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His knees protest when Hob kneels, but it's an ache so ancient that he isn't bothered by it. Scars litter his bones like notches on a bedpost. These particular ones aren't his first, and they certainly won't be his last.
He inhales deeply. Before him, his Stranger, his Dream, holds still as a marble statue. The air between them is heavy with ozone and a tartness that sticks to Hob's tongue like early autumn apples. The kind that used to grow everywhere in England before the world changed to accommodate industrialism. Dream's skin taste just like that — that indescribable otherness which can no longer be found in this world in its current state. It's almost nostalgic.
Hob's eyes are fixed on Dream's hands, though. In the quiet of their shared indulgences, Hob studies his lover's hands. They're soft and delicate; there's naught a scar on them, just like the rest of Dream's body. Hob often thinks Dream was carved straight out of the earth and heavens themselves, even if he knows this human-like body has been put together for his benefit. For his pleasure.
Yet Dream's hands retain that quality of otherness. Maybe they've been shaped from those long-ago apples too, and maybe that's where that tartness on his tongue comes from. There isn't a single hair on them, unlike Hob's own hairy hands and forearms. If he licks Dream's hands just so, will his tongue come away white as chalk? Probably not, but the image is there in his mind.
Even with his eyes closed, Hob could trace the precise shape of Dream's hands. They've shaped dreams and nightmares both; they know how to hold the weight of the worlds, both this one and all the others. They've surely carried Atlas as he climbed his mountain. Dream's hands should be covered with calouses, if only to show the quiet strength in them. They should look broken, just as he knows his lover has felt many times in his very long existence.
But Dream's hands are anything but rough. They're soft, and the skin blushes a timid pink when Hob sucks on his fingers. They hold Hob's face like he's precious, like he's everything Dream's ever wished to hold. Hob would weep if he wasn't so busy memorising the exact angle of that funny-looking thumb knuckle.
Later, when his breath is short and his cheeks flushed, he'll map Dream's hands with his lips and tongue. Even with his eyes closed, he knows his way through every line of those beloved palms. He knows the precise amount of pressure to sink his teeth in the meat of Dream's palm.
Hob is a supplicant and Dream all but offers him benediction with his cool fingers, anoints Hob's fevered skin with his love. It isn't reward for his devotion, for it has always been freely given. No — every touch, every caress is both promise and deliverance. It's acceptance.
And it's why Hob closes his eyes, because then he knows it's not a dream when his lover, the Shaper of Forms, holds his face and traces that four-letter word straight into the marrow of his bones. These scars, he bears with overwhelming love and pride.
Mine.