his sweater and takes another sip from his terrible whiskey. On the telly, Miranda breaks out in song at a funeral. Hob checks the weather app on his phone – it’s going to keep storming for the next few hours – and throws it back onto his coffee table with a miserable sight.

Another flash of lightning spills past the curtains, and his lights flicker into oblivion, his tv shuts itself off and his entire living room goes pitch-black. Hob sits straighter, looking around his darkened surroundings in stilted confusion, when suddenly everything flares back to life again. His TV remains shut off, but his lights blink back on like they were never out at all.

And between pitch-black and bright lights and the roar of thunder and the deafening stillness between it all – Dream materializes out of the shadows.

The man sits on his sofa, sudden, unbidden, unannounced, and uninvited.

“Hello, Hob,” he says softly.

Hob does what any other person would’ve done when an anthropomorphic personification materializes on your couch; he screams and chucks his glass of whiskey at his face.

.

“Perhaps that wasn’t the best way to drop by,” Dream says, slowly, like he’s only now realizing how stupid it was to just appear out of nowhere in the livingroom of an old war veteran. A slew of whiskey drips down his cheek, and if Hob wasn’t trying to reign in his out of control heartbeat, he’d have laughed at it.

“Jesus,” Hob grinds out, head between his knees, hands rubbing over his neck.

“Not just quite,” Dream whispers, and Hob looks up, mouth opened to shoot back a sharp retort when the words wither and die in his mouth. He crushes brittle bones underneath his teeth, swallowing away their corpses.

Dream, on closer inspection, is sopping fucking wet. And not just because of the whiskey. He looks like he spent hours in the lashing rain. Water drips down ridiculously flat hair, down his nose, and down to his chin, only to splatter apart against his black jeans. His eyes are bloodshot and red, as if he’s been crying for several hours. He shivers in his coat, blue-lipped from the cold, fingers gray-tinged at the tips. He looks like a drowned cat. He looks… strangely, like a human, fragile and broken.

Are you okay? He means to ask, but what comes out is, “You look like shit.”

Dream sniffs wetly, wiping some of the whiskey away with a wet sleeve. “You’d do well to remember you are talking to a King.”

Hob chuckles, regarding Dream with a sad expression.

“A king who is my best friend. Who randomly decides to seek me out in the middle of the night, soaked to the bone and making my couch all wet.”

Dream blinks funny little half-blinks, but makes no move to even stand up. His usual starry gaze is blank, hollowed out. Hob cannot see any stories in them, no fire, no will, and no hope.

“My apologies then, for your couch.”

“You don’t mean that,” Hob says, and scoots closer to a trembling Dream. He’s cold in a way that emanates from his body like radiation waves. Hob can feel it seep into his own bones like a transferable disease, and he has to suppress a shiver. There are a million questions on the tip of his tongue, but he knows Dream well enough if he asks them now, in a state of upset, he’ll get no answer at all.

He settles on something else for the moment. “Can I get you anything to warm you up? Tea, maybe? Coffee? I’ve also got some hot chocolate if that tickles your fancy.”

Dream struggles to speak for a second, jaw mulling and working like a factory before he finally pumps out a few words.

“Tea,” he mumbles hoarsely. “If you please.”

Hob gets to his feet. “Course. I’ve got black and green apple.”

Dream blinks up at him and Hob feels uncomfortable at the lack of sparkle in them.

“You don’t have oolong tea?”

Hob can’t help but laugh, a nervous, desperate thing. “Nah mate, this ain’t the Hilton.”

His friend looks away, staring blankly at the darkened TV screen. “Black, then.”

Hob nods and takes a horrible orange quilt draped over the sofa and wraps it around Dream’s thin shoulders, rubbing at the spiny bones for only a second before he skips off to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

It doesn’t take terribly long to prepare the tea, and he pours Dream’s tea into one of his best tea-cups. It’s a real antique he preserved from the 1700’s; the flowers are painstakingly and perfectly painted, colored in pink and blue. It’s a little chipped at the edges, but Hob counts it as a personal win that he has managed to keep such fine porcelain in a good condition for all these years.

He pairs it with a matching coaster and plops down a few sugar cubes on it, in case Dream fancies his tea sweet. He makes his way back into the living room where Dream is still staring ahead of himself blankly, his hand fisted into the hideous quilt.

“Your tea, your Highness,” Hob says as he puts it in front of his friend. “Didn’t know if you liked sugar in yours, but I brought a few anyway.”

Dream gingerly reaches out a hand towards the steaming drink as he shakes his head. “I do not, but I thank you either way.”

“You’re welcome, and me neither,” Hob says, the green apple flavor chasing away the last remnants of the nasty whiskey taste lingering on his tongue. “I do like a bit of milk, but sugar ruins it for me.”

His friend clutches the cup in shaking hands, pressing it to the center of his chest, right against his drenched shirt. He blows away a little steam before he takes a sip, and hums out an appreciative noise.

“Good?” Hob inquiries.

“Yes,” Dream murmurs against the rim of his cup, taking another sip.

“Okay, that’s good because I wasn’t sure you were gonna like the way I make it -” Hob starts, launching into a ramble about preferred tea-flavors, and a ridiculous story about how Earl Gray is banned in his house and his pub forever.

It takes at least half an hour before Dream finally finishes his drink, and Hob feels confident enough in the hope Dream won’t immediately de-materialize to ask him a question.

“Are you okay? And not that I don’t like having you here, but what’s going on? What brought you to my doorstep?”

Dream seems to consider these questions for a bit. “I-” he breathes, setting the tea cup back onto its coaster, lacing his fingers together on his knee. Dream has this horrible habit of picking out the least important question out of a dozen other ones. “- am well.”

Which is Dream-speak for I am well physically, but absolutely shit in all other aspects. Hob likes to think he knows Dream well enough to read between the lines now.

“And mentally?” No answer. Hob hesitates. “Can you tell me why you are all wet?”

“It’s storming outside,” Dream murmurs slowly, “and I walked here. I needed to think.”

“In the rain?” Hob raises an eyebrow.

“Such was the weather,” Dream shrugs, like it’s totally normal to have a thinking session in a fucking storm of all things. Hob sighs, trying not to be irritated, but pulling concrete answers out of Dream is like pulling perfectly healthy teeth sometimes.

Hob brushes a cold shoulder with his own. “Wanna tell me what you had to think about? Maybe I can help.”

Dream closes his eyes, tipping his chin to the ceiling. “Maybe,” he rumbles. “Maybe you can.”

Hob waits in a gentle silence.

“I - I saw she who was once my wife, tonight,” Dream begins, voice wavering and faltering like a faulty graphophone. “Seeing her dredged up a lot of -”

“Painful memories?” Hob supplies. “I didn’t know you had an ex-wife.”

“Yes. Her name is Calliope.”

“Like the muse?”

Dream nods. “She was imprisoned by a writer who used her for her gift of inspiration.” His hands curl into fists, his eyes flash back to life, but not with stories, with unbridled white-hot fury. “He defiled her to exert his power over her, to force her into giving her what he wanted.”

There’s a pause. Outside, the rain smashes against pavement with the force of a hammer to marble tiles.

“Defiled… “ Hob hesitates, “as in –?”

Dream’s bottom-lip crushes underneath his teeth. His radio flips on, switching to channel upon channel until all that comes out is eerie static. His telly flashes in blurs of blues and whites . His phone starts ringing, but the screen is black when he picks it up.

“For sixty-seven years,” Dream growls, “passed from man to man. Humiliated, abused. A goddess… besmirched by filthy hands and bodies.”

Hob’s heart pounds inside his chest like a gong, icy horror creeps behind his ribs like bugs, metaphorical fists crushing his bones to pieces underneath sharp knuckles. It cuts into his innards like knives, slashing and flaying. His belly feels like it is filled with cold blood.

“Oh my god,” he croaks.

Dream’s jaw trills, his nostrils flare. “I managed to free her. It’s what I owed her after the pain I brought her. Still, seeing her imprisoned like I opened wounds I thought long healed.”

Hob swallows a brick in his throat. A surge of anger suddenly rushes unbidden through his veins. “Who is this fucker? I’ll kill him.”

“His name does not matter,” Dream says, “even though I already punished him thoroughly, you would still go after him, for such is your nature, and it’s not what Calliope wishes.”

“It matters,” Hob bites, “they hurt her, and in turn hurt you. It matters a lot.”

A small bout of affection tugs at Dream’s lips, “you would defend my ex-wife, Hob Gadling?”

“I would,” Hob answers truthfully, “she mattered to you. I know she did. So she matters to me too.”

Dream smiles, his eyes like sharp uncut diamonds, “that is kind, but unnecessary. I punished her captor in a way that death would’ve been all the sweeter.”

“And in what way is that?” Hob asks.

“You really wish to know?”

“I do. I cannot think of a fate worse than death.”

“Then I shall tell you,” And Dream’s eyes turn black like a cloudless night, a singular star blazing and burning in the center of his pupils. It scorches and sears into Hob’s mind like a hot bladed-spear. He can feel tears burn at the edges of his eyes, and he wants nothing more than to look away, but he cannot. Dream’s gaze is demanding, furious, and full of rage. Everything shudders with intent. His lights flicker and fade in tandem with each gleam of Dreams teeth, a tad too sharp. “I took away his hopes and dreams, Hob Gadling, I took that sad pathetic soul in between my fingers and Icrushed it to dust.”

Hob feels his breath fall away like sand, his lungs shrivel up, eyes filling up with hot tears that flow over like a full sink. He’s small in the face of such ancient power. Dream is divine and formidable, a force to be reckoned with. He could destroy the universe with one flick of his wrist.

And Hob. He is a mere person. He’s nothing on the grand scale of things. He’s a mouse in front of a lion. What does he deserve to see Dream in all of his profound glory? To witness rage borne from love so steep that it burns white-hot on Hob’s skin?

Blood rushes in his ears, his heart beats itself to death inside of his ribcage. He can’t breathe, he can’t blink, and he can’t move. He’s ensnared in Dream’s hold, hopeless to watch on as his powerful friend scorches his living room with intense fury, filled with a holy purpose.

“Because what is a man who cannot dream? Who cannot hope, or think, or want?” Dream continues, darkly, an underlying tone to his voice that he enjoyed what he did. “He is nothing, Hob Gadling. He is a hollow shell and he will remain so until he dies.”

And from the dark, the cosmic blue appears again. Flooding back into the light like a river. The stars remain, white glimmering pupils instead of black. It should be disconcerting, but it’s not. It suits him as much as his name.

Job's tears dry. His ability to breathe comes back in small spades, and he gulps greedily on the oxygen. His lights burn on, steadily and uninterrupted. The rain outside is still going, the cacophony of its drum against the window as loud as it was half an hour ago.

“Do you see, Hob? Why cannot I allow you to go after him?”

“It would give him relief.” Hob swallows. His hands are trembling.

His friend nods. “Indeed it would. But Hob, I am not needlessly cruel,” he pauses, “or well, not anymore at least. I’ve learned a lot about pride and forgiveness in these past few years, and I would not leave him like this if it wasn’t completely justified.”

“I believe you,” Hob says. He does. Dream is – was a being of extreme hubris, and Hob’s not entirely sure if Dream hadn’t gotten imprisoned he would’ve gone to their meeting in time anyway. Just to teach him a lesson about staying in his lane.

But now, the last few years of meeting each other every few weeks or months, Hob’s said worse things to him in passing anger or frustration. Transgressions Dream from two-hundred years ago would’ve never forgiven him for.

Times are different now.

He’s grown so much – but Hob is saddened it took a hundred and sixteen years of imprisonment to do that.

“It makes me glad to hear you say that.”

“Of course,” Hob smiles, still a little shaky. “That's what friends are for, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Dream whispers, “they are.”

Time ticks on, and Hob gathers himself together. Dream stares at him apologetically but says nothing.

"I," Hob starts, voice hoarse as if he's been crying. He clears his throat but it helps nothing. "I'm not sure what to say."

"You do not have to say anything. Your company is more than enough."

Hob chuckles, stares down at his nails, ink and cigarette-stained. "At the very least, I'm sorry about everything you had to go through. It can't have been easy."

“No," Dream murmurs. "No, it was not.”

Hob exhales. Dream's gaze flicks towards him.

“What’s going to happen to Calliope, now that she’s free? Are you going to see her again?”

Dream’s bottom lip quivers downwards, and he averts his darkened gaze, “I must confess, I do not wish to meet with her soon. She mattered to me, yes, but I cannot bear the pain her gaze inflicts upon me.”

“What do you mean? What did she do?”

His friend inhales sharply, his face pulling like his whole body aches, which Hob supposes it must do.

“She bore me a son.” He says then, so quiet, so still, a ghost of a whisper, like the soft breath of a raven’s wing. “And he was so beautiful.”

A second ticks by, an eternity lost in a single moment.

Was

He isn't.

He was.

Hob is gob-smacked. All the air is punched out of his lungs. He wheezes for breath that will not come. Dream had a son. And Dream lost him.

Just like Hob did.

“I-” his eyes burn with the violence of his grief, reaching out a hand to slide over Dream’s shoulder.

At his touch, Dream breaks like a dam, the final needle in a large stab wound that finishes him off. He keels over like his body cannot support itself. A terrible gasp escapes from his lips. His shoulders start shaking like the apex of an earthquake. Hob cannot watch him cry helplessly, and so he pulls him into his arms, a hand gently pressed in Dream’s neck. The other one winded around his waist. He is both as light as a baby, and as heavy as a lion.

“Ah mate,” Hob whispers in the wet mop of jet black hair, “it’s okay.”

An ugly, desperate, keening sob wracks loose from his stiff body, like he’s been suppressing it for centuries. Another one follows. Then another. Hob drapes his body around Dream’s cold, shivering one, and holds him as he cries out all the tears that have culminated over the eons of his existence.

.

The crying has stopped, but Dream trembles like a leaf still, his body unthinkably icy against Hob's. His hair has dried a little at least, but the quilt is starting to get damp now too.

"His name was Orpheus," Dream whispers, "and there was music in his heart, music that when sung, would touch mind, body, heart and soul. He had the most beautiful voice. Nothing and no one on this or any other plane could match it."

Oh fuck. "Orpheus? Like the myth?"

Dream seems to hesitate. “Yes, and no. It’s not entirely like the story written in the history books but there is a grain of truth in every myth, isn't there."

"I suppose so," Hob smiles sadly, rubbing soft circles on Dream's bony shoulder.

"He loved so fiercely." Dream huffs out a keening noise that is bitter, and pained, "he loved this girl, Eurydice, to the point of foolishness. When she passed, he tried to sing her back from the dead. When his song did not appease the Gods, he demanded I help him."

"And did you?"

The room goes deadly silent, Dream goes ramrod stiff in his arms. The rain pounds against his window.

"No," he says eventually, curt, clipped, "I did not. I advised him to leave her in the past. You cannot bring people back from the dead. They will not be what they once were."

"He was grieving," Hob says softly, his hand rubbing over Dream’s back. He knows how this myth goes, knows how terribly it ends. Dream doesn’t spell it out. Hob doesn’t need him to.

"He was a fool, and I should’ve taken better care of him,” Dream snaps, “I should’ve known. After all, he came from my blood and from his mother’s womb. The offspring of a muse and a Dream-king.” A bitter, self-loathing laugh escapes bloodless lips, “It was doomed to fail from the very beginning.”

“Dream, I-” Hob begins, but Dream looks up at him, eagle-eyed, glittering with great emotion. His tongue stills in his mouth.

“She wanted to visit me in the Dreaming, to talk about our grief,” he whispers, “but in the end I could not grant her this.” His throat clicks as he swallows, his Adam's apple trembles. “Because… because I look at her, and I see him.”

He exhales shakily, pressing his palms to his eyes, his ennui, and grief is palpable in the air, a thick layer of smog Hob can almost touch with his fingers. “My beloved Orpheus.”

“I’m sorry,” Hob rubs a hand over Dream’s knee, “truly, I am. Losing your children it’s, it’s so -”

Hob’s been alive for centuries – his veins bleed with ancient dead languages and his pulse beats with new ones. He’s memorized books, poems and songs, and yet there is no word that could ever convey the pain a parent feels when their child dies.

It throbs with each heartbeat, a great cluster of pain that’s pressed deep in the center of his being. It aches like a wound still open despite the many, many years since then. His Robyn, his little face so clearly in his mind’s eye. The little hand he took in his own, the tiny feet he learned how to walk.

The big hand he took in his own, unmoving and still. His blood had dried on his clothes, his eyes closed in a rest that looked ill-fitting on his beautiful face. The feet that once walked the earth were now stopped in their path. He had been only twenty. Far too young.

It destroys him, by god, the memory destroys him still.

Tears that shimmer like diamonds cut over Dream’s cheek as he takes his hands from his face, “Indeed,” he says, and it’s clear that even the prince of stories can’t find a word for it either.

A roar of thunder has them both flinching – and Hob can’t help the tear that slips from the corner of his left eye. Dream lifts his hand to his face and thumbs it away. His fingers are unbearably cold. Hob clasps his hand with both of his, trapping the cold in between the heat of his palms.

“Robyn played the violin,” Hob offers, nodding, grief lurching in his gut like bile, “perhaps Orpheus would’ve liked him.”

A smile comes to Dream then, sad and wet and desolate and something uniquely broken. “Perhaps,” he rumbles, blinking, “if Robyn was anything like his father –” he squeezes around Hob’s knuckles, “ – most definitely.”

.

He puts Dream in a hot bath, because what else is there to do. The man is a shivering mess and his clothes won’t dry properly with him in it. He lets Hob help him peel the wet fabric off like a second layer of skin, which is a strangely intimate affair.

Dream is proper skinny, skin pulled over bones that protrude like rocks. He’s all sharp angles and sinews and blue-gray veins that look like they could bleed out from one shallow cut. Yet, he allows Hob, a soldier, a high-trained fighter, a killer, who knows fifty ways to kill with just a paper-clip to roam calloused hands over his hairless, smooth chest, tracing the visible collarbone with a thumb.

“God,” Hob whispers, “when’s the last time you ate?”

Dream’s smile is crooked, “an odd hundred years ago.”

They get everything off his body, but he draws the line at his underwear, a pair of fine silk black boxers that fit around his skinny thighs perfectly.

“I have been naked enough for one century,” Dream says softly, before he lowers himself into the steaming water. He hisses at the contrast of boiling water on icy skin but soon grows acclimatized. He leans back against the edge, water swirling around his graceful limbs. His eyes close in bliss.

“Would you like some bath salts?” Hob asks, from where he’s sitting on the close-lidded toilet, “I got some from a student who thought it was a funny joke, but I actually kind of enjoy it. It did wonders for my skin.”

Dream cracks open one starry eye, a hint of amusement pulling at his lips, “I would not be opposed, the bath is rather… lacking.”

Hob rolls his eyes as he gets off the toilet in search of his rose-scented bath salts, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

Dream smiles, eyes closing once more, “I am a King, Hob Gadling. It is usually a bit more lavish than this.”

“Oh so,” Hob kneels down in front of his cupboards underneath the sink, “you’re saying you want bubbles? Essential oils to be rubbed onto your delicate Kingly hands?”

“Careful,” Dream admonishes, but it doesn’t sound like he’s affronted at all. “Though, if you do have oils, it would be appreciated.”

Hob barks out a laugh that resounds through his bathroom, echoing off the grey tiles. “I can put bubbles on for you – seriously, that bathtub is one of the best investments I’ve ever made – but I don’t have any oils. Just the salts, soap and bubbles.”

“I’ll take it,” Dream says calmly, and Hob walks over to push the button. It takes a second before it starts bubbling, but when it finally does, Dream’s eyes widen in pleasant surprise. His fingers drift over one of the bubbles near his hands. It must be a funny feeling because a smile spreads on the Dream-king’s face, “This is most delightful.”

“Ain’t it? It’s great for back pain,” Hob grins, and pours in the bath salt. The scent of roses rises up the air, wafting along with the steam that blurs the mirror. He leans over Dream to grab one of his washing products and dumps in a fine helping of that too. Soon, soap bubbles up to Dream’s chin, which, weirdly, does nothing to make him look ridiculous. He still looks regal, even in a bath that’s every little kid’s dream.

“This smells nice,” Dream tells him, “this is much appreciated.”

“Well, you’re very welcome,” Hob smiles, setting everything back where it belonged and starts picking up Dream’s wet clothes. “Do you mind if I wash this?” he sniffs it, “It smells like rain and sea water. You can borrow some of my clothes if you want.”

Dream throws him an indecipherable look, but nods, slowly like he’s unsure about the question Hob just asked him.

“Alright, I’ll leave you to your bath. Uh, towels are under the sink, give me a yell when you’re done.”

“You’re not staying?” Dream asks softly, a vulnerability to his voice Hob’s not used to hearing.

Hob stands flabbergasted for a moment, “I, uh,” he pulls at his ear, “it’s not really customary for a bloke to watch his friend bathe.”

The bubbles rumble. The heat from the bathroom creeps up on him, making him flush a scarlet red and causing his body to sweat. Dream looks at him as a sad puppy might, kicked from the bed to sleep in his own crate.

“I,” Dream lifts his hand, and a mountain of foam is perched perfectly in the middle of his palm, “I thought that – is that not what friends are for? I do not wish to be alone.”

Hob feels a forlorn smile tug at the corners of his mouth. How can he refuse Dream’s request? He can’t. “Alright mate, I’ll throw this in the wash and get you some clean clothes okay?”

With a nod from his friend Hob pushes out the bathroom, the cool air a relief on his over-heated skin. Something loose and fluttery spools in his gut, a whirlwind of knots and intricate anxiety. It’s not like him to be nervous, especially not knowing what he’s even nervous about.

He throws the clothes in a quick wash and sets off to his bedroom on a quest to find something that will fit his friend. Anything colorful is immediately out of the question. Dream would probably incinerate him on the spot if he gave him his green sweatpants. Hob chuckles at the thought as he sifts through a drawer of house-wear.

He finds a pair of grey sweatpants that are a little too small on himself, a black sweater with a zipper, white knitted socks and a pair of clean boxers. He takes the small treasures back to the bathroom and is greeted by a lovely smile on his friend's face. The bubbles are off, so Hob surmises he figured out how the system works.

“You’re back.”

“As I promised,” Hob says, dumping the clothes on his sink and taking his seat on the closed toilet, “are the sweatpants okay? I know they’re not very Kingly, but jeans are so uncomfortable in the evening. Besides, I think they’re way too big on you. They’d probably slide right off ya.”

“It’s perfect, Hob, thank you.” Dream smiles, sinking back into the water until the foam reaches his nose. Now this does look rather ridiculous, but Hob knows it’s better not to say anything. Instead he just chuckles fondly, resting his elbow on his knee to cup his face in his hand.

Dream’s eyebrows raise at Hob’s sudden amusement, confused eyes peeking out from underneath his eyelashes. He pulls back up, wiping the soapy residue from his lips and chin. “Is something funny?” he asks arrogantly, but his expression is warm with affection.

He looks… well, god, he’s so adorable.

The anxiety loosens in Hob’s stomach, and something warm unfurls underneath his collarbone. “No, no, of course not.” He grins, “It’s just that you look –” He stops abruptly, the stone-cold realisation dousing him like the ice-bucket challenge that you’re not supposed to call your friends cute. Especially not ones that are literal fucking Kings.

“Well?” Dream asks expectantly, “I look like what?”

“Relaxed,” Hob croaks, and can see by Dream’s ‘yeah right’ expression he doesn’t believe it one bit.

Dream hums, “I suppose you are partly correct. I am relaxed. I am very warm.” His eyes tick up towards Hob, “I’m in good company.”

Hob tsks, licking his lips, “Aw you’re just saying that.”

“Pardon me?” Dream’s voice takes on a teasing lilt, “when exactly did I put out a notion that I lie?”

“Fine,” Hob laughs, “point taken.”

“You’d do well to remember this point, Hob Gadling. I do not lie to friends.”

“Good, it wouldn’t be a very good friendship if you did now huh?”

His friend chuckles, lips pulled over perfect white teeth, “no, I suppose it wouldn’t.”

Hob swings a leg over his knee, “say, do you want me to help you wash your hair? I think it could use one.”

“Are you telling me I look dirty, Hob Gadling? Were you not the one plagued by fleas only five hundred years ago?”

“Hey! It were dark times, mate.” Hob shoots back, feeling easy laughter bubble in his stomach as he gets to his feet.

“They certainly were,” Dream sighs, “they were throwing their – out of the windows,” he pulls a face and Hob knows exactly what he means. He laughs and reaches over Dream to grab a shampoo bottle.

“Mate, do I have a funny story about that. It was like, fourteen -hundred-and-ninety-something, right? Me and my friend, can’t remember his name, we were piss-fucking drunk – put your back to me please –” Hob pulls the showerhead from its handle and turns it on, guiding the gentle spray over Dream’s jet black hair, beginning to card his fingers through the smooth, wet locks, “ – we were piss-fucking drunk, and my friend decided it was a good idea to go sleep in one of the alleys.”

“Lord give me strength,” Dream prays, and Hob breaks out in roaring laughter.

“I was trying to pull him away, you know, I was drunk, but not so drunk that I would have a good sleep in a shit alley.” He cups his hand over Dream’s forehead, making sure no water can trickle into his eyes and face. “But by God, he was adamant, and I couldn’t carry him either because I was so unstable on my feet. I knew that if I fell, I wouldn’t be able to get up anymore, and I wasn’t going to risk that. So I was shouting at him to get up, pulling at his legs, but goddamnit, he was so fucking heavy. And then someone opened their windows right? And my friend was riiight underneath it –”

“I think I know how this story is going to end,” Dream says quickly, exhaling a long-suffering sigh, “That’s just so disgusting.”

“At the time, yes,” Hob chuckles, “but it’s really funny now, looking back on it.”

“I don’t think I share that sentiment,” Dream says, shoulders shuddering. His knees are propped up against his chest, sticking out of the water like two bony mountains.

“At least it wasn’t me,” Hob says, turning the shower off. He takes the shampoo bottle and squeezes out a generous dollop on the centre of his hand to lather it gently into Dream’s hair. “Though one time –”

“Hob.” Dream snaps.

Hob grins. “Dream?”

“Are you quite finished sharing your… less than appetizing stories with me?” Dream bites, and Hob thinks he means it to sound biting, only it’s anything but. It’s a desperate plea to stop talking about disgusting things.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Hob laughs, and focuses on softly massaging Dream’s scalp. He spent some time as a barber once, somewhere around the 1800’s. He still knows some tricks to get people to relax.

It’s silent for a while as Hob washes Dream’s hair. He listens to the dripping faucet, the creaking pipes, and the distant call of thunder from outside. Dream melts underneath his hands, stiff shoulders drooping into a relaxed posture, letting out little appreciative noises every once in a while.

“Does that feel good?” Hob asks, voice a breathy whisper. It almost feels wrong to break the quiet sanctity that swirls in the bathroom air. It’s a palpable, warm rush of calm. Hob’s body settles down as if on the beach, his being like an ocean, lapping at the shore with gentle, lazy waves.

“Yes,” comes the answer, throatily and low, rumbling like the thunder outside.

Hob hums. Closes his eyes as his fingers push circles against Dream’s head. Slips a hand underneath his neck to massage the stiffness out of that as well. It earns him another appreciative noise.

There’s two minutes of silence before Dream’s voice suddenly cuts through like a hot blade slicing through butter. It’s wet, shakily, but heavy in its underlying tone. It isn’t vulnerability, it’s strength, strength that Dream lets Hob see him like this. It’s an honor. It’s a privilege. And it’s all Hob’s.

“It’s - It’s been a long time since I’ve been taken care of like this.”

Hob swallows. Fingers still for only a moment before he remembers to continue. “How long?”

Something drips into the water. Dream’s voice carries softly on his breath. Like a song full of grief. A poem that has been freed from the confines of his throat. “I… cannot tell you. I fear that even The Endless forget sometimes.”

His words are a blow to his chest. A targeted arrow coated with poison. It makes his ribs hurt, his lungs ache. His eyes sting white-hot, as if he’s been doused with pepper-spray.

“Dream,” Hob whispers.

“Yes, Hob?”

“I’m going to rinse your hair out okay?”

“Of course.” Dream sounds disappointed.

And Hob rinses out Dream’s hair with all the care he can muster. He trails his hands lovingly down his scalp, brushing his neck with tender fingertips. Even when the soap is long since rinsed away, Hob keeps it up. Just to hear Dream hum so gently, so sweetly, as if Hob’s hands are the best thing he’s felt in ages.

(For some strange reason, Hob thinks he’s exactly right in thinking that)

Eventually, when the bathtub threatens to spill over, Hob finally turns off the showerhead, placing it behind the faucet. He doesn’t feel like getting up to put it back on the handle.

“Well? How was that?” Hob brushes Dream’s wet hair from his forehead. Dream closes his eyes and leans in to the touch. Their faces are so close together that Hob can feel cold breath fan over his lips. It smells like winter mornings, black tea, and strangely, soap.

“It was –” his eyes crack open a tad, their noses brush, “ – lovely. Thank you, Hob Gadling.”

“Thank you,” Hob counters, “for trusting me.”

This makes Dream widen his eyes, a perplexed expression shocking on his face, “of course I trust you,” he says softly, but desperately, and affronted, as if he cannot believe Hob thought he didn’t trust him, “are you not my friend?”

“Yeah, mate, of course, I am.” Hob has to huff out a laugh, and slides his hand from his hair, to the base of his skull, pressing their foreheads together. He closes his eyes at Dream’s cool touch, “best friends.”

The water splashes, and a glacial, wet hand cups his jaw in return. “Best friends.” Dream repeats huskily. And Hob can feel his lips brushing his as he speaks, and It’s torturous in the best way. Fire rages through his blood with pure want – a sudden need to have Dream as close to him as possible.

“May I kiss you?” Hob whispers, fingers dipping into the velvety skin of Dream’s neck.

Dream doesn’t open his eyes. A crooked smile lifts up the left corner of his mouth. He doesn’t move an inch. “If it pleasess you.”

“Hmhm, it very much would.” Says Hob, before he closes the gap between them.

.

If it had been Hob’s choice, he’d have lifted Dream out of the tub and carried him to his bedroom, but Dream isn’t having it. He’d loathe to get everything wet, and while future Hob would agree with this, current Hob is finding it less than stellar.

He has Hob turn his back as he changes from wet boxers to the clean, dry ones, only letting him look once he’s clad in underwear and the sweater.

Hob can’t help but stare at him. He’s so beautiful. moon-lit skin and cosmic galaxies reflected in the Montana blue of his eyes. His hair is pitch-black, gleaming like a starry night as the stark bathroom light reflects off of it. A smile graces his extraordinary features, and it makes Hob weak in the knees.

Within two strides Hob’s caught up with Dream, pressing him body against body, chest against chest, mouth against mouth. Dream’s lips are like a cold shock, pleasurable and exciting all at once. Electricity courses through his veins as Dream’s tongue slides wetly and sloppily against Hob’s.

“I must confess,” Dream’s breathless as Hob has him pressed up against the door, mouthing sweet kisses against every inch of milk-white skin his lips can reach, “that I hope you will not be disappointed when - ah - I tell you I will not be taking my sweater off.”

Hob pulls back, giving Dream a little room to breathe. “Why would I be disappointed in that?”

“Is that not the way?” His friend quirks an eyebrow.

“No, sweetheart,” Hob sighs deeply, “we can make it into whatever you want it to be.”

Dream blinks sheepishly, “truly?”

“Absolutely.”

“And what about your wants?”

He shrugs, humming. His arms wind around Dream’s waist, pulling him in as close as he can. “I want whatever you want.”

A bout of affection softens Dream’s face, and skinny, but strong arms lock 'round Hob’s neck. He leans in to press a long, lingering kiss against his jaw.

"In that case,” he whispers, lips moving seductively against Hob’s ear, voice dripping like honey and spice. “I want you to take me to bed.”

Hob noses at Dream’s neck, sucking at the pulse-point behind his ear to make him shiver.

"Your wish is my command.” He breathes, and revels as Dream moans softly in his ear.

.

Dream is impatient and greedy; tugging at Hob’s clothes as they stumble through the hallway like a couple of drunken idiots. All of it except for his boxers comes off in a flurry of fabric, strewn all over the carpet before they even reach Hob’s bedroom.

“Hold on,” Hob gasps into Dream’s mouth, trying to kick the door open. It gives with a mortifying creak of its hinges but he doesn’t care for now. The room is alight by a flood of streetlight spilling through the open curtains, and so Hob doesn’t bother flicking the lights on. He takes Dream by the forearms and steers him towards the bed where he pushes him against the mattress with a soft thud.

“Hob,” Dream begins, flushed, and feverish, but Hob cuts off all talk real fast. He pushes Dream’s knees apart and lowers himself onto that holy body, sinews and all sharp elbows. Every pant, every noise, every exhale Dream makes is swallowed up by Hob’s mouth, who licks against Dream’s tongue with a fervor that’s too tender to call it rough.

His friend’s hands rove wildly over the planes of Hob’s naked back, his pale legs hooking around Hob’s waist. The momentum pulls him in and their hips roll flush against each other. Heat blooms from where they touch, and Hob bites out a gasp, his teeth digging into Dream’s shoulder.

Dream sucks in a breath at that as they grind together in a perfect, imperfect way. Their movements uncontrolled and messy. His arms lock around Hob’s neck, lips pressing a series of open-mouthed kisses against his jaw and ear. He’s whispering something but Hob cannot hear him, so ensnared in the being that moves in frenzied tandem underneath him.

Everything grows hot and heavy, the air smells like laundry detergent and clean soap. Dream’s body is sweet, like honey. Him, an ocean, Hob the shore. They breathe into each other’s mouth as they ebb and flow, push and pull, breathe and hold.

Hob pulls the hoodie down to Dream’s collarbone, mouthing kisses down the lining of Dream’s throat, biting gently into the juncture where neck meets shoulder, then licks soothingly over the abrasion.

If Hob’s honest to himself, he could probably come just like this. Surrounded by Hob’s scent on Dream’s skin, his broken little moans as their erections brush ever so tantalizing, it’s enough to bring any man to his knees. Luckily for Dream, Hob’s not just any man.

He captures Dream’s bottom-lip in between teeth and bites hard enough that it makes Dream grunt. He kisses it to soothe, and gently pushes himself out of the confines of Dream’s arms and legs. The man makes a whining noise at the loss of contact, but Hob shushes him with a peck to his mouth.

“Tell me,” he breathes, as he trails his hands over Dream’s sweater-clad chest, “if there’s anything you don’t want me to do.”

“Believe me when I tell you, I cannot think of such a thing,” Dream pants, a smirk reaching his fevered blood-shot eyes.

“Good to hear you’re so eager.” Hob chuckles, sliding his body lower and lower until his nose is brushing Dream’s hipbone. Just to tease, he lifts the sweater up a tad, and breathes a hot kiss against the small sliver of bare skin.

Dream shudders, chin tilting back towards the headboard. His fingers wind through Hob’s hair, combing through the miniscule knots they encounter. It makes his scalp tingle pleasantly.

“For you,” he gasps, “just for you.”

And the blatant vulnerability of his statement makes Hob’s dick twitch with pleasurable agony. Dream – a being more than life, and the universe, and the thick threads of the cosmos wants him. A human, small and nothing more than an ant in comparison. But he wants Hob regardless, and no one else. He wants Hob to make him feel good. To forget about all the grief, to, however momentarily, stop the slicing knife of duty in heart and soul, to help him drown his sorrows in the curve and slope of his body.

Hob, despite his bruising inferior-complex towards Dream, allows himself to feel prideful over that.

“I’m gonna make you feel so good,” Hob says, voice more a breath than a whisper. Hands gently stroke over Dream’s thighs, thumbs underneath his knees to push his legs apart. Dream releases a nervous huff, but Hob takes his time to get him acclimated with the idea of what’s going to happen. “I’m going to take your underwear off, and I’m going to –”

He swallows hard, with brazen want or with nervousness he does not know, “ – suck you off.” He finds Dream’s dark gaze, “that alright with you?”

Dream cocks his head, a seductive smile crooking at the edges of his mouth. “More than alright,” he affirms, low and huskily. The baritone edge to his voice rushes straight towards Hob’s dick, making it ache within his boxers.

Hob hooks gentle fingers through the elastic band of his underwear, gauging Dream’s every single reaction. He pulls it down a little, revealing the sharp v-shape of his pubic bone. Dream is watching his every move like a hawk, as if he’s storing every moment in tiny little jars and keeping them in a cabinet underneath a sink.

“We’re taking it nice and slow, alright?” Hob says, less asking, more assuring. He leans down to press a lingering, hot kiss against the crevice of Dream’s pubic bone.

Dream lets his head fall down against Hob’s pillow, chest heaving a deep, contented sigh. “Nice and slow,” he repeats. In that same voice that’s going to make Hob come before he’s even given it some attention.

Hob glares at Dream, who smiles right back like he’s the paragon of innocence. He knows exactly what he’s doing to Hob. Bastard.

“Please,” Dream says, so damn smug, “do not stop on my account.”

Well if that’s how he wants to play it. Hob grins a little before pulling the boxers down Dream’s legs, flinging it at some random corner in his room before focusing all of his attention on Dream’s erection in front of him. The grin leaves him.

He’s bared now, naked, skin glittering in the flush of streetlight that slants over the bed, haloing Dream in sacred hues of golden-white. It digs shadows into Dream’s face like claws, lighting his blue eyes this side of icy. He’s almost like a saint in church, but this is no God, and this bed is no altar.

But Hob will worship him anyway. Like he ought to be.

The storm loses some of its hungry fervor, thunder rolling out to find another city to devour. Rain ticks against the window like an old friend.

Dream’s legs tremble gently but Hob hooks his arms underneath Dream’s thighs and presses a butterfly kiss against his knee. “Relax, sweetheart, it’s just me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” Dream hums, throwing an arm over his face, “It’s just been such a long time since I was admired instead of leered at.”

Hob doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so he guides skinny, hairless legs over his shoulders, pulling him in by his hips. Dream’s hands find Hob’s hair again as Hob presses fluttery, barely there kisses against the cold insides of his thighs. It makes him shudder almost imperceptibly, but Hob’s well versed in his body language by now.

“Relax,” he rumbles, letting his butterfly kisses turn into something more heated, leaving Dream’s pale skin littered with warm-red imprints of his lips and teeth, painting him crimson-tinged nebulae to mark him up, giving birth to what will be galaxy-blue lovebites come morning.

(If it doesn’t fade within the minute. With their kind, you never know what sticks and what doesn’t)

Rubbing soothing circles against Dream’s hipbone, he dips down to press an experimental kiss against the weeping tip. Dream’s body jolts like it's been hit with a bout of electricity, his hips jerk off the mattress, a wet breath huffs out of his mouth.

Hob hums a sweet smile against Dream’s thigh, fingers wrapping around Dream’s cock in a firm grasp. “Ready?” He asks. Dream only nods, eyes closed, mouth parted, the tip of his tongue so deliciously wet and pink against the ridges of his upper teeth. Hob is starving for that mouth, to feel that tongue again.

But first.

He tugs at it firmly, then, in the exact way he likes it himself. If Dream would want it any different, he’d speak up, Hob knows this, but his – friend? or whatever they are now – seems to enjoy himself nonetheless. His back is pressed into the pillow, face tilted back towards the headboard, puffing out short gusts of breath every so often.

Hob slowly guides his cock towards his mouth, pressing it against his lips in a semblance of a kiss. Darts out his tongue to taste. To elicit half-sobbed little moans. It’s salty and strangely sweet – the taste like nectarine and bitter lemons. Like the first snow in Winter, like ocean silt on chapped lips –

“Hob.” Dream groans, hands clawing in Hob’s hair.

“Right, sorry,” Hob mutters, and takes Dream in his mouth.

Outside, the street-light flickers into oblivion.

.

Dream is beautiful when he comes; his eyes scrunch up in pleasure, his mouth parts in equal measure. His hair is a black shadow around him, making his complexion glow in the dark like the outline of the moon.

He shudders and trembles and almost sobs as Hob sucks him in, hands digging into the hips of The Endless hard enough to bruise, letting Dream rut his cock against the niche lining of his throat. It aches, but God, is it worth it. He shivers into Hob’s mouth as he swallows dutifully, licking him clean with care so gentle he didn’t even know himself capable of.

“Was that okay?” Hob asks, grinning lopsidedly as he presses one last, punctuating kiss against Dream’s softening cock. He knows the answer already; after all, Dream did cause the black-out plaguing his street. He vaguely wonders when they’re going to resolve that issue.

Dream’s expression borders on sated and mortified. His eyebrow arches. “You have to ask?”

“Of course,” Hob drops his voice to a low whisper as he crawls back up Dream’s body. Legs slide down shoulders, resting beside unbruised hips. Dream’s still wet cock brushes against Hob’s naked stomach, and a warm shift of pleasure rouses through his blood. He’s still achingly hard, but they’ll take care of that later.

“I need to know how to improve, don’t I?”

The right corner of Dream’s mouth tips into a sly smile, “my darling,” he whispers, his hands such a gentle flutter over Hob’s bare back that he has to bite his lip to keep from coming, “my only complaint is that we didn’t do this earlier.”

Hob has to kiss him, has to recapture those plush lips, and trap them between his teeth. Dream moans against his mouth, and God, can he just stop doing things like that?

“You’re killing me, you know?” Hob bites into his mouth, tongue sliding wetly over Dream’s bottom lip. He gently nips at it with his teeth. “You’re fucking killing me.”

His friend laughs, a sound stuck between gunshots and the rushing of sweet frills on a Spanish dress. Hob’s never felt him laugh before, not this close at least, and fuck, he’s this close to losing his goddamn mind.

“Dream,” he mutters, pleads, and begs. “Touch me.”

Dream blinks at him, feverish, eyes at half-mast. His smile is seductive and wanton and almost a little mad. His sweater-clad wrist brushes against a sensitive spot in Hob’s neck.

“Make love to me,” he whispers instead.

.

“Do you want to be on top or –” Hob asks, squirting lube on his fingers. Warms it.

Dream’s jaw mulls as if he can’t quite pull the words out of his throat. He blinks those odd little half-blinks again. His eyes are wet with emotion or lust or from his orgasm or all of the above.

“I…” His throat swallows, and his teeth click.

Hob nods encouragingly, “we can do whatever you want, Dream. This is about you.”

“Hob – ” Dream starts to say but quickly aborts whatever statement he was going to make.

Then.

“I trust you.”

The smile twists on his face like a pearl, and Hob finds himself nodding without preamble. “I’ll be gentle.”

“It is not about gentleness, Hob Gadling,” Dream says severely, inhaling sharply when Hob pushes his legs apart. “It’s about control. I am surrendering myself to you.”

“No,” Hob says sharply before he can even think up a reason why that statement is so wrong in so many ways. “It’s not about control. It’s never about control. Not with me at least.”

“You don’t understand, I –”

“I understand plenty, love, have I not lived a life longer than normal people? Have I not been best friends with one of The Endless?”

Dream sighs. Looks to the side, and seems to drop the subject. “Been?”

“Am,” Hob corrects himself. Promises.

He slowly works a slick finger inside of him, reveling in the way Dream’s body reacts to him. Dream’s hips jerks towards the air, hands fisting into sheets that smell more sweat than clean, clenching around him before he relaxes, and Hob can work on opening him up.

“Good boy,” Hob praises before he remembers he’s talking to a literal King. “Uh, good King?”

A peel of laughter escapes his friend’s lips, a sound of pure joy that lets Hob know he’s not at all offended.

He adds a second finger, and then a third, fingering and angling until his elongated moans cut through the dark. He pumps his fingers in and out until Dream sweats, his eyes have long since closed, and his legs are trembling.

Now Hob could watch Dream get off on his fingers forever, but Hob wants to collapse into Dream’s warm body, crawl into the spaces of his ribs and make a home in his heart, settling there like an old dog in front of the fire.

He pulls away, accompanied by Dream’s soft whine of loss.

“Shhh,” Hob murmurs, wiping his hand on his sheets, he’ll change those later. “Do I need to use a condom?”

“No,” Dream pants, and that’s good enough for Hob.

He lines himself up with Dream’s entrance and pushes, oh, so softly, inside of him.

Oh god.. he feels so good. He thrusts gently into the warm ring of wet heat, feeling the pleasure of it bloom and enveloping his entire body like a hot wave of pleasure.

“Mm, Dream,” he pants, dipping down ever so gently to press a sweet, chaste kiss against his friend’s mouth. “You feel so fucking good.”

Dream releases a high-pitched keening whine as Hob thrusts again, angled a little more to the left this time.

"Hob." He moans, eyes closed in exquisite ecstasy, head tipped back, revealing the glimmering expanse of his neck. Veins wriggle and pulse underneath thin, gorgeous skin. Hob presses kisses against it as breaths, Dream's cold-shock scent burning in his lungs like oxygen-deprived air.

Their hands find each other, sweaty against cold palms, lacing together like destiny, a thread binding together in the cosmos, two stars that find each other, that will continue to find each other, over and over again. In every era, every decade, every life.

To Dream, he will always be who he once was. There are no secrets for him.

It scares him sometimes. To have an open chest, secrets pouring out in front of Dream’s eyes like blood. He cannot hide the pulsing ooze of regrets, of mistakes that flow out of him like a river. He cannot erase his deeds from history nor his mind, can’t stop the building crescendo of tar-stained wrongs, cannot bury it under a pile of golden rights. Because for it to balance out, it has to be equal.

Hob’s not a good person. But Dream knows this.

And isn’t that so spectacular? To be known so intimately, so deeply, and to be wanted anyway?

They move against each other in tandem, hips driving against hips in the most maddening way. Dream’s eyes are aflame like a light, casting their moving shadows on the wall like a silent movie. The bed creaks underneath them, the headboard hitting the wall at the edges of truly passionate movements.

Dream cries his pleasure, squeezes around Hob’s fingers so hard it almost aches.

And it's not surrendering. It's not control.

It's trust.

It's letting Hob take care of him, letting Hob see him be vulnerable, and knowing Hob will want to hold him close instead of shoving him away. It’s knowing Hob will let him choose, that he’ll have all the freedom in the world.

That is the most important thing.

Sweet little half-sobs spill past Dream's lips like wine, breath punched out of his lungs with each thrust Hob makes.

"Please, please, oh, oh," he moans, and Hob has to bite kisses against Dream's jaw to keep from ending their time too prematurely, but fuck, Dream feels so good and Hob is only human.

"Dream," Hob pleads. Prays into Dream’s open mouth like his tongue is a rosary.

"Harder," Dream begs. Teeth against teeth, lips against lips, body against body. He closes his eyes. Taking all the light with him. Pitch-black falls over them once more. "Ah, harder."

"If I do that," Hob can barely talk. "I'm going to come."

"Then pleasure us both," he drawls, kissing him in the throes of passion.

Hob chases his lips, swiping a gentle tongue over the ridges of Dream’s teeth. “Touch yourself,” he murmurs. And Dream obliges without protest, wrangling one of his hands free and slipping it in between their hot bodies to seek out his hardened erection.

“Yeah, like that, good boy, good –” Hob babbles, feeling Dream’s fist jerk against his stomach, spurring him on like he’s a human motor, driving into him with a vigor unmatched.

“Oh, oh, Hob.” Dream chants, a series of unfinished vowels expelled into the air like an aborted spell. Everything smells like sex and sweat and pleasure and desire. “Please.”

Hob is so dizzy on Dream’s endless body that he almost feels drunk. His pulse drums in his ears, his chest overflowing like a cup. His friend is everywhere, in every crevice and groove and crease. Milk and honey-scented. He finds Jerusalem inside of him, finds pleasure in his holy warmth, spilling into Dream like a teenager, high and dry and on fire.

He fucks forward until he’s soft, gritting his teeth against the over-stimulation until Dream finally comes a second time. It spurts hotly against Hob’s naked stomach, a stark contrast against the rest of Dream’s perpetually cold body.

They stare at each other for a second, just breathing in each other’s air. The air is hot and heavy and humid, burning with the scent of them. Dream doesn’t blink, just stares up at him with a strange sort of devotion in them Hob hasn’t seen before. For a moment, the weight of it crushes on his chest. Time seems to still – even the rain seems to hold its breath. Nothing exists apart from them, nothing and their pulses that beat to the same drum.

But Dream’s lips twist into a ghost of a smile, and suddenly the world hurtles into existence again.

Hob groans out a sigh and collapses onto Dream’s, burying his face into his neck. Dream nuzzles his jaw, slowly untangling their other hand and winding his long-sloped arms around Hob’s waist, holding him close.

Hob can hear Dream’s heartbeat even through the thick fabric of his sweater, or perhaps, is pretending to. Maybe it’s his own. But does that matter?

They don’t talk for a while, but they don’t have to. They understand each other without words.

In a minute, Hob will climb off Dream, clean him up and hand him a new pair of boxers and another sweater. In a minute, Dream will help him put on new sheets on the bed. In a minute, the lights will flicker on again, as if nothing ever happened.

But now though, now, they’re together. And Hob will milk this moment for as long as the universe, or Dream will allow him.

.

They slink underneath clean, cooled, crisp sheets. Dream sidling up to him as a clingy lover would. His head rests underneath Hob’s chin, cheek pressed against his naked collarbone. His breath is tepid and Wintry and full of life.

Hob slides his arms around the Endless, pressing his mouth against his forehead, and keeps it there. There’s a deep sense of home in his heart like this is what they were supposed to be doing all this time. And instead, they wasted it with years of silent apprehension, anticipation buzzing between the two of them that neither could put a finger on. Not until now.

Hob knows. He understands, in the dark, with the pin-pricks of Dream’s open eyes blinking like a cat, he understands.

Loneliness is a silent killer, and neither human or deity can escape it. Especially not Dream, the loneliest of The Endless, a fierce love propped up like a steel ball in his chest and being unable to let it spill forth. Who creates Dreams and Nightmares in his own image, who treats kids like the little wonders they are, who pets stray cats in the streets, who blesses every baby they come across with good dreams.

And yet still, being so surrounded, he still has no one to share it with. To share the deepest burdens on his mind. To have a soft mouth to kiss.

Except for maybe Hob.

And Hob understands, more than ever.

The room is pitch-black with the curtains drawn, silent with the murmur of rain abating like a thief that found their catch. The night is still relatively young, but old enough for Hob to know he’s not going to make his 8 A.M classes on the amount of sleep he’s going to get with Dream right beside him.

He’s just thinking about how he’s going to get to his phone and write the class a collective email about not having to come in, when Dream shudders out a soft breath, hooking a leg over Hob’s knees.

Hob rakes a hand through Dream’s hair. “You tired?”

“Tired,” Dream throws the word around in his mouth like a piece of meat that’s too tough. “No. I do not think I am tired. Tired is not the right word.”

He pauses. The rain has stopped. Hob’s body feels warm and drunk.

“Weary, perhaps,” His voice softens until it catches on the breath of a whisper, “I am worn-out, Hob Gadling, depleted. I am so full of emotions all of the time. It is like a bone-deep ache I carry with me, day after day, century after century.”

His vulnerability is almost tangible – something Hob could pick up with his hands, let it roam through the dips and creases of his knuckles. It fills the air with the smell of burning ozone, with fear, with pain, the shards from Dream’s cracked shell.

Hob doesn’t think himself privileged enough to be privy to such thoughts, but privy he is and therefore he must take them from Dream, carry them in the open expanse of his palms and relieve him of some of his burdens. His lover grows dreams and nightmares and is the sole holder of the collective unconscious. Has been so for eons. If Hob is his only respite, the only bed Dream permits himself to lie in, then so be it.

“Sounds to me like you’re in desperate need of a little rest,” Hob says, playing with a strand of hair near Dream’s ear. “seriously, when’s the last time you even slept?”

“Ah,” Dream says, the smile creeping into his voice. The little pin-pricks vanish into the dark. He has closed his eyes. “I do not sleep, my love. I do not require it.”

“Are you lying to me?” Hob hides his grin against Dream’s forehead, his stomach tingling pleasantly at Dream’s casual utterance of ‘my love’.

Dream hums, turning in Hob’s hold so Hob can press his hard body against his thin back. The way new lovers like to sleep. “Perhaps…” he mumbles. His sides rise with breaths he doesn’t actually have to take.

“Then sleep,” Hob presses a lingering kiss against his nape, their bodies melt together like candle wax. Like fate demanded it to be so. “I will be here when you wake.”

And Dream breathes out a sigh that seems to come out of his endless depths.

Dream sleeps.