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Dream does not think, only barrels into Hob's side at supernatural speed, in time for sharp pain to blossom from the chest of his corporeal form.
Ah. Unusual. The dagger protrudes from his chest, buried to the hilt at an upward angle.
"Dream!" Hob shouts.
Either the knife is made of something capable of hurting him, or it's an enchanted knife, because Dream coughs, bringing up blood. The pain spiderwebs out in rippling tendrils.
Then he's on the floor, slumped against the wall, and doesn't know how he got there. Hob shouts something else, turning toward the fight. Dream tries to get up, but he's lightheaded and his limbs feel uncoordinated and heavy. Hob yells something else above him, beautiful as he fights like the Kindly Ones are behind him.
He moves his hands up, tries to look down, trying to feel at the wound. Dream screams at the blinding pain all through his chest, spreading into the hollow above his collarbone in his neck. Or tries to scream, because nothing comes out but blood that he almost chokes on.
His chest is soaked in blood, silver-black starshine, and something thicker, like ichor. His mouth keeps filling with blood. Then Hob's kneeling next to Dream, who tries to listen to Hob's words, because he is saying quite a lot. Dream thinks he hears his name, a demand to stay with me. He hasn't gone anywhere, he wants to say, but when he opens his mouth, there's only blood.
Curiously, it no longer hurts. Hob rips apart his shirt next, packing it around the knife.
Dream is cold. His eyes start closing, only to start and open them when Hob slaps his cheek.
"You idiot," he hears, dimly. "You… you need not have come to my defense."
He forces his hand upright, to Hob's arm. Every part of him shakes, cold and fuzzy. Hob's arms encircle him, warm and secure, and his head comes to rest on Hob's shoulder.
"I'm gonna get you help, you're not allowed to die –" There's more, but his hearing glitches in and out along with his sight. He had never really told Hob he cared about him, had he? It might be too late for that now. He can't keep his eyes open, no matter Hob's frantic efforts above him.
Morpheus is slack in his arms now, eyes closed and utterly unresponsive. His pallor is almost a blue-grey at this point, the kind that looks like it belongs on a corpse. And there's so much blood. Dream's chest and mouth are drenched with it. Hob is covered with it from Dream and the demons he'd fought off. There's so much blood –
Dream had taken that dagger for Hob. A demonic dagger. Apart from the one statement in the New Inn – I've always heard it impolite to keep one's friends waiting – Dream has not acknowledged him further as a friend, hasn't really confided in him. They've talked, and Dream sounds a bit more open, a bit more expressive, had offered two names: Dream and Morpheus but with no additional context, said I reacted poorly in 1889. It was no doing of yours that I missed the meeting in 1989; I was unavoidably detained. But he hadn't thought Dream would put himself in the path of a demonically cursed dagger that would have otherwise struck Hob.
Hob stands, trying to jostle Dream as little as possible, and sets his jaw in a line. Tilts Dream's head carefully, so that when his friend coughs, the blood doesn't run back into his throat. The raven-haired man in his arm breathes, the first time Hob's ever seen him do so – shallowly and wetly. Every breath sounds like a dying bird's croak.
He considers his options. Hob has no idea how to reach Dream's allies, whoever they are, wherever he goes when Dream leaves their meetings. He does know of a being who is clearly versed in the occult, had helped heal some of Hob's nastier injuries over the years. Aziraphale is too kindhearted to refuse to help. Hob just has to get to Soho, quickly and without everyone else noticing he's carrying a bloody unconscious man.
Aziraphale looks up as the door to the bookshop crashes open, silhouetting a man in the darkened door and street lamps of Soho. "Sorry, we're clos–"
The man is holding a limp figure in his arms as he marches into the shop anyway.
"Fix him," Hob Gadling demands. "Please," he adds, softer.
He's holding a blood-covered, unconscious Dream of the Endless in his arms, and Aziraphale senses the dark magic emanating from the dagger in the Dream Lord's chest and winces. "To the back rooms," the angel orders, leading the way and clearing off a table. In a flash, it's clean and sterile. In another, he's miracled supplies he might need.
"Put him on the table, take off his coat," Aziraphale tells Hob.
The delicacy in which Hob removes Dream's coat and then bundles it under the Dream Lord's head – Well, Aziraphale can feel the loyalty and friendship and love there, but he doesn't need to be an angel to know. Hob angles Dream's head as Morpheus coughs, keeping him from choking.
The wound is ugly, dark veins spreading from the knife's entry point, and he rests a hand over it, tracing the extent of it, the damage. He can heal most of it, he thinks, but Dream is going to be sore after.
"Your job," Aziraphale says to Hob, "is to keep him calm and still if he wakes up during this."
And then he pulls the dagger out of the Dream Lord's chest in one smooth motion, dropping it into a pail of holy water, where it hisses and dissolves in a puff of smoke. The Endless thrashes briefly, still unconscious but the pain clearly registering. Hob's hands tangle in Dream's hair, murmuring something low and fast in Middle English.
Aziraphale has just enough angelic power to draw the ichor out and stop the bleeding, but he can't truly close the wound – Dream is an Endless, and Aziraphale a mere single principality on Earth. He can't reach into all the facets of Dream and miracle it all away.
But Dream of the Endless will live. He just needs to rest.
Hob and Aziraphale clean the rest of the blood off. Hob wipes the damp cloth over Dream's still face, tenderly. Dream hasn't regained consciousness, but he already looks somewhat better. Aziraphale retrieves a dressing gown to replace the now trashed shirt Dream had had on, and Hob lays him in a soft bed.
"He should recover, he just needs to rest. I was able to heal a great deal of it," Aziraphale said. "Healing all of it was beyond my capabilities, I'm afraid."
Hob blinked, torn between relief and wondering why Aziraphale hadn't been able to fix it all. Still. "Sweet dreams, my friend," Hob murmurs to Morpheus, running a hand through his hair.
Aziraphale pauses. "I'm not sure if he's... exactly coherent enough to form his own dreams right at this moment."
"What?"
"I doubt he's dreaming – I suspect most people are having trouble with it at the moment," Aziraphale says, like Hob should know this. "He's Endless, it's why I couldn't heal all of it."
Hob looks down at his unconscious friend, and considers, for the first time, that Dream might also be a job title. "Endless? What? Wait, you're saying he controls dreams?"
Aziraphale shifts uncomfortably. "Oh, dear. I assumed you knew."
"I know his name is Dream. Endless? What?" Hob repeats.
"I'm just a principality, he's… much more," Aziraphale says, increasingly awkward. "I'd have probably discorporated myself trying to. Perhaps it would be best if you asked him when he wakes up."
Hob stares down at Dream, whose chest rises and falls evenly, face slack and peaceful. "Principality?" he asks instead, trying to remember where he'd heard that phrase before. And why Aziraphale had been able to simply conjure a bucket of holy water.
Angelology.
Principality. The fifth highest order of the celestial hierarchy. "You're an angel?" Hob demands.
Aziraphale, thoroughly flustered, tugs at his bow tie. "Please don't repeat that in public."
"Fuck," Hob says, and sits down on the edge of the bed. "Right. End of cosmic knowledge for the time being." He has so many questions, such as why an angel is running a bookshop in Soho, and if that means Crowley, the lanky goth prone to wearing sunglasses, is also something similar. He wants to know what an Endless is, and what the fuck if Dream controlled dreams was that related to the Sleepy Sickness – only that had started in fucking 1916, had something awful happened to Dream? I was unavoidably detained –
He forces himself to breathe.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" Aziraphale finally asks, after a protracted pause.
Dream's eyelids feel impossibly heavy, so he lets them stay closed, sorting through his awareness. There's a dull pain in his chest. He doesn't know where he is. His limbs feel heavy, too. There are voices in the background, and he doesn't know what year it is. Jessamy? he wants to ask, call out for her, find out. Then remembers she's gone, a different pain blossoming in his chest.
No. No, that was – No, he hasn't been summoned. It's not 1916. It's… probably 2022.
He's on something very soft. A bed, his mind supplies. An aura of warmth and safety suffuses the entire space, now that he focuses. The voices become clearer. Without opening his eyes, he lets their consciousnesses wash over him. One is deeply familiar: Hob Gadling. The other is one he has interacted with far less, but knows all the same.
Hob. They had been waylaid by demons, for who knew what purpose. Hob. Was Hob safe? Dream finally opens his eyes, searching for Hob.
"Dream," Hob breathes, placing a hand on his shoulder, pressing him down as Dream tries to sit up. "Hey." His face swims into view, and Dream tries to smile.
"Hello," he tries to say back, but coughs.
"Easy," Hob warns him, reaching sideways and coming back with a cup of warm liquid. His friend raises him up slightly and presses the cup to his lips. It's broth, but it feels like ambrosia, no doubt from the fact that an angel made it and Hob is the one helping him with it. The concept of Hob helping with it stings less than he anticipated.
"You dumbass," Hob says fervently the second the broth is set down. Dream stares up at him, slightly confused.
"I'm immortal, you idiot, and you're Endless, you could have just presumably spirited us out of there, but no, you took a dagger and almost died!"
Dream wants to comment dryly on Hob's actions in 1789, but can't find the words. Then wonders how Hob knows he's Endless.
Hob pauses. "You had a cursed demonic dagger buried in your chest angled up into your neck. You were coughing up blood in my arms. You fucking idiot –"
Hm. Dream opens his mouth, closes it, and considers. "It was. You, Hob." Ah. Very articulate. Still, he's exhausted and in pain.
"What?" Hob says.
"You. Are my friend. I. Did not. Stop to think," Dream manages. "...Hob."
Hob freezes, brown eyes going glossy with tears, face struck with shock.
"Do not. Cry, my friend," Dream says, struggling to raise his arm to touch his friend's face. "You are. Important to me. I am sorry for. That lack of clarity."
"How am I supposed to not cry when you say things like that," Hob says, sniffling, and catches Dream's weakly outstretched hand midway. "I thought you might die, Dream. You were hurt bad."
Dream's own eyes have gone glassy. Hob's hand is warm in his, and he sighs. "There are. Many things to discuss. But… later…"
Hob shifts so he's partially lying on the bed, one arm coming up over Dream's head and the other tangled in Dream's. "Yeah. We do. You daft idiot." Another sniffle and a wet sound. "But yes, later. You need to rest, Dream."
"Hm," Dream says, blinking at Hob. "Stay. Like this?"
"Like you could make me do anything else," Hob whispers, as Dream's eyes start closing again.
Aziraphale pokes his head into the back room a bit later, to check on them both.
He finds Hob half asleep in the bed, curled protectively around the Dream Lord – who sleeps once more, face peaceful and hand still wrapped up in the immortal's.