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It’s not, to Hob’s surprise, a hundred years after their meeting in The New Inn. In fact, his friend visits next Thursday. Hob can’t help the bubbling joy that spreads like wildfire inside his chest, once he catches a glimpse of the stranger again so soon.
With the sun setting and the bar closing, Hob leads them to his flat a few blocks away. A strange feeling nudges at him when he sees the way his friend looks at the world around them: a steady look, the gaze of a cat, some might say.
Once they’re inside, they drink. They talk, Hob doing most of the work, but it’s not like he minds it.
“How about we play a game, then?” asks his companion, after he’s almost done with his wine, quite playfully at that, and Hob can’t stop the grin that spreads on his face. The alcohol must be taking its effects, for his friend to be making an offer like that.
“What kind of game?” And to be quite honest, Hob doesn’t really care for the answer. His friend could have offered anything, really, and Hob would be nodding his head in agreement before he even knew what he was signing up for.
“Well, since you would like to know who I really am, what would you say to a guessing game?” His friend's lips are neatly tucked into a smile as he continues: “You ask a question, and I answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Once you find me out, I’ll tell you my name. What do you say, Hob Gadling?”
“I say… You’ve got a deal,” says Hob and takes a sip of his whiskey. When he looks back up at his companion, he finds him already meeting his gaze, with his clever, careful eyes. Whatever his friend is, it truly never ceases to steal Hob’s breath away.
“Were you ever human?” Hob supposes he has to start somewhere. His immortality wasn’t a part of himself always.
“No,” the other man answers simply.
“Were you the one who made me immortal, then?”
His friend scoffs, but not unkindly. “No,” he says again.
“Are you God?” Another dumb question, Hob knows, but that’s kind of how you play these games, right? You start simple, small, build your way up?
There was a point when Hob thought that maybe the man sitting in front of him now was the Devil themselves, but that theory left his mind quickly. He has never considered many other options after that — it wasn't something he particularly wanted to concern himself with, not when all that really mattered to him was the company.
The man smiles. And he shakes his head. “No.” Hob groans and tilts his head back, hitting the backrest of the couch. Now that he finally has a chance, he’s not sure what questions to ask.
“But you are a god?” He asks, just to make sure. If not God, then maybe a god.
“Well, I suppose, in a sense, I am.” His friend shrugs like it’s an everyday matter to be a god.
“Are you the child of like, I don’t know, Zeus? Or Poseidon? Or like, you know, one of those Greek guys?”
“No. I am not a child of a Greek god.”
“Do your powers, or duties, involve any sort of force of nature?”
“I’d ask you to specify,” the black haired man tilts his head and takes a sip of his wine. His glass is almost empty, now that Hob notices.
“I mean, do you control any kind of element — like water, or wind?”
“No,” comes a quick answer.
Hob groans again. “Am I really only allowed to ask yes or no questions?” He asks his friend that’s looking at him carefully. “Would you at least give me a hint?”
“Perhaps,” the other man smiles and looks down at his glass, before carefully bringing it back up to his lips.. Hob stares at how his Adam’s apple moves when he swallows. Then his friend moves slightly to face him once again and says, “The realm which I am in control of is of good familiarity to you. You know it well, yet often forget about its necessity to you.” Hob almost expects him to add ‘What am I?’ at the end, just as if he were asking him a riddle.
“Oh god,” Hob sighs, “that did not make it easier at all.” He chuckles, and looks his companion in the eye. He’s met with a careful gaze, one that over all these years never failed to make Hob’s chest feel a little tighter. The man’s eyes have always been a point of deep adoration for Gadling; deep blues, always glimmering, just as if the stars from the night sky were pulled to embed his friend’s irises.
“Okay, are you, like, a god of light, or darkness? Wait, would that classify as an element like the wind or water?”
“I would request that you ask one question at a time,” and Hob knows, by the small smile that his friend is hiding behind the now almost empty glass of wine, that he’s teasing him.
“Right,” Hob says with a grin and eyebrows raised, “the first question of the two, then.”
“No,” the other man gives back, and leans his head back ever so slightly, “but I shall give you another hint.” Hob goes still, listening carefully. “I am closely related to light and dark themselves.” And the man finishes his drink, putting the glass on the table.
Hob squints and furrows his brows, pausing to think for a second. Looking at the floor, he asks, “Are you a god of the night?” It would be quite humorous for Hob to ask if his friend was a god of the day, given his appearance and his, as so many would eagerly point out, dry personality.
His friend hides a small smile behind his hand and looks away. “No,” he says, with laughter in his voice.
Hob nearly jumps out of his skin. This has to be it, then. “Are you a god of sleep?”
His friend leans in then, face nearly serious, but his eyes smiling, their noses almost touching. “My name is Morpheus,” he whispers.
Hob feels his whole body fluttering with warmth. Years of glances, grins, words and stories all tangled up here. The gentle pull, the curve of his friend’s lips, the sharp edge of his jaw, the glow of his skin, the mess of his hair. Constellations of affection, each star hanging with the two of them at the center.
“Some call me Dream. Choose whichever one you’d like.”
“You’re the god of dreams?” Hob breathes.
“Yes.”
Hob leans his head back for a moment, “God, how did I not guess that,” then looking back he reaches his hand out to his friend’s — Morpheus’, his name is Morpheus — forehead, and moves a strand of hair out of his eyes
Dream smiles at him and looks up from under his lashes, his breath warm on Hob’s lips: “That’s not a yes-or-no question, Hob Gadling.”
Hob rolls his eyes at him, tilts his head and kisses him.
It’s slow and a bit sloppy thanks to the state of drunkenness they’re both in, but Hob thinks it to be perfect. Gently, he places his fingers on Dream’s neck and runs them up to his jaw. Then, when they break for air and Hob opens his eyes, Dream is smiling. A grin that tugs at the corners of his eyes and makes his cheeks rounder. God, he wants to grip him by the shoulders and pull him so close to his chest, they melt into one whole.
When Dream reaches for him and gently runs his fingers through Hob’s hair, carefully watching his face, he can’t help but hold his breath. To be touched so sweetly, by this man in front of him, surely wasn’t something he expected to happen when he thought of the two of them together. To be quite frank, Hob’s not sure what he imagined his friend, Morpheus, to be like with another person. In his mind, he hardly ever let himself be pulled somewhere he knew he can’t follow. He wished for that love, but deep in his heart, he knew that it was nothing but a fantasy. Dream would be there, but a mere copy of him, a stunt double, not real Dream. Not the Dream here, flesh and soul, and so full of careful ardor and gentle touch. Here, where he’s so loving, his eyes full of warm light and hands gently tracing the outline of Hob’s scalp. He kisses him again.
Dream’s hands are still in his hair, and he’s a little surprised at the eagerness Hob puts in the kiss, but follows nonetheless and after a second leans into the touch. And then-
“Wait,” Hob pulls away and gasps a breath, “does that mean… you know what I dream about?”
Morpheus blinks slowly, once and then twice, and says, “Only if I wish to.”
Hob bulges his eyes at him and thins his lips out: “And do you wish to?”
“I would not want to impose,” he answers, and Hob thinks he looks almost offended. As if the mere suggestion that he could impose offended the god of dreams. “However,” he starts, “all dreams are a part of myself. I can recall them if I so wished to.”
“So you can just go digging inside my head if you wanted to?”
“I would not phrase it that way, but I suppose so, yes.”
“So…” Hob looks down at the floor and pretends like the ornaments on his carpet are that interesting, “you must know then.”
“About?” With only the corner of his eye, Hob sees Dream tilt his head slightly forward.
“Oh god,” Hob rubs his eyes. “You know, the times that I was… dreaming of you.”
There’s a beat of silence, one that Hob thinks might finally send him to his grave. If there was truly something that would kill him, it would be love, he thinks.
“We have just shared a kiss,” Morpheus says, as a matter of fact.
Black on white, nothing else to it. You like me, I like you. You kissed me, I kissed you. But Dream is far from simple, Hob knows. With him, the night sky falls down and the ground rises. South is east and east is south when Morpheus is in the room. The room turns upside down and time pours itself into a wine glass, another hundred years pass. The stars are closer and yet so far away, his friend’s lips curl and eyes shine, the door opens from within and a deal is made. Another hundred years pass, he loves and loves and then loses, his life falls apart, but Morpheus listens to him still, he lives on, another hundred years pass, aye, but you could be hurt, but Hob falls in love instead, another hundred years pass, he’s not there, he did not come to their meeting, and then-
He’s here, on his couch, hair as black as the deepest ink, bottom of the ocean black; eyes full, the moon’s glow decorating his gaze, the void of his presence a soothing dance of notes. He’s here and maybe, this once, just this once, at this moment, things could be simple with his friend.
Hob looks at him, and reaches for his hand. “Will you tell me why you were late?”
Dream nods.