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Dream has had alcohol this 1889 meeting, a first. He has not seen Hob Gadling since about 1800, when Hob managed to dream about him after getting his name in 1789. The dream had turned into something else, and Hob's hands had felt like a brand, holding him gently even as he took Dream with bruising force otherwise. He's not sure Hob realizes it wasn't "just" a dream.
"Well, I may have learnt a bit from my mistakes. But, uh... doesn't seem to stop me from making them. I think it's you that's changed." Hob gazes at him, analytically.
Morpheus keeps his face impassive. The implication that he's changed is laughable, but he's still... curious. "How so?"
Hob tilts his head, pulls on his ear. "I think I know why we still meet here, century after century." A pause. Beats in the narrative, Dream thinks.
"It's not because you want to see whether or not I'm ready to seek death. I don't think I'll ever seek death. By now, you know that about me." The pause before the dramatic statement.
"So, I think you're here for something else, Dream."
"And what might that be?" Dream asks neutrally, something uncomfortable rising in his chest, this body he's given himself. His eyes feel a bit damp.
"Friendship. I think you're lonely."
Rage boils over. "You dare..."
Hob tries to backtrack a little, placate him. "No, look, I'm not saying –"
"You... dare suggest one such as I might need your companionship." Dream bites the words out. It's cruel and sharp, but what else is Morpheus but sharp edges these days? Something is burning in his chest and his eyes.
"Yes. Yes, I do," says Hob firmly after a moment of deliberation.
"Then I shall take my leave of you and prove you wrong," Dream snaps.
Hob catches up with him in the rain, managing to grab his wrist. For whatever reason, Dream stops dead, unable to move, eyes fixed on the fingers closed over his arm. He could dislodge Hob with a flick of his fingers, disappear in a rush of sand, plague Hob with nightmares for centuries. And yet he does none of these things.
"Release me," he demands instead.
"No, look, you listen, Dream. I'll be here in one hundred years time. If you're here as well, it'll be because we're friends, no other reason!"
Morpheus laughs, low and bitter, still staring at their hands. "You delude yourself, Hob Gadling. I have no need of this. Of friendship or anything else. Certainly not your touch," he adds in. It's possible, Dream thinks idly, that he had a bit too much human alcohol. There's no other reason he's still standing here.
Hob's eyes widen. "That dream in 1800 –"
"Release me," Dream says instead.
"Look at me. Look at me and tell me that you don't need anything."
Dream drew his gaze up to Hob's. Something breaks in his chest. The rain is cold and he is cold and he's always cold and Hob's hand on his wrist burns. "I do not – I do not –" a juddering breath he does not need to take. "I do not have – I do not need – you, Hob Gadling. I do not have – feelings – for –"
His eyes have closed, and he wrenches them open again.
"Only why can't you let go of me, then?" Hob asks quietly.
Definitely too much to drink, Dream thinks, because his knees feel wobbly, his body off center of gravity, like he's tilting. "I do not –"
He's so cold.
He hates himself. He hates Hob. He hates wanting any of this.
He hates all of it.
He stumbles forward without thought, crashing into Hob, grabbing the other man's shirt collar, everything dizzying in its immensity.
"You –" Dream chokes out. "You – I cannot do this. I will meet you. In 1989."
And he's gone in a whirl of sand, leaving Hob in the rain. The Dreaming is hit with the worst thunderstorm in centuries.
In 1891, Dream feels a tug on his subconscious, while reviewing a report Lucienne's put together on the library's patronage. He follows it. He knows who, exactly, is on the other end, and still he follows it like magnet drawn to its polar opposite.
"Hob Gadling," Dream says, arching a brow. This is a bad idea. It's a terrible idea, and he doesn't know why he's here. "I told you we could not do this."
"And here you are anyway," says Hob. "You could have just sent me away."
"I could have, but it seemed… uncouth to do it from a distance." Is he lying? Is that why he's here? It isn't. Morpheus knows why he's here. He's here becuase he wants. Dream wants Hob Gadling to hold him. At this point, making love is secondary. His body aches for touch and warmth and a friendly face. And it's why he can't. Hob Gadling brings him low, vulnerable. "You bring me too far, Hob Gadling. It cannot be more than what it is."
"So, what, once a century forever?" Hob says. "If I'm being selfish, I'm going to also tell you that I'm lonely."
Dream is, at first, flummoxed. Hob is human, Hob has friends, he makes them so well. But immortality is a lonely way to be. Hob was right, he is lonely. And Morpheus wants.
And, of course, that's why they cannot. Cannot.
"It is not safe to do otherwise," Dream says, and does not elaborate.
"God, you're impossible," Hob bursts out.
It's not a new descriptor of him, so he merely shrugs. "That is the nature of dreams, Hob Gadling. If you are looking for tangibility, return to the Waking."
"You know what, I guess I will just have to see you in 1989," Hob says resignedly, brokenly.
Dream refuses to let himself be swayed. It is not safe to be anything else. "For your own good, Hob Gadling. This dream is over."
He lies. He sees Hob in the year 1900, in dreams. This time, he gives in, like a fool, and tells Hob he'll see him in twenty year's time, not every one-hundred. It should, he says to Hob, be safer. Be safer than meeting with human regularity. He is still a fool. He is still weak.
Later, in 1920, stripped of his vestments and his connection to the Dreaming, sealed in a glass orb, Dream wants to laugh until he cries, or vice versa. No one is coming for him, and why would they? Hob will think he just changed his mind again. Again. Again. Dream is fickle and cruel and why would anyone come for him?
Dream is cold again. He doesn't know what day it is. They have all turned into a haze of pain and mental fog. He wonders if there's something in the air, something drugging him. He can't remember whole gaps. It scares him, when he remembers to be frightened.
Hob breaks the glass on his cage, reaches for him. His touch is soft. Gentle. In these moments, Dream feels safe, like it's going to be over, finally.
Hob nearly reaches the binding circle, and then a deafening gunshot sends gouts of blood and gore spraying on the glass. The guards drag Hob away, and he never comes back.
Hob is carrying something. "Your poor raven," he says to Dream. "She died for you. Believing you were worth it."
Hob comes to stand and look at him, and says, "You're not the only one who can send mixed signals, love. But maybe stewing in here a bit longer will help." He walks off, leaving Dream behind.
Jessamy dies in front of him, blood and feathers and viscera. Her shattered remains lie in front the orb, mocking him.
Burgess uses the sand to make Hob beg for Death. Death comes, and shakes her head at Dream. "You could have ended this," she tells him. "You are too proud." She takes Hob's hand.
It's never real it's never real but Delirium never appears either –
Hob breaks the binding, catches Dream when he falls out of the cage, brushes the glass off him, holds him tight.
There's a voice echoing near him. Dream? Dream? He's in the dark. Here in the darkness – He nearly chokes. Dream! It's Hob. Dream, love, duck – He knows that voice. Dream, love, open your eyes, please, Dream, I have you, it's Hob, I got you –
There's something soft under his head. There was never anything soft in his prison. Warm flannel pressed near his nose. It smells like some kind of spice. Earthy.
"Dream," someone sobs above him. "God, I know you're not dead, please." Something wet drips on his face. Hob. Dream tries to open his eyes, a bare fluttering of his lashes; he tries to move his hands, but his fingers barely twitch; he tries to speak, but all that comes out is soft noise. It feels more real than the others, but perhaps he's just desperate at this point.
It's enough. There's a frantic press of lips to his forehead, his hair, a hand caressing his cheek in the next moment. "Oh, thank God."
Dream tries his hardest to open his eyes again, but the crack of light hurts, and he whimpers. Everything hurts, actually. He's wrapped in something impossibly soft, being held like he's the important thing in the world. "Hob…" he tries to get out, but very little of it comes out.
The dark swallows him again.
"Is this real?" he asks. "You've come before. And then –"
"Yeah, duck, it's real, it's Hob. You're in my house. It's April 19th, 1930," Hob says, running a hand over his hairline. "Gonna get you back to the Dreaming soon. Somehow. I'm so sorry it took this long, love."
"You came. For me," Dream says. If this is a fantasy, it's realer than the previous ones have been.
"I'm sorry it took so long. I waited for you in 1920, but you didn't come, and I was a bit of a mess from the war, and so it took me a bit to start looking. Then there lots of dead ends."
"Jessamy," says Dream, suddenly. "Jessamy was with me when I was taken."
"She went to tell Lucienne," Hob soothes. "She was cut off from the Dreaming while you were, but she stayed around, trying to find a way to help."
His head doesn't feel right. Scenarios keep crashing into each other. He's drowning, and they wash over each other.
"You died in front of me," he says. "Death took your hand."
"No, duck, I'm here," Hob-who-can't-be-real says.
"You died because I was too proud," Dream says. "You got shot, your blood – Burgess – the sand –" His head is burning.
Morpheus can't breathe. Everything is his fault, he thinks, and then he blacks out.
"You left me," Dream sobs.
"Oh, duck." Dream doesn't resist as Hob pulls him into his arms, petting the crown of his head. "No, sweting, I'm here. It's April 22nd, 1930, it's Hob, you're in my house, love."
"You told me two could do mixed signals. You had Jessamy, she died for me and I was not worth it."
"No, sir, I'm right here," Jessamy chimes in.
"Jessamy?" he says in confusion. "But –"
"I did not die," she huffs, and preens his hair.
"Oh," he says, so very tired.
It takes entirely too long for the narrative to stay reality. "You won't… leave me? Us?" Dream asks. "You'll be here?"
"No, sweting. You'll come back, yes?"
"Yes," Dream swears, about to enter the Dreaming with Jessamy on his shoulder.
The realm is not in too much despair, and after reabsorbing the ruby's power, he is able to resolve most of the damage. There are parts, in the heart of the Dreaming, the throne room, that stay just a bit off-kilter. A bit fractured.
And if Dream wanted before, wanted the touch and embrace and company, now he needs it. Hob says he is touch-starved, was sensory-deprived for so long. Hob gives him a name for the terror he experiences with mirrors and the occasional wobbly foundations of reality: shellshock. Hob has so many names for everything.
Dream comes back, over and over, to, Hob. And Hob has so many names for Dream, now.
Myn sweting. Duck. Love. Beloved. Lover mine. Partner. Friend.
My Dream.