Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And I think / of that feeling when you’re really full, or life is full / and you can’t think of anything else that could fit in it, / but then even more sky comes and more days / and there is so much to remember and swallow.

“Someplace Like Montana”, Ada Limon 

***

It was ten PM when Hob Gadling’s cell phone rang, vibrating the dish sitting on the coffee table that contained the remains of his dinner. He’d just finished marking a stack of texts and had been contemplating getting up and grabbing a beer or calling it an early night, but instead his attention went to the name Zed Martin emblazoned across his phone screen.

“Hey, Zed,” he answered. “Something the matter?”

He had met Zed Martin in an occult shop, a place that he had wandered into on a whim and one that she frequented. She was an artist and a psychic, and they had become friends over the course of the past five years as he picked her brain about the less usual sides of London and she took advantage of having a friend who owned a pub. They were certainly friends, enough that she knew a bit about his own involvement with the arcane if not the whole of it, but not usually the type of friends to phone each other up late on a Thursday evening.

“Yes,” she said. “Calliope’s ex showed up and he’s fucking terrifying.”

Hob abruptly abandoned his plans to settle in. Calliope was Zed’s roommate, and he knew from Zed that she’d had relationship trouble in the past. “What’s he doing? Have you latched the door?”

“She let him in,” Zed said. “Opened the door right up. They went up to her room.”

“Okay,” Hob said. “And she seemed scared?”

“I don’t know,” Zed said. “But I’m scared.”

Zed didn’t scare too easily, and that got Hob to stand up. “Did he threaten you?”

“He was threatening,” she said. “In how he acted. He didn’t make a threat. I opened up the door and he looked right past me at Calliope, said he had to speak with her, and she told him to come in and come upstairs, and—” Zed broke off.

“What did he look like?”

“Tall,” she said. “Dark hair. His eyes are—I don’t know. Horrible. Pitch black. And pale, he’s pale, like a vampire. Are vampires real?”

“I don’t know,” Hob said. “I’ve never met a vampire.”

“Me neither,” she said. “I might’ve now.”

“Anything else?” Hob asked.

“He was dripping blood,” she said. “From his hands. There’s blood splatter on the living room floor. I didn’t clean it up in case it’s evidence.” Her voice was shaking badly.

“Alright,” he said, working to keep his own voice calm to counteract her rising panic. “Can you see them now?”

“She went up to the room and shut the door.”

“And you already tried knocking?”

“Twice, no answer,” she said. “Oh, fuck, what if he’s murdered her? Why did she let him in?”

“I’m coming over,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. “I have no idea what to do.”

“You didn’t get a name?” he checked, shifting to hold the phone against his shoulder with his cheek while he searched for his keys.

“No, she called him something—she said he was her ex.”

“Not the recent one,” Hob checked.

“I don’t—think so. Oh, fuck, Robert, what do I do?”

“Stay calm,” he found his keys on the kitchen counter and headed downstairs. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay,” she said, but didn’t hang up. He set his phone on the passenger seat and put it on speaker phone.

“I’m driving now,” he told her. “She said ex?”

“Yeah. Ex-husband.”

“And you didn’t get a name?”

“She called him something,” she said. “She said—I don’t know, it didn’t sound like a name I know, I’d butcher it.”

“Greek?” Hob guessed.

“Probably,” she said glumly. “Maybe it wasn’t even a name.” She fell silent. “I can’t hear them anymore,” she reported.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s probably good.”

“What if he’s,” she lowered her voice. “What if he’s killing her?”

“Hard to do that quietly,” Hob said. “You didn’t hear any, uh,” he tried to think of a delicate way to phrase it. “Anything concerning?”

There was a silence, and then she said, “Oh, sorry. No. I was shaking my head.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then probably we’re fine.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll meet you downstairs and let you in, don’t ring.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Finally, she hung up, and Hob could put his full attention on the road. Zed’s worry was palpable, which made sense. She’d picked up Calliope as a roommate a year ago, fresh from some kind of abusive relationship, although she’d told Zed it was all over and there was no more danger. They’d met through some mutual friend in the arcane-adjacent community, so Calliope had to have some sort of experience or ability, but Hob hadn’t gotten any details.

He'd met Calliope a number of times now—she was a beautiful, well-spoken Greek woman, and she had an air of something magical about her, beyond the sort of occult-y vibes of minor practitioners like Zed. Hob hadn’t asked, because he also hadn’t offered up his own identity. He only knew about Calliope’s past experiences because she spoke about it frankly, and because Zed had explained that she needed to tell Calliope before bringing Hob over to the apartment because they were being careful about men.

Except apparently not careful about this man, whoever he was.

Hob stepped on the gas.

He got there in twelve minutes instead of fifteen, and found Zed waiting for him on the front steps. They took the stairs up to the flat instead of risking the ancient elevator, Zed taking them two at a time. When she swung the door open, only silence met them.

“Calliope,” Hob called. No one answered. The living room, kitchen, and small laundry area towards the back of the ground floor were all empty. He ascended the stairs, trailed by Zed. Calliope’s room door faced the landing, and the door was shut. “Calliope,” he said. “It’s Robert. Are you in there?”

Nothing.

“What do we do?” Zed asked, right over his shoulder. He started; he hadn’t heard her come up. “Can you kick the door in?”

“Probably,” he said, eyeing it. “Let’s see.” He reached and grasped the doorknob—and to his surprise it turned, and the door swung open.

“Oh,” Zed said, sheepish. “I didn’t think—” she cut off because Hob, stepping into the doorway, had stopped moving. “Oh, fuck, is she—”

“She’s gone,” Hob said. He stepped through to confirm it, but the room was empty. The bed was made, everything was in place, but neither Calliope nor her terrifying visitor were there. The closet door was ajar, all the clothes in place. There was nothing on the surface of the desk.

“They couldn’t have gone out past me,” Zed said. “That’s the only way out of the building. Fuck!”

“Okay,” Hob said. “Let’s—stay calm.”

“I’m calm!” Zed said, not calmly.

“Can you text her?” Hob asked.

“Yeah,” Zed went and got her phone, and texted.

They waited a moment, and then there was a chime from the desk drawer.

“Shit,” Hob said. Zed stalked over and jerked the drawer open, pulling the phone out.

“Her keys and wallet are here, too,” Zed said. “She didn’t—did she go out the window?”

Hob thought of Calliope, who tended to wear dresses—mostly white—with her hair just-so. He went to the window and looked, but he really couldn’t imagine her climbing down the brickwork or even the wrought iron fire escape. She had more of the vibe of someone who would drift gently to the ground like a fairy. “The way we met,” Hob began, carefully.

“What, through the magic shit?” she asked.

“Yes,” Hob said. After what he thought of—when he thought of it at all, which he tried not to—as the Witchcraft Incident, he was very careful about what he let on about his own involvement in arcane matters. He liked to keep his finger on the pulse of things, but everyone knew him as a bloke who was just a bit knowledgeable, not a practitioner of any kind and certainly not an immortal. But Zed, and many of the other humans these days, were fairly open about who they were and what they did. “Do you think that’s how he and Calliope know each other?”

Zed frowned. “I haven’t seen him before,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean much. I don’t know that many people.”

“How involved is Calliope with—that community?”

“Not very,” Zed said. “She didn’t know anyone else, she just turned up looking for a flatmate, said she was new to London. Can I say something crazy?”

“Sure,” Hob said.

“I don’t think she’s human,” Zed confessed.

“Oh,” Hob said. He’d wondered the same thing, but he hadn’t known whether Zed had considered the possibility. “Is that…just a vibe?”

“No,” Zed said. “Well, yes, but she’s said some things. I think she’s been around a long time.”

Maybe inhuman, maybe another immortal, then, except if she was just a human who didn’t die and anywhere near as old as Hob she would have learned not to let things slip. And there was the feeling Hob got around her, too. He hadn’t met many people who had that feeling, even of the magical sort. Calliope was the second.

His Stranger—Morpheus, Dream of the Endless—was the first.

“Well,” Hob said, letting all of those pieces arrange themselves in his head. “We don’t know for sure that she’s in trouble.”

Zed gave him a flat look, a glaze of panic to her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me,” she said.

Hob raised his hands defensively. “No, I know. It looks bad. But you said she let him in. It’s possible she went with him willingly. And if that’s true, and she’s not in any danger, we don’t need to sound the alarms just yet.”

“What alarms?” Zed wanted to know. “She’s said she has mums, but I don’t know their names or numbers. I didn’t press about other people because of the ex, but—I don’t even know who I’d call.” She sighed.

“Let’s make tea,” Hob said. “And we’ll talk it through.”

Down in the kitchen with the kettle going, Zed was back to pacing. “I could just start calling people up,” Zed said. “But they’re all going to be like, she’s your flatmate, why would the rest of us know where she is?”

“Do you know anyone who finds people?” Hob said.

“There are some PIs, yeah,” she said. That thought seemed to settle her enough to flop in one of the kitchen chairs. “I can call them up in the morning, no one’s going to answer me this late.”

“And if they did, they’d say to wait for her to come home,” Hob reminded, gently. “Seeing as she’s an adult and she’s hardly been gone an hour.”

“Yeah,” Zed shook her head. “Fuck. He just gave me such a bad vibe. Come here, look at the blood.”

Hob obligingly went over and stared at the spot on the living room carpet. It really was just a splotch of dark brown. It nearly blended in, such that he wouldn’t have noticed it if Zed hadn’t pointed it out, and it didn’t even look particularly like blood.

“Hmm,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I’m sure it was blood,” she said, shooting him a look. “Before you ask.”

“Alright,” he said.

“It smelled of it,” she said.

She had calmed down, though, and once Hob had made the tea they settled together on the sofa in the living room, backs to the front door and the ominous splotch. Hob stirred in sugar while Zed prodded at her teabag with the spoon.

“I just don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t come back,” Zed said. “Well—find a PI, I suppose. I don’t want to phone the police.”

“Probably for the best,” Hob said. “Especially if you think she’s, ah. Not our sort.”

“Yeah,” Zed looked down at the tea. “What would you do?”

“Well,” Hob said. “I think I’d be calling up the same PIs as you, mostly.” Being an immortal was conducive to a lot of things, but building a broad network wasn’t one of them. Money, property, information—all of those things could be carried with him from life to life. People tended to pass on.

“Shit,” she said.

“If things seem really bad,” Hob said, “There is someone I can ask.” If Calliope was closer to Dream’s sort than Hob and Zed, he might have an idea. “But I can’t exactly phone him up, so…”

Zed nodded. “Last resort,” she said. “Got it.”

“Yeah,” Hob said. “Probably for the best.” He wasn’t even sure how he’d get a message to Dream if it turned out he needed to. It wasn’t like he had a mobile.

“So,” Zed said, finally. “There’s really nothing to do tonight, is there?”

“I don’t think so,” Hob said. “Unless you do want to phone the police.”

“No,” she said. “I think that would make things worse.”

Hob nodded. “Then we wait.”

Hob finished his tea; Zed oversteeped hers and let it go cold on the coffee table. Then she dozed off. Reluctant to wake her, Hob moved the cups to the sink and returned. He thought about going, but he didn’t much like the idea of her waking alone in the morning, so he settled down on the other side of the sofa and closed his eyes himself.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d fallen asleep, but there was sunlight coming in through the windows when he woke. The smell of coffee permeated the air. Hob blinked awake and saw that Zed was still where he’d left her, curled into the arm of the couch.

“Good morning,” Calliope said, from where she stood at the counter, making coffee. She smiled; there was a tiredness around her eyes, but the cheerfulness of her expression didn’t seem feigned. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

“Zed called me last night,” Hob said, sitting up. “When did you get back?”

“When did I—” Hob could actually pinpoint the moment when she decided not to lie. “This morning.”

“She was worried about you,” Hob said.

“What time—” Zed groaned, rolling over, and then rapidly sat up. “Calliope!”

“Good morning,” Calliope said.

“You can’t fucking do that,” Zed said, springing to her feet. “You can’t just—fuck off with your scary ex and not say anything! I thought you’d been murdered!”

“No, of course not,” Calliope said, seeming genuinely baffled.

“Or at least been kidnapped,” she snapped. “I called Hob because I thought he might need to fight off that guy!”

Calliope looked at Hob and then laughed. “Sorry,” she said, mirthful, somehow even more beautiful even as she was clearly laughing at him. “The idea of you fighting Oneiros is—it’s very funny.”

“Oneiros,” Hob said.

“Yes,” Calliope said. “My former husband. He—I am sorry to have worried you, Zed, I didn’t realize.”

“Don’t do it again,” Zed said. “It’s bad roommate etiquette.”

“I did not know,” Calliope said, finally seeming abashed.

“How about we sit down and talk about it,” Hob suggested.

“Yeah,” Zed said. Worry and anger gone, she just seemed a mix of tired, abashed, and a little annoyed. “But only if you cook us breakfast.”

“Alright,” Calliope agreed. “Breakfast it is. And you will explain roommate etiquette to me.”

“And you’ll tell me about your former husband,” Zed said, stalking over to the table.

“Alright,” Hob said. “Well, call me if you need anything.”

“Oh, no,” Zed said. “You’re staying. Calliope owes you breakfast, too, since you drove over here last night to rescue her from Mr. Bloody Hands.”

“Oneiros,” Calliope said. “He is called Oneiros.”

“Yeah,” Hob said. “You might want to explain about the blood, too.”

Chapter Text

Hob joined Zed at the kitchen table while Calliope cooked. She finished the coffee first—Turkish, she’d explained, when Hob had been surprised by the thick bitterness of it. It was good, once he got over what to expect. She sipped at her own cup beside the stove while she cracked eggs into a bowl and put bread in the toaster.

“So, your former husband turned up last night,” Hob started it off.

Calliope nodded. “Yes. Oneiros and I were once married.”

“You still get on?” Zed asked.

Calliope hesitated. “For a long time, we did not. But more recently we had reconciled. I was glad to see him.”

“He’s not the last ex,” Zed checked.

“The last—” Calliope’s brow furrowed, and then her expression cleared. “Oh, no, no.”

“Okay,” Zed said. “So, just for some context, roommate etiquette is that you don’t go off with someone who might be a danger without telling people.”

“He was not a danger,” she said.

“I didn’t know that,” said Zed. “And you’ve had trouble with men before, you told me that, so…”

“It is not the same thing,” Calliope said, quite firmly. “I simplified the situation, when I explained it to you. I am not…”

Hob took a gamble. “Not human?”

Her head jerked up to look at him, and her hand wobbled; she set the bowl of eggs back down on the counter rather than pouring it into the pan.

“Don’t mean that in a bad way,” Hob said. “Some of my best friends aren’t human.” He smiled, as though he might have been joking, although he wasn’t—even if ‘some’ was ‘one’. “Just—we were talking about it last night, and well, you stand out.”

Calliope nodded, slowly. “I have simplified some things I have told you,” she said.

“You don’t have to tell us, if you don’t want,” Zed said.

“No,” Calliope said. “I wish to trust you both. I am the Muse, Calliope.”

“Oh shit,” Zed said.

Hob had seen a lot of things in six hundred years, but this was—well. “The muse,” Hob said. “Like, the Muse.”

She nodded, turning back to the bowl of eggs and pouring them into the hot pan. They sizzled and popped where they hit the metal surface, and she swiftly pulled her hands back to dodge the splatter, depositing the bowl in the sink. “Yes. The man I referred to as my ex—who I spoke to you of when I moved in, Zed—he was mortal, and he wished to have the gift I give for himself, and took it when it was not freely given. It was nothing like what I had with Oneiros.”

“What a shithead,” Zed said. “Is he—do you need us to fuck him up?”

Calliope smiled down at the pan. “No,” she said. “I have forgiven him, and he has suffered enough.”

“Probably not enough,” Zed said, but she said it quietly and if she did hear it, Calliope didn’t acknowledge the words.

“But you’re safe from him,” Hob checked.

“Oh yes. He would never come here,” Calliope said. “Oneiros—I did not expect him, but he is welcome.”

There was a moment of quiet except for the sound of the eggs sizzling in the pan. “When he showed up, it freaked me out,” Zed said, quietly. “He was pretty intense.”

“Yes,” Calliope agreed. “He is—he needed something from me. I am sorry that you were frightened.”

“That didn’t make you nervous?” Zed challenged. “Not even a little?”

“I have naught to fear from him,” Calliope said, tossing her head. “He is…” here she hesitated, prodding at the eggs with the spatula even though they were still runny at the edges.

“A good man?” Hob suggested. Zed shot him an incredulous look.

She shook her head. “He is not a man, and he is a king,” she said. “If it is possible to be a good king, and a good man, I have not seen it yet in all my years. But he was a good father. He was a good husband. He has always been good to me. Even after we parted ways, on ill terms, he has always come when I have called.”

Zed snorted. “So, good like a dog?” At Calliope’s blank look, she elaborated: “Comes when called. Like a dog.”

“No,” Calliope said. Her voice never quite became cold , but it took on the quality of steel. “Not like a dog. A dog who comes when called is obedient. He is like a god. A god who always answers when you pray to him.”

That silenced Zed. Hob took a drink from his coffee and wisely kept silent.

“Thank you,” Calliope said, finally flipping the eggs. “I appreciate that you care for me, and wish me safe. I promise you that Oneiros would bring no harm to me.”

“Okay,” Zed said. “Just—roommate etiquette. Next time, if you’re gonna go off with some guy? You have to tell someone. So we know when to call the cops. Not literally,” she amended. “I know you’re not…just, you know. If something goes wrong, I want to be able to sound the alarm.”

“I will tell you, next time,” Calliope said.

“Out of curiosity,” Zed said, leaning forward on her elbows. “Is there going to be a next time? You know, with the ex-husband?”

Calliope took her time answering that one, dividing up the eggs into three and sectioning them onto plates with the toast. “I do not know,” she said. “It is possible. Before last night, I would have said it was not, but…” she trailed off, and turned off the stove rather than continuing.

“Was that a booty call?” Zed blurted, suddenly. “Because that was a very fucked up booty call, if so. Bad vibes.”

“A what?” Calliope turned to look at her.

“You know,” Zed said.

If Calliope was the actual Greek muse, she’d been around much longer than Hob, and probably not embedded in the world in quite the same way. “A visit for sex,” Hob explained, as briefly as he could.

“Oh!” her cheeks darkened a bit. She handed him a plate, which he passed to Zed, and then another for him, and came with her own plate and cup to the table before she answered. “No,” she said, finally.

“He had blood on his hands,” Zed said. “I didn’t imagine that, right?”

“No,” Calliope said. “It was our son’s.”

Hob nearly choked on his toast and had to down the rest of the coffee to wash it down. Zed said, “What the fuck.”

“It is—I do not wish to go into it,” Calliope said. “In the simplest analogy—our son was hurt quite badly, many years ago. He did not die, but he has since lived a life that was not life. He asked my husband that he might end it, and he did, but he was—deeply upset by it.”

After a beat, Zed said, “No shit.”

“I am glad he came to me,” Calliope said, thoughtfully. “He is very proud, and often proud men suffer alone when they need not, and—I had told him that I wished to grieve our son together. That he allowed me to do so, and comfort him…in the old days I do not think Oneiros would have allowed such a thing.” She smiled, refocusing on the two of them. “So I am glad he came, and that I was of aid to him. And I may see him again.”

“I’m sorry about your son,” Hob said.

Calliope smiled sadly at him. “I am, as well. He was—I have known many poets, writers, and dreamers, and given inspiration to them, but he was the best thing I could say I had a hand in making. I think my former husband would say the same. But in truth I lost him many years ago, and what my husband did was a kindness, the more so for how badly it hurt him to do it.” Her eyes were bright with tears, and she laughed and wiped at them. “Oh, I thought I had cried all I could last night.”

“I’ve lost people,” Hob told her. “There’s always more.”

Zed leaned back and swiped a napkin off the counter and passed it to her. Calliope wiped at her face. “You are right, of course,” she said.

“Do you need anything?” Zed asked.

“No,” Calliope said, composing herself. “I do not think there is anything. Thank you.”

“We could do something to remember him, if you like,” Hob offered. “Even if it’s just us.”

“A shrine,” Zed suggested.

Calliope straightened, remembering something. “I have something,” she said. “Let me show you.” She stood and hurried up the stairs. When she returned, she was carrying a potted plant in her arms, which Hob felt sure he hadn’t seen in her room the night before.

“Whoa,” Zed said. The plant was a single flower, the petals blood-red, the edges of the leaves so dark green as to be nearly black, the veins also dark and like lattice-work. The interior of the bloom was a white-pale gold. “What is that? I’ve never seen one of those before.”

“You could not have,” Calliope said. “It bloomed where my son’s blood spilled on the earth. Oneiros brought one to me so that I might have it to remember him.”

“Your son’s blood did that?” Zed said, voice strained. Hob understood how she felt. It was one thing to be told that Calliope was not human—it was another to see such evidence of it.

“His father’s grief did that,” she corrected. “He makes—such beautiful things. He always has.” She stroked the side of the pot, setting it down on the kitchen counter. “When he courted me, he gave me many such things. It has been centuries since I have—” she broke off. “It was kind of him, to share this with me, something so lovely borne of such pain. He holds his own suffering so close, that it feels of more worth than something made only out of joy. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Zed said, roughly. When Hob looked at her, he could see that Calliope’s sadness was making her choke up. “It’s—art’s like that.”

“I might put it on the table in the next room,” Calliope said. “If you don’t mind it.”

“Yeah, no, go for it,” Zed assured her. “Wherever you want.”

She settled the flower on the table in the living room, lingering there a minute with her back to them. Zed and Hob looked at each other, but neither broke the silence. When she came back, her eyes were teary again.

“Thank you,” she said. “It is good to talk about them both. I am sorry he scared you, Zed.”

Zed grimaced. “Sounds like he was having a rough day,” she said. “Just—if you’re gonna go somewhere, next time, leave a note? Send a text? Something, so I know you’re not in trouble.”

“I will do that,” she said. “I promise.”

“Cool,” Zed said, exhaling. “Great.”

Calliope retreated upstairs after that, with another round of apologies. Zed took over the dishes and waved off Hob’s offer to help. “Go home,” she said. “You slept on my fucking couch last night.”

“I’d do it again,” Hob assured her. “If you’re in trouble, call me. Maybe I couldn’t take her husband,” he gestured up the stairs towards where Calliope had gone, “But I can take most people.”

She smiled. “I will,” she said. “Thanks, Robert. You’re a good friend.”

“I try,” he answered. He drove home and took advantage of his lack of classes to take a nap, and his dreams were pleasant and unremarkable. 

The whole incident slipped to the back of his mind until his phone rang again three days later.

“She’s out with him again,” Zed said, without preamble.

It took Hob a moment to catch up. “Calliope is out with her ex-husband?”

“Yeah,” Zed said. “She left a note. Listen to this.” She cleared her throat and then intoned, in a passible imitation of Calliope’s voice, “ Zed, I have gone with Oneiros. He will see me home safely. Do not wait up.” Zed snickered. “Do you think she heard that phrase somewhere?”

“Probably,” Hob said. “That’s alright, then, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Zed said. “Don’t worry, I’m not calling for another rescue. I probably shouldn’t deadbolt the door, should I?”

“Does she come and go through the door?” Hob asked.

“Up until this point,” Zed said. “I forgot to ask if she went out the window.”

“Maybe she just disappears,” Hob suggested.

“I don’t think people can do that,” Zed said, then, “I guess she’s not normal people.”

Hob waited, but Zed didn’t say anything else or make a move to hang up. “What’s wrong, then?” he asked her.

“Nothing,” she said.

“That’s the sense I’m getting from you,” Hob said dryly. “This is the behavior of a woman with nothing wrong.”

He couldn’t tell over the phone, but he strongly suspected she rolled her eyes at him. “I’m just—I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing is wrong, really. Obviously it’s her life. Her ex-husband and all. And if she says it’s safe, it’s safe.”

“But?” Hob prompted.

“But I saw him,” she said. “And Calliope might be a Greek goddess or whatever, but he was—Rob, I can’t even describe it.”

“He scared you,” Hob said.

“Yeah,” Zed said. “And maybe it’s just me, feeling stupid, but—I don’t know. I don’t like it. She’s a grown woman—she’s more than grown, she’s much older than me, she can do what she wants and I don’t have to like it. But I don’t.”

“Well,” Hob said. “The way I see it, there are two options.”

“Yeah?” she waited.

“First is, you tell her you’re not comfortable with him in the house, and she won’t bring him around. She can do what she wants, you won’t have to see him.”

Zed thought about that. “I’ll still be worried about her, though,” she said, finally.

“Then option number two, have her bring him over and introduce him,” Hob said. “You can get a sense if he’s really bad news, and we’ll figure it out if he is.”

“Are you gonna fight him?” Zed asked, amusement sparking in her tone.

“If I have to,” he said, honestly. “But maybe you’ll turn out to like him and it’ll all get resolved.”

“Okay,” Zed said. “That’s a good idea. I’ll tell her to bring him over for dinner, and we’ll get a fresh start.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Hob said. “Let me know how it goes.”

Zed laughed. “Are you serious?” she said. “You’re coming. There’s no way I’m doing this without support.”

“Like moral support?” Hob asked.

“Like air support,” Zed said. “Mr. I Can Take Most People.”

“Yeah,” Hob sighed. “I asked for that.”

“It’ll be great,” she said. “I’ll make spaghetti.”

Chapter Text

They all agreed on the following Thursday evening at 6 PM, but when Hob turned up at Zed and Calliope’s around four-thirty to see if he could help, it turned out they hadn’t agreed on much of anything else, least of all the menu.

“Look,” Zed said. “It’s a perfectly reasonable meal.”

It was a perfectly reasonable meal, Hob had to agree: dry pasta and jarred tomato sauce were acceptable and probably at the top of the range of Zed’s cooking abilities. But Calliope looked deeply dismayed as she surveyed the dry spaghetti and Ragu that Zed had set on the countertop.

“It’s very…” she seemed to be struggling to come up with a word.

“Maybe not your best foot forward,” Hob told Zed, kindly.

“This is my best foot,” Zed scowled. “We could order pizza?”

“Are there—dietary restrictions here?” Hob asked Calliope. “Preferences?”

She made a face. “I do not know,” she said, finally.

“Weren’t you married to him?” Zed demanded.

“Many, many years ago,” Calliope said. “You would not recognize much of the food eaten then. And we did not dine often in the mortal world.”

“Right,” said Hob, struck again by the fact that Calliope was technically a deity, and that meant they were probably having a Greek god over for dinner. “Right, good. That makes sense.”

Zed, however, had a different bone to pick. “Then he might love spaghetti and you wouldn’t know,” she accused.

“The odds of that are very slim,” she said, flatly.

“How about you make the spaghetti,” Hob said, finally. “And Calliope and I will go down to the supermarket and pick up a salad and some wine, so that worse case scenario we’ll all get drunk and forget about it.”

Zed signed onto that plan, so Hob left her to boil water and walked down the street to the grocery store with Calliope, who frowned all the way.

“This may have been a bad idea,” she said, as they stood under the bright lights of the produce aisle looking at bagged salads.

“How so?” Hob looked at the salads. “You have a preference?”

She shook her head mutely, then retrieved the Greek salad and handed it to him. “It is not really Greek,” she said mournfully.

“That’s how it goes,” Hob said. “Are you really worried about the food? We can order in.” Hob was a half-decent cook, but not on less than two hours of planning.

“No,” she said. “He may not even eat.”

“Great,” Hob said, after shooting her a glance to make sure she isn’t joking. “That’s a good sign.”

“He will not mean anything by it, but…” she sighed. “I am sorry. I understand why Zed is worried, but Oneiros will not like the idea of seeking her approval. He will not think she has the right.”

Hob chewed on that one as they went towards the wine aisle. “You said he’s a king.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Not, like, Zeus,” Hob checked.

“No, not like Zeus,” Calliope said. “He is far more powerful than Zeus.”

“Oh, good,” Hob said. “Great. And you think Zed’s going to offend him.”

“You do not have anything to be afraid of,” Calliope said, grabbing his elbow. “He is a guest, and he will cause no harm, no matter your rudeness. But I do not want there to be rudeness. You are my friends, and he is my—” she broke off. “It is wrong to say I loved him once. I have always loved him, but I hated him too, for a time. And now I think I would like to have him in my life again, if he will have me, but I would have you, my friends, too. And I do not like the idea that I will not be able to have both.” She sighed. “The wine is a good idea. He may even drink it.”

“Tell Zed that,” Hob said. “Really. Tell her that this means a lot to you, and you want her to try to get along. It may not work, but it’ll at least make her try.”

Calliope sighed, and nodded. “I will tell her,” she said. “Yes. And I have already told Oneiros that she is dear to me, and this is why I wish them to meet.”

“Great,” Hob said. “Everyone’ll be on their best behavior.”

“And if that fails,” Calliope said dryly, picking up a bottle and examining the label, “Everyone can at least be drunk.”

Calliope was charmingly oblivious to the raised eyebrows the cashier gave them at the four bottles of wine and single bagged salad; Hob simply smiled. God only knew what they looked like to the ordinary people around them, an unusually well-muscled professor and an ethereally beautiful woman in white. Actually, he had a guess—most of them would have eyes only for Calliope, and those who noticed him would wonder what they were doing together.

He felt briefly smug about that. Then the thought pulled Hob up short, a little disquieted. It was impossible not to notice that Calliope was very beautiful, of course. She was articulate, charming, and clever—and the idea that she was also immortal, if farther towards the im - side of it than Hob was, was nothing to discount, either.

He also had no business fancying her. For one thing, it sounded like she was on the way to rekindling things with her ex-husband, and far be it from Hob to stand in the way of a god. For another, Hob had long since recognized another attraction blooming slowly into what his students would have referred to as a crush.

And to fall in love with both of your immortal friends was just embarrassing.

Luckily, being centuries old did give you a lot of practice at managing inconvenient emotions, and he was able to set the thought aside with relative ease. A flash of interest was just that, and although Hob had felt a lot of attraction over the years, he’d gotten used to acting on it more and more rarely.

They finished checking out and walked out, Hob carrying the bag. “Thank you,” Calliope said. “It is kind of you to do this.”

Hob shrugged. “It’s not that heavy,” he said. He had maintained the strength required of a soldier and a mercenary over the years, even as his trades drifted further and further from being a soldier and a mercenary. Dream’s words in 1789 had stuck with him, and he didn’t intend to be caught off-guard unable to defend himself.

What had happened to Dream more recently wasn’t the sort of thing that might have been fended off by the ability to throw a punch, but it had still renewed Hob’s resolve. Besides, it was much easier now than it had been even fifty years ago—kickboxing gyms were a remarkable thing.

“I did not mean the bag,” Calliope said warmly. “But thank you for that, as well. I meant for being here. I know it is a comfort to Zed.”

“Yeah, of course,” Hob said. “I’m here for you too, you know. Not that you need it.”

“Even if I do not need it, I appreciate it,” she said. “You are a good friend.”

“I try,” he said, mind still half on Dream. “Thanks for letting me.”

When they got back to the apartment, Zed had a pot of water boiling on the stove. The hour that followed would have been comic if it wasn’t so tense standing in the middle of it, as both women’s apprehension visibly grew the closer the clock ticked towards six o’clock. Calliope lined up the bottles of wine along the countertop where they sat and watched like a line of dour-faced glass birds on a telephone line. Zed put the bag of salad in the refrigerator, took it back out, checked the clock, and put it back in. Calliope opened up all the cupboards and stared at the plates, as though waiting for some sort of sign as to which should be laid out on the table.

Hob stood about uselessly, trying to help with the pasta until Zed snapped at him, “I’ve got it!” She apologized immediately, but he got the idea and retreated to the living room, leaving them to fuss at each other. The table got set, then reset when Calliope decided to swap out the glasses. Hob overheard a brief argument about what ‘al dente’ meant. Hob got called back into the kitchen to decant a bottle of wine.

When the buzzer rang at exactly six o’clock—Hob wondered if Greek deities had impeccable senses of timing, if it really was teleportation, or if the man had simply been lingering outside until precisely the correct moment—Calliope was standing on the counter retrieving wine glasses from the top shelf, and Zed was standing by the steaming colander of pasta in the sink with her arms folded.

“Can you get that?” Calliope said.

Hob thought she’d meant it at Zed, who wasn’t technically doing anything, but Zed said, “Robert?”

Hob opened his mouth to point out that Zed’s hands weren’t exactly full, and she lived there, but she shot him a pleading look. Right. She was terrified of the man, who was probably not a man at all.

“Alright,” Hob agreed, and headed out, taking the stairs down to the front lobby. He took a breath before opening the front door, and then stopped short.

Dream, handsome and haunting as ever in his long dark coat, stood on the front steps. In his hands he held a bottle of wine.

“Hob Gadling,” Dream said, looking almost as startled as Hob felt. “I did not expect to see you.”

Hob felt, and swallowed down, the urge to laugh. “Yeah, well. I didn’t, uh, realize it was you, either.” Of course it was, he though, a little madly. Who else? “Come in?”

Dream gracefully ascended the steps inside and joined Hob in the front lobby. “How are you and Calliope acquainted?”

“Friends with her roommate,” Hob said. “I’m here as, uh, moral support.”

Dream’s expression arguably didn’t shift at all, but somehow managed to convey skepticism nonetheless. “For who?”

“Well, everyone, at this point,” he said. Then the disparate pieces of information from the past few days slotted together, and he remembered what had started this all—Calliope’s former husband, half-mad with grief, showing up still all-over with blood after the death of his son.

Calliope’s former husband. Hob’s friend, Dream.

“Dream,” Hob said, and grabbed his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Dream went stiff under his touch. “What has Calliope said to you? She had no right.”

“Hey,” Hob said, sharply. “It’s her son, too, and Zed and I, we’re her friends. She had every right to share her grief with us.” He judiciously didn’t mention that she’d spoken of Dream’s own grief—he’d brought it into her home, so Hob thought she was probably morally in the clear, but there was no sense impinging on Dream’s pride unnecessarily.

It worked, though; he softened immediately. “…you are correct. I apologize.”

“I’m your friend, too,” Hob reminded. “You don’t owe me anything, but—if you want me to, I’ll listen. I’ve lost a son, too,” he reminded. As always, there was a pang at the thought of Robyn.

“I remember,” Dream said. “Thank you, my friend.” He looked a little lost, standing there. Hob released his arm. He was used to Dream’s silences, and knew how to fill them.

“What did you bring?” he nodded at the wine. Dream turned it around to show him, but Hob couldn’t read the label. “How old is that?” he gaped.

“Many centuries, and only a night,” Dream said. “We shared such a bottle not long after meeting, and she dreamed of it.”

She was obviously Calliope, and the matter-of-factness of the statement left Hob gaping at him. He’d literally pulled a bottle of wine from her dreams and brought it to dinner. Calliope’s starry-eyed recollections over breakfast the previous week brought the gesture into context. Hob had been dazzled by Dream’s infrequent, brief attention; what must it be like, to be in the full focus of his love?

“You’re a romantic,” Hob said, startled and delighted simultaneously at the realization. “Aren’t you?”

“At times,” Dream said, slowly.

“You and Calliope?” Hob said. The phrase came out as a question.

“We were married,” Dream said, misunderstanding Hob’s aim, perhaps deliberately. “It ended poorly. I did not save him and she could not forgive me for it.”

“Could you have saved him?” Hob asked, without thinking. He winced, immediately, hoping it didn’t sound like blame.

“I will wonder it until the stars go out,” Dream said, voice heavy. He didn’t seem the least bit offended, simply distant. “I do not think so. He would not have let me.” He looked at Hob, his eyes watery but the tears not spilling over. “So many gifts, he inherited from his mother, and the misfortune to share with me only stubborn pride.”

“It’s not your fault,” Hob said.

“It does not matter,” Dream said. “Fault, or not, he is gone.”

Hob swallowed. “Can I—” he almost faltered, and then went for it. “Can I hug you?”

“Why?” Dream gave him a strange look.

“Because I would have liked it, when Robyn died,” Hob said, honestly.

After a long silence, Dream said, “Yes.”

Hob took the wine from him, set it safely off to the side under the mailboxes, and pulled Dream into a tight hug. At first it was a bit like hugging a coat stand—very stiff, the coat barely cushioning the bony angles of elbows and ribs. And then it was like hugging a coat stand that very, very tentatively lifted an arm up to rest against your shoulder and hug you back. And then it was like hugging a tall, very thin man who clutched at you, trembling a little, as though your touch had given him permission to turn back into a person after being a coat stand for a very long time and he wasn’t good at it yet.

They stood like that for a long time, until Hob heard a soft inhale behind him on the stairs. Dream lifted his chin, and released Hob—not as though he’d been caught at something, but as though he’d been about to do it anyway.

“Calliope,” he greeted.

“Oneiros,” she said.

“Turns out we know each other,” Hob said by way of explanation.

“I did not realize,” Calliope said. “I am so glad you are here,” she told Dream, with aching sincerity. She stepped forward and took both his hands in hers, which he allowed.

“I thank you for the invitation,” he returned, formally. “I have known Hob Gadling for many years. That you have his friendship as well I can only be glad for.”

Calliope gave Hob a newly appraising look. “I have been very glad for his friendship,” she said. “I did not realize…” She was still holding Dream’s hands, and she let go quickly, as though she’d forgotten she was doing it.

“I’m immortal,” Hob said, after a quick glance up the stairs to make sure Zed wasn’t coming down too. “Zed, uh, doesn’t know, so if you could keep that one under wraps…”

“I will not share your secret,” she promised. She glanced at Dream, and then said, “You have bargained with Teleute? I cannot say I do not fear for you.”

“Uhh,” Hob looked at Dream, too.

“My sister withholds her gift,” Dream acknowledged. “But he may have it at any time of his choosing, and no debt is owed.”

Calliope relaxed. “Forgive me for prying,” she said, to Hob. “I have seen the ill side of bargaining with the lady Death, and I do care for you.”

“There wasn’t much bargaining involved,” Hob said. Since Dream’s reassurance that his immortality was permanent until he wanted it gone, he hadn’t felt compelled to ask many questions about it. He still didn’t. “You called him—” he turns to Dream, conscience that he’s asking about a person present, “She calls you Oneiros?”

“I have had many names,” Dream said. “Calliope favors the one used by the Greeks, as is her right.”

“It is how I have known him,” Calliope said.

“ You have known me as Morpheus, or Dream,” Dream said to Hob. “In a thousand years I may be called another name, and you may use what you will.”

Hob felt a surge of warmth, at the idea of another thousand years of knowing Dream—at having the right, knowing him so long, to call him a name long consigned to history.

A right that, as far as Hob knew, had only been granted to his former wife. He flushed under Dream’s gaze, and didn’t manage to respond.

“Zed sent me looking for you,” Calliope said, rescuing him. “Come upstairs, Oneiros, and you can meet properly.” She turned towards the stairway, gesturing at them to follow.

Hob retrieved the bottle of wine and handed it back to Dream. “Sorry,” he said, not quite sure what he was apologizing for.

Dream gave him a penetrating look. “What for?” Without waiting for an answer, he ascended the stairs after Calliope with a sweep of his dark coat.

Hob lingered for just a moment at the base, looking at the two of them, one dark, one light, a painting come to life in an old stairwell. It felt absurd to have ever thought they could be human; absurd that he had stood with Calliope in a grocery store, that he had held Dream in his arms.

“Robert?” Calliope called, as she rounded the landing. Dream glanced back, his eyes a shard of crystal in the gloom, and Hob was helpless but to follow.

Chapter Text

At the top of the stairs, Calliope opened up the door to the flat and ushered them through. Dream went first, took two steps in, and halted; Hob had to step sideways to avoid running into the back of him. As soon as he did, he saw that Dream had stopped to look at the red flower, which was still blooming, no petal curled or even drooping after more than a week.

Calliope slipped carefully around them both, graceful as a dancer, and then stilled herself when she saw what he was looking at. “I wished to have something here to remember him,” she said. “This fit the purpose well.”

Dream didn’t say anything for a moment, and then said, “It does little justice to his memory.”

Calliope stood on tiptoe to rest her chin on his shoulder. “It is very beautiful, and so was he. Two beautiful things you have given to me.”

It hurt to look at them; Hob couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Zed stepped into the kitchen doorway, stilling at the sight of Dream. “Hello,” she said, a little brusquely.

It broke the spell. “Hello, Mary Martin,” Dream said gravely, turning towards her. “I apologize for our previous meeting. I was not myself.”

She swallowed hard. “I go by Zed,” she said. “How did you know that name?”

“Zed Martin,” he acquiesced. “I know all names.”

“Zed,” Calliope said, perhaps sensing—as Hob had—that while Dream was very composed, he was not quite succeeding at appearing harmless. “This is Oneiros. He is also called Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless.”

“Nice to meet you,” Zed said, a little faintly. “Do I call you— Lord, or—”

For a terrifying moment, Hob worried that Dream was about to say yes , but instead he said gravely, “Many of my friends call me Morpheus. My truest name is Dream. You may use either.”

“Dream,” Zed said, visibly shaking herself. “So, um—you met Robert?”

“We are acquainted,” Dream said.

“Cool,” Zed said. “I made spaghetti.” She turned back to the kitchen, and then spun around. “Do you know what spaghetti is?”

Dream gave her a baffled look. “I contain the universal collective unconsciousness. Why do people keep asking if I know what things are?”

“Right,” Zed said, shooting Hob an alarmed look. “Uh, Rob, can you come help me for a second?”

“Sure,” Hob agreed, and followed her into the kitchen. “Nice of you,” he said, after she nudged the kitchen door so that it swung shut behind them.

“What?” Zed said. She was dumping spaghetti into the dishes that Calliope had picked out, clearly not needing Hob’s assistance with anything.

“To give them a minute alone,” Hob said.

“Oh,” Zed said. “I didn’t even think about that. I was going to ask why you’re so fucking calm. You were gone so long I thought he’d murdered you.”

Hob gave her a helpless little grin. “Yeah, turns out I know him.”

She gaped at him. “What?” He watched her recontextualize Dream’s statement. “So when he said—acquainted—”

“Yeah, for a while,” Hob said. “Not like, we just met downstairs.”

She looked at him for a moment, and then punched him in the shoulder. “You asshole,” she said.

“Ow,” he complained.

“You didn’t say anything!”

“I didn’t know it was him,” Hob complained. “She calls him Oneiros . I’ve never heard anyone else do that.”

“Oh,” she said. “So it’s like—a pet name. That’s cute.”

Hob almost objected to that—it was just an old name—but it was, in a way, a pet name now. “He has a lot of names,” Hob said.

“So you know him,” Zed pointed the serving spoon at him. “What did he mean about the universal collective unconscious or whatever that is?”

“He’s not a god,” Hob said. “He’s a—anthropomorphic personification of a concept.”

Zed paused in dumping pasta into bowls. “I’m feeding spaghetti to a concept?”

“He’s also a person,” Hob said, a little sharper than he means to.

“Yeah,” Zed said, taking a deep breath. “Okay. This is pretty weird, Robert.”

“Yeah,” said Hob. “How do you think I felt when I went downstairs and saw him?”

Zed gave him a considering look. “Weird in a different way for you, maybe,” she conceded. Then she said, “You don’t find him scary as fuck?”

Hob couldn’t think of a delicate way to say no, not at all. Instead he said, carefully, “I think you met him on a bad day.”

“Yeah,” Zed said. “I can tell. He is less…” The pasta was in the bowls by now, but she still stood over them with the serving spoon, thinking about it. “More, uh, anthropomorphic personification and less concept, I guess, today. I wouldn’t have described it like that before—he was just fucking terrifying—but it was like he was. More, uh, more than a person. Like a thunderstorm that just looked like a person. You know?”

“Haven’t seen that,” Hob admitted. “But it makes sense.”

“So he isn’t a god,” Zed said. “I don’t know what the difference is.”

“Neither do I, really,” Hob shrugged. “He’s the Sandman.”

“He’s the—” she broke off. “Yeah, okay.”

“You’ll like him when you get to know him,” Hob promised.

Zed gave him another look, a little more discerning than before. “I will, will I?”

“Yeah,” Hob said. “I think so.”

“You like him,” she said suddenly. “You like him a lot.”

“I—” there was no point in lying about it. “Yeah. I’ve known him a while.”

She seemed on the verge of saying a number of things, and then she only said, “So, does he eat?”

“Yeah,” Hob said. “Sometimes, but—he eats.”

“Cool.” Zed picked up a bowl and shoved it into Hob’s hands. “Go give him his spaghetti.”

Hob shot her a look, but picked up a second bowl and carried it out to the dining room table. Zed followed with the last two bowls. When Hob emerged from the kitchen, Dream and Calliope were standing very close to each other, talking quietly. Dream looked as impassive as he usually looked, standing stock-still; they weren’t touching, a state of affairs that could only be deliberate given the intense proximity. Calliope had been crying.

“Dinner’s ready,” Zed said, to gain their attention.

“Thank you, Zed,” Calliope said, turning her tear-streaked face towards them. She glanced back at Dream for a second, and he lifted his hand with the gravitas of a glacier shifting and wiped away her tears with his thumb.

Hob found himself watching them again, like staring at the sun—objectively a terrible idea, but nearly worth it for the brief flash of brilliance. Then Zed set her pasta bowls down on the table with a loud clack, and Hob jerked his gaze away and went to sit down with her. She gave him another loaded look but didn’t say anything.

Calliope and Dream came over and joined them. “We were speaking of Orpheus,” she said by way of explanation.

Zed had picked up the wine bottle that Hob had decanted earlier, and it slipped through her fingers. Lightning-fast, Dream moved and caught it, returning it to her hand.

“Thanks,” she said, obviously a bit stunned. “Your son is Orpheus?”

“Yes,” Dream said.

“Damn,” Zed said. She was still standing there stunned, so Hob took the wine from her and poured it himself.

“Thank you both,” Calliope said. “I am glad to have you all here together. It was a good idea,” she directed this at Zed.

“It was his,” she said, immediately redirecting the attention onto Hob.

“He has had several,” Dream said.

Hob felt his face heat. “Well, I’ve had a while,” he said, uncomfortably aware of how it felt to have Dream praise him. He liked it, probably too much.

The spaghetti was nothing remarkable, but it was good in the way of simple things. Dream did eat; that seemed to surprise Calliope, if not Hob. Zed, without the context of a past acquaintance with the habits of the Lord of Dreams, just seemed relieved that he didn’t have anything critical to say about it.

Hob prepared to fill silence—he was used to it, dining with Dream—but to his surprise his oldest friend spoke first. “I did not realize this was your intention, when you spoke of turning to the mortal world,” he said.

“I did not have this in mind, specifically,” Calliope admitted. “But I spoke to people, and they talked of finding flats, and roommates, so…” she shrugged gracefully. “Zed has been a dear friend to me.”

“Hey, glad you answered the ad,” Zed said. “This is not—quite what I expected, but, you know, it’s been good.”

“I am sorry for not being forthright with you,” Calliope said. “It is only that, at times when people realize you are not human, they decide that means you are not a person, either.”

Zed gave Hob a little bit of a guilty look. Hob couldn’t figure out what she meant until he remembered how he’d snapped at her in the kitchen about Dream. “Is that what happened to you?” she asked. “With your…not-ex.”

“You do not need to speak of it, if you do not wish,” Dream interjected, imperious, when Calliope hesitated. It was a level of consideration that Hob wouldn’t have ascribed to Dream in earlier centuries—but of course, Dream would know all about histories you did not wish to speak of.

“I know,” she said, reaching over and touching his hand briefly. “Yes, that is in a way what happened to me. It is not uncommon.” Her eyes went to Dream.

“Humans hunger for power,” Dream said, flat. “They will attempt to take what they are not granted or due.”

Zed seemed on the verge of asking something, but she looked at Hob, who shook his head a little, and she looked down at her spaghetti. “Yeah,” she said. “People suck.”

“Often,” Dream said. “But you are also capable of change, in a way that I and my brethren are not. You remake yourselves and your world so rapidly. Often for the better.” His eyes met Hob’s.

“We are not incapable of change, Oneiros,” Calliope said. “You have changed, you know.”

“You have both said that to me,” Dream said. Calliope looked at Hob, surprise on her face; Hob shrugged.

“You didn’t like it when I said it,” Hob reminded him, smiling a little. “Did he get mad at you, too?” he asked Calliope.

“No,” she said. “He did not. See, Oneiros? We have both seen it. You must believe it in yourself.”

Dream said nothing, just met her gaze and then turned to his glass.

Zed reached for the wine bottle to refill their glasses, but found it empty. “I can open another,” she offered.

“You both ought to try the one Morpheus has brought for us,” Calliope said, rising. “But before we do, Oneiros, may I beg another gift from you?”

He regarded her for a moment, setting his wine glass down. “You need not beg,” he said.

Calliope smiled. “A moment, then.” She rose and went upstairs, and returned carrying a violin case. “Will you play for me again?”

Dream had gone very still. “It has been a very long time,” he said, finally.

“There is no need if it pains you,” she said, softly. “But if we gather in memory of him—what better way?”

There was another long silence. Then Dream rose and took the violin case from her and carried it to the coffee table. His movements were smooth and practiced as he unzipped it, withdrew the violin and the bow, and began examining the strings.

Hob had tried his hand at a few instruments over the centuries. He’d even gotten good at a few of them; you picked up a lot of skills when you had all that time. And of course, Dream had been alive far longer than Hob—it made sense that he would have some skill in an instrument.

Still, it was strange to watch him tune the instrument effortlessly, draw rosin across the bow, and hesitate for a moment.

“What shall I play?” he asked. He looked towards Calliope.

“What you will,” she said.

He nodded, then lifted the instrument to his shoulder, lowered his chin, and began to play. The instrument itself was nothing special—Hob thought he recalled Calliope buying it at a rummage sale some months before. But under the hand of its player, it turned into an object of wonder. Dream did not hit a false note or hesitate. The music sang from the strings, unhesitating and pure.

Hob could not have told how long he played. He played until the song ended, and then he lowered the bow and returned the instrument to its case.

Zed, the first to unfreeze, clapped. Hob joined her. Calliope didn’t; she had begun to cry again and was wiping at her face.

“That was Schubert,” Zed said. “But that—it’s unfinished. You played an ending.”

“Many things live in dreams that have never come to be in the waking world,” Dream answered.

“Did you write it?” Hob asked.

Dream shook his head. “No more than I have written anything that is dreamt of,” he answered.

So—not at all, and yet he was made of it. Hob was struck by how uncannily accurate a description he’d stumbled upon earlier with coatrack . All of these ideas, dreams, hopes, stories and songs, all of them stacked upon him. What weight did that place on a person? How was it possible to bear a sense of self beneath it?

And yet Dream was—Dream. He was always the same man. Was it any wonder, Hob thought, that he was afraid to have changed? If he did not hold fast to who he was, how could he have been someone at all beneath the weight of all he carried from everyone else?

Hob watched him carefully put away the instrument, and said nothing. What could he have said, to encompass all of that?

He cleared his throat. “It was beautiful,” he said.

“It was,” Zed agreed.

“Thank you, Oneiros,” Calliope said softly, wiping at her face. “Thank you for this gift. And for this one.” She lifted the bottle of dream-wine. “You have a good memory.”

“It is yours,” Dream answered.

“And yours too,” she returned. Zed cocked her head, but Hob knew then that Calliope was thinking of the same things he was.

Zed handed Calliope the corkscrew. “Can I ask,” she said. “How did you two meet?”

Calliope smiled, but cast a glance at Dream, whose face showed nothing. “That is an old story,” she answered, waving off the question. “It has been told many times.”

Unexpectedly, it was Dream who spoke. “Most old stories have been,” he said softly, returning to the table. “The best ones will always bear telling again.”

At his approval, Calliope lifted her chin, eyes shining. “Well,” she said, and opened the bottle. “This is one of the best.”

“It doesn’t have a happy ending, though,” Zed said.

“That will always depend on where you stop,” Dream replied, and held out his glass for Calliope to fill.

Chapter Text

The wine was like nothing Hob had ever tasted. It poured dark purple, and the taste was sweet and heady. When Calliope sipped from her glass, her face lit up, and Hob was once again stunned by how beautiful she was in her joy.

“It is just as I remembered,” she said, turning that smile on Dream.

Even he was not immune; the corners of his mouth curled up and his eyes lit. So little seemed to break through Dream’s icy countenance to elicit emotion, but Calliope’s smile did. (Hob tried not to remember how his own had, at the New Inn, how easily it seemed Dream had smiled back at him.)

He sipped at his wine. It didn’t drive the thoughts away, but it did give him something less dangerous to do with his mouth than voice them.

“It was very long ago,” Calliope began, glancing at Dream. He only lifted his chin at her, waiting for her to go on, and she launched into the story. She spoke of how they had encountered one another, of how beautiful Dream was, of how sweetly he spoke to her. “I was halfway to in love with him,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed pink, whether with the alcohol or recollection it was difficult to tell. “And then he took me back with him to the Dreaming, and I fell the rest of the way.”

“The Dreaming?” Zed interrupted.

“My realm,” Dream answered. “You have been there, though most of you do not remember well the time spent there.”

“Do you mean we go there when we sleep?” Zed asked, and at his answering nod, “I’ve never seen you.”

“Most will not,” Dream said. “You make your own dreams, and few dream of me.”

“Though in a way,” Calliope said, “They all dream of you.”

“Not this facet,” Dream said. “But I take your meaning.”

“Facet?” Zed interrupted.

“This form,” Dream said. “This self.”

Zed’s expression indicated that it clarified nothing, but she didn’t ask any further questions. Calliope spoke again, “The Dreaming—it is beautiful. The palace there rivals Olympus for its beauty. Rivals the Silver City.”

“Olympus is a better compliment,” Dream advised. There was a little twist to the corner of his mouth, and Hob realized that he was perhaps teasing her. “You and your brethren have a better eye for aesthetics than the seraphim.”

“You are a proud creature,” she accused, tossing her head. Then in the same breath, she told Hob and Zed, “But he has earned it, for he is right—he has built a prettier world than my brother and sister gods and the angels themselves have managed.”

“Angels,” Hob said, but Zed was talking over him.

“And he took you there,” she prompted.

“Angels,” he mouthed at her, but she ignored him. Hob quietly added it to the list of things to question Dream about the next moment he had him alone. Hob wasn’t much for religion—hadn’t considered himself a devout Christian even back in the day, and had become pretty thoroughly lapsed in the matter at the point where he was no longer in any danger of going to hell—but some centuries-old part of him was screaming in terror at the confirmation.

“He did,” Calliope said, with a glance at Dream. “He took me to his library, which is the stuff of—well. It is not a place that could exist anywhere else, and it is infinite and beautiful. The walls of his throne room are glass images, the likeness of his creations, and when the light shines through them those images are cast on the floor.”

“Like a cathedral,” Hob said.

“Yes,” Calliope said. “A cathedral to dreams.”

“A throne room, you said?” Zed glanced at him.

“The first time I went there—I went at his invitation, but not as I would later, with his hand in mine. His servants led me through the gates, across a shining pool of water, through the doors and into the throne room.”

“That feels weird,” Zed broke in. “He asks you on a date and you have to come bow before him?”

“He was not sitting on the throne,” Calliope said, with another quick look at Dream. “He sat on the stairs, and he came down to greet me. Do you ever?” she asked, turning to him. “Sit on that thing.”

“When necessary,” Dream said. “At times there are rules that must be followed.”

“Why even have a throne, then?” Zed asked.

“Because he is a king,” Calliope said, as though it were straightforward. “Why have a throne? Why have a crown? Because when you are a king sometimes you must make it known that you are a king, and that you must be treated as one.”

“It is so,” Dream agreed with her. “A crown and a throne are not for your subjects, or your…lovers,” his gaze lingered on Calliope. “They are for other kings.”

“I’ve never seen a crown,” Hob said.

“It is as I said,” Dream answered. Then, a beat later, he said, “They are not for friends, either.”

“But he brought you to the throne room,” Zed prompted, a little more intent on the promised love story than Hob was.

“Yes,” Calliope said. “We walked through the palace together, and I met his Raven, and a number of the staff—I met Lucienne then, I think.” Dream nodded, and she continued. “And I saw his library, and then he took me to a place called Fiddler’s Green, which then was the heart of the Dreaming.”

“It is still,” Dream said.

“And we walked through it, and we stayed there together, until the sky grew dark and filled with stars and the meadow in which we lay filled with fireflies. And he had made all of it. Every firefly, every star. And can you blame me, for loving him then?” She shook her head. “Through all the grief, I could never blame the girl I was then. She knew you truly, and chose well.” She spoke directly to Dream then, as though she had forgotten they were there at all.

He looked back at her. The intensity between them in that moment was hard to watch. Hob couldn’t look away.

“She did not know all,” Dream said.

“She knew enough,” Calliope said.

“You have no regrets?”

“I regret,” she said. “I regret how it ended. I cannot regret the start.” She leaned across the table and cupped her hand against his cheek. He went perfectly still. She held there for a moment, and when he did not move, she withdrew.

Hob drank deeply. Zed coughed and said, “So, bet he didn’t take you back to the throne room after that.”

“He did,” Calliope said. “ He never sat upon the throne, though.”

It took Hob a moment to guess what she meant, and then he looked to Dream to try and read his expression.

At first he got nothing, and then, “It is a convenient height,” Dream said. His lip curled in a sly smile.

Hob felt his face heat, which was a neat trick, since he’d thought he’d gotten old enough to shed embarrassment at least a century ago. Sex was something he’d been intimately familiar with even in his original lifetime, and he’d seen it all, heard it all.

Dream’s tiny insinuation ought not to have phased him at all, except for the man whose mouth it came from. Except that it was Dream’s lips shaping the words, his tiny smirk, and him who Hob imagined on his knees with his head between Calliope’s legs—

Hob drained his glass. Zed reached over for the bottle and refilled it. She would do it several more times for each of them, which ought to have been an impossibility, but Hob supposed that dream wine came in dream vessels.

Pleasantly drunk and warm from the alcohol, the company of his friends, and the low-burning attraction that he had resolved to ignore, Hob found that the rest of the evening passed in a dreamlike way. Calliope was made to recount how she met Zed, as though in recompense, though the story was not nearly so grand. Then Calliope insisted that she had talked too long. “Zed, Robert, you must tell the story of how you met, now.”

“You’re less drunk than me,” Hob told Zed. “You tell it.”

“We both went to a meeting at a magic shop,” Zed said. “It was supposed to be some sort of—I don’t know, was it meant to be a workshop?”

Hob shrugged. “Meant to be for witches, I think.”

“And then it turned out to be just a bunch of white girls swapping crystals,” Zed said with a sigh. “They weren’t even the lesbian kind of fake witches, so I didn’t even get laid. But he was there, except he had the sense to duck out back to the shop floor when he realized it was all hippie junk. I figured he was more interesting, if he knew this was all bullshit, and I followed him out.” She shrugged. “And we got to talking, realized we had a couple mutual friends. We met again at a party about—a month later?”

“Or two, yeah,” Hob said.

“I had a stalker,” Zed said. “So I got Robert to walk me home, and he mentioned he did kickboxing, so I called him a couple weeks later when he—the stalker—tried to break in, and Rob kicked his ass. And I’ve been calling him for help ever since.”

“When she needs dumb muscle,” Hob said, cheerfully.

“I would have thought you’d had enough of witchcraft,” Dream mused.

Hob grimaced a little at the memory. “Yeah, well.”

“You said you didn’t know much about witchcraft,” Zed said, giving him an accusing look.

Hob was spared an interrogation on a subject he really didn’t want to think about because Dream wasn’t done. “Kickboxing?”

“Useful to keep my hand in,” he said. To Zed, he said, “When I was younger I did a bit of fighting. He knew me then.”

Zed nodded, appeased. Hob never felt guilty about this particular lie—the necessary lie, the lie that he wasn’t seven hundred years old—but he did wonder if it might be safe to tell Zed. He would have to think it through when he hadn’t been softened with alcohol and the pleasant surprise of getting to spend an evening with his oldest friend.

“What about you?” she said, gesturing between Hob and Dream. “You said you knew each other, how’d you meet?”

“A long time ago,” Hob said, attempting to wave it off.

“No,” Zed said. She was definitely at least a bit drunk, too, and it made her bold. “I introduced you and Calliope, and Dream and I met tonight, so you’re the only ones who still have to go.”

“We met in a pub,” Dream said.

“Really?” Zed turned to him instead of Hob. “You don’t seem like the type.”

“I am not,” Dream agreed. “I was with my sister, who wished me to be more…sociable. She felt I was too embroiled in my work.”

“Your work,” Zed said. “As the king of dreams, yeah, okay. The king of dreams has a sister?”

“I have three,” Dream said. “This was my older sister, Death.”

Zed laughed briefly, and then froze, realizing he wasn’t joking. “Shit,” she said, and sat back, subdued.

“I do not know why you humans fear her,” Dream said. “She is far kinder than me.” Unlike the rest of them, Dream showed no signs of intoxication, and he spoke softly and deliberately. “Nonetheless. She…pointed Hob out to me. I think she felt, knowing what she did of his nature, that I might…benefit from his perspective.”

“Your sister dragged you out to a pub and picked out a friend for you,” Zed said, into the silence.

Hob looked at Dream, wondering if he would take offense. But his eyes flicked to Hob with only a glint of amusement in them, and another smile crossed his face. “Perhaps,” Dream said.

Hob was charmed by the description and Dream’s easy acquiescence, even if it was only so Zed did not ask more questions and force Hob to reveal his immortality. It did make him wonder how Dream might have told the story without any obfuscation, almost enough that he revealed himself to Zed right then.

He didn’t; if he’d learned something over seven hundred years, it was to be careful what he said while drinking.

Zed yawned into her hand. Hob checked his watch and was startled to realize it was past midnight. “I think it’s time for me to go,” he said. He swayed a little when he stood.

“You gonna get home okay?” Zed asked.

“I will see him home,” Dream stated—and it was a statement, not an offer.

Calliope stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to Dream’s cheek. “I will see you again, Oneiros?”

“You will see me again,” he agreed, tilting his head down so his lips brushed her hair.

Hob fumbled into his boots and coat to avoid staring at them as they said goodbye. Soon Dream joined him, and they walked out onto the street. Hob had taken the train, in deference to the fact he would be drinking, but in the cool darkness with his oldest friend beside him he felt compelled to walk.

Dream did not question it; Hob felt it equally likely that he perfectly intuited what Hob was doing or that he had no idea how to navigate whatsoever.

“You could have stayed,” Hob said. “I could make it home alright.”

“Stayed?”

“With Calliope,” Hob said. “Aren’t you…”

“Ah.” Hob could see a minute stutter in his pace in the moment he understood what the question was getting at. “ I can find her easily enough in my realm, should we both wish,” Dream said.

This time it was Hob’s turn to trip on his own feet, far more noticeably. Dream steadied him at the elbow, letting go the moment he’d regained his balance. Hob missed the contact instantly. “Right,” Hob said, briefly overwhelmed by the idea that his friend could visit a lover in their dreams.

Could know when he was being dreamed about.

That thought was too much for the moment, so Hob carefully shoved it aside for a moment when he was less drunk.

“Are you well?” Dream asked.

“Yes,” Hob said instantly. “A whole evening with you, and it’s not even been a year and a half.”

Dream was quiet for a moment. “I was glad to see you as well,” he said. Then, “ You and Mary Martin, you are not lovers?”

Hob prided himself for not tripping that time. “No,” he said. “Also, stop calling her Mary, she really doesn’t like it.”

“Zed Martin,” Dream corrected himself, dutifully.

“She doesn’t do men,” Hob added.

Dream’s brow furrowed, then cleared. “I forget that,” he said.

“That some women love other women?” Hob said, frowning. “It’s been that way for a long time—"

“That humans find the sex of their partners so troubling,” Dream said.

“You, ah—” Hob cleared his throat. “You don’t?”

“No,” Dream said. “I am not a man, Hob Gadling.”

“You’re not?” Hob said. “Fuck. I keep—is he okay? You know, we ask our kids—our students, now, what pronouns they want. I never asked you.”

“I use he ,” Dream said. “Do not be troubled. I was a husband to my wife and am a brother to my siblings. But this is a form in which I have made this self. I could be other than this.”

“That doesn’t make you not a man,” Hob said.

Dream frowned at him. “I do not understand.”

“You can be a man because you chose to be a man,” Hob said.

Dream’s expression cleared. “Ah. Perhaps it is better to say, then: I am a man, as I walk in this form, and in other forms I am a woman, a cat, a world, a star and a fish and a bird and the song the bird is singing. I do not worry that I cannot claim an identity, Hob Gadling. I might claim them all if I wished.”

“Calliope’s a woman,” Hob said, finally, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I have loved women,” Dream agreed.

“Do you still love her?” Hob asked.

Dream turned to look at him, expression askance. “You dare much.”

“You don’t have to answer,” Hob said, but Dream was already speaking.

“Yes,” he said. “I still love her.” Hob’s stomach dropped, sinking with a jealousy he had no right to feel, and then Dream was speaking again. “I do not often stop, when my lovers tire of me.”

Dream’s gaze was distant. They passed below a streetlight, which illuminated his pallor more sharply. Hob twice started to reach out—to take his arm? To comfort him? But something always stopped him. They walked on in silence, the noise of London at night distant around them, the stars a dim blur.

Dream walked him all the way to his front door and waited while he found his keys.

“Sleep well, Hob Gadling,” Dream told him.

“Wait,” Hob did seize his arm then, which Dream allowed. “I wanted to say—”

Dream waited.

“I’ve been around a long time,” Hob said. “Not as long as you, but—a long time.”

Dream still waited, arm frozen in Hob’s grip. Hob released him, and he drew it back to his side.

“I said before,” Hob said. The words were hard to find, weary and still half-drunk, but he had been seized by the sense that he had to say it now, that the moment would pass by morning. “You know me by now, you know I—I won’t ever seek death.”

“So you have said,” Dream agreed, wary.

“You know that about me,” Hob insisted. “And you have to know, too—I won’t ever tire of you.”

Dream’s expression softened in a moment. His eyes widened. His lips parted slightly. In the subtlest shifts of his countenance, Hob could tell that it wasn’t what he’d expected Hob to say, and that it had struck him like being punched.

In for a penny, Hob thought. He reached up and tugged at Dream’s shoulder, pulled him close, and kissed him.

Chapter Text

The intoxication—both the alcohol and the nearness of Dream—felt as though it had slowed Hob’s thoughts to molasses. With their lips pressed together, he could feel how soft Dream was, his skin silken rather than marble. He wasn’t warm, but he wasn’t unnaturally cold either, like his body was always precisely the temperature of the air.

Dream didn’t melt into the kiss, but nor did he stiffen and withdraw the way Hob feared. Hob might have described it as acquiescence; he accepted Hob’s touch, and even leaned in, although he didn’t move a hand to reach back.

It was Dream, though, who broke it, and then he did lift a hand to put on Hob’s shoulder, holding him at a distance. “ You should let us inside,” Dream said. In the shadow of the doorway, Hob couldn’t read his expression.

Whether it was nerves or drunkenness, it took Hob a few tries to get the key in the lock. Dream did step inside behind him, but he kept his distance, lingering in the doorway while Hob grappled with his boots.

“Talk to me,” Hob said, picking at his laces, unable to bear the suspense any longer.

“I know not what to say,” Dream said.

“Did you—” Hob started to ask did you like it and then realized he really wanted the answer to a different question. “How do you feel about me?”

“You are dear to me,” Dream said, carefully. “And you know not what you seek.”

“I thought I was pretty clear,” Hob said, a bit miffed. He’d managed to get the right boot off and moved onto the left.

“You only think you know,” Dream said. He sounded very tired. “It is—it would be ill-fated, Hob Gadling.”

“Of course it would, if you won’t try,” Hob said. He was aware of how petulant he sounded, and he tried to backtrack. “I don’t—if you don’t feel the same, I’m not angry. I’m happy to be your friend.”

“It would end ill,” Dream said. “Such things always do. And I care for you too much to wish that for you.”

“You and Calliope,” Hob said. “You’re trying again, aren’t you? Don’t you care for her?”

“She is no mortal,” Dream said. “And she knows what she risks.”

“Who’s to say I don’t?” Hob challenged.

“You don’t, Hob Gadling.” Dream spoke with finality.

“Then tell me,” Hob said. “If you don’t—feel that way about me, then say it. I told you, I won’t mind it.”

“I care for you,” Dream said, after a pause. “Perhaps in that way.”

That was the closest Hob thought he would get to an admission of interest. “If you do, then—tell me what’s stopping you. Let me make my own decisions.”

Dream regarded him. Hob regretted not turning on the light in the entryway; he couldn’t get to it from where he was, on the floor with only one boot on, but he couldn’t see Dream’s face well. He was all in shadow, except for his eyes, which glowed as though there were stars inside them.

For a moment, Hob dared to hope in the silence—that Dream would agree, that all his objections would come spilling forth and Hob could address them, one by one. That they might, for once, talk as equals.

Instead, Dream said resignedly, “You are still drunk.” He crossed into the kitchen—he, Hob noticed, hadn’t bothered to take his boots off, although they didn’t seem to be leaving any trace of mud or rainwater on the floor—and filled a glass at the tap. He returned and handed it to Hob.

Hob, obligingly, took the glass of water, even though he was still sitting on the front mat half-shod. “I’ve been drunker.”

“Drink that before you sleep,” Dream ordered. Hob did. “And sleep well, Hob Gadling.”

“Wait,” Hob said, knowing Dream intended to go. “Promise me something—it had better not be another hundred years!”

“I promise that,” Dream said. And then, in a blink, he was gone.

Hob was left sitting there alone in his dark front hallway, water glass in one hand. He still hadn’t gotten the damn boot off.

“Shit,” he said, into the sudden silence.

---

Hob woke up with less of a headache than he would have had were it not for the empty glass now sitting on his nightstand. He had texts from both Zed and Calliope. Zed’s was from the night before and asked if he’d gotten home alright; he picked up his phone and texted back quickly Home safe and sound. Fell asleep pretty quickly, sorry. It was still early, so he didn’t expect a response from her yet.

Calliope’s texts had been sent that morning, only about twenty minutes before he woke up. Would you come over today after work?

Sure, he texted back automatically, but as he showered and got ready to face a roomful of teenagers, the oddness of the request hit him. It was usually Zed asking him over to the flat, and she would have asked him over in the afternoon, not made the request hours in advance.

Everything alright? he sent a second text, following up.

Yes, Calliope replied, and said nothing more.

Hob considered himself, after six hundred plus years, to be a champion compartmentalizer. Cryptic texts from the muse of epic poetry? The existence of angels? The fact that he’d kissed his oldest friend the night before and gotten a mixed response? All of those things went in the Don’t Think About It Right Now box while he put bread in the toaster, and when it came out golden brown the box had firmly been slammed shut and shoved to some back corner of a mental closet.

So he managed to get through a Friday of history classes without thinking about any of it, which meant that there was plenty left for him to stew over as he squeezed between other commuters on the Tube to Zed and Calliope’s flat. She buzzed him in, and he let himself up to the third floor, where the door was ajar.

“Hello,” he called, nudging it open.

“Hello,” she said. She was sitting at the kitchen table, hands folded in front of her, and Hob suddenly realized that she was pretending that she had been doing something other than waiting for him.

“Zed in?” he asked, a little apprehensive.

“She’s meeting a client,” Calliope said. “Will you sit down? Do you want tea?” She stood up and put the kettle on, without waiting for an answer.

“Everything alright?” Hob asked. He came over and sat across from her. “Hey, didn’t mean to spring that on you last night.” He smiled, ruefully.

She smiled back over her shoulder, before turning back to the cupboard and retrieving cups. “I understand. He has many names. It is—good. I think your presence put him at ease.”

“Well,” Hob shrugged. “We’ve known each other a long time.”

“Yes,” Calliope said. She set both teacups down on the counter with a click. “That is why I wanted you to come. I wanted to speak to you about Oneiros.”

Hob hesitated, not sure what she was referring to. She spotted his pause, and said, “He told me you kissed him.”

Hob sighed deeply. “I’m sorry about that. I was—drunk.”

“Did you not mean it?” Calliope asked, suddenly. She abandoned the cups and kettle to take the seat across from him and lean in. Her expression was very intense, eyes fixed on his.

“Did I mean—fuck, of course I meant it,” Hob said. “I’ve been waiting for the asshole seven hundred years. But he told me,” Hob said quickly, “He told me he still loves you. I wouldn’t get in the way of that.”

Apparently satisfied, she leaned back, countenance quickly softening. “Oh, he was so flustered by it. It was very sweet,” she said. “Have you ever loved more than one person at once, Hob?”

“Um,” he said, thrown by the abrupt subject change. “In—I suppose, in a way,” he said carefully. He’d certainly had relationships while holding a torch for Dream, and he’d dabbled with multiple partners a few times.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” Calliope said. She hopped up again and began pacing the kitchen. “I am going about this all wrong. What I mean to say is, Dream loves so slow, and so rare, that he has never been troubled in this way before. How strange and lucky of us, to have lived long enough to be the first to have his love at the same time.” She turned and smiled at him.

“He said he loves you ,” Hob emphasized, trying to suppress the jolt of happiness that sprung up at the words. He would have reveled in it, if only he thought it were true.

“He loves you too,” Calliope said. “He would not have been so upset if he didn’t.”

“He was upset?” Hob felt a sinking feeling in his gut. He’d been embarrassed, but he hadn’t realized he’d truly upset Dream.

“Not at you,” Calliope said. “Forgive me, Hob, but your little kiss on the doorstep—I promise it was not such a trespass. Oneiros would not have thought of it again if only he did not feel such things about it.” She giggled. “I am sorry, I do not mean to laugh at your worry. It is only, it was very sweet.”

“What was?” Hob felt as though he was experiencing emotional whiplash at every sentence.

“Oneiros,” she said. “I have rarely seen him so at a loss. He did not know what to do, or how he ought to feel, and as I said, he has never wanted two people at once.”

Despite how disoriented he felt, that image did send a smile creeping onto Hob’s face—Dream, back here in Calliope’s kitchen, pacing about after Hob had kissed him. Not sure what he was feeling—or very sure what he was feeling and twisting himself into knots about it.

“That is what I called you here to say,” she said. She came back over to the table and stood their with her palms flat on it, haloed by the kitchen light. “Oneiros will torment himself over it for a hundred years and do nothing unless we make him. If he is willing to let himself love me again, I want him,” she said frankly. “I have fallen in love again, and that is a rare thing, to know someone so well and let that knowledge of your faults curdle your affection for them, and then to turn back over to love again. And I do not think you would have told him you would never tire of him and kissed him if you did not mean it, and I know he would love you as well, if he could be convinced to allow himself it. So the question is, if you are willing to let him accept both our love at once, and if you wish to do it separately or together.”

Hob reeled, momentarily speechless. He didn’t think there was much that could render him silent after all these years, but Calliope seemed to have cut the voice out of him, sharp with beauty and confidence and ideas that Hob wanted so badly to believe.

“I will get you a drink,” she said. “Think on it.”

“Something stronger than tea, please,” he managed. She retrieved a beer bottle from the fridge and opened it for him, setting it in front of him. He drank, trying to organize his thoughts and decide what to ask first.

“What do you mean by together ?” he asked.

“I don’t know how you feel about me,” Calliope said. “But I find you handsome,” he had to set the beer down to avoid choking on it, and he thought he might have seen the edge of a smirk on her lovely face. “You are good company. And you are a good man. You have been very good to Zed and I, and Oneiros thinks well of you, which is not an easy thing.”

She hesitated for a moment. Hob waited, unwilling to interrupt, until she said, “Oneiros…I do not know if you have spoken of… melancholy, with him, but this is often a hard world for him to love. To understand what is the point of it all, and why to keep going.”

Hob swallowed hard. They hadn’t had a conversation explicitly about it, but—

“I’d guessed,” Hob said finally. “That’s what he said he wanted, when we first met. To know what it was like. I thought he meant, to be human, but…”

But he meant to want to live , he didn’t say.

Calliope nodded. “That is the shape of it,” she said. “And to be someone so bright as to be such a reason for the king of dreams—that makes you very special indeed.”

Hob felt his face heat at her compliment. “Not sure about that,” he said. “But I try.”

“You have not given me an answer,” she said. “I promise I will not be offended if you do not want me.”

“I don’t…not want you,” he admitted, looking back at her. This was a conversation to have while actually looking at the other person, even if it felt like his face was on fire. “I do. You can probably tell I think you’re very attractive. But I don’t know how Dream feels about…sharing. You would know better than me.”

“He is not so much a fool as to think he could have the both of us and forbid me from you,” she said frankly. “I would not call him more than ordinarily jealous. He would wish us both to be faithful—to go behind his back, or betray him, that would be a great crime. But to love each other with his full knowledge, I think would please him.”

Hob turned that over in his mind. He sensed that Calliope was right—it was loyalty, not exclusivity, that Dream would want. He took a drink, trying to decide how the idea felt in his mind.

Well, he knew how it felt. It felt fucking amazing. It felt too good to be true, which was why he kept prodding it for holes. Yanking open his gift horse’s mouth, as it were.

Calliope added, “The idea of you two together, it pleases me.”

He set the beer down abruptly. “You have got to stop saying stuff like that while I’m drinking,” he coughed.

She giggled, pressing a hand over her mouth; Hob didn’t have enough evidence to make an accusation, but he was half-convinced she’d done it on purpose.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes, together? All three of us?” Calliope asked, suddenly serious again.

“Yes, if he wants it,” Hob said.

Calliope beamed at him, leaned across the table, and kissed him. He was too surprised to respond, and she drew away after only a moment. “You look so surprised! I just told you that I wanted you.”

Hob managed, “I’m still getting used to the idea.”

“We had better tell Oneiros of what we have spoken,” she said.

“Probably a good idea.”

“Very well,” she said, and then she reached into her pocket and withdrew a stone, which she pressed to her heart. “Oneiros, I hold your gift in my hand and call you. Will you come?”

“Now?” Hob demanded, and started to get up, and then there was a whisper of air and shadow, and Dream was standing in the kitchen.

“ Calliope ,” he greeted, and then he caught sight of Hob. “ Hob Gadling. ”

“Hey,” Hob said, sinking back into his seat.

“Robert and I have been speaking,” Calliope said.

“ Speaking,” Dream said, enunciating every letter.

“Yes. About you,” she said.

“Nothing bad,” Hob hastened to add. “Just, uh—well, you told her about last night,” he realized, wheeling on him.

“Should I not have?” Dream asked. “Was your affection such a secret?”

“No,” Hob said. “Don’t—put words in my mouth. Please.”

Dream frowned, but didn’t say anything else, just stood there and loomed. Calliope stood—he still had a full head of height on her—and tilted her face up towards him.

“Oneiros,” she said. “I love you. As does he. Can you accept our love, and love us both?”

Hob had never seen the look on Dream’s face before. There was a moment where every sharp line of it went soft, and open; like the honest sweetness of her words had cut through the impenetrable ice that usually governed him.

And then his face shuttered, and the look was gone. “You have seen what will result,” he said. “Do you not remember? How you hated me. How you swore you would never speak to me again.”

“And I told you that I am sorry ,” Calliope said. “Have you not forgiven me, Oneiros?”

“I have forgiven you,” he said. “But that is easy at the beginning. You remembered yourself last night how sweet beginnings are. What of the end?”

“I told you last night I cannot regret it,” Calliope said. “I will not regret it, that you were once mine. Do you regret your love for me so much that you will never dare love anyone, ever again?”

“ No ,” Dream said.

“No,” Calliope said. “So it might be worth it for someone else, but not me? Not him?” She took one step forward, then a second, advancing slowly. It was startling how such a slip of a woman could suddenly have the comportment of a wildcat stalking its prey. “You said we might try again, Oneiros.”

“ That is one matter,” he said. “But he is mortal.”

“He is right here ,” Hob said.

They both ignored him. “He is not so mortal,” Calliope said. “Mortal things die .”

“He might yet still,” Dream said. “Whenever he wishes.”

“I am no mortal, and yet I might die,” Calliope said. “How many old gods have passed on, forgotten? There is no telling that I will walk this world forever. The faeries, too, are no mortals, but at times can pass on to your sister’s kingdom. In the ordinary course of things, death shall not touch him—that is no mortal thing.”

“ He is human ,” Dream said, and the words somehow came out despairing.

“Hey,” Hob cut in. “That’s not—is that such a terrible thing?”

“The Endless may not love a mortal,” Dream said.

“He is no mortal,” Calliope said again.

“ He is enough.”

“Why not?” Hob said. “What happens if you do?”

“Nada,” Dream said, low and dark.

“Nada,” Hob repeated, and watched Dream’s eyes darken, swallowed up by the darkness of the night sky. He swallowed hard. “I—hang on. Calliope, I appreciate the, uh, initiative, but I think maybe Dream and I should—talk some stuff through, by ourselves. If that’s okay?”

Calliope flushed and stepped back. “I am sorry. I do not mean to—push you.”

“It’s been good,” Hob said, watching Dream’s face. “Good step forward. I think we just need to—settle some things.”

“I will be upstairs,” Calliope said, and rose gracefully. Before she exited, she caught Hob’s arm and whispered into his ear, “I think your fear does not often cloud your judgment, Robert Gadling. Do not let his fears cloud it, either.”

Hob swallowed hard, and nodded. She smiled at him, and then slipped out the door. Dream watched her go, and then kept looking at the shut door behind her, not looking back at Hob.

“So,” Hob said. “So you loved a human, and it—it went pretty bad?”

Dream let out a low sound—it could have been a growl, or a hacking cough, but Hob realized with surprise that it was a laugh , the lowest darkest laugh that might still be called by the name. “ Pretty bad . In the way your Ice Ages were long winters, yes, it went pretty bad.”

Hob grimaced. “You don’t have to tell me about it,” he said. “I’m not owed anything. But if you do want this—I would like to know what you’re afraid of happening.”

“So you can tell me it will not?”

“I won’t lie to you,” Hob said. “But if—I would like to give this a try. Calliope would like to give this a try. Sorry, by the way, if it felt like we were—ganging up.”

Dream paused. “That thought does not trouble me.”

The rush of heat that flooded downward as the full meaning of Dream’s words hit him was not helping Hob keep his head in the game. Not the right head, in any event. He forged onwards. “Tell me,” he said. “I can’t promise you something won’t happen if I don’t know what it is. Tell me what you need from me. What can I promise you?”

“You have already said you will not tire of me,” Dream said. “That is no small promise—but I will not hold you to it.” Hob started to object, and he held up a hand. “Calliope and I married. Those are no idle vows.”

“I don’t know what else to say,” Hob said.

“There is nothing. You cannot promise me to guard this against the ill fate to which it is doomed,” Dream said, with finality.

Hob laughed. “Nobody can promise that. Dream, hey. Look at me.” Hob finally caught his eyes, and stared into them. “Nobody can promise everything’s all going to work out. Ever, in anything. And what would be the point if we knew?”

“You do not understand,” Dream said.

“I do,” Hob said. “Fuck, I do. How do you think all my relationships end, Dream? If anyone knows about things ending ill , it’s me. But it’s worth it. I swear to you, it’s worth it. Isn’t it? Aren’t I, to you?”

Dream was quiet. He stared past Hob, out the window, although Hob had the sense he wasn’t seeing the London street bathed in afternoon light. “If you do tire of me,” he said, finally. “Do not take my sister’s gift to rid yourself of me.”

It took Hob a slow, horrified minute to parse the sentence. “Yeah, fuck that,” he said. A thousand questions bubbled up, and he swallowed them all back. Dream would tell him the story if and when he was ready—which, knowing Dream, might be forever from now, but Hob had forever from now. “I’m going to outlive you.”

A smile slowly broke out across Dream’s face. “I would like nothing more,” he said. Then, graceful as a cat, he knelt beside Hob’s chair and took his face in his hands and kissed him.

Hob hadn’t been unimpressed by their kiss the night before, but the difference between kissing a Dream who was allowing it and a Dream who was participating was the difference between a light drizzle and a thunderstorm. Hob was breathless when they broke apart without realizing that he’d stopped breathing; he was clutching hard at Dream’s arm, trying to pull him back the moment he withdrew. Dream’s eyes had gone dark again, swallowed up by galaxies.

“You can’t stop, ” Hob protested.

“You would leave Calliope waiting?” Dream asked, rising to his feet.

Hob nearly tripped in his hurry to stand as well. “No,” he said. “You’re right. That would be—bad.”

Rather than hurrying upstairs, though, Dream took Hob’s face in his hands. “Hob Gadling,” he said, solemnly. ”You have offered me your love. It is only right that I offer you mine in return. Will you accept it?”

“Yes,” Hob said, surging forward to kiss him, but finding himself laughing helplessly against Dream’s mouth. “Of course.”

“Good,” Dream said, leaning forward, his forehead against Hob’s.

“Good,” Hob echoed. “Should we—Calliope?”

“Calliope,” Dream agreed, and he grabbed Hob’s hand and then they were—

—upstairs, in the bedroom. Hob yelped; the sudden dislocation felt like it had left his stomach behind downstairs, and he steadied himself by clutching Dream’s hand tighter. Calliope dropped her book onto the bed beside her, eyes wide with hope—hope that turned to satisfaction as she spotted their entangled hands.

“Oh, well done,” she said, and to Hob’s surprise she was looking at him. “I had hoped you might convince him it would not end ill.”

“He has not convinced me of that,” Dream cut in. He was looking at Hob, too; there was a strange pressure in the weight of their gazes, these two unfathomably creatures, his two loves. “He has…convinced me to try. Once more.”

“Once more,” Calliope murmured. She stepped forward and took their enjoined hands in both of hers. “That is all we need, is it not, Oneiros? Each time. Once more.”

“I know not how you hold onto such hope,” Dream replied. “Both of you.”

“It is not difficult,” Calliope said, “When he lets me.” And as she said it she drew Dream into her arms, tipping her face up and pressing her lips to his throat. He swallowed, and Hob watched his throat bob against her mouth; then he hid his face in her hair.

“Come to bed,” Calliope said, reaching out a hand to Hob past Dream, and pulling him into the circle.

“As you wish,” Dream said. Neither he nor Calliope understood why Hob laughed.

“The Princess Bride,” Hob explained briefly. “It’s a movie. You might like it.”

“Might I,” Dream mused.

“It’s a good story,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Dream agreed, carelessly. “Think of more important things, Hob Gadling.” Hob would have asked what those things were, except Calliope was shedding her dress, and the answer became abruptly clear.

---

Hob and Calliope slept, after; he could only assume Dream didn’t, and he woke as Dream was putting on his boots and coat in the darkness.

“Dream,” he whispered, unwilling to wake Calliope, whose face was tucked sweetly against his shoulder. “Are you going?”

“I must attend my work,” Dream said, matching his whisper. “Sleep, Hob Gadling, and I will see you sooner than you will know it.”

“But I will see you soon,” Hob pressed.

“Yes,” Dream said, giving Hob a straight answer for once in his life. “Very soon.”

“Good,” Hob said, and he fell back to sleep. He woke again in mid-evening to a knock on the door.

“Calliope?” It was Zed. “Are you in there? I’m making dinner.”

Calliope sat up. “Yes, we’ll be right there,” she said, almost automatically. Hob winced.

“ Oh, ” Zed said. “Alright then.” There was the sound of footsteps, down the stairs.

“I,” Hob said, with supreme dignity, “Was going to climb out the window.”

“Why?” Calliope said. “I would not hide this from her—do you wish to conceal it?”

“No,” Hob said, honestly. “But might get a bit awkward to explain.”

She shrugged. “Anyway, you could not go out the window, it is not safe.”

“We thought you had,” Hob said. “Before we realized he could–uh, teleport.” 

Calliope climbed out of bed to peer out the window, down at the street. “I think it would be difficult.”

“Probably.” He got up and retrieved his clothes; he’d definitely left them in a tangled heap on the floor, but someone had folded them on the chair. “That’s…cute,” Hob said, pointing it out to Calliope. “Did he used to do that?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Yes,” she said. “But in his own realm he need only think it.”

Hob imagined Dream—who’d always had the bearing of royalty, even before Hob found out he was an actual king—fastidiously folding his socks in Calliope’s dark bedroom, and grinned wide.

Still, he let Calliope head down the stairs first, following her at a short distance. “Hey,” he heard Zed say. “I wasn’t sure after he went out with Rob last night, but—” then she spotted Hob in the doorway and her eyes widened.

“Hey,” Hob said, trying to be casual.

“I thought you were—” Zed broke off. “Is the, uh, King of Dreams going to kill you both?”

“Nah,” Hob shook his head, fighting a grin.

“He would not,” Calliope agreed.

“Alright,” Zed said, and picked up her glass of wine, clearly reevaluating some things.

She went to take a drink, which was when Calliope said with a glint in her eye that Hob was rapidly beginning to characterize as mischievous , “He had far too good a time,” and she spit it back out.

“ Two gods,” Zed said, shaking her head at Hob, when she’d recovered. “You might die anyway.”

“Yeah,” Hob said. “Well.” He glanced at Calliope, who gave him a tiny nod, and made a decision. “That’s another thing…”