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Hob Gadling has lived for so long that he isn't able to remember some things anymore - including people. Not in a "unable to link a new face to a person he's just met" way, no, but as in his own kin.
By age 33 he was already struggling to remember his father's face, as he'd died from the plague as soon as Hob had reached manhood; after that his mother and sibling's faces had started to fade from his memory.
When he'd told his Stranger - Dream, fuck - about his Eleanor and their children's untimely ends back in 1689, he could only vaguely picture her blue eyes and Robyn's curly hair, all of the paintings that could've given him more details to remember had burned in the house when he ran from the witch-hunters.
It explains a lot about this feeling of being uprooted that metaphorically sits where his heart is. Between this, the language that has evolved so much throughout the centuries he doesn't think in the right English most of the time (being multilingual for the sake of living outside of England between his meetings with Dream does not help his case), and the fact that he has to reinvent himself every ten to fifteen years, Hob sometimes feels... empty. Devoid of a home that he can't even remember he once had.
"This is what I always dreamed Heaven would be like" he'd said to Dream back in 1589. He would say the same now, only it wouldn't mean the same thing. Heaven back then was having a family, a roof over his head and food every day more than once a day: now, oh now Heaven would be getting rid of this ache that sometimes keeps him up at night, when there is nothing to distract him from it. He lives with it, just like he's lived with his bad leg ever since Burgundy; he feels fine most of the time, but when he doesn't think about it for some time, the pain comes back, burning him only brighter.
Hob Gadling has lived for so long that there is nothing binding him to anything. And it shouldn't hurt so much. It shouldn't, because he couldn't live any other way. He had tried staying after Eleanor and Robyn's deaths, and he knows the consequences of tying himself to things; it only ends in more pain - Hob is a fervent believer that good experiences outweigh bad ones, but he is no masochist (at least, not in this regard).
Sometimes he yearns for an anchor point, something to call his home. Something he could come back to that would always feel welcoming. Something he wouldn't forget the shape of.
It hit him when Dream appeared in front of him in The New Inn. He had barred that possibility more than a hundred years ago, but here he is. The one he'd like to call his home. The one he can call his home now, now that there is nothing to pull them apart, now that he wakes up next to him every day.
Hob had realised that he loved his Stranger - Dream, for fuck's sake, he'll never get used to have an actual name to call him - way back, but he never imagined for one second that - and he knows it sounds utterly stupid when he words it - the only constant in his life could fill that part of his heart that he had never felt complete. Honestly, he didn't allow himself to think about it too much, and seeing how Dream had reacted when Hob mentioned friendship... he was not at all close to do so.
"What are you thinking about, dear heart?" says Dream. He is narrowing his eyes at Hob, ever suspicious as he is since he lost the ability to see dreams.
"Nothing love," answers Hob with a charming smile."I love you, that's all."