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Hob could not help but grin at the sight before him; his lover wrapped around him, having jealously kicked the duvet between them off the bed.
”Dear heart, as much as I enjoy wearing you like a cape, you will need to disembark me now, — I need to take a piss.”
Dream reluctantly slithered off him, grumbling something about the incessant indignity of being at the mercy of human bodily functions.
Hob looked back tenderly at the impossible creature sulking in his bed. A peacocking paradox of milkyway limbs and dishevelled tempest bedhead.
In battle, he wears a helmet made from the skull and backbone of an enemy god whom he defeated. In bed, he wears the soft sweatshirt of the immortal lover who has tenderly bullied him into living.
Something deep within Dream soared at the realization that Hob no longer had that look of worry upon his brow whenever he had to briefly leave a room; as if Dream would disappear unless he kept his eyes on him. The unbridled relief in his eyes whenever he returned to find Dream still there had initially stung Dream so deeply, the way only a righteous blow could. But it had also strengthened his newfound resolve, not to leave Hob a second longer than he had to. Hob had waited for him for over three decades — no, you oblivious fool, for over six centuries — so he would prove himself worthy of this; capable of the same acts of devotion. I will always be waiting for you. I will never leave you again. I will show you that.
Dream’s eyes wandered to the framed drawing on the wall, and then panned over to the faded little daguerreotypes (no, polaroids, Hob had called them), friends huddled together in smoke-laden sofas, drunken smiles and warm limbs. The painful twinge, again, but softer this time. Like a yellowing bruise.
There was a more human way of making memories. His fingertips twitched, and the little box appeared; plucked out of a dream of a being belonging to something called generation X (it was most likely some kind of fae, but he would have to inquire with Lucienne to know for sure).
Hob returned from the bathroom, and with a childlike smirk leaped into the bed. Without the time to adjust his weight for this treasonous invasion, Dream bounced a few inches into the air, before regally landing in his previous position.
”I could have your head for that.”
”You already have it, darling. What’s that? Is that a Polaroid camera?”
His eyes furrowed at the sight of the apparatus in Dream’s lap, clearly trying and failing to remember when he had gotten that camera.
”Seeing as you rightly pointed out that the drawing did neither of us justice” — Hob huffed at that — ”I believe we might create some fairer mementos of our time together.”
He had anticipated the well-known teariness in his own blasted waking form, but he hadn’t expected the surprise and uncharacteristically sudden welling up of tears in Hob’s eyes. He opened and closed his mouth, clearly stunned. The moment was raw and frail, like silk over an open wound. Dream took an unneeded breath, and waited. When Hob had wrangled back some kind of composure, he blurted out:
”Yes! Yeah, of course, I would… I would love that. How… how would you like it?”
Dream paused, contemplating the question for a moment before finding the answer. He wanted it to be the complete opposite of that drawing. No table between them, no clothes between them, not in the posession of others (how had the damned thing ended up sown into a dead man’s shirt?), but for them to keep.
”Just like this.”
Dream nuzzled into Hob’s neck, before turning so he sat with his back against Hob’s chest. He handed the camera over to Hob, who stared at it for a few seconds, before chuckling.
”You know, for a long time I honestly wondered if you would even show up in a photograph.”
Dream allowed himself an undignified eye-roll; he was already slumming it, as Hob so lovingly put it.
”If you are trying to make me regret this suggestion, I must admit that you are succeeding.”
Hob grinned and pressed a sloppy kiss against Dream’s cheek. Dream sighed contently, leaning into it for a moment, before turning his gaze forward with resolve; his chin lifted in an unbearably regal pose.
Somewhere in the aether, a temporal crossroad; a thundering click; a blinding flash
It felt like a sentence.
It felt like a prayer.
It felt like a promise.