Love Is Patient, Love Is Kind - sweet_tangerine_dreams (2024)

He wakes with the birds, their songs rousing him from sleep long before his alarm will. His room is pitch-black, with only a small sliver of light filtering through. It’s much too early for the sun to have risen yet, and by the gentle ticking against his window, he can only surmise they’re not going to see much of the sun at all today.

But that’s completely fine, Hob doesn’t need the sun, because crazily enough, his personal star is still fast asleep in his bed. He had expected to wake up alone, because tired or not, it’s still Dream, and he has duties Hob cannot even imagine.

Something warm unfurls underneath his breastbone, a deep coil of affection and devotion that springs towards the heat of the sun like a flower. Hob smiles as he watches him sleep peacefully, letting the deep satisfaction settle in between his ribs that Dream finally feels safe enough to let Hob be his safe-haven.

Dream’s moonlit skin is like a coat of snow on a grey slab of London. Even in the darkness of a night on the cusp of morning, he can almost make out every detail on Dream’s face. The way his long eyelashes fall against his cheekbones, framing his almost porcelain features, how his sweet, raspberry lips are parted as he breathes through pearly teeth, sleeping deeply like he hasn’t done so in centuries.

Perhaps he hadn’t needed to. Not until now.

Not until Hob held him, dried his tears, bathed him, made love to him, and held him again.

Hob can’t resist touching him, caressing his sleeping face with the back of slightly trembling fingers. He’s cold, like the surface of a marble statue. He looks like a religious portrait, framed by crumpled, gossamer sheets. The bed is his altar, and Hob touches him with holy intent, meant to love, meant to worship.

He’s so utterly beautiful. And Hob doesn’t mean in an aesthetically pleasing way. Beautiful like a poem, the fluttering feeling in his gut much reminiscent of when he remembers what words can do. Beautiful in a way nothing else human-made or common could be, otherwordly and angelic – lily-white and shimmering like evening stars on bobbing ocean waves.

But beautiful in the most fatal way, with almost deadly flaws and terrible emotions that always seem to bubble up to the surface of his skin. He wears his heart on his sleeve, always has, if he really thinks about.

It’s ever so human, and so fragile. A flicker of a flame in Hob’s clasped palms. For as long as he’s known him, Dream has been trying so hard to remain in control of himself, but Hob can see the pain underneath, the longing for something out of his hands so steep it’s almost damning. It must be frightening, Hob thinks, to be so much bigger than life, the universe, humanity, but being torn asunder by the very same things.

He inches closer to Dream’s body, laying his head onto his pillow. Their foreheads touch, and Dream’s steady breath fans over Hob’s face, which unlike his own morning breath, still smells of a winter breeze and snowed in forests.

Hob presses a soft kiss against the tip of his nose, sliding his arm down the covers until he reaches Dream’s waist. He slips a hand underneath Dream’s sweater, fingers brushing his torso as he rests them on the dip of his middle. His skin is warm against Hob’s palm.

Dream’s mouth closes, then, suddenly, and he inhales so deeply Hob’s arm moves upward with the momentum of it. He shimmies a little in Hob’s hold in a way that’s too aware to still be asleep, sidling up closer to him. He presses open palms against the naked expanse of Hob’s chest. His hands are almost tepid, too cold to really be warm as they’re curved right over where his heart resides behind his breast. Hob wonders if he can feel his heart beat against his bare fingers, if he can feel it echoed through his bones. If he keeps them there for that exact reason.

Then, his eyes open, meeting Hob’s eyes with his blackened sclera he has come to know so intimately over the years. “Hob.” He says softly, breath fresh and cold as it hits his nose.

“Dream,” Hob murmurs, slipping his arms around Dream’s waist. “we’re still friends right?”

“Hmm, of course.”

Hob nods, nuzzling his jaw. “So, with that out of the way, now what?”

Dream closes his eyes again, tipping his head back as if Hob’s rubbed a bruise.

“Everything.” He says.

A few weeks go by after that initial night, and it’s left Hob and Dream closer than ever.

It’s the most Hob’s ever seen Dream, and it’s an incredibly welcome change. Even if he has no f*cking clue about human etiquette and the fact you can’t just wait in the dark for hours until Hob gets home, flips on the lights, and almost (if he could) dies from a mini heart-attack.

Dream doesn’t see a problem with it, because of course he doesn’t.

“I thought you’d be glad to see me,” he’ll say, pouting, and Hob’s adrenaline siphons away like water through a sieve and there’ll be absolutely nothing left but joy at seeing him.

“Of course. I am, I am.” Hob will respond, dropping his school bag to his feet to greet him.

It’s an odd territory they find themselves in. They still call upon each other as friends, but in the deepest throes of intimacy Dream will kiss the word lover into his skin, penciling indigo finger-marks upon his biceps as their bodies rock against each other. Hob will wipe the tears away that accumulate in his star-lit eyes that set the room awash in a silver glow, and kiss the sweet fluttering of his eyelids after.

And it’s bitter-sweet because they don’t talk about it, not about the sex, not about the intimacy. None of it. They are friends, that’s what they tell each other as they make love, as Hob bathes him, kisses him, hugs him. They are friends, and they’re nothing more.

Hob has learned to be precise, learned to stuff emotions away because they would only hurt him in the long run, (this he learned after shakespeare, after Eleanor, after Audrey) but he’s after all still human, man enough to still wallow in self-pity because he wants so desperately for something they cannot speak outloud, he wants so badly.

Dream is a blitzkrieg, and Hob is caught in the explosion, pierced by adoration and desire like it’s shrapnell, tearing holes in the soft tissue of his flesh.

But Hob fills his longing with what he can have, lets his eyes drink in Dream’s rakish form stretched out languidly on the bed, lets his hands search for his across the couch, lets his body hold Dream’s body up – feel him deeply, in the fibers of his being, the warm and acrid bite of Dream’s reciprocated affections, sparsely given, but when he does, in abundance.

And for some time, it’s enough, and Hob is so happy he feels like he’ll burst. Feels reborn within his own body like Nicodemus, a true believer and worshipper.

But –

( And there will always be a but, for this is Dream of the Endless, and nothing is ever so easy. )

The fact remains. His friend is a King, he has duties he cannot forsake for the benefit of Hob or himself. For all the days he gets to see Dream, there are weeks, months even where he has to go without.

It’s a lonely existence sometimes, but an existence they must bear nonetheless.

(Hob helps him, he whispers at night, naked from the waist down when Hob’s warm and hard inside of him. The memories Hob gifts him so eagerly help him through the days they cannot see each other.

And God, isn’t that just everything?)

And besides, in a way, he’s grateful for it. He doesn’t have to change the way he lives for anyone. No one who gets mad at haphazard shoes in the hallways, or his smudged mirrors, or the clutter from every era that makes up half of his livingroom.

(Even if he misses it, even if he desires it so, to come home to him, to kiss his mouth and feel him right there, solid beneath his fingers, a body grounded in reality)

Luckily, Dream never asks him to change.

Dream admires every little bit of his home with almost wide-eyed wonder, clutter and all. Maybe because he never had that. A king with a crown and a palace and a home but not really a home, a throne he sits upon. A tower of bones he created underneath his hands. He must live with all of his grief carved into the walls, etched into the bones of his being. Swirling in the dreamstuff of his veins; raw and open and keening. Growth is difficult for a creature of habit. He creates dreams from nightmares, but cannot keep himself from tilting inwards, from imploding into the core of himself.

Perhaps he likes the simplicity. Is envious of Hob’s yoke-free shoulders. Sits down on the couch when he can (because doesn’t he know Hob’s dreams so intimately?) Accepts that cup of tea when pressed into his hands; oolong, but won’t drink it on rainy nights. He stays to f*ck, or to talk, or to exist in a silence that’s as mournful as it is amicable. He stays to trip over shoes, stays to soak in Hob’s bathtub and fog up the mirrors, stays to mess with his never-ending clutter.

But duty comes for everything, long before love, and long before care. This is what both of them know, and this is what Hob knows burns at him, in the intervals of silence, where his eyes flicker like distant stars, the longing within him so hard and heavy he bears it on his back like a cross.

He is not God, nor is he the Messiah, and Hob is not Simon of Cyrene, this house will never be Golgotha.

Hob takes him to the park sometimes, because Dream’s pale complexion can use some sun. They sit in the pale, watery rays and watch the clouds drift by. Sometimes they speak, and sometimes they don’t at all.

It delights him, to watch Dream take it all in with open eyes, experiencing this painfully mundane world like it’s something exceptional. It’s wondrous to see him smile at children feeding the ducks at the pond, stopping to smell the sickly sweet smell of Autumn,

But then, there are also days where Hob finds Dream curled up in the bed, feet tangled in the sheets, his arms wrapped tightly around Hob’s pillow as it’s pressed up against his nose. The many mugs of tea Hob makes for him go tepid on the nightstand.

On those days, Hob likes to be a refuge, a being where Dream can burrow into like a fox in winter. Previously, when Hob asked him to tell, he never did, but now, now, now –

Now, everything is different, And when Hob asks him to tell, to spill the heavy burdens on his shoulders, Dream finally relents. Whispering long-kept secrets into the dark like Hob’s found the key to the tomb of his heart.

Christmas passes. Hob gets Dream fuzzy blue socks (so he won’t have to steal his anymore) and Dream doesn’t take them off for an entire day. Hob does his yearly ritual of baking chocolate chip cookies, and Dream eats almost all of them.

New Years eve comes, and Hob is sobbing in his bathtub. Dream materializes out of the shadows and lays down with him in what must have been the most uncomfortable position ever and proceeds to block out the noises with his soft voice, silver-smooth and warm-edged.

And when one day he comes home on a muddy day in January, finding Dream on his sofa admiring one of Hob’s old, old books that he annotated in the 1700’s, he finds his home changed after all. He has no clue how it happened, but as he trails around his house, he finds it’s filled to the brim with all of Dream’s favorite things.

Bath oils, chocolate chip cookies, dark blue fuzzy socks, cat-prints tacked onto his walls, bottles of brandy older than fridges. Hob’s personal Bible, placed open on Corinthians, the verses marked in Dream’s loopy red-penned scrawl. All of the books by Margaret Atwood. The complete collection of the Doctor who series from 2 till 5. Etta James on vinyl records. Poetry by Joost Zwagerman. Spoons from the 1600’s. Porcelain figurines. Red roses that don’t die in the center of his dining table. A pink-pearled shell from the dreaming on a shelf in his bedroom.

It’s permanent in a way that the Dreaming could never be – how could it even be? A land shaped by the minds of men, waterfalls inspired by tears that fell to the ground in their dreams, lavapits that burn from anger processed in sleep. Winds that are drawn from their heaving breaths. It changes current, it ebbs and it flows. It rises and it falls. Fiddler’s green is never in the same place twice.

Perhaps it soothes him, the consistency of Hob’s existence. That he can come to a place where time stands in a stalemate. Where artifacts of eras are collected but not forgotten. Where things are important, no matter how small. Where the walls do not shape upon Hob’s insistence, where the toilet will always be down the hall, and the chocolate chip cookies will remain in the left cupboard above the sink.

Dream’s long since stayed when he meant to leave, and as Hob wraps himself around him, he asks.

“Aren't you tired of it? Of everything?”

And Hob likes to think –

Dream won’t even open his eyes, won’t even turn to face him. He glows in the pale darkness like a distant star. The air is thin and cold. Hob kisses his shoulder to try and ground him, but Dream has always been a creature of the gaps between words, the spaces between one sentence and the next.

“Sometimes,” He whispers, brokenly, heaving out the word as if it cuts his throat like a knife.

– he understands.

Realistically, Hob knew it was going to crumble eventually – something like this always does. It happened with Eleanor, with Audrey, and with Gwen. Why should Dream be the exception?

There’s always been this soft undertone of fear to their relationship. A hesitation to linger in the doorway. Dream doesn’t always seek his arms, is sometimes, somewhat akin to a caged animal Hob has to coax out from underneath the bed.

There’s only so much even an ethereal being can take before a soul breaks. And Dream has had to take a lot. All of it having left indents on the hard shield he’s built around him like armor.

This particular morning, they’re in Hob’s bed, because that’s where they’re always are. It’s 6 in the morning, and the April sun has just begun to peep out over the horizon. A small sliver of that young spring-light slips past his blinds, slanting over the bed in a narrow stripe.

They’ve been awake since eleven PM, since that’s the time Dream dropped by ever so unannounced, and ever so welcome. His mouth had been on Hob’s almost instantaneously, his hands pulling him in like fishnets. He’d smelled of something uniquely him, and human cologne – Hob’s cologne – and well, how can he ever resist that?

(In hindsight, Hob should’ve stopped his feverish attempts of pushing Hob into the mattress, should’ve stopped that scalding mouth laying claim to his, should’ve stopped that body from ploughing into his own – Dream hadn’t been right from the start, and Hob wished he’d have looked at him better, seen the tears burning in his eyes like wildfires, seen his form flicker and fade between his hands)

Anyways, it’s been a busy night, and Hob is right and well tired though the King of Dreams does not seem to share that same sentiment. He lays beside Hob, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. The hood of that same old sweater bunched up around his neck, sleeves rolled all the way over his knuckles. Hob does not remember it to be that long, but he does remember that Dream is not without power here.

Something’s wrong, Hob can feel it. The cold air strokes down his naked shoulders like a presentiment, a swell of I am afraid already forming like a glass balloon. His heart twists inside his chest, feeling the atmosphere deep in the marrow of his bones.

This is it, he thinks, this is Dream telling him they have to stop.

“Dream?” He murmurs, from where he’s facedown on his pillow. “Are you okay?”

Dream stays silent. Hob doesn’t dare breathe.

“I am thinking.” He rumbles eventually, sounding far away.

“Alright,” Hob says softly, “would you like to tell me about it?”

A blind person could see that something’s pressing on his chest, the way his eyes stare unblinkingly, his kiss-swollen mouth pursed in quiet contemplation. He sighs deeply – a breath he does not need, and for a second Hob fears if he blinks Dream will be gone in a flurry of sand.

But Dream doesn’t leave, instead, pulls his knees to his chest like he’s a stricken six year old boy instead of a man. He’s almost fragile like this, breakable like fine porcelain.

“I don’t know.” He says tentatively, as if the very statement is a knife in his throat.

“Maybe you’re just tired, love,” Hob suggests, patting the pillow, “lay down for a bit. It’s Sunday, I don’t gotta be anywhere else but here, Dream. C’mon, have a rest with me.”

The corner of Dream’s mouth lifts up in an almost smile, but shakes his head. “I would love nothing more than to lay down with you, dearest, to curl up in your arms and feel you against me.” His eyes close, his long lashes clap against his prominent cheekbones, cut like a statue. “But I am unable.”

“Why?” Hob asks.

“Because,” Dream whispers, voice taking all the warmth in the room, leaving Hob chilled to the bone, “If I did, I would never want to leave your warmth again.”

It takes Hob a second to respond, mainly because he doesn’t know what to say to that. His lips part, close, like a faulty elevator.

“Dream,” he mumbles eventually, and Dream’s eyes open. They’re blue again, shining with unshed, glimmering tears.

Hob’s fingers itch to reach out, but despite the heat they shared only a few minutes ago, he felt the touch would be unwelcome, as though Dream would shatter into oblivion, his pillars shaky and unstable.

“My function –” Dream starts, pauses, as though the words have evaded him like a flighty flock of geese. Hob sits up, alerted, because Dream, the prince of stories, shaper of Dreams and Lord of Nightmares, is not supposed to search for words.

His lower lip trembles, open mouth like two backdrops of blood against pristine white snow as he inhales shakily.

“My function,” He begins anew, voice something that demands pure genuflection, and Hob wants to reach out, wants to touch his hand, hold him close to himself, but his composure is already so brittle, he doesn’t want to risk it. “Hob, it wrings me dry. It wrings me dry in a way it never used to.”

He huffs out a bitter sound, something so incredibly broken that Hob’s mouth dries out like the sahara desert. “Everything is as it was as though I was never captured. My realm is thriving, my subjects are carrying out their duties with dedication and I wield more power than I have been privy to in eons.”

Dream pauses, lips parted. The air is heavy with everything he’s saying and everything he’s not.

“But?” Hob presses.

“But I did get captured, and nothing is as it was, nothing will ever be the same.” Dream snaps, and it’s like fingers wrapping itself around Hob’s airway, making oxygen seize in his chest. There’s a hot sear of fire down his clavicle, a pain that burns so hotly and heavily that tears spring up in Hob’s eyes. There’s only a vague realization that the sudden, crushing ennui he feels is not his own.

Like he said, Dream is not without power here.

“I’m sorry love,” Hob chokes out, trying to keep breathing. The weight of this sadness like a dozen bricks piled up on his body like he’s building ground. His lungs won’t expand properly, his throat goes sore, his tongue is so dry it hangs limp in his mouth.

(He wonders briefly if this is how Dream feels all of the time, this ache imbued into his splintered soul, the life-sucking grief that attaches to your spine like a leech.)

“I don’t know what is wrong with me, Hob,” Dream whispers, dropping his head to his knees. “I am trying my hardest to be the King they deserve, but something within me died in that cage. A piece of me got left behind in the rubble and in the ashes, and I cannot ever get it back.”

Hob sits up, and finally, finally allows himself to touch Dream, drawing him into his chest. He immediately melts into the embrace, thin arms wrapping around his naked middle. Carding his hands through Dream’s shock of ebony hair, he presses a kiss against his forehead. “You are so certain everyone expects perfection, but they don’t, love. Especially not after what you went through.”

Dream stays silent, eyes a warm smear against the right collarbone. Hob jostles him a little. “You understand that you’re allowed to grieve right?”

“What good would that do?” Dream says scathingly. “If I allow myself to mourn, if I allow myself to fall down that rabbithole, I will never get out. Humanity has far more use for me unfeeling than feeling entirely too much.”

Hob feels the strange urge to laugh, which would probably be the worst thing to do in this situation, but still, the irony is just so laughable. Dream is every dream that has and will ever be dreamed, and what are dreams for if not for processing the culmination of emotion, knowledge, and happenstance?

Dream is a being made from emotion, and it’s something that he must bear everyday of his eons-long existence. He has to guide the rawest layer of humanity, press it into the palms of his hands and make something out of that bleakness, ignoring his own heart hurting.

Hob wonders what that’s like, to be constantly on the grand cusp of every emotion, to have to contain that within himself, sequester it into a tiny bullet, and bury it somewhere deep beneath the gathered, built-up scar tissue that still aches, still gushes blood sometimes.

Of course Dream is tired. Of course he’s exhausted. He won’t give himself a second to breathe, to sit and think and process it.

All that vivid trauma must rub him absolutely raw, it must cut him to the bone.

“Sweetheart,” Hob murmurs softly, breathing in Dream’s scent. He smells like sex and the ocean in December. “You realize how crazy it is that you won’t give yourself any respite, right? You’re made to help humanity process their daily lives – why won’t you extend that towards yourself?”

“Because I cannot, do you understand Hob Gadling?.” Dream hisses. “I was in that cage for over a century, occupied with nothing but my own thoughts, and you know what I have discovered? I drive myself insane – if I leave myself to grieve, I will think of nothing else but my mistakes, of nothing else but all that I’ve lost –”

There’s defeat in his voice – blatant, and obvious, and there’s not much Hob can do to make it right. He’s only a temporary distraction. Soon, Dream will have to leave again, do his job, even though it’s killing him. Even though all Dream wants is a soft landing spot.

Dream swallows so hard his throat makes an audible click.

“Do you even understand how much I have lost? How much they have ripped from me? Truly?” He whispers, fury swirling in the night-black of those inhuman eyes – his armor, meant to scare off offenders, but Hob pricks right through it. It’s so paper-thin, so surface-level menacing.

And Hob thinks about back to those years in the stews, stinking of sh*t and mud, when he wasn’t even worth the food that pigs eat. Once, he’d been so f*cking hungry he’d stolen a bread from a bakery. They caught him, and flogged him right in the city square. That, and combined with everything else had wrecked him, damaged him beyond repair. He still finds it hard to not hoard his food, to not stuff it in the hollow gaps behind his bed in case he gets hungry.

He thinks about his children, who he had loved so much it ached in his chest, all of them lost to the erosion of time. Their memories nothing more than sand that slips through his fingers when he tries to grasp at the exact slope of Robyn’s nose, the curling strands of his hair, framing his face just so.

In 1943 he kept a kid’s torn skin together with muddied and battlefield-filthied hands, trying to keep his innards from spilling outside his body. He screamed bloody murder for his mummy, he just wanted his mummy, where is his mummy? Mummy is coming soon, Hob had soothed, nearly unable to talk over the cacophony of grenades turning bodies into severed limbs and rifles shooting everything up to high hell. Mummy’s just going out for coffee.

He didn’t look like Robyn, and in all honesty, Hob has forgotten his name, it got swept away in a sea of bullets and blood and battle strategies for the next day, and the weeks after that. But Hob had mourned him all the same, built a make-shift grave just outside of base, two tiny twigs placed in a cross beneath a tree, its leaves twisting out the Summer-y greenness to give way to the sickly Autumn colors. He’s got no idea if the kid would’ve liked it, but it felt right to do.

These are some of the holes – and he’s got many more – in his chest that he can’t fill with anything except time. And then, sometimes, even time isn’t enough.

“You know that I know,” Hob says, feeling strangely stricken – but not like Dream feels, radiating coldness even with the thin barrier of the sweater he’s wearing. Hob shivers in their embrace, the frigidness of him seeping slowly into Hob’s body – a disease, a warning, a threat.

“You know?” Dream asks darkly, irritation bleeding into his tone and he pulls away from Hob’s arms. The inflection on his tongue is mordant, snarling, meant to make Hob feel like a dumb asshole.

But Hob is not easily swayed, not like that, not like earlier years when a raised octave could mean imminent departure – not always, but often enough to fear it.

“Yes,” he says firmly. “I know, and I understand. I’ve been around, love, I know what it’s like to lose everything you ever had.” Hob can’t help but laugh. “Hell, I lose everything every twenty-odd years. There’s only so long before you’re supposed to get wrinkles and grey hairs, you know?”

“That is different, age does not affect me or mine, and thus I cannot lose anything over time.” Dream mutters, and perhaps it is different. Despite all odds, Hob has chosen this life, could retract it if he would so wish, but he doesn’t. He’s not done with living yet, even if that entails a litany of losses carved and sewn into his heart like a poorly done patchwork.

Dream cannot stop being Dream. Dream has to carry it all like some misshapen Atlas, and didn’t, at some point, Atlas’ arms shake?

His friends breathes out bitterly at Hob’s supposed silence, blowing at a lock of hair tickling at the bridge of his nose. “You do not understand, Hob, how could you? You lost everything due to circ*mstance and not enough time. I have lost many a thing due to malice and hatred.” Dream grimaces. “Have I told you that my sibling orchestrated my capture? Just so that they could teach me respect for their realm?”

Well, no. Hob hadn’t exactly known that.

“I-” Hob starts, but Dream interrupts him.

“They hunt me, Hob.” Dream whispers, the boiling fury simmers down to absolute, demolishing sadness, “all of them, they seek to destroy me, to rip me apart, and I am so tired of it.”

Hob stares at him, at his hunched over frame. The sight of him is heartbreaking and renders him speechless in a way he hasn’t been in centuries. He itches to reach out – but Dream suddenly tears away from him, as if moved by strings. He jumps off the bed, turns to face Hob with red-rimmed eyes and sorrow etched into every crease of his face.

He’s leaving his brains supplies helpfully, this is a goodbye

“I’ve lost so much, Hob Gadling,” Dream is fading, transparent in his own skin, unsolid like a flickering candle-flame, a whisper of breath caught in a hard winter breeze. “I do not want to loose anything else.”

And before Hob can react to that, even begin to comprehend that statement, because how f*cking ridiculous is that, Dream is gone in a mist of fine sand, the golden grains circling the place where he had stood only a second ago.

“Dream!” Hob shouts, scrambling off the bed to scoop up the sand, but even that dissolves into nothing but grey dust.

He’s gone.

He’s been gone for months on end now.

It’s fine. Of course it’s fine. This is what Hob signed up for, this is what Hob has known ever since Dream started coming over more often. There will not always be time where I can visit you. My realm and my subjects need me there constantly, Dream had warned.

Hob had made a dismissive wave, pssh, he’d said, I’ve waited for hundreds of years, what are a few months?

Dream had smiled at that, said, what are a few months to a few years, Hob Gadling? I cannot promise you I will not be gone for another hundred years if need be.

Hob had shaken his head, I don’t mind. If I have to, I’ll wait a thousand years for you. Forever, even.

Forever, Dream said, his smile so bright and wide it warmed something cold deep, deep inside of Hob.

Hmm, Hob hummed, for as long as you need.

Only this time, it’s different. There’s not even a glimpse from him in dreams, no peek, no presence, no nothing. As though he’s been abolished from the plane entirely.
Not even Lucienne reaches out to him, no matter how hard he tries to conjure her while dreaming.

Six months go by, dreams are becoming worse and worse by the night – he’s on a boat on a sea he knows he’s never sailed before, the waves mount like a giant, inky black maw, and he instinctively knows the sea, this ocean, wants to swallow him alive. She wants the taste of his human flesh, bury him beneath her ocean floor like a closed oyster, his heart beating in the echoing silence, valuable like a pearl – and because nightmares ran rampant when the sleepy sickness was at its peak, Hob convinces himself Dream’s been captured again.

This does not last, Mad Hettie – the absolute mad lass – stalks into his house on a warm evening in June, calls him a bleedin’ idiot, and makes him make her tea despite the heat.

“There ain’t no sleepy sickness anymore, Hobsie.” She says, when half of her cup is slurped back.

“And?” Hob grumbles, feeling oddly like he’s getting an intervention. An intervention by Mad Hettie, God, what has his life come to?

“That means ‘e’s fine, Hob. Just busy.” She says, her wrinkled mouth smiling a little. He’d ask her how she knows, but he stopped doing that over a century ago. Girls and their tricks, he supposes.

Though Hettie’s reassurance isn’t much, it soothes the niggling feeling of dread in his gut a little. There hasn’t been a Encaphilitis Lethargica case in any of the recent years, nor in recent days. Sure, there are cases of sleepwalkers and insomniacs aplenty, but none of them have carry the signature symptoms.

It’s enough to ease his worries, Dream isn’t torn from his realm, or if he is, he’s at least close by it.

And just like that, it hits September again, seven whole months without Dream. The worry slowly dissipates, and Hob picks his life back up, just as he’s always done. He starts throwing himself in his college work, goes out with coworkers on the weekends, flirts with the old, red-lipsticked sample lady in Tesco, helps carry the groceries for an older man, and babysits the neighbors kids.

Hob’s life slowly fills up again with grocery shopping, feeding the birds at the park, holding babies, grading papers, yelling about shakespeare, and cooking the most extravagant meals for himself. He pretends not to care, and his life is going great!

(But sometimes, Hob opens the door to his darkened apartment with no one waiting for him, and it’s a little too much to bear. On those days, he doesn’t understand how he ever got through entire centuries without him. How he never missed that raspberry mouth before, that sharp smile on his angular features, those starry eyes that regard humanity arrogantly but full of wonder at the same time.

But now he misses them, and he misses them like one would an arm. Besides, Hob’s never done anything half-assed. Why would he? Not when time is an eternal ocean in the cup of his palm, and his love for Dream is deep and wide and overflowing within him like a cup of wine.

Six-hundred-and-seventy years old, and he still hasn’t learned that love is a wound that cuts the deepest. )

Hob isn’t really religious, not anymore, but old habits die hard, and he finds himself in church every Sunday. It’s less of a need to atone for any sins because God knows he won’t ever be able to be absolved, but more because it reminds him, vaguely, of old times.

Of going to mass with his mother, hand in hand, her sharp elbow in his side when he couldn’t sit still on the splintery pews. Then, with Eleanor and Robyn, centuries later. They had gone to large heavenly cathedrals that seemed to breathe in it’s shuddering stillness – reverence and respect was demanded by the very space itself, and Hob had never been one to f*ck with the church (still isn’t) so he gave it readily. He remembers the echoing crowd, filling the hollow gaps between the beams with the solidifying song in their throats, their joyous hymns lined into the seam of their tongues. Psalms Hob used to sing with Robyn before bed, the same psalms Eleanor sang as she pushed out nothing but blood. Her voice had been thin, and she begged for her mum, and then sang, sang, sang, until the lily-white shape of her voice took over the coppery smell of blood.

Worship is innate, Hob has found out over the years. It thrills and thrums in veins, cloying like thrombosis. He has seen too many deaths not to know. To not understand.

(Do you? Do you?

And he does. f*ck, he does)

He clutches the rosary in his palm – he had to sell Eleanor’s for a scrap of food. It had been passed down from mother to daughter, and was passed down from Eleanor to Robyn when she died. It still feels like one of the worst things he’s ever done in his life – brings it absently to his mouth, feels beads running through his fingers like a smooth river.

There’s no mass today. Hob missed it, but there are plenty of people here still. Some are sitting in the pews, like he is, some are roaming around, and some are lighting candles. Maybe he should light one too, but he doesn’t know for what. He hasn’t prayed to God in years and instead devoted psalms to a skinny neck and kissed holy hymns into a petal red mouth with unholy vigor.

He smiles to himself, the beads dig into his skin uncomfortably – Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I worshipped a man, no, a god, on my knees and I enjoyed it – and does the sign of the cross. He kisses the base of the rosary, polished and shining in the ever moving shadows of color. It catches in Hob’s watch like a chain of twisting gold, blinding and binding him like a mare.

“It’s almost funny, y’know,” he says, eyes unwavering from where they’re staring at the resin stained glass, spilling amber-colored light into the soft dark that swirls through the beams upholding the roof. It paints the floor a reddish-gold.

Dream sits next to him, as though he’s always been there, and never left Hob’s side at all. He looks saint-like, here in the church. He’s forgone his black coat for a dark blue winter coat Hob’s been missing since October last year, and his eyes are starry and reverent like he understands the gravity of where they are. He does, he does, Hob knows he does.

“Yes?” He says, and it’s low and husky, and Hob missed the sound of it so incredibly much.

“That you show up here, now, after almost a year. No message or note or dream telling me how you are, where you were, when you would come back. But nothing. I got nothing.” Hob hisses angrily, and it’s poison in his saliva glands, pooling in the dip of his tongue.

“I worried you.” Dream’s voice is soft, lacking his usual reverberating cadence.

“Yes,” Hob says, forlorn, “yes you did. I thought you weren’t coming back.”

Dream shakes his head. “It was not my intention to worry you, my friend.” His hand is cold where it rests on Hob’s knee. It’s meant to comfort, but the touch is hesitant, as if he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing. “I needed to think, Hob. I needed time.”

Hob brings the beads to his mouth, imagines Dream’s lips in their place. Forgive me Father for I have sinned, he thinks, though the thought is too pleasant, too good, to be anything but sinful.

“And I’m willing to give you time, but you can’t leave me hanging like this. You understand that right?” Hob asks quietly. And now he does look at Dream, who meets his gaze with tremulous eyes – so blue that they’re black. Whiskey light glitters back at him within the vast sky of Endless dark, and Hob has to swallow. He’s thinner again, his cheek bones protrude like his skin is a garment he pulled on too tight.

Hob touches the rosary against Dream’s knuckles, the wood almost a stark brown against the transparent complexion. He doesn’t know what he expected Dream to do, hiss back like a vampire, cradle his burnt hand to his chest like a vexed demon – but he expected more than his blank face, watching with barely contained disinterest as Hob trails the crucifix over the sculpted lines of his fingers.

They haven’t really talked about what this is, and Hob doesn’t think he wants to have the ‘what are we’ talk in a literal church, and neither does Dream, he thinks, judging his ever-stoic silence on the matter.

“Will you just promise me to let me know the next time you leave for literal months? I get scared, you know? Thought you wouldn’t wanna vist me anymore.”

The church smells like candle-wax and the pungent odor of leather bibles. He’s hot in his jacket, but it’s too much hassle to take it off.

Dream licks his lips slowly, and to anyone else it’s anything but lewd, but Hob knows, knows Dream, knows Dream never does anything without deliberation. His eyes turn towards Hob. He’s hungry, and Hob is chosen as the whole cour.

Hob knocks their shoulders together. “Dream?”

Dream’s gaze remains unwavering, and once upon a time Hob would’ve found it intimidating, the display of power and finality and the strange innate knowledge this man is more predator than friendly, more dangerous than a cutting knife flying at a hundred miles an hour. But now nothing is the same. Hob has loved him through the throes of desperation and sorrow, and though it will never make him less formidable, it makes Hob less scared.

In the staring match that ensues, Hob wins.

“I will, I apologize for worrying you so.”

Which is the best he’s going to get. Hob knows he should probably be more mad, but Jesus said forgive and forget, and Hob’s not about to question Jesus in his own house, thank you very much.

“Okay, you’re forgiven.” Hob nods, pushing the back of his hand against Dream’s knee, ”I hope you didn’t put too much work on Lucienne’s shoulders.”

Dream puffs out a breath of air, “I did not, in fact, I took over all of her work, except for her library, and she got irritated with me. She told me I was upsetting the Dreaming and punishing myself and you by osmosis.”

“Lucienne, as always, was right.” Hob bumps their shoulders.

Dream smiles gently up at him.

“Listen, Dream. I know you’re scared of losing me, but you won’t, okay? I’m always gonna be your friend, and there’s nothing that’s gonna stop me from being with you.”

To Hob’s horror, Dream’s eyes fill up with star-glazed tears, slipping out of the corners and rolling over his sallow cheeks in a smooth, burning trickle.

“Oh no, no, no, Dream,” Hob wraps an arm around Dream’s shoulder and dabs at his burning-wet cheeks, “don’t cry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I apologize, Hob.” He says with a soft smile, sniffling wetly, “it has been a long while since someone has cared for me so vividly.”

The casual admittance of that fact breaks Hob’s heart in pieces. It’s not like Dream has no one, because he has many, many people and manner of beings that love him, but none love him in a way he needs, none of that inherent love saved him from his prison, and none of that love saved him from himself.

“Not even your sister?” Hob asks.

Dream smiles bitterly. “She cannot be around always, Hob. She has her realm, as do I.”

“I’m sorry.” Hob says, earnestly, “it must be hard.”

His lover gifts him a genuine lift of the corner of his mouth, “It is our way of things, my dearest companion.”

“It’s not going to be our way okay?” Hob takes his hand in his own, squeezing around the bony knuckles, “all I’m asking of you is to communicate – if you’re scared of something, or dealing with something that concerns me, please tell me? Running from it does not help.”

Dream’s jaw mulls like he’s got to think on it, but he nods. “Very well, I promise, my friend.”

“Good,” Hob says, and they really need to get out of the church so they can go to Hob’s house and desecrate every inch and corner of it.

Instead. He remains seated, thigh to thigh with Dream, afraid for some reason that if he gets up now, Dream will evaporate in sand. He stares at the beads slipping through his fingers.

“Are you religious?” Hob asks him, then.

Dream’s lips open, move, as though to form words, but then fall still again. He looks ahead, and following his gaze, Hob sees he’s staring at the candles. The flames move together in a sea of reds and oranges, some vicious, others soft.

Eventually, Dream’s answer is an eloquent, graceful shrug.

“I suppose I must be,” he muses cautiously, “though I am sometimes more one than the other. It depends on the time of year.”

“Oh,” Hob says. “What about when you’re in a church. Are you catholic now, here?”

The question brings a smile to his face. Hob missed that smile. He wants to kiss it, feel the plush touch underneath his own lips. He’s tired of kissing the polished frame of the crucifix in an attempt to feel the same completion. “I am as much a Catholic as you are.”

And he’s Catholic, in the sense that he’s not at all. It’s more of an afterthought, church hasn’t felt like church for a long time, and when Hob looks at Dream it’s like he’s found his own altar all over again.

He doesn’t know how to answer. He rubs the beads.

Dream places a hand over his wrist, stilling him in his fidgeting. “Will you accompany me to your home?” He asks, “we have much to speak about.”

“Speak?” Hob asks, deadpan.

Dream’s mouth curls into an open smile, pressing the tip of his tongue against the ridges of his unnaturally white teeth. He’s eyed hungrily, and it only solidifies the fact. Hob is a gazelle and Dream is the lion.

“We are in a church, Hob.” Dream says, huskily, mouth so close to his ear he can feel the tip of his tongue flicking his earlobe. “We are expected to have a shred of decorum in the house of God.”

“Hmm,” Hob says, and smiles up at him. “I want to argue with you, but honestly, I just want to kiss you.”

Dream curls his fingers around Hob’s hand, the tips of them touching the rosary. Holy, and absolute.

“Let us go, then.”

Hob is a useless worshipper, carried only by his devotion. His desire makes him rise to his feet and Dream’s hand leads him away like a grounding anchor – that night, Hob kisses prayers into the folds of his skin and loves him like he once loved God. Endless, and undeniably grand.

In the kitchen, Dream stands there like a stringed-puppet, a statuesque marble piece stilled in motion and night-black, the alabaster set of his jaw chiseled like it’s drawn on. He looks uncaring, aloof, like he doesn’t quite understand what he, of such status, is doing in the kitchen of a human.

But Hob knows that’s not the case, watches Dream as Dream watches him, observing his cooking like a child who has never seen it before, wondrous fascination and maybe a little bit awe-struck at being present for something this mundane, this normal. There’s a twinkle in his eyes, a singular point of heat and light that siphons all the light from the surrounding lamps, leaving them dim and flickering.

He’s making a cake for the birthday of one of his students, to share and pass around during the lecture – he used to make cakes often when he worked as a chef, and the delight for it never truly waned, the preparation (he likes to make it from scratch, still revels in the way he can make something out of nothing) the smell as it bakes in the oven, wafting around the house, every room ensconced in the scent of autumn afternoons and flour and baked eggs. Less delightful, the clean-up later.

Dream asked him, when he was putting out his ingredients, why he did it, and Hob shrugged, said. “It’s a fun way to connect with my students.”

And it is, and more often than not, long after they’ve graduated, come running up to him and say, “Remember when you baked me a cake for my birthday?” and he’ll say yes, because he remembers, remembers how some of the students needed that extra care and love, and they will know that he cared about them, and in turn that they cared about him.

(Six-hundred-and-something years later, he’s still afraid of being forgotten.)

Hob cracks the eggs over the bowl, drops them in. Dream watches with interest as the yolk breaks apart on the floury substance, making a soupy mixture, yellowing and droopy.

He turns to his lover, with the beacons of light in his eyes, and asks, “do you wanna stir?”

A common question, frequently denied, for all that Dream loves watching him cook, he’s never wanted to help, satisfied by just observing, like he eats nutrients through his pores like a sea-sponge. Maybe he does, he’s Endless after all, and there are endless possibilities.

Today, however, he must be intrigued, because he slinks gracefully over to Hob. He knows how to stir, he’s seen it many times, and thus Hob hands the mixer over and Dream wraps his slender fingers around the device.

“You gotta stir until it’s completely smooth,” he says, “we don’t want any chunks.”

“I know how to stir,” Dream says, a little affronted, and then proceeds to mix the batter for approximately twenty seconds before he announces his arm sore.

“Baby,” Hob laughs as he takes the mixer from Dream’s hand. Their fingers brush, and a little hush falls over the kitchen, drowning out the pallid rumble of the cars outside – He can feel his heartbeat in his throat, suddenly, feeling raw and naked, like a tender wound underneath his touch.

Dream looks at him, with eyes that shine like the sun, and there’s that age-old feeling again. The one he used to have before they became more than friends. Vulnerability, desire and wanting. Weary of longing, and yet all the more hungry for it. There’s remembrance of that cold-shock mouth against his, and nothing has ever felt so right in his long life.

Hob has a right lust for life, a hungering love for all that it has to offer, all that it has to bring, but he adores Dream in a way beyond love – worship, maybe. The thudding of his heartbeat wraps around them like a membrane. Only torn when Hob looks back at his sandish-yellow, chunky batter.

He stirs the rest of it himself until it’s smooth and shimmering in the reflection of the white pin-pricks in Dream’s eyes and pours it into the cake tin, sleeks it with his butter knife, and carts it off into the oven.

Picking the stirrers back up to wash it off in the sink, he suddenly stops, and turns to Dream who stands there, almost hopeful, holding it out. “Do you want to taste it?” He asks.

Dream raises his eyebrows, scruncing up his nose like a little bunny as he stares at the batter-covered stirrer. “Why on earth would I want to do that?” He responds, like Hob asked him to lick poison.

He laughs, thrusts it into Dream’s hand. “Trust me,” he says, “it’s good.”

Dream is apprehensive as he brings it very hesitantly, very gingerly, to his lips. The tiniest tip of his pinkened tongue darts out, licking off a tiny drop.

Then his eyes go wide, and that apprehensiveness leaks away as if flour through a sieve. He licks it again, a little more this time.

“This is quite delightful,” he says, smiling wide, like a child who has never really known love before, and Hob feels soft, gentle heat blossom up underneath his breastbone.

Dream licks it again, and a tiny hint of batter gets left behind on his bottom-lip. There’s nothing left of that uncaring, aloofness, just the giddiness of new things and the hope for a better tomorrow. He’s innocent like this, lily-shapen, soft and milky, like a baby. Hob wants to wrap him up in his arms and keep him in his heart forever.

Hob thumbs it away, smiles softly. “Yeah.” he murmurs, leaning in to kiss the taste of batter from his lips. “It is.”

Dream kisses him wetly and hungrily into his bedroom, his nails raking over his chest like talons wanting to rip open the frail, bare skin. Hob wouldn’t mind that one bit, wants to shed his skin like a curtain and let him into the place behind his ribs. Have Dream take up permanent residence there.

It’s one of those nights – where he seeks grounding touch, where he wants every inch of him kissed and licked and caressed and loved. Sometimes, it’s not enough, and sometimes it is. Tonight it’s not nearly enough. His eyes are flickering like flash-lights on low battery, his form is transparent like a ghost, the space between sentences. He lives in the dusk and dawn gaps of life – there, and not there at all.

Hob grasps him like a china doll, like his precious tea-cups, holds him like a child might hold an insect wanting to escape, in cupped palms, with soft fingers and the firmness of all that Hob’s ever learned of strength. He’s not dumb, knows that it’s not about sex, knows that it’s finding refuge in the familiarity of his comfort, consolation in the never-changing pillars Hob’s made of.

Afterwards they live in the deafening silence of shame, more Dream’s than Hob’s. It thickens the air with the sweet-sour fog of regret and denial and the weary-wanting of Dream’s never-still mind. He’ll sit there, on the edge of Hob’s couch that’s Dream’s designated seat, veins pulsing blueish black underneath the transparency of his skin like a cloud, staring at an unfixed point in the wall, eyes blackened and terrifying.

Sometimes, as Hob watches him do this, watches him go beyond, he wonders if Dream’s still iin the cage, staring at his captors with his determined resolve of his stoic silence. There exists no here and now – this is something Hob knows intimately, knows that the past is something the future lives and breathes like air. It’s inescapable, inevitable. Your body may have left, may have survived, but what of the mind?

What of the mind?

“Dream?” he asks, and it shatters the fragile glass of silence they’re shrouded in – Dream’s shoulder shake like he’s being pulled in like a gunshot. His eyes are soulless pits, and Hob forces himself to not look away as they land upon him, filled with a burning sense of otherness and all things human are not meant to see.

Dream’s voice shakes like thunder, and it makes Hob nauseous. “How do you do it?” He asks, rumbling through the spaces of his bones with the mighty roar of a river, his mouth unmoving. Everything quivers, and Hob doesn’t know if it’s him or the world around him.

“What?” Hob begs, “how do I do what?”

But Dream already looks away again. The shaking of the house stops and there is only the faint tremor that runs along the knobby spine of Hob’s back.

Like this, Dream’s a broken limb – a shadow of his former self, living his own past, digging his humiliation and regret into his arm like pieces of jagged glass. Is it self-harm when the only wound you dig is your empty heart?

He doesn’t cry, and perhaps that’s what scares him the most.

Morning afters are Hob’s favorite. They’re soft and silent and full with adoration of the other. Hob will cook, and Dream will sit on the counter, bare feet dangling against the cupboard as they talk about everything and nothing.

Today is not one of those mornings. Adoration is replaced by introspection – they had a fight last night, (something stupid, really) and though they made it up with each other, Hob’s still not sure why Dream stayed. Dream is a petty creature, even on his good days.

“I thought you’d leave during the night,” Hob admits, bacon and eggs frying in the pan underneath him. He pokes at them with a spatula. “I thought I was going to wake up to an emtpy bed.”

Dream furrows his eyebrows from where he’s leaned against the counter, clutching a cup of hot tea in his hands. “And why would I just leave?”

Hob looks up from his eggs to eye his friend. The way he’s still dressed in just underwear and a sweater almost makes him look like a human, now that the night has faded from his eyes, leaving them a cosmic, glittering blue. The pale thighs that stick out from underneath his boxers are white and flawless. The marks that Hob imprinted with his mouth and fingers are no longer there.

“I don’t know. Maybe you were still angry.”

Dream raises his eyebrows, taking a sip of his tea. “Am I missing something? I thought we had already hashed it out.”

Hob shrugs. “We did. I just didn’t expect you to stick around.”

Dream rolls his eyes, “I am not just going to leave without saying goodbye. You never know when it’s the last time.”

“You say this to me, an immortal,” Hob says.

“Time is fickle, Hob Gadling. A moment of absence can turn into an eternity of it.” He swallows, a little too hard, “you know I was captured.”

Hob nods.

“And during that time, I kept thinking about you, about what I said, and how much I regretted them.” He says. “It doesn’t always work, but I try leaving on good terms – as I said, you never know when it’s the last time you can speak to someone.”

Hob chuckles. “Damn, I never knew you to be so emotionally thoughtful.”

Irritated, Dream looks at him. “I am very emotionally thoughtful.”

“You are,” Hob soothes, “I’m just glad to hear it. Makes me feel secure that you’re not gonna up and leave me after every little squabble.”

“I wouldn’t,” Dream says, “or well, not anymore. At the very least, I’d wake you up if I had to return to the Dreaming at once.”

Hob smiles at him. The bacon hisses. “You would?”

“Of course.” Dream lifts his head up, and Hob can see the shadow of a hickey he must’ve forgotten to fade away placed right underneath the skin of his ear. It satisfies a deep, crazy part of him. It’s not like he wants to possess him, that he wants his body to be exclusively his, but it feels good to know that Dream is his to mark up.

“Admiring me?” Dream inquiries, voice dropping to a sultry low. He places his half-empty mug of tea on the counter – a subtle move that isn’t subtle at all – and stares at Hob from underneath his long eyelashes. His mouth parted, but tipped up into a faint hint of a smile. God, he’s gorgeous.

Hob exhales a breathy laugh, placing his tongue against the seam of his bottom lip. “I mean, you are pretty handsome.”

“Handsome?” Dream inches closer. Hob turns the stove off. f*ck breakast.

“Hmm,” Hob turns to face Dream fully, just an inch shorter than himself. “Very handsome.” He reaches out a hand to pull Dream’s collar further down, staring at the purple-blue love-bite marring his otherwise perfect skin. His eyes dart back to meet Dream’s as he grows hard. “Especially like this.”

Dream tilts his head to the side, playfully raising his eyebrows. “All disheveled, and marked up?” He sets his hands on Hob’s hips and pulls him flush against his own growing erection. Hob tips his head back and groans at the unfurling, hot pleasure blooming deep down in his gut as Dream wraps his arms around Hob’s neck to press even closer.

“Completely and thoroughly wrecked by your body, and yours alone?” He whispers into Hob’s mouth, his smile ever so wicked and delicious. Hob tries to nip at Dream’s plush lips, but Dream turns his head away, and Hob’s mouth smushes against his hollow, cold cheek.

“Bastard,” Hob gasps, and Dream lets out an evil little laugh, one that knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Would it delight you to know I can still feel your presence?” He whispers, tongue flicking against Hob’s earlobe, “that I remember how truly astonishing you felt inside of me last night?”

Hob’s throat goes dry as a thick wave of molten pleasure washes over his body. “Dream,” he moans, the name tumbling from his wanting lips like a desperate attempt for salvation. “Kiss me,” he begs, like a hopeless addict. Is ready to kneel at his feet. To kiss his ankles in a true act of worship.

Bow for no one but God, but f*ck, isn’t his lover glorious?

“You take good care of him, won’t you?” Lucienne asks him. They’re cleaning up the library, or well, Lucienne was cleaning up, and demanded Hob help her. Dream has long since f*cked off to do whatever that guy does when he’s not with Hob.

“Hm?” Hob puts a book in the wrong place, and the shelf, annoyingly, vomits it back out. He glares at the offending shelf, and wonders if its wrong to fight a book case when it burps antagonizingly.

“That’s supposed to go there,” Lucienne points at a few shelves below, and with a stern glare from here, the shelf goes sweet as a doll. Hob puts the book on the appointed shelf, and reaches for another book when Lucienne stops him.

“What?” Hob asks.

“Don’t hurt him.” She says, her pointed ears flicking backwards like a threatened cat.

Hob blinks. “Loosh,” he starts, “are you giving me the shovel-talk? You know we’re not like… together- together.”

At this, Lucienne drops his hand, throws her head back, and starts cackling.

Turning back to the books, Hob exclaims, “you’re being ridiculous.”

Lucienne doesn’t stop laughing.

Hob used to have a fireplace, three houses before this one. It had been old-fashioned one, or well, whatever they called old-fashioned these days. It had been installed by the previous owners, a vitreous enameled cast iron fireplace, dotted an ugly beige Hob later painted over white.

He’s not going to lie, he scarcely misses fireplaces, likes central heating better (really, what an invention!) but on days like these, he rather misses the ambiance the warm crackling of the flames could bring. He could put up a youtube video of a hearth crackling away on his TV, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Time has waded into the deep end of March – April is already to be spotted on the other side like a cancer, a tumor that will grow and grow into the malicious hatred summer brings – the world is raging and storming, grieving for something Hob does not know she lost. The rain lashes against the window like self-flagellation, almost drowning out Dream’s low, lovely voice as he reads out-loud from The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“In the center of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary beauty –” Dream intones, the rumbling of his voice drilling into Hob’s body as he lays sidled up against Dream’s shoulder. They’re sharing the comforter Hob ripped off his bed, wrapped warmly around the two of them. Two mugs of tea stand steaming on coasters on the coffee-table.

It’s shockingly, disgustingly domestic, and as Hob closes his eyes to drink in the pleasure of listening to Dream read, he finds there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

He dreams of golden eyes, sometimes, and they spill like the sun over wet pavement.

Vaguely, he thinks they ought to be beautiful, but they aren’t. The gold spools like a thread and it’s a noose around Hob’s neck. It smothers, and it terrifies. They circle Hob like a predator, and he’s left a vulnerable, broken-necked prey.

He fears it. Them. The Golden eyes. His terror something born only from primal gut instinct.

Beware, do not tread any further.

There is danger ahead.

“I know we don’t really do like.. dates,” Hob starts casually one evening, three fingers deep, “but I was thinking that it would be kind of nice to go on one.”

Dream is absolutely not interested in anything he has to say, upper body stretching out like a cat as Hob fingers him hard and deep. “Don’t stop, please.” He moans, low and husky.

“I think it could be fun, you know? we could go to a restaurant, or the movies maybe,” Hob says, “Ooooh, what about the museum?”

“Hob.” Dream snaps, effectively cutting through the stream of words. “Less talking, if you please.”

“Right, right,” Hob says, focusing his efforts on pleasing Dream, “on it boss.”

Dream gives him a look over his shoulder. “... Please do not call me that.”

“Mmmm,” Hob grins, “so bossy.”

A pause. “I will leave your bed, Hob Gadling.”

The tone is teasing, but Hob still has to give him a little reproach. He snakes his arm around his middle, hand stroking down the v of his pubic bone until he has his co*ck wrapped in a firm grip. Dream almost shivers into collapse, but Hob holds him steady.

“What did you say, love?”

“Hnngh,” Dream heaves, black hair sleek and moon-lit curled over his temples. “I confess I cannot - ah - remember.”

Hob hides his laughter in Dream’s sweater.

“Anyways, we were talking about dates.” Hob says, running the towel along Dream’s naked thighs.

Dream’s eyes flutter shut as Hob cleans him gently, hands on opposite sides of his marble-cut jaws, pale wrists snared by the long sleeves of Hob’s (borrowed, but most likely stolen) sweater. “Were we.”

“We could go to a restaurant, or the movies.” Hob grins, “we could go clubbing. Though, the last time I went clubbing someone vomited on my shoes.”

Dream’s eyes crack open, flat and horrified. “Pardon?”

Hob cackles. “Fancy going?”

Comically large eyes stare up at him, bulging out of their sockets like Hob suggested they go murder a small child.

“I do not think that’s such a good idea.”

“Oh, because of your realm?”

“No, dear, for my sanity.”

Hob rolls his eyes, throwing the towel in the laundry bin in the far corner of his room. He plucks out two sets of boxers from his closet and chucks one of them at Dream who catches it with deathly precision. Once Hob has shimmied the underwear onto his body, he flops down onto the bed with Dream, the mattress bouncing underneath their shared weight.

“C’mon, it could be fun. When’s the last time you went on a date?”

“I do not go on dates, Hob Gadling,” Dream says warily, “I am King of Dreams and Nightmares and as such I do not have time for such frivolities.”

“So sitting with me at the pub is not a date?”

Dream turns his head, expression entirely unreadable. His lips move – pursing, as if he, for once, cannot find the words.

“They are not dates.” He says carefully, words resounding like he gave them the utmost consideration, as though they are a difficult mathematical theory, unsolvable, amd unmanageable. “They are friendly encounters.”

And it’s true, it’s true what he says, they are friendly encounters, because him and Dream are friends, best friends, but Hob is so f*cking done with being just friends, is so done with intimate sex and morning-afters and kissing the batter off Dream’s lips and holding his hand on the couch when he can’t ground himself, is so done for it all to mean absolutely nothing.

He wants to draw Dream into his arms, bite the words ‘mine’ into his skin and brand them there with his lips – there’s the horrid desire to have, to keep. And he can’t keep on pretending, he can’t keep going on like there’s nothing here to gain when Hob has so much love spilling from his hands and Dream is a white canvas.

“Dream, love,” Hob says softly, thumbing at Dream’s hipbone, “what are we doing? Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

His lover swallows, casts his gaze towards the ceiling. “I do not know what you are referring to.”

Hob laughs, humorless, gestures between them. “We’ve spent so many years dancing around each other, avoiding what we could’ve had for decades, and even now, though I have you in my arms, I can still not have you in full, nor you me.”

Sighing, he holds Dream closer – still ever so scared he’ll up and leave whenever Hob so much breathes at him the wrong way – hooking his legs over those bony knees, digging into the meat of his calves.

“Aren’t you tired of this, Dream? Aren’t you so f*cking tired of this f*cking cat and mouse game?” Hob presses his cheek against Dream’s shoulder, nuzzling at the edge of his marble-cut jaw with his nose. “Don’t you want this with me?”

Dream is silent, and Hob soldiers on bravely.

“I know I do, I want to do everything I couldn’t do before. I want to go on silly little dates with you, like cat cafe's, I want to hold your hand in the streets, I want everyone to see who captured my heart. I want –”

Hob swallows hard, meeting Dream’s unfathomable eyes. “ – I want so much, Dream, and I want it all with you.”

For a few seconds, there’s unbearable silence. Hob feels his anxiety swell like a wound, open and gaping and terror-inducing. He doesn’t dare breathe in the face of heavy judgement, of rejection, perhaps, in the next few seconds.

But any nervousness he had at all is killed dead swiftly with an arrow straight to the heart.

The corners of Dream’s mouth start to dance, his gorgeous face tender and warm with adoration plain in his eyes. His slender hand coming to rest just a few inches beneath his left collarbone. Hob can feel the drum of his heart beating against the softness of Dream’s palm, giddy and loud, like Dream’s touch is enough to draw his heart out through the very gaps of his ribcage.

Hob’s heart will always be a bird that kills itself for love.

“I captured your heart?” He asks, lowly, like falling rain.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, Duck.” Hob whispers, covering Dream’s hand with his own.

Dream inhales, and Hob feels the mountain-thick rumble of it throughout his entire body like little aftershocks. “So I will not, then,” he says, and their eyes meet, divinity and humanity like two fixed points in time that shouldn’t exist, but that’s destiny, isn’t it? Here they are, and here they will always be.

“Dream,” he breathes.

The pleading question in his voice is painfully obvious – what are we? And if we are nothing, can we create ourselves up from the ashes? Make something out of the nothing-something that has plagued us for decades?

There’s a pause, wherein Dream tucks Hob close to his thin body, almost like he’s trying to melt into him like candle-wax. Hob sticks a hand underneath Dream’s sweater and gently strokes over the smooth hairless skin pulled over his belly with the flat of his palm.

“Hob –” His voice wavers like he has to swallow around words he’s unsure on how to say. Hob burrows into the crook of his neck, pressing a butterfly kiss against the underside of his jaw.

“Yes?”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve done this –” Dream mutters into his hair, thick and laced with experienced hurt “ – since I’ve properly courted someone. Most of my… Entanglements… ended in misery and pain. I do not wish to experience any of it again.”

He removes his hand out from underneath Dream’s warm sweater, pressing both of his palms on either opposite side of Dream’s face and lifts himself chest to chest. Dream stares at him with those bottomless eyes, in which whole nations and responsibilities rest. He angles their faces together so their noses brush.

“Let’s just take the chance anyway,” Hob whispers, caressing Dream’s sharp cheekbone with the tips of war-built fingers. Dream inhales sharply. “Pain is inevitable, but so is this.” He dips down, lips brushing Dream’s in a quite-not kiss. “Please, don’t deny me your love. Not after all these years.”

Dream’s hand reaches up, slender, unworked, and swipes at Hob’s bottom-lip with an elegant thumb. His own mouth parts and Hob stares at the glistening pink tip of his tongue, caged behind glittering white teeth.

“Is that your truly your wish?” He rasps hoarsely, “I could hurt you, Hob Gadling. A thousand times over, and a thousand times more. Tell me, my love, is that really what you want?”

“I want you.” Hob says, foolhardy in his resolve. His mind is of steel, his soul has never been so determined. “I don’t care about the pain, or the misery. I just care about you.”

“Hob..” His blue eyes blaze with a desire so steep it fills the air like thick, swirling fog. It seeps deeply into Hob’s bone-marrow, into the narrow pathways of his veins, it nestles into the hearts of his bloodcells, sweeping through his body like a vigorous wave of wanton, and almost crazed, need.

“All I ever dream of is to call you mine.” Hob nips at Dream’s lips, brushing them together so tantalizingly close it’s almost torturous to not kiss him fully.

Dream closes his eyes like Hob rubbed a painful bruise. His chin tips towards the ceiling in a particular reverend way.

“Then make me yours.” He whispers, the beauty of it like a bible verse on his tongue. He’s particularly holy – here in the semi dark of Hob’s bedroom, alight in the single flush of streetlight.

God, it’s going to hurt, Hob can feel it. But to love is to hurt and Hob knows this. To love an endless is even worse. It’s been a tragedy written in thousand poems and in a thousand songs before this. Yet, Hob can never stop being addicted to his lovers. To their breath and their hair and their hands and their bodies and their souls and their hearts.

Eleanor, Audrey, Gwen. They are wounds open and gaping in his chest.

And maybe someday soon, Dream will be added to that list.

And maybe someday soon, he’ll be added to Dream’s list.

He supposes this is their eternal curse, their come-uppance for a life not rightfully lived. For all their mistakes.

Hob can never find the brakes before the train crashes.

And despite knowing all of this; Dream crashes into him anyway, and Hob shivers against the feel of Dream’s body moving against his.

Their lips catch in an open-mouthed, wet kiss. A sealing of their hearts, of their souls. Their palms lace, cold and warm and tender in the face of such rough passion.

He tastes like prayers and odes to long lost Gods. Like poetry out of books weary with age. Like holiness, sacrilege and salvation. He tastes like dreams, Endless, and yet, so fragile.

When Hob comes inside of him it’s benediction at the tips of his fingers, bruising into that lithe, star-lit body of his.

Come morning, the marks remain.

Hob checks his watch, 5:30 PM. The reservation is made for 6 PM, the Uber is going to be here any minute and Dream is still not here yet. He sighs annoyedly, getting up for the umpteenth time to check the straightness of his tie in the mirror in the hallway.

Like the previous three times before this, it’s still ironed straight against his chest. Hob breathes out a nervous puff of air, thinking he might’ve shaved as he moves his hand over the five ‘o clock shadow dappled onto his jaw. Dream prefers the stubble, and Hob likes the redness it causes between his pale thighs, but he can’t deny it makes him look a little undignified.

He flattens a stubborn strand of hair, sighing at the image the mirror presents, and then promptly has a heart attack when he sees Dream leering over his shoulder.

“Jesus christ!” He swears, and swats Dream’s chest out of pure instinct.

Dream gaze follows the hand as it falls back down to Hob’s side, and grins crookedly. “Not quite.”

“One day I’m going to give the ghost forreal,” Hob admonishes, “Your sister’s gonna come and be all like, how is that even possible? And then you have to tell her about you scaring me.”

Dream raises a single, amused eyebrow. “You bear my sister’s mark, my beloved –”

Oh, Beloved. Hob absolutely swoons everytime Dream addresses him by it. A warm rush of affection flooding beneath his breastbone and he grins so widely it interrupts Dream’s talking.

“You were kidding.” He states.

“That, and I’m just ridiculously happy to see you.” Hob smiles, and Dream’s mouth purses in that way when he has to smile but tries not to. “C’mon, give me a kiss.”

Dream steps happily forward, working his arms around Hob’s shoulders, leaning in to press a lingering, chaste kiss on his lips. When they pull apart, the corners of Dream’s mouth dance. “You look positively dashing, my love.”

(My love. Oh my God, Hob’s never going to survive this night.)

Hob looks pretty simple, actually. The restaurant they’re going to is pretty fancy, what, with its two week waiting list, so he’d dug up a Sunday-suit, all black, with a navy blue pocketsquare and a navy blue tie, to match.

In fact, the one that looks dashing is Dream. It’s as though he stepped straight off the cover of Vogue. The suit he wears is all black (of course) with a white dress shirt, coiffed pants, golden buttons, and loafers. There’s no tie, and his dress shirt is unbuttoned down to his collarbone, the lick of skin showing is like drugs to Hob, his mouth starts watering, and his knees start buckling.

He looks absolutely jaw-droppingly, stunningly, gorgeous.

Dream smirks, makes a mocking little twirl. “Am I to your liking?”

“Oh my god,” Hob groans, “you have no idea how much. If we didn’t have plans right now I’d –”

The phone ringing interrupts, very rudely, Hob might add, but the uber is parked outside, waiting for them.

“You could cancel him?” Dream suggests slyly, hand brushing over the soft of his silk tie.

“Hah, you wish.” Hob says flatly, and takes Dream’s hand in his own, secretly very giddy at being allowed that now.

The ride is largely uneventful, even though Dream spends the whole time insisting they could just teleport with his sand. Hob just tells him no, because he’s teleported with Dream’s sand before and it left him nauseous for days on end – later, when Hob had been throwing up like a mad man, the idiot told him, yeah, humans aren’t really meant to travel with the sand, and Hob, sick as a dog, had exclaimed, why would you even take me then, oh my god! – and Dream slumps back into his seat, petulant, like a giant child.

They arrive just five minutes before the reservation goes in, Hob thanks the driver, and starts herding Dream towards the entrance of the restaurant. Dream lets himself get pushed willingly, eyes wide as they take in all of the scenery.

“Have you never been in a restaurant?” Hob asks him, a little taken-aback by his reaction, because surely Dream in his eons-long existence must’ve been at one point and –

“No,” Dream answers, the tips of his mouth jutting upwards. “I have seen them in dreams, but I have never actually sought one out.”

Hob is…. surprised as he is unsurprised. It makes sense, Dream never really liked visiting the waking world all that much, and hadn’t really a reason to before Hob. Sadly, this means he only has experience with the White Horse and the New Inn, which is unacceptable, really.

Hob is so ready to baptise Dream in the world of amazing restaurants and cafe’s. Oh god, he’s so excited about this.

“Next time we go on a date, we’re going to a chinese restaurant. The dim sum there is to f*cking die for.”

Dream stares at him. “Dim sum?” He repeats, lips moving over the syllables like he’s holding a potato between his teeth.

“Yes,” Hob says, and they join the line in front of the check in.

“Good evening,” The seater-lady says when it’s their turn, a welcoming, red-lipsticked smile on her face.

“Good evening,” Hob greets. “I have a reservation under the name Gardner?”

“Right you are sir,” She says, her smile never leaving as she punches at the keyboard, her eyes scanning the screen of the computer. It takes a little long, and Hob sways from one leg to the other. Dream is utterly disinterested in the conversation, looking idly around him.

“Um.” She starts. “There’s no reservation under that name, sir.”

“No Robb Gardner?” Hob asks, and the girl punches the keyboard again.

“No sir.” She says apologetically. “You’re really not in our system.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hob scoffs, “I made the reservation three weeks ago.”

The girl’s mouth twists downwards, her feet scuffle underneath the desk. “I don’t know,” she says nervously, “something must’ve gone wrong. Did you make your reservation online or by call?”

“I called,” Hob answers, awkwardly conscious of the line growing behind him and Dream.

“Ah,” She says, and types something in. “Yeah, I really can’t find you. I think they might’ve forgotten to put you in the system. I’m terribly sorry, sir.”

“How can they just forget to put you in the system?” Hob asks, trying not to be biting. This girl is only doing her job, and it’s not her fault, but Hob had wanted this evening, their first real (or well, confirmed) date, to be perfect and now it’s all going to sh*t. “Can’t you just give us a table?”

Her lipsticked mouth curves into a nervous smile, her blonde curls swaying around her ears as she shakes her head. “I am afraid we are fully booked, sir. But it seems I have a table for tomorrow morning, if you’re interested.”

Hob bites his tongue, shaking his head. “No thank you, we’ll find something else.”

“Okay.” She nods. “Once again, I’m very sorry.”

He waves her off, even as he’s biting his tongue not to snap at her. “It’s fine. It happens.” He turns and grabs Dream by the elbow, pulling him out of the line and towards the exit.

“Are we not going to eat?” Dream asks confusedly, and Hob sighs.

“Oooh,” Hob exclaims as he scrolls google maps for another restaurant close by. “They’ve got a cinema close to here. You ever been?”

“No.” Dream says, considering, “but my sister told me all about them.”

Hob raises an eyebrow, “which one? Death?”

“Yes. She loves films.” Dream plays with his grey pocket square. “She made me watch Mary Poppins.” The corner of his mouth ticks up. “It was dreadful.”

Hob snorts, making his phone map out the path towards the cinema. It’s only a five minute walk. “We’re a little overdressed for it, but.. should we go see if there’s a film more worthy of your tastes then?”

Dream considers this for a second, pursing his lips, before he nods his assent.

They walk side by side, their hands brushing. It’s only a matter of seconds before Dream slips his palm into Hob’s, pleasantly cool, velvet skin against the rough of his own. Hob tries not to buzz out of his own skin with giddiness, instead grins so widely he feels like his cheeks might fall off one of these days.

There must be a theme running tonight, because when they arrive, the cinema is closed.

“Are you kidding me!” Hob shouts when the door won’t give an inch. He pulls up his phone and does a quick google search. Closed on Sundays, the website says, and Hob has never wanted to murder something as much as he did in the 1600s.

He bites his lip, sighing so deeply it burns in his lungs. He wanted this to be memorable, he wanted to treat Dream to experiences he’s only ever experienced through the contorted dreams of others. (He wanted to impress him, wanted to lavish Dream in attention and luxury. He’s a king, after all)

“We can find another cinema, love,” Dream says calmly, but Hob doesn’t want to find another cinema. He wants this cinema. He wants to show Dream what life is about, he wanted to treat him, not drag him every which way because everything is closed or didn’t get the memo they’d be coming that night.

But, before Hob can concede and whip out his phone to find something else to do, the sky starts absolutely pissing rain. Not just lightly, no, no, the universe has made it its mission to antagonize him today. You wanna be a gay little creature under my roof? Not on my watch.

The only blessing they’ve received so far is that they’re standing underneath a ledge.

Throwing Dream an agonized look, he says, “Should I just call the uber to take us somewhere else?”

Dream ventures out a hand in the down-pour, letting droplets fall apart on the edges of his fingertips. “Alright.” He says, “Where?”

Hob shrugs. “Maybe that chinese restaurant I told you about? There’s no waiting list for that one?”

“Yes,” Dream says, smiling, “we could try the Dim Sum.”

“Yeah!” Hob says, hope bubbling up in his stomach, maybe this evening doesn’t have to be entirely ruined after all.

He whips out his phone to start calling, only for it to die a soundless death between his fingers.

Hob stares at the device with a strange sort of detachedness that bleeds from his gums.

Dream, apparently having sensed the absolute apathy that comes with incoherent rage, turns towards him. “Darling?” He asks softly, “is something the matter?”

Hob tries not to scream. “I don’t suppose you have an umbrella?” He asks miserably.

They decide to just go home as they huddle underneath the umbrella Dream fashioned out of his sand, but unlike in the Dreaming, it doesn’t hold up so well against waking world rain and dissolves ten minutes in as they’re making their way to the bus stop he’d spotted on the way to the restaurant.

Hob’s getting soaked to the bone, and he shivers against the harsh wind. It’s nearing the end of September, and October is looming on the horizon like a troublesome child. Hob hadn’t thought of bringing a jacket, didn’t think he would’ve needed one. He curses his own stupidity as he huddles into Dream’s body, scrambling for one measly scrap of bodyheat.

“I could cook something myself,” Hob offers, clammy and cold, wiping his wet hair out of his face. “It’s probably not as good as the restaurant would be, but I did work as a chef once upon a time.”

Dream’s hand is icy in his own, seemingly unaffected by the chill of the lashing rain. His eyes are beacons of blue light through the curtain of the downpour. It glimmers on the wet concrete like sunlight, burning into Hob’s eyes with a brightness dialed up to eleven.

“You need not exert yourself,” He says, a raindrop drips down his nose, sticking to his upperlip and his pink tongue darts out to lick it away. “I do not actually need to eat.”

“Y’know what?” Hob says, his breath visible in the air like fog. “I don’t care. I promised you a date with food, so I’m gonna cook something. Any preferences?”

“Fish and chips?” Dream suggests, because however kingly that man is, his food tastes are that of a three year old human child.

Hob sighs deeply, kissing the thought of the amazing beef wellington he was going to order at the restaurant goodbye, and settles for the already distant taste of fish and chips. “You really want me to make you fish and chips?”

“And chicken,” Dream confirms.

“And chicken,” Hob repeats, even though it’s not really something he would eat with fish and chips himself, but hey, he’d rather Dream eat than not at all. The man likes to claim he doesn’t need it, but the fullness of his once sallow cheeks tells Hob otherwise.

They finally make it to the bus stop just in time to see the bus already driving away. Hob runs after it, waving his arms, shouting, but the bus keeps on driving, not sparing them a single glance as it rounds the corners, wheels skidding in the puddles accumulated in the grooves of the street.

Angrily, he takes a seat at the cubicle, because at least that keeps the chilling rain away from them a little. The seat, however, is completely wet, but Hob is beyond caring. He’s already soaked, his ass can’t get even more soaked.

Dream, instead of sitting next to him, plops himself down on Hob’s knees, pressing his body up against him. Their chests meet in a cold kiss, Dream’s frozen against him, and Hob holds him just a little closer, trying to inflict what little body heat he possesses on the man.

He smiles, a flicker of white teeth, and leans in to kiss his mouth, open, and gasping. “You’re so cold,” he murmurs, playing with the strands of damp hair at Hob’s nape. Their eyes interlock like hands, and Hob always feels like falling when he looks in them for too long – the reflection of his own soul, flyspecked, muddy. The enormity of his own desire, and his longing. All of it so vast, and wide, that Hob feels dizzy with it.

“Nice of you to notice,” Hob chuckles, and Dream laughs softly, the sound like canons riveting in the air, the sweet brush of a pencil stroke.

“Do not worry, my love,” Dream drawls, almost a purr, and his body starts heating up like an overworked laptop. “I will not let you go cold.”

Hob clutches at the heat, pressing his nose in the now dry clothes on Dream’s body. He sighs heavily as his damp skin warms up slowly, eradicating the chill settled in the gaps of his bones. His veins dilate, and hot blood pumps through every part of his body.

Dream pushes him back a little, just to gain enough access to his lips and kisses him again. His mouth is scalding, hot like lava, and Hob feels it pool inside his gut. He puts his hand on the small of Dream’s back, the other squeezing at his hips as Dream’s tongue slides hot and wetly against his own.

“We’re going to be arrested for public indeceny at the bus stop,” Hob jokes, when he has to pull away for air, flushed and all warmed up again.

Dream smile is crooked. “At least you will be warm in jail.”

“Get off me,” Hob laughs.

The bus arrives after half an hour, and the drive to the bus stop nearest to Hob’s neighborhood is less than ten minutes. They walk an additional five minutes through the rain and finally, finally get home.

They stand there, in the darkened hallway, dripping and smelling of petrichor, staring at each other, before Hob bursts out in laughter. Dream starts laughing too, because it’s just too funny not to. He clutches his own stomach, holding onto Dream’s shoulder with the other one.

It feels good to laugh this off, the disappointment, the inherent humor of it. Of course when Hob wants to take Dream out on a date, it fails in all aspects. It echoes in the hallway, spreading tendrils of shadows that shake as if they’re laughing as well.

“I’m sorry, Dream,” Hob says, when the laughter drifts away a little, “I just wanted a nice night with you.”

Dream eyes him confusedly. “I did have a nice night with you.”

Now it’s Hob’s time to be confused. “You did? But everything went wrong.”

A soft smile unfurls on his lips like a velveteen flower, lips petal-red and beautiful. “But I was with you,” Dream says, “and that is enough for me.”

Inconsolable love flares up in his chest, hot and wide and licking. His heart skips a beat, and he grins so widely he can feel the strain in his cheeks. “You mean that?”

“Always,” Dream says, and they fall in each other’s arms. Dream is still warm from earlier, but not as hot. Lips finding each other like magnet and steel. Their mouths are a warm slide of unbroken affection, Hob a planet in Dream’s orbit, the push and pull of gravity making the both of them spin and dance as they find ground underneath their feet, bare skin beneath their fingertips. Hob wants to vivisect, dig into that heated core of him, shroud himself in the dreamstuff of him – he wants to bite, he wants to devour.

Dream, it seems, is not opposed to that.

Hob’s sucked a bruising mark in Dream’s neck when the man pulls back ever so slightly, voice the low trumpet sound of dawn. “Now, how about we take off these wet clothes and draw ourselves a nice hot bath?”

“Uh-uh,” Hob nods, weak in the knees and incredibly hard in his pants. “Sounds like a plan.”

“And make some fish and chips after?” Dream asks, sultry eyes blinking blueish in the shadow of raindrops.

“Whatever you want,” Hob says whiny, and they bleed together again, a blur of one flesh. For the remainder of the night, Hob doesn’t know where he begins, and Dream ends. Perhaps they are stuck together, like an ink blot on wettened paper.

It’s supposed to be like this, he cannot refute the utter rightness of it, of his hands on Dream’s body, his mouth on that sinewy neck, his co*ck thrusting in the hot empty of him, filling him up until Dream’s eyes are wet and tearful, and soundless words tear from his throat.

Dream is never naked in true, but that’s alright, Hob is bare enough for both.

Their next date doesn’t go as awfully. Hob never attempts to take Dream to a high end restaurant again, and instead try out the locals. Dream loves the Dim Sum, and Hob wipes his forehead with a mocking phew, I didn’t think I could be your boyfriend if you didn’t like it, he says.

You are a devious man, Hob Gadling, Dream says, once he figures out that was a joke, chewing around the heaps of food in his mouth.

Absolutely wicked, Hob grins.

Nightmares for you, Hob, nightmares for ten thousand years, Dream admonishes, and the owner yells at Hob for laughing too hard.

The year flies by, and before they know it, it’s summer again.

It’s a Thursday evening, as it always seems to be, deep into the throes of august, summer rain files against the windows with a smothering sort of quiet. He dreams of a world beyond it all, the cruelty of her, of his memories stored in her soft breeze upon his skin.

It leaks into his house, this gloom, that summertime sadness. It seeps into the cracks, makes it creak and whine and sob. Hob can hear his own screams for his son reflected in every croak of the stairs. Eleanor did not die here, but she dies wherever he takes her – every summer, over and over again.

He bears this like he always has, a ritual he’s cloaked his shoulders with. This is something you carry either on your back or in your palm, considering how big the grief is, you do not laugh in august, you do not love in august.

Hob, abruptly, has enough of it.

Dream, who has been reading with his bare feet thrown over his boyfriend’s lap startles as Hob leaps to his feet, unbidden.

“Hob?” He asks, as Hob ambles towards his gramophone to shuffle through the rows and rows of vinyl records he has until he finally finds something worthy of his mood. He puts it on and Franki Valli’s voice fills the gaps between the utter silence he feels in his heart and the sweet ruckus of the rain.

You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you

His smooth voice floats the room, filling the giant chasm that only sober Thursday nights can bring. Frankie Valli’s sweet notes chafe away the sharp edge of existential grief, leaving tender and raw flesh behind.

Hob stalks towards Dream with intention, whips out his hand, and waits.

“What are you doing?” He asks, arching a baffled eyebrow.

Hob laughs, feeling it deep and recklessly inside him, and wiggles his hand towards Dream. “What does it look like, duck? I’m asking you to dance with me.”

“Dance?” Dream chuckles, his expression growing amused.

Hob shakes the hand still suspended in the air. “Yes. So take my hand and get off your ass.”

“I do not dance,” Dream says, crossing his arms over his thin chest. “I told you before, my love, I do not dance.”

But if you feel like I feel
Please let me know that it's real
You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you

“C’mon,” Hob wiggles his fingers. “Not even with me? There’s no one around to see.”

“That matters little.” Dream says, and his faint smile dispels from his face like snow in front of a hot sun. His throat works hard as he swallows. “As a matter of fact, I–”

He goes quiet for a second, goes beyond, his form flickering like a lamp-light with failing batteries. Frankie Valli gets interrupted by bouts of static, and his phone pings on and off from where it lays on the table.

“Dream?” Hob says softly.

Dream’s body snaps back into solidity, and his eyes are a bruised blue when they meet Hob’s, watery, like a church window through the open, clear expanse of a lake.

Frankie Valli sings on steadily, and the screen of his phone goes dutifully black.

“Hob,” he swallows. “I did not dance since the death of my son, nor did I before it. I did not want to dance at his wedding, the very last time I saw him truly happy.”

"That's really sad," Hob says, because he doesn’t know what to say to that, “do you not regret that?”

The music plays through the painful silence, and Dream looks away from Hob, his Adam's apple shivering at the juncture of his throat.

"I do, more than anything." He whispers, and the watering edge to his everything-eyes is just too much for Hob to bear.

He takes Dreams hand in his own, ensnaring Dream's thin fingers in his own. "Then lets do it anyway. now, here," Hob squeezes dream's soft palm and smiles encouragingly, "C'mon sweetheart. For Orpheus. Let’s celebrate him."

Dream stares at him without blinking for entirely too long, but eventually settles a hand on the small of hob's back. "for Orpheus," he says softly. his mouth works up in a velvety smile. closing his eyes, he gently presses their foreheads together. Hob thumbs away at the wetness that gathers underneath his eyelashes. “And for Robyn."

“For our boys,” Hob says, and he feels shaky. “So that we may live for them.”

“So that I may remember him.” Dream says, and his eyes are shimmering with unshed tears that don’t spill, “that I may finally leave my grief in my heart where love resides.”

It makes something burn terribly in his throat, but he swallows it away and grins as he spins Dream through his living room, causing the Dream lord to let out a startled laugh.

“Admit it,” Hob whispers, when their laughter simmers down, and Dream presses his forehead into the crook of Hob’s neck, breathing him in like a man devoid of air. “I’m a great dancer.”

Dream’s breath is shock-warm against his neck and Hob closes his eyes as he rests his cheek against Dream’s, thumbing along the base of his thin wrist. “Hmm,” he hums, and Hob can hear the smile in his voice, the wetness of a grief finally pricked-through. “Perhaps not entirely awful.”

“I’ll take it,” Hob says cheerfully, and Dream chuckles sweetly into his skin.

Together they swing and turn and move to the gentle beat until well into the night.

I love you, baby
And if it's quite alright
I need you, baby

Rain splatters against the windows, and Hob’s watching a movie on the telly with a cup of coffee in his hands and a blanket thrown over his lap. It’s four in the afternoon of this boring, boring Sunday, and he hasn’t changed out of his pajama’s at all.

He sighs into the ratty pillows (that he’s had since the sixties) on his couch, kept solely for sentimentality, and closes his eyes. The movie isn’t doing much to keep his attention – the plot is boring and the pacing is rushed – and grey-weather induced fatigue is slowly creeping in.

“It is in the middle of the day, my beloved. I think Lucienne would chase you out of the Dreaming immediately if she saw you.” Dream’s voice suddenly cuts through the white-noise of the movie, and Hob shoots up, instantly awake (you can take the man out of the military but you can’t take the military out of the man) and springs to his feet. His coffee sloshes over the edge of the cup and splashes on his grey sweatpants and the carpet, dyeing it an ugly shade of brown.

“Are you kidding me!” Hob snaps, putting the wet cup down on the coaster he put on his coffee table, and fixes Dream with an angry glare. “What did I say about knocking on the door?”

Dream sighs petulantly, like the big man-baby he is. “That I wasn’t to drop in unannounced and use the door instead.”

“Exactly,” Hob says, making a face at the wet coffee stain on his sweatpants, “so why didn’t you?”

“Because it takes much too long before you answer.” Dream replies, a little haughtily. “I am a man of little time, Hob Gadling, so come here and give me a kiss.”

“Too long,” Hob snorts as he heeds Dream’s plea and wraps an arm around his middle to pull him into a chaste kiss. “It takes a minute at most.”

“Like I said,” Dream slides his arms up Hob’s neck, they feel like ice-picks on his skin, “It takes too long.”

“You’re a drama queen,” Hob smiles, and Dream kisses him again, but Hob stops him when he tries to go deeper. Dream scowls, clearly affronted by having been stopped.

“Listen, sweetheart, I’m not mad, I’m just setting a boundary, okay? I want you to use the door. You know it scares me when you do that.” Hob smiles a little, thumbing over Dream’s sharpened jaw. “Just like loud noises scare you sometimes.”

At this, Hob no longer meets defiance, yet more of a hesitant guilt. Dream nods, then, gingerly, carefully, as though his head’ll fall off if he nods it too hard.

“I will knock, next time,” Dream says, soft. “I do not wish to scare you.”

“Good,” Hob says, and leans in to peck his petal-red lips, “I could give you a key? That way it wouldn’t take so long.”

“I would not be opposed,” Dream hums, leaning in to seek out Hob’s lips. He inches closer, until their chests touch. Hob loops his arms around Dream’s waist, leaving one hand to palm the curve of his ass.

“So,” Hob starts, when he has to come up for air, “what’s up?”

“What is up?” Dream repeats, lips kiss-bruised and swollen, “we are kissing, that is up.”

“I’m well aware, but what’s the reason for your visit? Surely it’s not just a booty-call?” He laughs, teasingly.

Dream’s slender fingers toy with some of the hair at Hob’s nape, making gooseflesh erupt on his skin. He can feel the soft electric current of Dream’s butterfly touches shoot down his spine like arrows. It tingles like a kneading massage, spooling into his gut like kettle-boiled water.

“And what if it is?” Dream’s smile is crooked.

“I’d be so offended,” Hob says, unable to keep the teasing smile off his face, “I’m more than my body, you know?”

“Thank the heavens,” Dream closes his eyes and brushes his nose against Hob’s, “you’d be so dreadfully boring if you weren’t.”

“Sly bastard you are,” Hob murmurs, hands trailing down to squeeze at Dream’s hips, his ass. “I should call you bastard of the Endless.”

Dream slots their mouths together and Hob shuts up as his tongue licks sweetly at his lower-lip. He opens up for Dream, and they come together in the most delicious, languid slide.

Dream moans into his teeth – and f*ck, there goes Hob’s dick, straining wildly against his zipper. Dream smiles victoriously when he feels Hob’s hardness pressing against his own, a clever flash of white teeth, predatory, eyes full of yearning hunger. He shifts his pelvis harder against Hob’s, who has to break away from Dream’s lips to inhale sharply.

“This is such a bootycall.” Hob says breathless, teasing.

Dream’s mouth pops open to form an oval, affronted, and Hob has to laugh at the sheer shock on his face.

“It is not a booty. Call.” Dream says, rolling his eyes. “Can’t I just have missed my lover’s touch?”

“Let me guess,” Hob says cheerfully, “this lover’s touch includes blow j*bs and sex?”

“I prefer to call it making love,” Dream says, and pokes a finger at Hob’s chest, smiling slightly, “you humans are always so crude.”

Hob pecks him on the lips, sticking his hands in the backpockets of Dream’s jeans. “You would rather me recite you poetry, oh mine heart?” Dream hums, appeased, “You would like to me to strum words together like a musical note, oh how I would like to touch the beauty of your skin in the silver glow of the moon?”

“Hmm,” Dream presses closer, eyes sultry, black swirling nights as they lance through Hob’s mortal browns. They are a clash of mundanity and absolutely everything and yet, nothing has ever been more right. “That is more like it.”

Hob leans in to kiss him, because what better poetry is out there other than the gentle slide of their lips, to feel that body moving against his, warm and alive and smelling of sweet-soft dreamstuff?