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He was at Robyn’s funeral. Again. Still. Forever. The pain squeezed his heart, a physical feeling that forced thick sobs out of his throat.
His son, his clever, brave boy, was gone. Hob had waited so long for a family and now… and now…
“Hob?”
He pulled his hands away from his face to see the mysterious stranger from the White Horse Inn facing him over the grave.
No. No, that was Dream. Robyn had died hundreds of years ago. Dream was his lover. Hob gulped back his next sob and reached for him.
Dream gathered him into his arms and Hob tried to grasp at his robes only to find them made out of shadows. Dream kissed his forehead and Hob felt the garment become solid in his hands. He clung to Dream, burying his face in his chest.
“I have taught you how to navigate the Dreaming, Hob,” Dream said gently, “why would you come here when it brings you such pain?”
“I didn’t,” Hob gasped, still struggling to orient himself, “I don’t…”
“Hm.”
Hob could hear the frown in Dream’s voice. He felt Dream’s cool thumb draw a line across his forehead and the overwhelming emotion of the funeral faded away. He looked up to see one stark white hand make a dismissive gesture and the graveyard fell away, replaced by a cliff overlooking the sea.
Hob took a deep breath of the salty air and shook his head, releasing his grasp on Dream’s garment. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking out at the sea, “I don’t know what happened. I haven’t lost myself in a dream in…” he squinted, thinking, “must be well over a year now. I’ve gotten so good at coming straight to you.”
“I felt you enter the Dreaming,” Dream ran a hand up and down Hob’s arm, “but when you did not come to me, I thought there was somewhere else you wished to be.”
Hob snorted. “If I’m dreaming then I want to be with you.”
“Yes,” Dream said, “when I felt your sorrow I realized that your location was unintentional.”
“Thanks for coming.”
“You know I always will.”
Hob draped his arms over Dream’s shoulders and leaned in to kiss him.
When they eventually parted, Hob found that they were in a cozy room with a plush couch in front of a hearth with a crackling fire. Dream plucked two glasses of wine from the side table, handed one to Hob, then pulled him down to sit on the couch. Hob gladly pressed himself against Dream’s side and took a sip of the wine.
“Something is troubling you,” Dream said.
Hob shrugged. “I must have been thinking about Robyn before I fell asleep.”
Dream hummed in disagreement. “That memory represents loss for you. Is there something you fear to lose?”
“No, I-”
The voice of the history department dean sounded in the room. “I swear you haven’t aged a day since I first met you, Robert! It’s got to be, what, 20 years now? How do you do it?”
Hob sighed and rolled his eyes, then nudged Dream with his elbow. “Could you not do that, please?”
“I did nothing,” Dream insisted, “this is still your dream, Hob.”
Hob groaned and rubbed his hand over his face. “Then I need to get better at controlling that.”
He quickly set down his wine glass and wrapped his arms around Dream’s waist, easily pulling him into his lap. Hob marveled as he always did that Dream’s weight in the Dreaming bore no correlation to the size of his body. Dream shifted so that he was straddling Hob’s lap.
“If this is my dream,” Hob said, “then I want it to be about making love to you, not my fear of loss.”
Dream smiled and Hob reached up to grasp the back of his neck and pull him down into a kiss.
When Hob awoke, body still tingling with the pleasurable sensations of his dream, he was happy to find Dream in his arms. A benefit, he thought as he pulled Dream closer, of having a supernatural lover who didn’t sleep, was that he never had to worry about waking him.
“Couldn’t bear to let me go?” he murmured into Dream’s shoulder.
“Something like that.” Dream smiled at him.
Hob kissed Dream’s shoulder and shifted with a contented sigh to rest his head on his chest. Dream stroked the hair at Hob’s temple repeatedly and Hob lost track of how long they lay like that before Dream broke the silence.
“Hob?”
“Mm?”
“The voice in your dream.”
Hob groaned. “It seems a bit unfair that I fell in love with you before I knew that you could see my subconscious.”
“You suspected.” Hob couldn’t see the smirk, but he could hear it.
“I did think you were a vampire for a while.”
Dream scoffed, then stroked his hair in silence for another moment before continuing. “I do not wish to look into your subconscious mind. I would much prefer that you talk to me.”
Hob blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s not… I don’t know. It’s not something that should make you have to come rescue me from nightmares! It’s really not a big deal.”
“Someone has noticed that you have not aged in twenty years?”
“The dean,” Hob sighed, “my boss. Frankly I’m surprised it took this long.”
“You will have to move on then,” Dream said.
“Yeah,” Hob muttered. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head to kiss Dream’s chest.
“That is what is troubling you?”
Hob shrugged.
“You have uprooted your life many times,” Dream said gently, “why is the prospect of doing it again making you dream of your son’s funeral?”
“It’s different this time!” The words flowed more easily when he didn’t have to look in Dream’s eyes. “Before, I always knew I would be coming back to the White Horse to see you. The world kept changing but that stayed the same. It was the constant. But then the White Horse was gone and the New Inn was my constant.”
Dream leaned down to kiss the top of Hob’s head. “You hardly need wait 100 years or be in a specific tavern to see me. You can always reach me in the Dreaming now and I will come to you wherever you are in the waking world.”
“I know, I know.” Hob turned his head to press his face into Dream’s chest. “It’s stupid and irrational but … leaving the New Inn when I spent so much time waiting for you there… when it’s the place where you came back to me…” he trailed off and tried to swallow down the emotion.
“I suppose,” Dream said after a moment, “that it is not surprising that you would be reluctant to leave your temple.”
“My what?” Hob frowned.
Dream tucked one hand behind his head. “Your temple to me.”
Hob sat up and turned to look down at him. “Hang on, what are you talking about?”
“You constructed a temple to me in my absence.” Dream’s face bore the calm, pleased expression he always got when he learned a new rule for how something worked.
“The New Inn?” Hob narrowed his eyes, perplexed.
Dream nodded with a smile that teetered perilously close to smug.
“It’s a pub, not a temple!” Hob huffed. “And I paid people to renovate an old boarding house, I didn’t construct it!”
Dream shrugged. “You had a place built for me. A place where you hoped and waited for me to come. I have been worshipped before, Hob Gadling. Do you think I would not know how it feels?”
“Wait, I thought you weren’t a god.” Hob tried to grasp at anything to understand the turn this conversation had taken.
“I am not a god. Over time certain cultures and individuals have worshipped me regardless.”
Hob knew he was losing the thread but couldn’t resist his next question. “What does being worshipped feel like?”
Dream closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It feels like strength, and power, and love flowing to me.”
“And you think I worship you?”
Dream opened his eyes again and they were black with stars shining in them. “I know you do.”
He reached up to grab the front of Hob’s shirt and pulled him down into a kiss. Hob leaned into the kiss but pulled back when Dream let go of his shirt. He lay on top of Dream’s chest, his chin resting on his crossed arms.
“Why did you never say anything?”
Dream frowned. “What would you have had me say?”
“I don’t know… ‘thanks for the temple, Hob’?”
“I thank you for the temple, Hob Gadling,” Dream smirked.
Hob traced a curlicue over Dream’s shoulder with his finger.
“Have you got lots of temples?” he asked quietly.
“None that are presently in use on this world.”
“But you had some,” Hob pressed. “Probably proper marble jobs with plinths and whatnot.”
“Some were like that,” Dream said, “some simpler, some more elaborate. The New Inn is perhaps not the most elegant temple I have received over the eons-”
“Hey!”
“- but it is the most heartfelt. And the most meaningful to me.”
Hob smiled softly as he let himself get lost in the blackness of Dream’s eyes. “I suppose I’ll take that.”
Dream interlaced their fingers and brought Hob’s hand to his mouth to kiss. “We can return to the New Inn in dreams. And perhaps in the waking world in 2089.”
Hob took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then pulled their hands towards him and kissed Dream’s fingers. “Yeah. That sounds good.”
~One Year Later~
Hob waved as the Jeep trundled away from him down the gravel road. He felt a sudden change in the barometric pressure and grinned, then turned to face Dream who had appeared behind him in the open field. Dream stepped towards him, long black coat flapping in the breeze and then they were in each other’s arms, lips joined.
“You seem extremely pleased with yourself today,” Dream remarked when they eventually broke apart.
“Just had a very good meeting with an architect I’ve hired.” Hob grinned.
Dream tucked a lock of Hob’s hair behind his ear. “An architect?”
“I’m building you a new temple.”
Dream froze. “What?”
“I mean, it’s also going to be my home, but I figure if I unintentionally turned a pub into a temple, if I try I can probably intentionally make a house into a temple to Dream of the Endless.”
Dream stood there, lips parted, studying him. Seemingly at a loss for words.
Hob’s grin widened and he stepped closer, taking Dream’s face in his hands. “And I intend to spend most of my time there worshipping you.”