Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Death had been wrong.

Dream is surprised how much it shocks him to find the White Horse abandoned, with no sign of Hob anywhere. His own subjects, with more ties to him than Hob ever had, abandoned him, so why should Hob have stayed? Dream had abandoned him first, twice, so Dream has no right to the hurt that roots him in place, staring at the sagging husk of the building until the pull of trouble in the Dreaming becomes too strong to ignore.

He certainly has no right to return more a year later, the seventh of June, neglecting his kingdom and his duties to keep a vigil for a disaster that he alone caused. He has no right to this grief, this regret.

And yet he remains by the White Horse, unnoticeable by any Waking creature, until the sky darkens.

He does not notice the man approaching the fence at first. Instead he notices the dream that propels the man forward, inhabiting him, possessing him. The man's movements are stiff, as though he truly is an automaton being driven forward by the dream and nothing more.

For a moment, Dream thinks this is one of his wayward subjects, wreaking havoc in the waking world. Only a moment, though; the moment he inspects the dream, he sees it for what it really is- the man's own beloved creation, strong enough to propel him through whatever he is suffering.

And the man- just a man, he is only a man, Dream will not allow himself to think otherwise- truly does seem to be suffering. He's wearing a heavy coat with the hood covering his face, burrowed into the fabric as though he were walking in a snowstorm, not a warm June evening. He moves not as one possessed, Dream realizes, but as though every motion is causing him intense pain.

Almost without thinking, Dream lends a small bit of his strength to the man's dream. He expects it to provide the poor creature some relief, and he wishes to acknowledge his subject, who has cared for this human with no hope of reward.

The man brightens perceptibly and lurches the last few steps toward the fence, pulling a can of spray paint from the pocket of his coat as he moves. He raises the can. Shakes it twice. Paints a single, clean line across the fence.

The dream supporting him strengthens abruptly, becomes impossible for Dream to ignore-

Hob is sitting at a table in the White Horse, a version of the building cobbled together from his memories, a 15th century chimney to his back, a chocolate pot on the table, Hob himself the scruffy bandit of 1389. The very fabric of the space sings of comfort, familiarity. A man- pale, dressed in all back, a reasonably accurate facsimile of Dream's mortal form- enters. He lights up the room as he does, and Hob smiles at him, and-

Dream wrenches himself away, shock and guilt and a foolish, foolish hope all clawing at him, disoriented enough that he steps fully into the Waking world.

Hob whirls on him, centuries-old instincts still tuned to a footstep on a deserted stretch of road.

For a brief, stolen second, the moment of possibility that is Dream's best refuge in the Waking world, they stare at each other.

Then Hob makes a terrible noise, half-choking, half-retching, and drops the can of spray paint, doubling over with both hands covering his mouth. He slumps to the ground, the motion almost gentle despite the convulsions that pass through him as he falls, his hands falling away from his mouth as his body goes limp.

A spray of white petals dribbles from his lips.

Once again, Dream finds himself rooted in place, horror surging through him violently. In the Dreaming, lighting cracks frantically across the sky, winds ripping so violently across the landscape that the entire palace buckles.

In the Waking world, Dream wills himself to Hob's side. Shifts his body, as gently as possible, so he can cradle Hob's head in his lap.

The damage is even worse than he feared.

Hob is not breathing, his lungs crammed so full of flowers that such an act would be impossible. The only sign Dream has that he lives at all is his mind, still active and sparkling in the Dreaming.

And the curse, having overtaken Hob's lungs, has set its sights further, roots reaching out through his veins, stems twining up his throat. They've pushed through his right cheek, left an entirely new blossom sprouting from the side of his face; a second is starting to emerge at the joint of his shoulder and his neck. He must have had his hood pulled up to hide the damage as much as protect himself from the cold, although he must be cold; he is as thin as he was in 1689, when he was a dead man walking.

He is. Dying.

Dream pulls him closer, hunches his human form over Hob's too-still frame, as though it were within his power to keep his sister at bay. As though the only thing preventing Hob from dying in his arms were not Hob's own stubbornness.

He will call for Death, Dream realizes. As soon as he wakes. The only thing that had kept Hob going had been the thought of reuniting with Dream. Now that has been achieved, he will call for Death, and Dream will be alone. Alone, with the half-second he’d allowed himself to consider what reuniting with Hob might mean.

Dream almost dissolves back into the Dreaming, to spare himself of having to watch Hob die.

But Hob waited for him. Despite insurmountable pain, Hob waited for him; Hob trusted him to return. Dream owes him this. He will stay, and he will comfort Hob at the last, and then he will find the one Hob loves, whatever monster would leave him like this, and he will make them live out every second of torment Hob has experienced in their dreams, every night, for the rest of their life.

The thought is extremely satisfying.

Hob twitches in his arms. Dream sets aside his plans of vengeance to watch as Hob comes to. He still does not breathe, but he moves, shifting against Dream and blinking to clear his eyes.

Dream realizes, a split second before disaster, that his emotions- not least his utter fury that Hob would waste his love on someone so unworthy of him- are bubbling much too close to the surface, and calls on one of his sweetest, softest, most comforting dreams, a vision of safety and home, pulling it to the forefront of himself and letting it guide his actions. 

He smiles down at Hob.

For a moment, Hob stares up at Dream in perfect confusion. Then a smile, tired and worn but sincerely, perfectly happy, spreads across his face in return.

"... you're late," he whispers. The words are breathy and thin, with no air behind them; Dream isn't entirely certain how he's speaking at all. Clumsily, he reaches up and brushes a hand across Dream's face, as though trying to confirm he's real.

"I apologize," Dream whispers in return, catching Hob’s hand and pressing it to his cheek, "It was unforgivably cruel of me, to keep my friend waiting."

Impossibly, Hob's smile brightens. "Nah," he says. Coughs weakly. "Deserved it."

"No," Dream says, more fiercely than he means to, "I did not intend to miss our meeting, and you would not have deserved the slight had it been intentional. You are my dearest friend, Hob Gadling. I should have told you that a century ago."

He would not have. He is only saying this now because Hob deserves to hear it before he dies, should know that Dream cared for him, never mind that saying so leaves him feeling more exposed than he had in his century of imprisonment.

And it was clearly the right choice, because the moment he finishes speaking, Hob seizes up in another, harder coughing fit. Full flowers, mangled, the petals dotted with drops of blood, spew from his mouth this time, decorating the pavement around him.

Dream pulls him upright as he coughs. Many humans dream of comfort when they are ill, so it is easy enough to follow those dreams, rub his hand steadily across Hob's back, whisper soothing nothings, you'll be alright, my friend, you're through the worst of it.

"My reaction to your offer of friendship was cruel, and undeserved," Dream continues, when Hob has finished coughing and slumped back against Dream’s chest. He seems to be holding himself a bit less stiffly, but then, Dream has always been given to deceiving himself. "I apologize, my friend."

"Mmph," Hob says. Given his condition, the level of sarcasm he manages in half a syllable is deeply impressive. "Thank you," he adds after a moment. His voice is barely audible, but the peace in it is profound.

This should make Dream happy.

It terrifies him.

And yet. Hob does not ask for Death. He must know, now, that he can.

Dream does not suggest it. "Lying on the ground like this cannot be good for your health," he says instead, prompting the thought, bit of a moot point, there to blare across Hob's mind so loudly that Dream hears it. "Will you permit me to take you home?"

"'course," Hob says, and before he has finished speaking Dream has deposited them in Hob's bed.

His bedroom is stuffy, barely furnished, at once messy and spartan: there is very little in the room beyond a bed and a dresser, but the floor is covered in dirty clothing, empty bottles, bloodied tissues, clearly left to lie where they had happened to fall. The sheets have not been washed in some time; it has been still longer since the window was opened.

Dream has only seen Hob's life in glimpses, but this does not look like the sort of place he'd choose to live.

All the same, Hob sighs, melting into the bed with visible relief. "Sorry. Friend," he rasps, "I-"

He breaks off in another coughing fit before he can continue, but Dream skims the surface of his thoughts and finds the sentiments he'd intended to express- shame, at the state of the room, inadequacy, for his lack of ability to speak to Dream, distress, for fear that these things will cause Dream to leave.

This last is piercing, needling its way into Hob's flesh just as surely as the roots sprouting from his lungs.

"Do not apologize," Dream assures him. "I-" he pauses, uncertain that his offer will be of any comfort. "I will stay. If you wish me to."

The shock of delight that runs through Hob is answer enough, even as another wave of coughs wracks his body, strong enough to have him bringing up bile along with the bloodied flowers. Dream cleans the mess with a wave of his hand, and then, upon second thought, dissolves the layer of trash on the floor of the room and exchanges the sheets on the bed for the cleanest, softest, warmest set he can pluck from nearby dreams.

Hob lies perfectly still through the change, his thoughts a shrill sludge of shame and fear. "I will stay," Dream assures him, in the same tones he would use to make a decree as the Lord of Dreams.

It is baffling beyond measure that Hob would take this as a comfort. And yet he does, letting out the smallest of sighs, his rushing thoughts quieting. Dream edges closer to him in the bed, letting his shoes and coat dissolve back to the Dreaming. Without quite meaning to, he runs his fingers through Hob's hair. Hob leans into his touch before Dream can second-guess himself.

"After we met, I spent several years crafting nightmares based on the experience," Dream says. The words are likely not comforting, but he knows Hob is not conscious enough to parse them, only the low, soothing tone of his voice, the warmth of his physical form, slightly warmer than an ordinary human body would be, to better provide comfort. "I am quite proud of them," he continues, still stroking Hob's hair.

And for the first time, their meeting is marked by Dream describing his own centuries, as much as can be spoken in human words: his dealings with mortal artists, his work with Johanna Constantine, the reasons for his absence.

Eventually, Hob coughs himself into something resembling sleep. There is still no breath in his body, but his mind is active in the Dreaming, too active, in the way of someone who has slept far too little for far too long. It is- worrying. Dream peers closer at the tangle in his mind, half-hoping for some clue to as whom Hob is in love with-

Hob is sitting by a bed. Eleanor Gadling’s deathbed, Dream knows, although he suspects Hob doesn’t; Hob is entirely unaware he is dreaming.

The person in the bed is not Eleanor.

The person in the bed is Dream, insofar as Hob’s mind can conjure his likeness. He lies there, still and cold, perhaps already dead. Hob is clutching one of the false Dream’s hands in both of his own. “Please,” he whispers, “Please. Don’t leave me alone.” His voice chokes on the last word, and he begins to weep, quietly at first, then with such grief that another, less exhausted man might have woken himself up with his own sobs. “Please,” he repeats, more of a howl than a word-

Dream dismisses the nightmare. It has its place, it may come to Hob again, but for now, he would be better served by rest. Instructing Hob’s mind that he is not to wake until he has slept for at least nine hours, Dream returns his attention to Hob’s Waking form.

He should return to the Dreaming, and his duties. Their meetings have never extended beyond one night. Hob might have wished for Dream to keep their scheduled meeting, even as ill as he is, but that does not mean Dream should impose any further. Hob did not request Dream’s help, inadequate as it would be, so Dream should not force it upon him. And yet-

He remains in Hob's bed, stroking his hair and worrying. Dream is by no means an expert in the passage of time, or the particulars of human health, but even he could tell that Hob's fits had started coming more quickly as the night passed. Surely, he will eventually give up, enough of his body eaten by flowers to make life unsustainable. Or he will be transformed utterly until he is not himself anymore, another Daphne or Narcissus or Hyacinth. 

Either way, Dream will lose him.

The sun is fully risen, and Hob mere minutes away from waking, when Dream finally takes his leave. 

When Hob wakes, he will find two things on his dresser. The first, Dream pulled from the Dreaming, a bottle of cough syrup that ceased manufacture almost two centuries prior, one that a brief look at Hob’s dreams had informed him was the good stuff. The second he wrote himself. A brief note: Should you wish to contact me, my friend, call for Dream of the Endless. 

It is the best comfort Dream can give: his aid, on such terms that Hob can freely reject it.

Chapter Text

Hob wakes up unpleasantly. 

He's been waking up unpleasantly for a while now, ever since the flowers got to the point that the most cutting-edge miracle medications didn’t do shit to kill them, and waking up started to involve several panicky seconds where his body is awake enough to try to breathe, but his brain is too asleep to remember he can't.

So the moment of terror as he slams back into consciousness and the pain that comes with it, the dull, feverish aching in his limbs and the nagging itch where the flowers have burst up through his skin, none of that is unusual.

What is unusual, what has him launching himself upright to stare around the room, shock and adrenaline crashing through his body, is that he actually manages half a breath before his throat closes up again. 

Hob hasn't breathed normally in over four centuries, hasn’t breathed without pain since 1989, hasn't breathed at all in almost two years. That tiny gasp is, by all counts, an actual fucking miracle, and yet the first thought in Hob’s head as his heart shudders back to life, thumps twice, and stops again is still he came back. He actually came back.

The fact that Hob is breathing at all is proof of that; his condition has always improved after their meetings.

The sheets on his bed are another, Hob realizes as he slumps back against his headboard. They’re soft and clean, not soaked in almost a year’s worth of sweat and other substances he doesn’t want to think about, and more importantly they don’t look like something he could have purchased anywhere on this earth. The pattern on them is dizzying, four or five separate designs weaving into and out of each other like the bedding section of a store got caught in a horrific teleporter accident, a tiny woodland scene bleeding into rainbow dots bleeding into blue plaid, spiraling into tiny fractals if he tries to tell where exactly one section begins and another ends.

Hob’s memories of last night are fuzzy at best. He knows he’d gotten out of bed, forced himself to shamble the few blocks to the White Horse to leave a message for his Stranger. He knows his Stranger had appeared there, gaunt and grieving, had held Hob in his lap and called Hob his friend. He knows his Stranger had, somehow, brought Hob home, and stayed with him until he fell asleep. 

And then, apparently, he changed Hob’s sheets. And cleaned the floor.

And, Hob realizes now that he’s playing Spot the Difference in his own bedroom, left a bottle sitting on his dresser. 

He’s struggling to his feet to grab it before he can think twice. ‘Before he can think about it’ is the best way for him to move, to be fair; if he thinks too hard about how he’s moving his limbs, the whole process goes from ‘painful’ to ‘impossible’, but even with the help of the adrenaline still coursing through his system it’s a struggle to swing his legs out of the bed, like trying to move a limb that’s fallen asleep. It takes all his energy to stand and stumble the two steps to the dresser, his shoulders hitching as his body tries to gasp for air he can’t physically take in. 

The bottle alone- a medication that’s been banned for centuries for the crime of being 50% opiates and 50% industrial grade weed killer- would have been worth getting up for.

Hob would walk the earth twice over with his body entirely taken over by flowers for the note lying next to it. He slides down to sit on the floor, propped up by the dresser, and reads the words over and over until they blur: Should you wish to contact me, my friend, call for Dream of the Endless.

My friend.

My friend.

Were his lungs even slightly less clogged with flowers, Hob would be up and dancing around the room. As it is, he’s grinning from ear to ear, the note- everything he’s ever wished for, condensed down to one sentence- pressed to his chest, like he could absorb this single perfect thing into himself if he holds it tight enough. 

My friend.

Hob lets his head fall against the dresser with a contented sigh. It’s one of those little noises that he would normally make without thinking, and then spend five minutes cursing himself for as he tried to get his lungs to stop burning.

Once again, miraculously, he’s able to manage that soft, tiny breath, just as he would have forty years ago.

At some point, Hob’s going to have to stop smiling. His cheeks are honestly starting to hurt a little.

Right now he doesn’t think he can. He’ll rest here for a moment, and then he’ll haul himself up and find somewhere safe to put his gifts, and then maybe-

Hang on, says a voice in Hob’s head, the quiet, insistent one that kept him alive in the years before he met his Friend and has kept him more or less whole ever since, Something’s wrong here.

Hob’s Friend gave Hob his name, probably, assuming ‘Dream of the Endless’ isn’t a title or some sort of magical phone number. And even if it is, if it allows Hob to get in contact with his Friend, directly, whenever he wishes, it’s still too much information by far from a man who’s never said a word about himself to Hob before this point. And left in a note.

And once Hob’s acknowledged that, he can’t help but remember that his Friend- that Dream- hadn’t looked… well, last night, in the few clear glimpses Hob had of him. And as much as Hob is certain, in the same way he was certain Dream would come back to him, that Dream’s easy, open affection last night was genuine, he has to acknowledge that cuddling is a shocking change in behavior given how reserved he normally is. And Hob’s memories of everything after landing in his own bed are blurry, warmth and a soothing voice and little half-memories of a play being performed under the stars and a woman sneaking through a dungeon, like a movie he’d watched with a deadly fever-

But he swears. He swears Dream had said something about a cage.

He’d definitely said that he hadn’t intended to miss their meeting. And if Hob puts that together with how awful he’d looked, with his desperation while speaking to Hob on the street outside the White Horse, he does not like the picture he puts together.

Well, Hob thinks, looking down at the note in his hands, No time like the present. He clears his throat, sending a spray of bloody petals flying onto the floor. When the resulting pain has dulled back to its usual ache, he rasps, as loudly as he can, “Dream of the Endless.” 

And then, still a little uncertain if he’s calling his Friend by name or not, he adds, “Can you hear me?”

The room blurs slightly, as though Hob had almost fallen asleep sitting up but blinked himself back awake, and when the blurring clears, Dream is standing in front of him.

Hob, who’d been expecting some sort of Magical Answering Machine, at best a Magical Zoom Call, nearly throws the bottle of cough syrup at his head on pure instinct. Then he swears- or tries to, anyway, it comes out mostly as a pathetic wheeze- and drops the bottle.

His Friend is here. Standing a foot away from where Hob is still crumpled on the floor, in the tiny square of space between the bed and the door. For a moment, everything else in Hob’s mind is whited out by sheer, awed joy at that fact: Dream came back, the moment Hob called for him. He came back. 

Only for a moment, because the longer Hob stares at him, beaming uncontrollably, the more he realizes his vague misgivings about last night hadn’t been dire enough.

Dream looks worse off than Hob is. He’s skeletally thin, and his pale skin has a greyish, waxen look to it. The exhaustion that radiates from him should rightfully have taken some physical toll on his body, but his face is still perfectly smooth, like a sickly marble statue. The fact that he’s staring at Hob with the grim terror of a man approaching his lover’s deathbed does not improve matters; he looks seriously ill at best and actively on death’s door at worst.

The smile slips off Hob’s face like a glob of mucus. He tries, unsuccessfully, not to let his worry show in its place; he can’t imagine a man who took offense at being called lonely would appreciate it.

All Dream does is flinch, just slightly, and ask, “You summoned me?”

“I didn’t mean to. Summon you,” Hob says, as quickly as he can. Which isn’t quick at all, as fiercely as he wants to make it clear that he won’t force Dream to be here; speaking the few words of the apparent-summoning has shredded the inside of his throat and left him feeling like he’s had his chest slowly crushed in a vise; it’s even more of an effort than normal to force the words free. He wraps one arm around his ribs in an ineffectual attempt to soothe the ache. “Wanted to ask. Are you. Alright?” 

Dream stares at him. His expression hasn’t brightened, exactly, now he looks like a man who’d approached his lover’s deathbed only for an angel to appear and tell him that he’d been chosen for the Holy Purpose of knitting socks, awestruck and a little confused. “You were. Worried about me?” he finally asks. 

Hob is adding that reaction to his list of things he does not like about this situation. “Course I was,” he says, reaching one hand up toward Dream. It is probably a good thing he's still in a heap, and Dream is backed away from him like a wary cat, because otherwise he would tug him forward and hug him. “You-”

In a piece of timing so bad it seems deliberate on the part of the universe, Hob feels his throat close around a mass of phlegm and plant matter, and knows he’s about to spend the next several minutes dry heaving. He freezes like a cornered rabbit, deliberately loosening his throat and holding perfectly still in a feeble attempt to hold off the fit. Fuck, fuck, fuck, not now, give me just five more seconds-

“If you wish,” Dream says, interrupting Hob’s thoughts, “We could continue this conversation in my Realm.”

Wait, you have a Realm? What sort of Realm? Is it yours-yours, or do you just live there? Hob tries to ask, but all he manages to do is make a noise like a cat spitting up a hairball.

Dream’s only response is a soft, “You would not be in pain, there.”

As if the promise of a fucking Realm, whatever sort of Realm it might be, weren’t enough to get Hob to agree immediately. In any circumstances, but especially now, when it calms the little piece of his heart that’s been pacing around like a wounded animal for the past thirty-odd years. It had been sated, but not silenced, in the confusing peace of last night, and now it finally drifts off to sleep to the lullaby of he cares he cares, he cares enough for your pain to take you to his Realm about it.

The promise of a painless conversation is- good, very good, if Hob can get through four whole sentences without feeling like he’s taken a cheese grater to his internal organs he’ll owe Dream his gratitude for the rest of his eternal life- but the offer itself matters more. He coughs, then gags a little, clearing enough of the blockage from his throat that he can whisper, “Thank you. I’d be. Honored.”

Dream reaches into his pocket.

Hob blinks-

And opens his eyes in a private room of the White Horse Tavern. 

“Oh,” he whispers, choking on the word for an entirely different reason than usual. There’s a small table and two chairs pulled close to the fireplace, where a fire burns cheerfully, bathing the room in warm light. He can hear muffled conversation from the bar but this space is private, for him and Dream alone. 

It’s the White Horse as Hob remembers it, before the imminent closure left the poor place feeling like a newly dug grave, the White Horse as he would have set it up for a perfect reunion with Dream, down to the chocolate pot and the phone- the first cell phone Hob had owned, the one he’d bought more or less for that 1989 meeting- sitting on the table. 

Hob sits down in the nearer chair, more by compulsion than by choice, and twists his body to face the door.

A moment passes. Hob sighs, resigned, but peaceably so; if there is anywhere he is content to wait, anywhere he belongs, it is here. The flowers in his lungs rustle as he breathes, which makes him feel a bit like he's experiencing a breeze from the perspective of a tree.

Another moment passes.

“Holy shit,” Hob says aloud, as it hits him like a blow to the head that the only thing he feels is the gentle rustling of flower petals. No desperation for more air. No pressure in his lungs as roots seize against his organs. No pain.

He takes a huge, gulping breath, one that would likely have been painful even without the flowers, and- nothing. A stronger gust of wind through the trees. “Holy fucking-” he whispers, and then realizes that he can talk without pain, too, without even the strange, rasping resistance he’d normally feel simply because he was speaking around a mass of plants. He could recite all of Henry VI if he wanted to, which he doesn’t, or Faustus, which he might, and absolutely nothing can stop him.

The door at the other side of the room opens before he can seriously consider it. Dream walks in, and Hob finds himself breathless again anyway, so it’s all kind of irrelevant.

Dream is beautiful here.

He doesn’t look any less ill than he had in Hob’s world, to be clear; if anything he’s even paler and more skeletal, but he’s at ease in a way Hob’s never seen him. Confident, almost- it seems the wrong word, because Hob would never have described him as meek, but there’s a striking, serene assurance to him that Hob’s never noticed before. Whatever the word for it is, it looks lovely on him.

And then there are his eyes, like windows to the night sky back when Hob was young, thousands of stars glittering against an endless sea of darkness, a glimpse at a horizon he has no hope of understanding but wants to cross anyway.

Luckily, Dream sits down in the chair opposite Hob without him saying anything, because otherwise Hob might just have kept staring at him forever.

“Hey there, stranger,” Hob says, reveling in the opportunity to tease his friend, “It’s been so long.”

The tiny, soft smile that dawns on Dream’s face as he realizes he’s being teased is, beyond a doubt, one of the most perfect things Hob has ever seen.

“Thank you. For bringing me here,” Hob adds, trailing his fingers over the letters HG carved into the tabletop in front of him. He’d put them there, over three centuries ago, purely to spite the people who didn’t want him in the building in the first place. The words aren’t anywhere near enough to encompass how grateful Hob is for all of this, how grateful he is just for the table, but they’re the only words he has. “Your realm is beautiful,” he adds, in an attempt to make up for it.

“It is yours, as well,” Dream replies, his voice warm. Hob whips his head up to stare at him. 

Dream categorically, definitively, has not just said the thing Hob heard him saying. The all-consuming affection Hob has for him is causing him to paint romance over a perfectly reasonable statement, and Hob needs to put his feelings aside and respond, but he is very much having difficulties reading ‘hey share my Realm with me’ as anything but a goddamn marriage proposal. 

“This is one small facet of my Realm,” Dream says, which does ease Hob’s confusion somewhat. Only somewhat; even a small portion of Dream’s realm still feels like a far grander gift than Hob deserves. “A facet you built,” Dream continues, in a tone that Hob almost wants to call admiring, “I should be thanking you for allowing me entry.”

It makes sense, in a surreal sort of way. Dream isn’t giving Hob a realm tailored to his every wish, Hob made the place himself. This realm- realm-facet?- is exactly what Hob would have built, if he could have, because he did. Somehow. Apparently. Before Hob can probe at that particular question any further, Dream asks, “What were you saying, before?” 

The blatant redirect away from his personal matters is so familiar, Hob can’t help but let it work, his curiosity temporarily covered in a warm blanket of fondness. “I was saying that yes, obviously I was worried about you. You look like hell.” Their hands are so close together on the table, closer than they’d ever been, when they met here in Hob’s world, and Hob itches to reach out and close that last bit of distance. Instead, he adds, “I’m not asking for the story.” He wants the story, of course, but more than that he wants his friend to feel safe. “Just- is everything alright? And if it isn’t, can I help?”

Even though he knows beyond a doubt that Dream has forgiven him, a tiny part of Hob had still been prepared for him to storm off.

Instead, Dream chuckles- a rusty sound, like sheets of metal snapping in half, utterly cheerless. It’s the way a man laughs when he knows he’s going to the gallows. Hob stretches his hand out to him, just a little, without exactly meaning to.

And then, miraculously, Dream takes Hob’s hand in his. “The danger has passed,” he says, his voice gentle. He squeezes Hob’s hand, just as gently, and adds, “There is no need for you to worry.”

He says it so blandly, like he’s explaining to Hob that he won’t fall off the earth and into space, gravity will keep him nice and safe, all while Hob can feel the bones in his hand, his knuckles standing out against the skin like they’re trying to break free of his body.

Clearly, there are still some very good reasons for Hob to worry, and he’s caught on a knife’s edge between pointing that out and not blundering headfirst into mistakes he’s already made. Before he can choose which direction to fall, Dream says, “Please, do not trouble yourself over me. Not in your condition.”

“My condition?” Hob asks. His life has dramatically changed for the better on all possible fronts since yesterday afternoon and he’s sitting in a perfect world designed to match his every wish; as far as he’s concerned, nothing can stop him from helping Dream in any way he can.

Dream reaches up and catches Hob’s free hand, where he’d been fidgeting idly with the flower sprouting from his cheek.

“Oh,” Hob says, abruptly confronted with reality. “That.”

He’d had a plan, two-three-five hundred years ago, for explaining that. Hell, he’d had one in 1989.

He does not have anything resembling a plan now, the one from last century eroded by thirty years of pain and uncertainty. And even if he did, Dream looks about how Hob felt back in 1689, so Hob honestly can't imagine a worse possible time to mention oh the thing that’s semi-killing me? It's the unrequited love I've had for you basically the entire time I've been alive, nbd.

"It's not as bad as it looks?" he tries.

"Robert Gadling, that would not be reassuring if it were only a tenth as bad as it looks," Dream replies, and Hob really doesn't have any way to counter that.

The silence as he tries to figure out a single additional thing to say is long enough that Dream speaks again, unprompted. “Your. Love,” he says, every word falling from his lips like a footstep onto thin ice, “Is there. No chance that they might grow to return your feelings?” 

And any thought Hob had of finding a way to avoid this conversation, at least for now, crumbles immediately. Dream is clinging to Hob’s hands as though one of them were in danger of slipping off a life raft; if giving him the full story will make him feel the slightest bit better, Hob needs to take that chance.

“I’ve never asked,” he says. It’s probably the safest answer.

Dream’s grip on his hands tightens to the point that it should be painful, very painful, but all Hob can feel is the pressure of it, steady and grounding. “You haven’t?” Dream asks.

There are tears welling in his eyes, the exact color and consistency of ink. 

“I’d been planning to,” Hob says ruefully. “Kept missing my chance, or fucking up my chance, or-” He steels himself, one more long, painless breath filling his lungs. He meets Dream’s eyes. The little galaxies within them are shining, mesmerizing, and Hob couldn’t look away if he wanted to.

He throws himself into that horizon. “I love you. But if you never feel the same way, I promise, this still isn’t going to kill me.”

A look of naked grief, a thousand times more horrible than anger or disgust would have been, creeps across Dream’s face like growing vines, but he doesn’t let go of Hob’s hands, even as the silence between them swells and the expression on his face slowly warps into a scowl.

“You love. Me?” he finally asks, the words rasping like Hob had stabbed him in the lung.

“I do,” Hob replies, solemn. Dream has been the cornerstone of Hob’s life for literal centuries, not just for the regularity of their meetings but because he’s been Hob’s friend, and he’s literally magical and also the most beautiful person Hob’s ever seen. The trick would’ve been not falling in love with him.

Dream considers this for another excruciating silence. Finally, he asks, “How long. Have you been suffering for my indifference?”

“Hey,” Hob says immediately, stung by the word ‘indifference’ and even more indignant that Dream would talk about himself that way, “This is not your fault and never was.”

There’s a rant he falls into if he’s with people he trusts and he’s had too much to drink, about how back in his youth they’d have made you a martyr for suffering in silence and dying with a throat full of flowers, but at least nobody genuinely tried to make the your callousness is literally murdering me argument, and thank god the public mindset has moved on from that one in the past fifty or so years, et cetera. He very nearly launches into it now, but Dream squeezes his hands again and says, with clear skepticism, “Very well. How long have you been suffering?”

Hob’s intrinsic habit of telling Dream everything about himself has a brief scuffle with his brand-new realization that Dream thinks Hob’s condition is his fault. The habit wins, but not unscathed, and Hob finally says, “I’ve been sick since we met, I think,” much more cautiously than he might have otherwise. “I’m not positive,” he continues. “It was mild enough those first two centuries that I didn’t actually. Um. Notice?”

Hob has told this story a few times before, to friends who knew about his immortality. Every time, the response has been something to the effect of, ‘How in the blazing fuck did you not notice?’

Dream does not say, how in the blazing fuck did you not notice, but his face conveys the same sentiment very eloquently.

It’s a reasonable question. For all that even the experts still aren’t sure how people contract hanahaki- to the point that, as far as Hob is aware, they’re still arguing about whether it should properly be called a disease or a curse- the progression of it never changes. You get sick, and the flowers in your lungs steadily grow until you die. If you get lucky and your love is requited, the flowers vanish, as though they’d never existed in the first place. If you fall out of love, the flowers vanish. If your love dies, the flowers vanish. Simple. 

In all Hob’s 600-odd years of living, he’s never met another person like him. He’d spent the first two centuries experiencing sporadic, inexplicable periods where he couldn’t quite breathe properly, never long enough for him to start fearing that they were anything but an ordinary illness. It had gotten worse in the seventeenth century, in those years after he lost everything he loved, when the thought of getting back to his Stranger had been the only thing keeping him going. But even then, it had always been a strange, gentle cycle of recovery and decline, never progressing beyond a nasty, wet cough that brought up mouthfuls of bloodless white petals and a heaviness in his chest that made it hard to draw a full breath. To outside eyes- to anyone who assumed he was mortal- he’d have been in the middle stages of infection, nothing more.

The situation has, historically, been difficult to explain.

“Like I said, it’s always been mild,” Hob tries, hoping that Dream’s obvious experience with magic will make him less resistant to the idea. Going by the stubborn scowl on his face, that hope is in vain, but a man can dream. “Enough that I didn’t realize what was happening, those first few centuries. It got worse eventually, but even then, I’ve been more ‘annoyed’ than ‘suffering,’” he says, the joy he feels at that apparent in his voice. If he weren’t immortal, he’d have been lucky to make it three years after contracting hanahaki, and here he is talking about centuries. It’s still thrilling, every time.

“Hob,” Dream says, with the softness of someone talking to a cornered animal, “Do not-”

He pauses, like he’s searching for a word. Then the room shifts.

For a moment they both fall into a storybook scene, all in the deep colors and bright golds of an illuminated manuscript, a noble knight heading out on a grand quest for a fair lady, treasuring the flowers that crawled through his chest, the only connection he would ever be able to have to the woman he loved, but could only love from afar. He will be noble and valiant and never speak of his affliction to his love, never force her to choose, and she will weep over him when he dies, but he will be happy-

“Oh, God, of course not,” Hob says, and they’re abruptly wrenched back to the White Horse. “I’m not that stupid.” 

“Then why-” Dream’s brow knits in concern. He lets go of Hob’s hand to reach out, almost like he’s being compelled to, and rubs his thumb along Hob’s cheek, just below where the flower blossoms from his skin. It withers and dies at his touch, brown petals cascading to rest on the tabletop. Hob can’t help but lean into his touch, feeling the mess of stems in his mouth start to wilt as he does. He's always assumed that seeing Dream acted as some sort of reset button of his immortality, the flowers dying in his wake, but right now it feels more like a physical manifestation of what it's like to be near Dream, the whole world seeming that much brighter and easier.

“Clearly, you have been suffering. Why try to mislead me?” Dream is trying to sound stern, Hob’s pretty sure. It doesn’t come off as terribly intimidating when he’s tenderly cradling Hob’s face.

“It. Uh. Stopped being mild, eventually,” Hob admits. “Since we last saw each other.”

In truth, it had remained mild right up until the night Dream missed their meeting, and then abruptly gotten much, much worse, but Hob’s not going to mention that. Not when Dream has already apologized, not when he’s currently giving Hob the most guilt-wracked stare Hob has ever seen on a living being. “But it hasn’t been that bad,” Hob says breezily, hoping to coax away the guilty look. 

The attempt backfires spectacularly. Hob is quite possibly one of the worst liars alive; he’s only hidden his immortality for so long by telling a lot of misleading truths. The sentence comes out dripping with disturbing, false cheer, and leaves Dream looking even more concerned. 

Hob changes tack, quickly. “I mean,” he adds, “it’s been bad for a while. I had to fake my death six times this decade, and every time it got harder to run, and the past two years have been absolutely fucking miserable. But it normally improves when I see you, and we’re meeting, so…” he shrugs. “Problem solved, yeah?”

A second too late, Hob realizes he’s just shown his hand; Dream is smart enough to put two and two together and get four. Any attempt at softening the blow dies in Hob’s throat; he as watches every trace of emotion slides away from Dream’s face as if washed off by pouring rain. The guilt, the grief, the tiny spark of something Hob had hoped was reassurance, all disappear, and Hob is left staring at a statue of a god.

The hand on Hob’s cheek drops away.

“I see,” Dream says, gravely. “In that case you were incorrect; your present suffering is my doing.”

There’s something about the way he says it that sets Hob on edge. Something too deferential in his tone, something too wary in the way he’s looking at Hob. Hob has known people, over the centuries, with a tendency to immediately, frantically apologize whenever he was slightly upset at them, as though they were trying to ward off a blow by sheer force of contrition. None of them had acquired that tendency for pleasant reasons, and even though nothing Dream’s doing resembles that rush of apologies, at least not on the surface-

Hob worries.

“I will meet you whenever you wish, in the future, to keep your illness at bay,” Dream continues. “Is this acceptable to you?”

“Oh Christ no,” Hob says.

The world freezes. It's not something of Dream’s doing, or a feature of this realm, just an ordinary moment where everything has gone wrong but the full reality of the destruction hasn't hit yet, and Hob has plenty of time to wish he'd thought those words through, no matter that he wouldn't take them back-

The moment shatters. An undeniable look of hurt flashes across Dream’s face. It’s gone a second later, vanished under that marble stillness, but it had been so vivid, so pained, that the afterimages remain firmly burned into Hob’s eyelids, like he’s stared at an eclipse.

In Hob’s lowest moments, the recent ones at least, lying awake for the fourth or fifth night in a row, so tired he’s started hearing disembodied voices and still unable to sleep for the pain of the thing lodged in his chest, the slow, agonizing, almost-purposeful burrowing of roots through his veins, he’d wondered. If his Stranger ever did care about him. If anything he’d said or done had affected the man at all.

He has his answer now, and he hates it.

“Of course,” Dream says, his voice wobbling. “I shall. Take my leave.” Then he stands, leaving Hob to drown in the sick dread of knowing that he’s just ruined the best thing that ever happened to him.

It’s horribly familiar.

But Hob is braver than he was, back in 1889, and secure in the knowledge that Dream spent all of last night holding him while he choked up assorted fluids and flowers, so when Dream steps away from the table, Hob flings himself up after him.

The room shifts again.

They're both standing on a cobbled, lamplit street outside the White Horse, freezing rain pouring down, soaking Hob to the bone within seconds. He's managed to catch Dream’s arm, still in the jacket he'd been wearing when he'd appeared in Hob's room.

That arm is the only part of him that looks familiar. The rest of him is changed, into a huge, shambling creature made of thorn-covered vines and black flowers dripping with petals. Hob can see hints of bleached bone peeking through the veil of drooping branches, as though the last hapless person who got too close to Dream is still nestled within his core.

He's a creature out of Hob's nightmares, one of the really good ones, where he’s propelled through adventures he could never have in the real world on a wave of sheer, joyous terror. Just looking at him gives Hob that same thrill.

And he hasn't moved from Hob's grasp, so Hob pulls him into a hug.

“I’m sorry,” he says, clinging to Dream like he would to one of those nightmares the moment before he wakes. Dream doesn’t seem to have arms to return the hug, but the vines that make up his body start coiling around and into Hob, worming their way under his skin in a tight but painless embrace. It should be terrifying, but all Hob can think is that this means Dream will stay close to him, and all he can feel is relief. “I didn’t mean it like that, I’d love to see you more often. As often as you can.” 

The vines burrow deeper, wrapping themselves tenderly around his organs. Are you certain? Dream asks, the words appearing in Hob’s brain without ever passing through his ears. His voice is deep is a way that vibrates pleasantly in the back of Hob’s skull, deep like a calm ocean or a night without stars. I understand if it is too difficult -

“I’m certain,” Hob interrupts him, with a shaky laugh. “Of course I’m certain, I made all of that for you,” he adds, tilting his head toward the White Horse, as much as he can while remaining in Dream’s embrace. As he says the words, he knows with a surreal certainty that they’re true, and that the building contains much more than the tiny space they'd been in- libraries full of every book he's ever read and wondered if his Stranger would like, a kitchen full of foods he’d hoped to ask his Stranger to try, galleries and parks and arcades and theaters, everything he's ever considered sharing with his Stranger.

“I want it because we're friends, though,” Hob adds quietly. Saying so feels like reaching into his lungs and yanking out the mass of flowers that rests there, slowly dropping the bloody mess of his affections in a pile between them. He forces himself to continue. “Not because I'm an obligation to you, or you’re at my disposal somehow,” he says, the words coming out in a disgusted little snarl. “I don't think I could stand it.”

Just the idea of it, of only seeing his friend because of guilt, at best, or force, at worst, is sickening. He’s so busy beating back the idea that it comes as a shock when Dream asks, As your friend, am I not obligated to care for you?

Hob starts to answer, and realizes he has no idea what to say, his thoughts chasing themselves in circles, yes- no- yes kinda but also no, you’re not obligated, there is a difference between helping a friend out while they’re sick and offering to base our friendship around you helping me and nothing else.

Dream simply holds him. The vines that encircle Hob meld together into something that almost feels like a pair of human arms. A third, bony arm reaches out from the curtain of vines to run gentle fingers through Hob’s hair. Hob lets out an involuntary little hum of contentment at the feeling, and Dream responds with a noise somewhere between a purr and an ancient tree creaking in the wind.

It abruptly seems more than a little silly to believe that he would only be visiting Hob out of guilt. “Alright,” Hob says, “Just. Promise me you’ll only visit when you want to, not because you think you have to.”

I swear it, Dream says solemnly. The words land more heavily than anything else he’s said today; there’s an almost tangible weight to the syllables, like there had been six hundred years ago, when he’d told Hob they’d meet again. Hob feels a tiny shiver run up his spine, and wonders just how powerful a promise from his friend actually is. 

“Thank you,” he says, curling into Dream’s embrace. The fact that he would make some all-powerful Fey Promise for Hob’s sake is a thousand times more comforting than regimented visits would ever have been. The not-quite arm loops of vines pull him a little tighter. Hob half-nuzzles, half-headbutts the patch of vines in front of him that is starting to almost feel like a human chest.

For a moment, the world is made of pastel watercolors and safety, and Hob is hugging a human person and being embraced by a vine creature that has looped its way through every one of his veins.

You will wake, soon, Dream says gently. I will visit as often as I can.

“Wait, wha-” Hob asks, all the questions that hadn’t quite struck him as important before now suddenly hitting him all at once-

And then he’s waking up, back in his bed, to the unfamiliar, exhausting, wonderful sensation of air wheezing in and out of his lungs.

Chapter Text

“Dream of the Endless? Can you hear me?” 

Time does not pass in the Dreaming as it does in the Waking world, but Dream has been keeping a close eye on the Waking since he returned from meeting Hob, even as he works to repair the damage his emotions wreaked on the Dreaming during that meeting. 

So he knows, beyond a doubt, that exactly sixteen minutes have passed since he left Hob asleep.

For Hob to summon him so immediately-

He spills back into Hob’s room without further permission, dreading what he will find.

What he finds is Hob, sitting slumped on the floor and looking no worse than Dream left him, if substantially more sleep-mussed. He makes a noise- the first half of a curse, cut off by lack of air- upon recognizing Dream, and drops the bottle of cough syrup he’d been holding. His expression cycles through several emotions that Dream cannot name, landing for a brief, inexplicable moment on joy. His smile is bright enough that the dim, musty little room suddenly seems cheerful, and Dream is almost- almost- swept up thoughtlessly in his happiness.

The moment passes. Hob’s expression crashes back into wariness, which Dream has surely earned, but which wounds him nonetheless.

 “You summoned me?” Dream asks, cautiously, refusing to let either emotion show.

“I-” Hob says, cautiously. “Didn’t mean to. Summon you. Wanted to ask. Are you. Alright?”

In other circumstances, Dream may have been irritated by such a question.

This sheer absurdity of being asked after his health by a man who sounds like he’s speaking with two ruptured lungs leaves him too baffled to feel offense. It is true that Dream has… neglected his human form, of late. It still bears the scars of his imprisonment, waxen and almost skeletally thin, and the ensuing years, the recovery of the Dreaming, his journeys to Hell, have left all their own marks. But it does not make sense for Hob, half-dead himself, a thousand times more fragile than Dream will ever be, to be so focused on Dream’s well-being. He is, in fact, enveloped by a cloud of anxious daydreams, as though- 

“You were. Worried about me,” Dream marvels, pinned to the floor by the concern in Hob’s soft brown eyes. He does not remember the last time he was summoned solely for his own sake.

“‘Course I was,” Hob says, as if it were that simple. He’s still curled in on himself, still clearly in pain, one arm clutching at his ribs as though he is trying to keep the flowers from prying him apart, or perhaps to keep them contained. He reaches out the other hand toward Dream anyway. “You-”

Dream wants, briefly and desperately, to hold him. To provide him some softness and comfort. It is a terrifying impulse, ruinous and inexplicable in its intensity.

Before Dream can think on it, Hob makes the pained, phlegmy choking noise Dream has come to recognize as preceding an intense bout of coughing. 

“If you wish,” Dream offers, “We could continue this conversation in my Realm.”

The moment Dream mentions a Realm, Hob’s daydreams go flying off in a hundred exciting directions, like children given free rein in a toy store. He chokes, again, upon trying to speak, and Dream adds, “You would not be in pain, there.” He is unsure if Hob will accept an offer of help from a friend who has abandoned him, but offering respite in the Dreaming is a basic part of his function. Surely, he is allowed to do that.

Something in Hob’s expression softens still further. “Thank you,” he whispers, “I’d be. Honored.”

Dream puts him to sleep again without a second thought, catching his body before he can hit the floor and gathering him up in his arms. Hob’s mind is already secure in the Dreaming, so Dream nudges him into the version of the White Horse he’d created in Dream’s absence. It is the proper space for them to meet, after all, and Hob has dreamed of it so much and for so long that it has become its own stable skerry of the Dreaming, almost more Hob’s than Dream’s.

That settled, he returns Hob’s body to his bed, and follows him into the Dreaming.

Chapter Text

Dream is… unsettled, in the weeks following his meeting with Hob. He had promised to return as soon as he was able, and he intends to abide by that promise, but there is much that needs to be done in the Dreaming before it would be right of him to leave. 

There is much to be done. He must not shirk his duties. That is the only reason he remains away.

So he buries himself in his work, and does not think of Hob, and ignores the way the clouds that have covered the sky since his release have turned a sickly, churning shade of grey, the air charged like the air before a storm.

He does not think of Hob. 

Hob, who is unnaturally ill. Dream had not realized it in the moment, too afraid that Hob would ask for Death to think of anything else, but even considering his longevity, even considering how long he has, apparently, carried a torch for Dream-

He does not think of Hob.

Hob, who had insisted, despite all evidence, that his condition was in no way Dream’s fault. Who had not even blamed Dream for his absence, no matter how horrifically it had affected him.

He does not think of Hob.

Hob, smiling up at him, delighted to see Dream despite the flowers choking his lungs. Hob's arms wrapped around him, as though Dream were not a beast out of his worst nightmares.

It is so very like Hob to embrace a thing that can only cause his ruin.

The thought hits him like a tidal wave. The thought is a tidal wave, drowning the stretch of shore he'd been working in, pulling him out into a sea of panic and grief. He has just enough presence of mind to think that he must not do this again, that he will cause untold damage to his people if he does not control himself-

A flicker of light, of safety, flashes through the growing flood. He lunges for it. Falls, gasping, into the safety of a dreamscape, gravity reasserting itself as he lands on a wooden floor.

The floodwaters slowly drain away.

It takes him a moment to realize that he has fled directly back to Hob's skerry. He is in a corner of the White Horse, next to a lovingly-detailed fireplace, crumpled in a soaking wet heap.

It takes him no time at all to discern why he was drawn here. He has created thousands upon thousands of similar dreams, over the course of his existence. Dreams of coming home after an extended absence, dreams of joyful reunions with loved ones, dreams of pleasant afternoons spent with friends.

This dream was made for him. Every strand of it sings to him of welcome home comfort safety, and he cannot help but curl up and savor the sensation, melting into the fabric of the dream in the way a human might pull a homemade sweater up to their face to savor its warmth.

This is a story Dream could almost be part of.

As if in response to his half-voiced thought, the fire in the fireplace burns more brightly; a table appears in front of Dream, so laden with food that its basic geometry would be impossible in the Waking world. Thankfully, the change startles Dream out of his pleasant stupor, and he struggles to his feet. He does not deserve this. He is the root cause of Hob's pain, after all, no matter how much Hob had denied it. He should leave, now, without taking any further advantage.

He does not believe he can leave. No matter how sick he feels with guilt, while he is here, that feeling is… contained. It is as though the warmth of the place has blanketed his emotions, calmed them enough that they only affect his conscious form, instead of the entire Dreaming. If he steps back outside now, if he loses that sense of calm-

A moment, he promises himself, slumping back into the corner where the fireplace meets the wall. You will take a moment to get hold of yourself, and then you will leave Hob in peace.

It is, of course, inevitable that Hob enters the Dreaming at that exact instant. A smile flickers across his face as he appears, the skerry welcoming him just as completely as it had Dream.

He looks as he did before Dream’s claws sank into him, confident and full of hope.

The next moment, something happens to his Waking body, painful enough that it nearly yanks him from the Dreaming. His form gutters like a candle flame, the flowers that sprout from his face and throat seething out of time with the rest of him, an entity all of their own. 

Those flowers have grown since Dream last saw him.

Much too slowly, Dream reaches out and pulls Hob’s mind deeper into the Dreaming, where he cannot be hurt.

Hob's eyes meet Dream’s the moment he stabilizes.

His smile surrenders to a look of abject horror. 

“Dream,” he whispers, and then he's standing directly in front of Dream, and Dream is flinching like a human would. Nothing that occurs in the Dreaming should have the capacity to surprise him, and yet-

He holds absolutely still as Hob's fingers trace his cheekbone, barely touching Dream’s skin and searing him to the core, as Hob whispers, “Are you alright?”

The firelight transforms his face, sets him aglow like a saint, or the gallant, cursed knight in a period romance. 

Dream, a monster at that knight’s feet, is entirely unable to answer that question.

He is saved from making an attempt by Hob, who adds, dazedly, “I asked you that already, didn't I?” As Dream watches, he slowly surfaces into awareness- that he is dreaming, that he is back in his own skerry of the Dreaming, that Dream is here with him. His hand drops from Dream's face as though Dream is on fire, and he takes a very deliberate step backwards.

“I apologize for the intrusion,” Dream says, once he is certain he will not startle Hob awake by speaking. “I will leave you to your rest.” 

“No, please,” Hob says, with an awkward shift in place, as though he’d started to reaching out toward Dream and thought better of it, “You’re not intruding?”

This is objectively, blatantly false. Dream attempts to convey as much with a look, but Hob simply grins at him and says, “I told you, you're welcome to visit whenever you want. You're not intruding.”

There is no point to Dream’s remaining here. He has already pulled Hob's mind as far from the pain of the Waking as he can; his conscious presence in Hob's dream will do him no good. If anything, his presence may be a harm to Hob- he can feel the storm that drove him here seething under his skin, where the least scratch might unleash it and bring the whole building down around them-

Before Dream can make this objection, Hob adds, “I'd hate to let you leave in that.” He nods at the rain lashing the windows, rain that only exists because Dream lacks the discipline to stop it. “At least wait until it calms down, give yourself a chance to dry off?”

Hob is aware that he is dreaming. And yet, he asks after Dream’s comfort. Acts as though Dream were nothing less than real. 

The shock of it solidifies Dream in the space, in a way that should terrify him; he is suddenly present, standing in a room that is centuries old, soaked to the skin and beginning to shiver.

“My friend?” Hob whispers, worry carved into his voice. 

Dream should leave. He should leave, now; he should not allow Hob to take on the burden of witnessing Dream’s inadequacies.

But if he leaves-

There is a nightmare, an old one, lurking in the rain outside. It knows Hob well. Even from this distance, Dream can sense the shape it has taken in the past, the shape it will take again- the rain, Dream’s retreating back, the flowers clawing their way up Hob’s throat, blocking his attempt to shout Dream’s name, roots pushing their way out of his legs like maggots, anchoring him to the ground, and as he stands there, frozen, ribs beginning to crack under the pressure of the thing in his chest, what hurts most is the certainty, dawning equally slowly, that he will never see Dream again.

If Dream leaves now, he will only strengthen that fear that he should never have inflicted upon Hob in the first place. 

And he cannot make himself stop shivering.

It would be the lesser of two evils, he tries to tell himself. Leave, find some other place to calm yourself. Even if that nightmare never leaves Hob, it would still be better than what you will do to him if you stay. And if you are too self-obsessed to leave for his sake, he has already seen you lose control once. He will lose all regard for you when you do so again.

Dream can already feel it happening, his appearance warping in response to his own foolishness, his skin growing sallow, his form skeletal, his eyes windows to an empty void, the monster in Burgess’ basement returned to-

Something impossibly warm touches his upper arm. He looks up to find Hob resting a hand there, his touch as gentle as if Dream were a baby bird. “Please stay?” he whispers, and Dream’s greed wins out.

He nods, sharply. Some of the worry ebbs away from Hob’s features- not enough, not enough to justify anything Dream has done tonight, but enough that he feels no guiltier about allowing Hob to tug him into a soft armchair that has appeared next to the fire. 

“How do I…?” Hob asks, to the room at large as much as to Dream. Before Dream can find the words to ask what he means, Hob holds out both arms, like he expects to catch something falling from the ceiling.  A heavy blanket appears in them, and a look of startled delight flickers over Hob’s face, briefly erasing the worry lines Dream had etched there.

Perhaps Dream can still salvage this. He should be the one caring for Hob, after all. That is the way of things, that is his responsibility, perhaps he can-

Hob crouches down in front of Dream and begins tucking the blanket around his shoulders. The thought vanishes from Dream’s mind; he finds himself leaning into Hob like the world’s most sun-starved flower.

He is- impossibly- rewarded for his behavior. Hob’s smile is now directed at him. “There we go,” Hob whispers. “Is that enough? I don’t want to smother you.”

Dream tugs at his sleeve in response, unsure if he can trust his own voice. Hob is ill and should not be sitting on the floor, even in a dream.

Instead of moving to a more comfortable location, like any sensible person would, Hob leans forward, wrapping both his arms around Dream's shoulders.

Acceptable, Dream decides, and pulls Hob closer, so that his weight is at least on Dream instead of the floor.

“It's alright, my friend,” Hob whispers, his voice soft, the words remarkably familiar. “You're alright, I've got you. Whatever you need.”

When was the last time-?

Something in Dream, some corner of the wall he's been building since he awoke in Burgess' basement, crumbles into nothing.

Dream crumbles with it. Dissolves into a wave of betrayal, of fear, of grief, all the emotions he had so carefully set aside where they were safe, and harmless. Where they could not tear apart the Dreaming, and with it, the very fabric of reality. They tear into Dream now, shredding him to pieces, the floods and storms and fires he had kept quietly tucked away all carving into him at once. And then he is lost, he is nothing but a wave of sorrow and anger and the far-off sensation of sobs being wrenched from someone else’s throat.

It comes as something of a surprise, when his mind finally clears enough to be aware of what he has done, that-

He has done nothing.

He is clutching at Hob’s shirt like a child. He has been sobbing raggedly into Hob's shoulder for. For some time, now.

But Hob is unharmed, aside from Dream having pulled him fully into his lap. Hob's skerry is still standing, still peaceful and warm, and when Dream reaches out to the Dreaming at large he finds it… calm. The air feels light and clear, like the air after a storm, but the damage that should have come from a storm of that magnitude simply has not manifested.

Dream lets out a long breath, feeling at once lighter and more tethered than he has in centuries, and releases his grip on Hob's shirt.

When he lifts his head, he is once again Dream of the Endless, Lord of Dreams and Nightmares.

Somehow, now, it is a less painful thing to be.

Hob sits back the moment Dream moves, hunching awkwardly with one knee still on the chair and one foot on the floor. “Better?” he asks, softly. 

“Yes,” Dream says, although in truth having Hob so close and so far away hurts like a spear through his chest. “Thank you.” It is the very least he owes Hob, who should never have been asked to comfort him.

“Of course.” Hob tugs nervously at one earlobe, then the flower in his cheek, and finally adds, “If there’s any way I can help, please-”

“Hob,” Dream says, firmly. He threads their fingers together and pulls Hob's hand away from his face. “All I would ask is that you take care of yourself,” he says, running his thumb in a gentle arc across the back of Hob’s hand. “You are gravely ill-”

“I’ve been gravely ill for six centuries now,” Hob says. And then he rolls his eyes, as though he were speaking with a human friend, not one of the Endless. The audacity of it irks Dream almost as much as it charms him. “I can look out for both of us, I promise,” Hob adds, squeezing Dream’s hand.

“You are currently-” Dream begins, intending to remind him of the reasons he can ill afford to waste his energy on Dream.

“-In your realm, where I’m not in pain, and actually sleeping well for the first time in centuries?” Hob interrupts, smugly.

Smugness should not look so handsome on him. It is an injustice on the part of the universe. 

“...You cannot be comfortable sitting like that,” Dream mutters. It is a foolish objection to make; he does not wish for Hob to move any further away. In an even more foolish attempt to correct his mistake, he alters Hob’s dream just slightly, so that he is cradled comfortably in Dream’s lap.

For a moment, Hob is utterly still. Then, with the cautious movements of someone who is entirely unused to being held like this, he relaxes into Dream’s arms with his head in the crook of Dream’s shoulder.

“Besides,” Hob says, more quietly. He does not turn to look at Dream. “It seems- I don’t remember everything you said last time we met, but it sounds like you’ve also had a hell of a century.”

The admission leaves Dream's mind momentarily blank, the heart he should not have pounding, an emotion he cannot hope to name clawing up his throat. He had not realized Hob would remember anything he had told him that night. To explain it now, with Hob fully conscious, will be like tearing barbed wire out of an already raw wound. But he must, if-

“Did I ever tell you how Eleanor asked me to marry her?” Hob asks, his voice loud in the silence of Dream’s thoughts.

In the billions upon billions of years that Dream has existed, he does not believe that he has ever heard a more blatant change of subject in a conversation.

He does not believe that he has ever been more grateful, either. “You did not,” he says. To his relief, his voice does not shake. “How did she ask?”

“She told me I’d be dead in six months anyway,” Hob says, with such overwhelming love that for a moment, all Dream can do is wonder how Hob could possibly still be dying for Dream's sake. 

Only a moment, though, because the contents of the sentence had also been quite startling. Dream had avoided studying Eleanor’s dreams for the same reason he has avoided Hob’s, but he had not gotten the impression, from what Hob had said about her, that she was so indifferent to him.

“To be fair, I don’t think she was thinking clearly at the time,” Hob adds, gathering more from Dream’s silence than Dream would have expected anyone to. “This jackass friend of her father’s was pressuring him to set up a marriage, and…”

Dream, of course, could easily learn the rest from the collective unconscious, but it is so much better to hear the story from Hob, sweetened by the love with which he talks about Eleanor and his pleasure in the telling itself. So he allows himself to get lost in Hob’s tale- which eventually begins to involve an improbable amount of heroics on Hob’s part- until Hob slips into a dreamless sleep and disappears from the Dreaming.

When he steps out of Hob’s skerry again, the clouds in the Dreaming are beginning to clear. 

Chapter Text

With the Dreaming calm, bright in a way Dream has not seen it in centuries, two things that he should have realized long before become obvious. 

First: Hob’s claim that Dream’s presence is, in any way, beneficial to his health is suspect at best. The new growth of plants across Hob's face in his dream, the pain he had been experiencing in the Waking world, both of them are evidence of a problem Dream had feared from the start but had been unable to voice, even to himself.

And second: before Dream does anything else, he must meet Hob in the Waking to confirm his fears. Even when- even if- they prove true, he must confront Hob about the matter directly, where Hob will be completely clearheaded. Hob is a creature of the Waking, after all. 

As Hob is likely still performing his human morning routine, and does not require or desire Dream’s presence, Dream waits. 

Time passes with interminable slowness. The longer Dream waits, the more time he has to get lost in his own realm, in horrible imaginings of what must be happening to Hob at this exact moment, at Dream’s hand-

Six hours exactly after Hob awoke, Dream steps into the Waking. 

He finds Hob sitting up in bed, his laptop balanced precariously on one knee, frowning at something on the screen. The most he seems to be suffering, aside from the obvious, is worry over whatever he’s looking at. 

He’s breathing.

It is a rattling, fragile sound, but Dream hears it the moment he appears in the room, and is flooded with relief so powerful a section of the Dreaming that has been barren since his return spontaneously becomes a peaceful, sunlit meadow. 

In the split second that Hob spends staring at Dream, trying to figure out if he’d fallen asleep sitting up, Dream catalogs him. 

By no means does he look healthy. He is still too thin, and almost picturesquely sickly-looking, as though he’d been made up and costumed as the love interest in one of the many thousands of hanahaki-based romantic films. And yet.

There is a bandage over his cheek, and he's wearing a hooded sweatshirt- a much bulkier one than the last time Dream saw him; it entirely covers his throat. 

The flowers he’d had sprouting from his flesh cannot possibly have grown any further. He would not have been able to cover them, if they had. The one in his cheek may even have shrunk.

Before Dream can unravel what this might mean, Hob jolts, nearly tipping his laptop onto the floor.

“You're back!” he says, half-rising from his bed, tugging at the hem of the sweatshirt in what appears to be an attempt to make the garment look more presentable.

“You said that I might return whenever I wished,” Dream murmurs. He means the words as an explanation, an apology, but he realizes the moment they are out of his mouth that he simply sounds like a petulant child. Hob had no clear idea of what he'd been agreeing to, when he'd said that he wished to see Dream as often as Dream could manage. No matter how comforting Dream’s presence may be, surely Hob would have wanted a few moments free of him. Surely Hob will now ask him to leave, since Dream cannot bear to do so on his own, cannot bear to leave this room where he can listen to Hob's shaky breaths. 

Instead, Hob makes a soft, startled noise- almost a gasp, muffled by a mouthful of petals- and then offers Dream a small, hopeful smile.

“I did. Would you. Like to-”

The daydream is radiating off of Hob so loudly that Dream cannot help but taste it-

“I will stay,” Dream intones. And then they are sitting next to each other in Hob's bed, positioned much as they had been the last time Dream was in the Waking, only Hob is conscious enough to savor every half-remembered detail- the warmth radiating from Dream’s body, the gentle, comforting tug of his fingers through Hob's hair, the scent that clings to his coat: ozone, and the smoke of the fireplace in Hob’s childhood home- and every word of what Dream might have to say-

Hob should receive everything he wishes for. Dream does not know when this became a ruling tenet of his existence, but it certainly is one now. 

And yet it would be cruel, unconscionably so, to go along with this wish. To give Hob so much false hope.

Dream knows this.

Dream wants to curl up in the space next to Hob so badly it aches.

Before he can decide on the best course of action- any course of action- Hob makes a familiar, sharp choking noise, and the decision is taken out of Dream’s hands; entirely of its own accord, Dream’s body sits on the edge of the bed next to Hob and wraps a bracing arm around his shoulders.

This time, the fit tears through Hob with a life of its own. His first cough sends entire blossoms and parts of stems spraying across the bedsheets. The next is less violent, but only because it is more choke than it is cough, and the next even more so, until Hob is doubled over with reflexive tremors that are half-retch, half-sob.

He doesn’t so much stop coughing as he runs out of energy to keep coughing, and the fit shudders into nonexistence.

There is a mess of flowers on the bed, full flowers rather than just blossoms, leaves full and dark green, petals an almost shining white. The one closest Dream’s hand lies curled so delicately it could almost be a purposeful design, a flower thrown at the feet of a lovely young performer. 

There are tiny bits of tissue clinging to the tightest curl of its roots.

So Dream had been right, then.

“Hey.” The voice is Hob’s, steady despite the damage that must have been done to his lungs. He shouldn’t be breathing without medical assistance, let alone talking, what on earth has possessed him to try, aside from Dream’s damned presence-

“I'm alright,” Hob adds, his voice insistent, but soft in a way that cuts through Dream’s swirling thoughts, “It's a good thing.”

It is, by all accounts, wildly un-Hob-like behavior to rejoice in his own suffering, and for a moment Dream is consumed by the horrible idea that he might mean it. After all, according to the stories Hob grew up with this is the purest form of love: to allow that love to overwhelm your human body. 

The terror lasts exactly as long as it takes Hob to get his breath back and continue speaking. “I know how it looks,” he says, nudging Dream’s shoulder, “but as long as that shit isn't in my lungs anymore, I’m counting it as good.”

His words have a well-worn feeling to them, a confidence that comes of years of experience; Dream knows, without having to check, that Hob is offering Dream the same reassurance he's offered hundreds of other friends, over the centuries. By all rights, the reminder of the length of Hob’s suffering should only compound Dream’s guilt. But Hob is himself, still, finding hope in a pile of bloody flowers. The only thing Dream can possibly feel is relief.

That relief only deepens when a few moments pass, and instead of succumbing to another fit or realizing that he should be in incredible pain, Hob simply… continues breathing. The noise is still shallow, still rasping, but noticeably stronger than before. If Dream concentrates hard enough, he can sense the damage to Hob's lungs starting to heal itself, in what must be an extension of Death’s blessing.

It should not be possible. No matter what Hob had believed, no matter what reassurances he’d offered. Stories like Hob’s, a love gone unrequited for so long, end in death.

Perhaps not, some small part of Dream's mind notes, a part that had been buried in glass and metal and loneliness. Perhaps he should have counted less on this story being one of unrequited love, and more on the story being Hob's.

“Not good that it’s on my sheets,” Hob adds, although his voice is so low Dream assumes this is less a serious complaint and more a sentence spoken for the sake of speaking, “but-”

Dream waves a hand, and the pile of flowers vanishes into the Dreaming, material for a new nightmare. The sheets below are spotless.

When he looks back at Hob, he's staring at Dream with the same startled, hopeful look that had sparked his first coughing fit. “Um,” he says after a moment, his voice hoarse. “Please. Stay as long as you like.” 

In answer, Dream wraps his arm more securely around Hob's shoulders, expecting a second bout of coughing. Instead, Hob tugs him fully onto the bed. 

Dream is. Not entirely certain how he’d managed that. Hob should not be strong enough to maneuver a human of Dream’s size, let alone the weight of the entire collective unconsciousness. It is. Arresting, that Hob was capable of it, and Dream finds himself staring as Hob arranges himself more comfortably. Wondering if the move was simple luck, or something he’d practiced over the centuries. If it was something he may be able to do again, if Dream were to allow it.

There is almost certainly a thought Dream should be having. It would likely be useful to have this thought, but whatever clarity Dream had a few short hours ago has abruptly vanished. Even so-

Hob leans back against the headboard next to Dream, their arms just barely brushing, and Dream’s attention dives to that point of contact so quickly that he forgets to think, and the temperature in the Dreaming shoots up six degrees.

This behavior is. Unbecoming. Dream is mindful enough to realize that. Whatever Hob needs, it is certainly not. This.

He directs his focus to the laptop at Hob’s side. The open tab is a search of missing persons in and around London. Most of the other tabs appear to be realty websites.

“Trying to figure out where to go next,” Hob says, when he notices Dream staring. “I-” 

The shadow of a nightmare, water filling his already choked lungs, passes across his face as he stumbles for the words. “Left too many loose ends, last time.”

“How so?” Dream asks. It occurs to him, too late, that Hob may not want to speak, but Hob lets his head fall onto Dream’s shoulder and begins to explain, with something approaching relief. 

He tells Dream of his past century in fitful stops and starts over the next few hours- a pause here to cough up another flower, a pause there to rest his lungs, a pause to make tea and a pause within that pause to argue with Dream about which of them should be making the tea and which of them should be resting. 

Dream is certain Hob has obscured the worst details, but the story as he understands it is this: A little more than a year ago, Hob had been living just outside of London, in one of the most comfortable lives he'd managed to make for himself, since Dream failed him so utterly in 1989.

(This, he does not say, but Dream is aware of it all the same.)

He had made friends. His friends had begun to make concerned remarks about Hob’s illness, about measures to lessen his symptoms and experimental treatments and ‘holy shit are you even seeing a doctor.’

“It wasn't that. I don't think any of them would have done anything. If they'd found out,” Hob says, staring into the mug of tea Dream had only gotten him to accept along with an agreement that next time, Hob would be the one to make tea. The shadow of the seventeenth century looms over the words. “But I couldn't ‘just go to a doctor’ about this and I couldn't explain why not, without telling them-” he pauses. The shadow grows teeth. Dream, unthinking, reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. 

“I was planning to leave that life,” Hob continues. Although his tone remains grim, his face visibly brightens at Dream’s gesture. “Make up a family member to intervene, pretend they’d had me admitted to one of those inpatient programs...  Before I could, it got. Worse.”

If Dream has been following the timing correctly, he suspects- no, he knows- that this would have occurred just after he escaped his imprisonment.

A conclusion, one that Dream desperately wishes to ignore, begins to tap insistently at his shoulder. 

“Much worse,” Hob adds, tilting his chin to show off the bandage on his cheek. “I took what I absolutely needed and ran.”

The bandage on his cheek. The bandage that is there because the flower has wilted enough to be covered, because Hob has recovered more in these two short weeks than Dream would have thought possible. And that is discounting his recovery in these past hours; the entire time Hob has been speaking, since Dream placed the mug of tea in front of him, he has only paused to clear his throat twice.

It all leads, inevitably, to a third realization Dream should have come to long ago: Hob would not be this ill- might never have fallen ill to begin with- had he not been in love with something Endless. The severity of his symptoms, the fact that they have only lessened in Dream’s presence, when falling in love with Eleanor should have cured them entirely, even the fact that Hob fell deathly ill with love for Dream after a single meeting, a storybook occurrence incongruous with his very human self: it is all obvious evidence that Dream had willfully missed.

And Hob had been right after all, if not for the reason he thinks. Dream’s presence is helping him recover, because being with Dream means seeing Dream for what he truly is: a selfish, demanding, sullen creature, not something fit to be loved. The flowers are dying along with his feelings. 

There is no undoing all that he has suffered in the meantime. All that he will continue to suffer, for until the last shred of his love for Dream is killed, he will continue to suffer. 

Dream is Endless. To love him is to be destroyed. 

Dream barely hears the rest of Hob’s explanation, that he had come to this flat, which he'd kept as a place to briefly rest and regroup between lives, only to find himself too ill to go any further. His attention is only drawn back when the nightmare of the 17th century flickers over Hob’s thoughts again, as Hob says, “...but I’m afraid if I fake my death- hell, if I stay here too much longer- my poor downstairs neighbor will try to get involved, and-” he trails off, his mind washed in a tangled mixture of present guilt and stubbornly rooted fear. 

Instead of examining that fear more closely, Dream peers into the mind of the neighbor in question: Philip Layne, age 81, who thinks of Hob as the stupid kid from upstairs, trying to run off like a sick cat and die where he thinks no one will notice. Contrary to Hob's assumption, Philip has been worried about ‘the stupid kid from upstairs’ since Hob moved in, and the only reason he hadn't tried to find Hob’s people long before now is a deeply-held belief that Meddling In Someone Else’s Business is an unforgivable sin. A particularly loud cough on Hob's part might push him to do it anyway.

“Your plan would still work,” Dream says, the idea forming in his mind even as he speaks the words. “If an old friend appeared at your doorstep looking for you.”

“Well, yeah, but-” Hob says. He stops speaking suddenly, looking intently at Dream. “You mean. You?” 

Dream nods. “You would be able to start a new life, without attracting suspicion. And it would give you ample time to recover, if I were here as often as a human friend would be, in these circumstances.” 

And, Dream does not say aloud, it will place a definite final chapter on Dream's involvement in Hob's life. So that when he is inevitably cured, and no longer wishes to see Dream, he will be able to bow out gracefully, and Dream will be able to pretend he is unaffected.

Hob does not agree immediately. Dream had not expected him to, but even so. The way he stares across the table at Dream, like a fox sizing up a much larger predator, makes Dream want to recoil. As deserved as this wariness is, some irrational part of Dream still cries out at the rejection.

Finally, Hob whispers, “Thank you.” There is gratitude in his voice, woven through with a stabbing, quiet longing Dream dares not investigate too closely. He grins, and adds, “You’re going to get very sick of me.”

A human would have been able to see straight through that expression and realize that he was voicing a very real fear. The King of Nightmares is even less convinced. “Never,” Dream replies, too intensely.

It is much too honest an answer. 

Their hands are still entwined on the table.

Dream cannot bear to pull his away.

Hob peers at him curiously for a moment. “And in 1589?” he finally asks, far more gently than the question should be asked. “You don’t have to spare my feelings, I know-”

“Clearly you do not, if that is your rebuttal.” Dream is treading on dangerous ground, but he cannot seem to stop himself from speaking. “Of all the reasons I had for leaving that night, my being ‘sick of you’ was not one of them.”

His honesty does not have the desired effect. A look of hurt flashes across Hob's face, gone just as Dream notices it. “Uh. Thank you,” he says, with another easy grin that doesn't reach his eyes, “But I think 'reasons' just kind of proves my point, yeah?”

“Hob.” And perhaps it is a blessing that Dream cannot stop talking, because at least now he has the chance to dissuade Hob from loving him. He squeezes Hob’s hand, gently, and waits until Hob meets his gaze. “I left that night because I was so envious I wished to give the whole of London nightmares, and because I am given to becoming overenamoured of my work and abandoning the people I care for. I was frustrated with you, yes, but not ‘sick of you’ in the way that you mean. I could not be.”

Meeting Hob’s eyes was a mistake. The warmth, the hope Dream finds there is a knife through the core of him, every reason he could never do anything but cling to Hob Gadling, no matter that it could kill them both, honed there and carving through Dream’s heart.

“Goddamnit,” Hob mumbles, and doubles over, jaw working as he attempts to breathe past another round of coughing. “Alright,” he says, after a moment, the words somewhat distorted by the fact that he barely opens his mouth as he speaks. “If the universe. Would let me get a fucking sentence out. Before I stop breathing again,” he says, and then pauses warily. The universe seems inclined to acquiesce to his request. “Thank you," he says to Dream. This time, the thanks is sincere, and more vulnerable, more relieved, than he should ever have had cause to feel. "And the same goes for you, obviously. Visit whenever, I'll be thrilled to see you.”

He punctuates the statement with a single cough, followed by a yawn that shows the stem curling up his throat, the small, viney tendrils burrowed into his cheek, gruesome evidence that he is telling the absolute truth. 

Dream takes his leave soon after.