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It is some time during the first week of January that Dream appears in Hob’s living room, ostensibly following an ill-advised evening couch nap from Hob. Hob rouses, the darkened room coming into focus, and in the blue-wash light of the television he sees Dream’s dark figure become more opaque. And he looks exhausted. Hob hauls himself upright on the couch, scrubbing his eyes even as he takes in the deep shadows below Dream’s. His brow doesn’t seem tense so much as crumpled, the angle of them looking almost pained.
“My friend,” he whispers into the silence.
“I… perhaps owe you another apology.”
“Why?”
“It has been a season of celebrations. A time when friends and communities come together to celebrate and feast. And I have been absent. I had not intended to be.
“I…” Hob’s post-nap brain is whirring. “I really didn’t expect you to. I love that I don’t have to wait a century to see you. But I hardly expect you to come along to my work Christmas do. Or watch the fireworks with me. It’s okay. Really.”
“I had imagined… in my freedom. I would be allowed such liberties. But,” and here, somehow, his breath seems to falter, his shoulders sink, like papier-mâché caving in on itself.
Hob jolts, suddenly completely awake. “Dream.” He wants to reach out a hand to steady him, hold him, but he’s too far away, and he knows it would be taken with some degree of offence. Instead he lets his hand fall to the cushion next to him, beckoning his friend over.
“I have not experienced Christmastime in over one hundred years. I could not have predicted what to expect. The amount of dreams and fears, fantasies. The overlap with desires. Even with my powers restored…the Dreaming is still not at its full strength.”
“Nor are you by the looks of it.” It’s the wrong thing to say, even though he meant it to be caring.
“I have power –”
“Power isn’t the same as strength. You’ve got your powers, but at some point you need to rest to recharge them, right? Surely. I mean, I can’t die but I still get tired, right? Lack of sleep won’t kill me but it’ll make me fucking miserable.”
Dream looks indignant, but too exhausted for it to really take.
“Dream,” Hob touches the cushion beside him again, “please.”
“I do not sleep.” Dream sniffs, even as he deigns to heed Hob’s plea and sit beside him on the couch, the dark circles under his eyes looking even more stark at this closer distance.
“Mm, funny. Cos I know you’re not stupid.”
Dream snaps around to glare at him, though the tiredness slows the movement down a little.
“Sleep isn’t the only way you can rest. I know you know that. Must do. What with the not being stupid.”
“I…” Dream is facing him, looking him in the eye, looking a little lost. “That is not what I came for.”
“What did you come for, love?”
“To… offer belated season’s greetings. Wish you a happy new year. It… is what friends do. I am trying to be better about…friends.” He looks, with a wavering gaze Hob has never seen from him, down at Hob’s chest, at the empty space between them, before meeting Hob’s eyes again. “And… I wanted to.”
Hob’s heart aches.
“I cannot rest and do those things.”
“Here we go again with the not-being-stupid. Rest is part of the celebration. Everyone knows the days between Christmas and New Year are like a weird limbo time where nothing makes sense, nothing is open, and all you can do successfully is rest. So, take it from someone who’s seen a century of holiday excess – you can absolutely do both. I, personally, wholeheartedly encourage it.”
“I should go.” Hob has never seen him look so unsure, not in all six centuries.
“Why?” Dream’s eyes flicker, glassy, between Hob’s. “I’m not kicking you out. Stay. Here,” he unfolds the blanket that’s still over his lap, spreads it out to offer the far edge of it to Dream. “What do you think I was doing before you got here? Having a good old rest, because early January is still far too early do be doing anything if you ask me. Crazy that people are already back at work.”
“You were dreaming of empty corridors.” And at his words Hob can suddenly recall the murky nap-dreams he’d been drifting in and out of. A quiet, empty campus. “I was not looking. I only…”
“Hitched a ride?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Glad you did. Now c’mere, get under this. Let’s get some rubbish telly going – works wonders as white noise. S’funny, people say cities are loud, but sometimes it feels like they’re quieter than ever. Cities used to be filled with the sound of people. Now it’s cars and buses and roadworks and occasionally someone shouting at the traffic. And they’ve got this thing called double-glazing now – extra insulation in glass. Good for keeping warm, but also good for soundproofing. There’s a kind of lifeless silence you can get in the twenty-first century that I’m not sure I’ve ever quite experienced before.”
Hob looks over at Dream, who has melted into the couch and, in a feat of trust or exhaustion or both, has sunk into the cushions enough that he’s now a little below Hob’s eyeline. His blue eyes, usually so piercing, are a dull, iced over grey-blue. Like overcast skies. And truly, the shadows around them, they look as if someone carved the sunken recesses out of clay. Hob can imagine a sculptor gouging out strips of mottled porcelain until all that’s left is the distant view of dark clouds surrounded by a dark sea. He looks gaunt, in a way Hob’s never seen but has imagined after he learned about Dream’s whereabouts during the previous century. Trapped, behind glass, in the dark.
“Fuck,” he says aloud as the realisation hits him. “Fuck. Sorry. Didn’t mean… Yeah. I… well. Yeah, I suppose well – you’d know. About silence. Shit. Sorry.”
Dream is looking up at him with, if he didn’t know better, sleepy, slow-blinking doe eyes. Hob holds his breath and savours this last moment of peace before his words shatter the soft cosiness that was slowly descending.
“Double-glazing.” Dream says without inflection.
“Wh–? What?”
“Over a century of information and stories to tell. And it’s double-glazing today.”
“Are you… fucking mocking me?” A grin threatens to break across his face.
“No, no, I am simply fascinated by the minutiae of human architectural advances,” he says with such thick sarcasm Hob’s surprised he’s not rolling his eyes.
“You are such a little shit. Guess you’re not that exhausted after all. Or is this couch sit already having healing effects?”
“Mm, impossible to say.”
“I bet.” Hob smiles to himself, Dream's eyes already straying to the movement on the muted TV. He's staying, for now at least, and Hob silently savours the moment, the trust Dream is showing him, it is a huge and delicate offering and it is the best gift Hob has ever received. Immortality notwithstanding. He lets himself sink back into the couch, into the warmth, into the soft hazy state of the evening and feels the weight of Dream's physical form press a little closer as the cushions dip and draw them together.