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It can’t be said that Hob Gadling doesn’t have friends. He has plenty, in fact. He’s had hundreds, over the years: neighbors, fellow soldiers, local drinking buddies. In 2022, he has colleagues, other regulars from the pub, mates from his conversational Korean classes.
But this is the first time in a long time that he has, well—
A best friend.
Not that he’d say this to Dream. Recent years seem to have mellowed him a bit, maybe even softened him, and Hob knows that the (not-)god does in fact consider him a friend. But: best friend?
Even Hob won’t push his luck that far.
That’s how it feels, though. Since reuniting, not even six months ago, Dream has come by a dozen times or more. Most of the time the conversation is light. Hell, sometimes there isn’t even a conversation at all, just the sound of whatever movie they’ve agreed upon, but even these nights are precious beyond words. It’s a gift just to sit in the presence of someone who knows him for who he really is.
But the fact remains that this is all at Dream’s leisure; it is Dream who says when they will meet again, and Hob’s just along for the ride. He doesn’t mind, generally speaking. Dream’s appearance is always a pleasant surprise.
But on a night like tonight, Hob would give an awful lot to be able to just—pick up the phone. Call his best friend, no fanfare involved, and simply ask if he wouldn’t mind coming over.
But there’s nothing to be done here that works simply. And when Hob emerges from a long, brooding shower, nursing a tiny spark of hope, there is nobody else in his flat but Winnie.
Blinking back tears, he scoops the cat up to cradle against his chest. “Oh, Winnie Mouse,” he sighs, “gotta say I could really use a friend tonight. But at least I’ve got you.”
Winnie, in response, headbutts gently at his chin. Hob carries her into the kitchen, where he pours himself far too much whiskey, then back into the living room, where he settles in his armchair. Winnie curls up in his lap. The weight of her helps, though if he’s being honest, he’d still prefer a proper hug, from a human. (Or a human-shaped thing, or what have you.)
But it seems that that’s not in the cards.
So Hob just pets his cat, and drinks his whiskey, until she drifts off to sleep and he himself sinks into a restless stupor.
It’s from this state, unthinking but nowhere near at peace, that a voice rouses him some time later.
“Hob.”
Hob blinks. Then he startles, belatedly, at the figure before him: dark hair and grey t-shirt, and a face so familiar Hob could weep.
“Dream?”
“I received the message.”
“Message?” Sitting still, Hob’s not feeling all that drunk; but he’s certainly not feeling sober.
“Winnie informed me that you could—use a friend tonight?”
Glad as he is to see the (not-)god, his own words, echoed back to him, needle unpleasantly. He feels his brain piecing things together in real time. “You’ve got my cat spying on me for you?”
“She lives here. She is not spying.”
“But you’ve got her passing you messages?”
“I invited her to visit me whenever she wished,” Dream replies, still not seeming to grasp why there might be an issue with any of this. “Tonight is not the first time she has done so, but on this occasion, she approached me out of concern for her father.”
“Oh, right,” Hob snorts. “Great. Glad the cat gets an all-access pass to you and I’m supposed to just sit here like a dolt and take what I can get.” The urge to stalk off is brewing in his legs, but Winnie herself is still asleep on him and, well, it’s not like she did anything wrong. He stays put, albeit unhappily.
“Hob,” Dream says; his temper has not risen to meet Hob’s own. “Why could you use a friend tonight?”
“Dunno what she meant,” Hob grunts, and of course that’s when his eyes start stinging again. “I’m feeling like a loner right now. Sorry for pulling you away from it.”
“You didn’t do so intentionally. But now that I am here, you may as well tell me why.”
“I didn’t call you!” Hob throws both hands up. “Come to think of it, I can’t call you, so, I don’t know why you’re acting like I did. You’re off the hook. I mean it, you can leave.”
To Hob’s immense disappointment, Dream does so, turning on one foot and disappearing into the kitchen. But then comes the sound of the tap. And a moment later Dream is back, with a glass of water that he holds out expectantly.
And, fine. Hob is, in fact, thirsty. Still feeling a bit petty, though, so he denies Dream the courtesy of a thank-you as he takes the glass.
His lips are quivering too much to drink properly. A couple of drops escape down his chin; he wipes them with his sleeve, then wipes his eyes while he’s at it.
Dream, perched on the couch now, watches in silence.
Hob finishes the water, and clears stickiness from his throat. “I’m going to ask you a question. And I need you to answer it honestly. And”—not get butthurt, he almost says, but forces himself to finish— “not take it personally.”
“Ask.”
“But I mean it,” Hob insists, “because you do that. You take things personally even when they’re not meant that way.”
Dream’s eyes flash, and for a moment Hob thinks he’s finally gone too far. But the moment passes. “Ask your question, Hob Gadling,” Dream says.
“Okay. Here goes. Why—me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why did you grant me immortality?”
“It was not me who granted it to you.”
That’s not the point right now, and Dream damn well knows it. “Okay, but, obviously it was one of your lot. Obviously you had to do with it. So don’t deflect,” Hob chides. “I’m asking you the reason. Even back then there were nearly half a billion humans you could’ve granted this to. And I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, because I’m not, and I’m not asking you to take it back, because I don’t want that at all. But I need an answer. You wanted companionship, fuck, you wanted an experiment, I don’t know, either way, why me? Why me, Dream?”
Dark lashes touch briefly to pale cheeks, as Dream seems to consider his answer. But all that comes out is, “you boasted that night, that you chose not to die.”
“That’s it?!” Hob yelps. “That can’t be it! I can’t be the first stupid bugger who ever went and said something ridiculous like that.”
“Indeed not. But that night, we were there to hear it.”
“So it really was fucking arbitrary. It really was just a whim on your part. On—whoever’s part!” he snaps, before Dream can correct him. “Brilliant. Excellent. I’m just a roll of the fucking dice.”
All the huffing and puffing has bothered Winnie enough that she’s woken, and jumps down now. Finally. Hob takes gracelessly to his feet and stalks into the kitchen, empty water glass in hand to give the illusion of a purpose other than running away. At the sink, he tries to refill it. But his hands are shaking so badly that he puts it down before it can drop.
Footsteps come in from the living room, stop near the kitchen table. “I am not sorry for having had your companionship these last centuries, Hob Gadling,” Dream says. “But I am sorry that I cannot offer a more satisfactory explanation.”
Too tired for anger now, Hob just shrugs.
“I would ask you again. Please. What’s the matter?”
And it would be quite ridiculous, wouldn’t it, to pray for a friend just to snap at them when they finally arrived? And not say anything about why you were feeling rough in the first place? Hob turns, lifts his head. He can feel his lips wobbling, eyes leaking, and he knows he must look absolutely pathetic. He can’t bring himself to care.
“One of my students is sick,” Hob rasps. “She has been for a while, but she’s always said, she wants to be a normal kid. Go to school, do her homework. Live her life. But today she told us, it’s getting bad. That today was her last day of school. She’s starting with hospice, she’s— she’s getting ready—”
His voice breaks. “And she’s fifteen. Y’know, a twat like me has gotten six and a half centuries and counting, and Maddie’s going to get fifteen years. It isn’t fair.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It just really fucking isn’t, though.” Hob’s starting to blub properly now. He presses at his hitching belly, as though he could hold himself together from the outside in.
“Please believe me,” Dream murmurs, “that I understand that on quite a personal level.”
“And I just think, why did I deserve it? What did I do to deserve it? I am a mediocre man, when it comes down to it, Dream. I’ve done good things but I have done horrible, horrible things. You know. Why did I deserve this and she d-doesn’t? A-a-and Robyn?”
“Slow your breathing,” Dream intones, coming to Hob’s side. And it isn’t until that moment that Hob realizes just how badly he’s been gulping for air. He forces himself to exhale through his nose.
“It isn’t fair. It isn’t fucking fair,” he continues, softer now, not sure what he wants his friend to say to this. For a long moment he says nothing, anyway.
Then: “Death is my sister,” Dream tells him, quietly. “It is she that granted you immortality.”
And wow, okay, not much would have earned a reaction at the moment, but a statement like this does. Hob bites the inside of his cheek, and stays quiet.
“I have watched her work,” Dream continues. “And I do not know what it is to be in the Sunless Lands, but I can tell you what happens in a mortal’s final moments.
“My sister is very kind, and very beautiful. She appears as a human, nothing frightening, nothing strange. When your time has come, she walks to you. She calls you by your name and you wonder: how does she know?”
Dream smiles, his own eyes full of tears now. “And then you realize. You take her hand, and you hear the sound of her wings unfurling. And she shepherds you from this life. In that moment, you do not go alone.”
And probably Dream meant all that to be comforting— and probably it will be, later— but for right now all it does is snap the last threads of Hob’s composure. He breaks down. Claps a hand to his mouth to stifle the worst of the noises, but there’s no denying that he’s real-and-truly hysterical now. He’s crying so hard he can’t stand up straight. So hard he tastes the whiskey, trying to repeat on him.
Dream lays a hand on his back. “Shall I make you sleep?”
Hob shakes his head, frantically.
“I would guard your dreams. You would sleep well.”
But he doesn’t need the fucking King of Dreams right now; he needs his friend.
The hand is still on his back, and it’s tentative, but it’s all the invitation he needs. Hob leans into Dream’s side. Wraps both arms around his waist, hides his face against his shoulder, and sobs.
Dream doesn’t speak. Nor does he bring up the other arm and pull Hob in completely; but he stays. Stands, unwavering, as Hob makes a noisy, blubbering fool of himself, and soaks Dream’s t-shirt with tears (and snot, and drool).
“I’m sorry,” he finds himself weeping, at some point. Though he’s not sorry for the breakdown. He’s not sorry for being angry before, either; in the end he’s not sure what he’s sorry for. But he says it again and again. Maybe it’s just something you say when you’re crying. “I’m sorry,” he stammers, and he likes that Dream does not respond. All that has changed about his position, in these long minutes, is that his chin has come to rest lightly atop Hob’s head.
There’s a handful of false stops before the jag runs its course. Even as Hob pulls away he finds he can’t quite hold his own weight yet, and he bends heavily against the counter.
Dream, for his part, nearly seems to be fretting. “What can I do to help?” he asks, as Hob rests there, panting. Hob waves him off, too frazzled for questions.
“Would you like to sit?”
“Just, gimme a minute,” Hob croaks. The truth is that he’s come within a hairbreadth of crying himself sick, and he isn’t sure he should turn away from the sink just yet.
“Of course.”
“Don’t leave, okay?”
“I won’t.”
Hob nods. Hugs himself around the waist, sucks in a breath, and lets it out as slowly as he possibly can. His head is pounding. He turns on the tap and splashes cool water onto his face, less for the purpose of washing and more for the purpose of soothing his swollen eyes. Fuck, but they hurt. He wonders if they look as raw as they feel.
The whole of him feels raw, really. (And thank fuck it’s Friday night because if he had to be useful a scant twelve hours from now, he’s honestly not sure he could do it.)
A hand rests, once more, between his shoulder blades.
“The girl,” Dream prompts. “You called her Maddie?”
“Yeah.” Hob sniffles. “Maddie Mason.”
“I will see to it that her dreams are sweet. For all the nights she has left.”
He’s out of energy to cry properly anymore, but Hob feels his face crumple at this; fresh tears prick, painfully hot against the tapwater still dripping down his face.
“My apologies,” Dream murmurs. “I shall say no more. You must sleep now, Hob Gadling.”
“Yeah,” Hob whispers, drying his face on his collar. “Okay.”
Dream extends his hand, offering it to be held this time. And though it’s smaller and lighter than his own, Hob feels like a child as he takes it. It’s a rare comfort to be the younger man in the room.
That comfort seems to grow, to enfold him like a blanket, as Dream leads him calmly down the hallway. Leads him into his bedroom, right to the side of his bed.
Hob thinks about sitting up, back to his headboard: a grown man still capable of conversation. But he’s not, right now, so he doesn’t. Instead he lays down and curls up on his side, trembling with sheer exhaustion.
Dream perches on the mattress’ edge. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to dream about?”
Hob shakes his head; suddenly he’s forgotten every pleasant dream he’s ever had. “Dealer’s choice,” he croaks.
“Perhaps a dream of nothing much at all, then. A green glade, on a sunny day.”
“I like rainy days better,” Hob whispers.
“Very well,” Dream says, with a smile. “Sleep, my friend.”
And the last thing Hob knows is a cool hand on his brow.