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Dream steps into the wan sunlight of the inn, and it feels brighter and warmer than it really is. His eyelids flicker against the deluge of brightness. He wishes he had come later. But he couldn’t have. He walks through the sparse crowd, not having to think, people moving easily around him, until he reaches the same table as last time. Hob is there, hair hanging a little further over his face as it is bowed this time over a laptop. A book stuffed with loose sheets of paper balances on the edge of the table beside it.
He looks up just a second before Dream starts to doubt that he will. And his face creases in concern. Ah, Dream thinks, so it shows then.
“My friend?”
“Hob.” This does not seem to quell him; his concern, if anything, deepens.
“Dream?” His shoulders square and he sits up straight and rigid, a bowstring tightening. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.” But Dream hasn’t sat down yet, still hovering by the table. Now that he is here in the new comfort of the New Inn he can barely will himself to move any further.
Hob, who knows him far too well, too well for any human, clearly doesn’t believe him. He looks around the pub, at the many still-crowded tables, then snaps shut his laptop. “We can go to my place?”
Dream should be offended, he thinks, in some way. There are a multitude of implications in Hob’s question, in his concern. But they wash over him like a breath, as formless as half-waking dreams, and he holds onto none of them.
“Is it far?” This, at least, seems to provide some ease for Hob, and his shoulders release a fraction of their tension.
“Not far. We can walk it.”
Dream nods.
Hob scrabbles to collect his things, shove them hastily into his bag. He springs up from the table and they both head for the door.
The walk is quiet. The city around them is still awake but between them there is peace, and the peace is all that Dream allows himself to listen to. Hob glances at him from time to time, and after awhile stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets, mirroring him.
It is a pleasant walk, and true to Hob’s word, not far at all. Less distance than he had last walked through these London streets.
The key crunches into the lock and Dream is admitted to a slightly dimmer space. He closes his eyes for several long seconds against the relief of the low lighting. The door closes behind him with a heavy, satisfying sound, and he hears the lock catch and slip back into place.
Hob moves past him, and Dream moves too, carried along in his wake, unthinking. Hob’s bag is dumped unceremoniously and heavily into a chair, and then Hob is rounding on him in the middle of the living room.
“Dream, what’s wrong?” He asks it so softly, he’s almost begging. Trying not to scare away a shadow.
“It is nothing. It…” he is near horrified at his inability, his unwillingness, to find the words.
“Dream…” Hob whispers his name into the space between them, a sigh, a hope. And he reaches out, perhaps without realising it, clutching his fingertips into the sleeve of Dream’s coat halfway up his forearm.
“I have been rebuilding.” He cannot look at Hob’s face. He wants to close his eyes but he does not think he would have the strength to open them again, does not think he could bear it, but his lids are low, his eyes cast down. “However…many things were destroyed.” He thinks of a small skull in his palm, of his favourite creation returned to sand. He thinks of a family, fragile and scared and angry, one of whom he would have to choose for his sister’s gift. He thinks of his sibling, who had sought to make all of it worse. And he thinks of the unexpected sight of once-beloved dark eyes so full of pain, and disbelief, and in the old days you would have left me, and might I visit and do you still hate me? No, he had answered no to all of it. And was ashamed, so deeply ashamed, to see how much was broken long before he had been imprisoned.
“Oh,” Hob says on a breath. His hand, which had become an anchor on Dream's arm, disappears. “Oh,” he says more quietly this time, as if it is only the sound of the air itself.
And then his hand, warmer than the sunlight, though trembling slightly, fits itself against Dream’s jaw. His eyes snap up to meet Hob’s, see the trepidation and resolve in them. A second warm hand mirrors the first, cupping Dream’s face, holding him in the cradle of Hob’s palms. A broad thumb makes one featherlight sweep across the rise of his cheek, cresting the delicate skin under his eye. It is then that Dream realises the wetness clinging to his lashes. Hob can see it, of course. It is perhaps what made him so bold. He captures an unshed tear against his thumb and smoothes it away. And Dream cannot help that finally his eyes slip closed without him really deciding on it. His eyes close and a breath leaves him and it’s so whole and heavy that he feels like his physical body is surely about to become liquid, return to sand. He’s not sure if he is still standing on his legs. He can barely feel them. All he can feel is the heel of Hob’s palms along his jaw, his little finger tucked around the hinge of it. Warm, gentle fingers splayed up to his cheekbones. He sinks into Hob’s hands, he is so weary, he cannot think of anything else to do. Does not want to think. He sinks into his hands, and Hob holds him with more confidence, and his thumbs stroke Dream’s face with such softness, with such care, with such feeling that Dream has not experienced in far more than one hundred and six years, his whole chest feels broken open with it.
“Oh,” Hob soothes a third time, unable to conjure anything else, and steps closer. This, too, Dream should bristle at, should be cautious and not indulgent of such boldness. But it has been so long. Hob waited for him when almost no other creature in existence did. Hob, whose last boldness he treated with defensive rage and abandonment. If only he hadn’t… who knows where they would be now. “It’s okay.”
“It is not.” Dream manages to pull from his own throat, rusty and thin. He takes an involuntary shuddering breath. It echos through his chest, and Hob steps closer again.
“It is for right now. ‘Kay? Right now you’re here. And it’s just us. And it’s okay for just this moment. Even if it’s not after. You can have right now.”
Dream does not stop the watery laugh that burbles up his throat behind closed lips. He shakes his head in Hob’s hands, a small enough movement to not push him away. “So very human.”
“Guilty.” Dream’s eyes are still closed and yet he can sense Hob’s grin. “We’ve only got each moment. Not dying doesn’t change that. All we ever have is this moment. Everything else is unknowable. May as well enjoy it.”
Dream hums. “Human.”
“Yeah,” Hob is still grinning.
A tear escapes Dream’s lashes, and another shuddering breath wracks through him, and one of Hob’s hands flies to his side as though he’s worried he might collapse. Dream turns into the remaining hand still holding his face, the loss of half the warmth somehow worse than being held up, and more tears fall against his will.
“Hey. C’mon,” Hob soothes, grips him tighter as he tries to manoeuvre them around the coffee table towards the couch, but it’s no use. Dream’s body won’t move. He cannot will it to. He does not want to. Another breath is clawed from his throat and it’s too much, he feels, with horror, as his body sags, his knees waver and his weight is no longer stable. But Hob is still holding him, and Hob does not push or protest, he makes a surprised little sound and then more soothing noises that Dream really should oppose to, as he uses his hold to lower them to a tangle of limbs on the ground. “I’m not going anywhere. This moment can be as long as we want it to be.”
“I have done nothing… to deserve your friendship, Hob.” Dream’s head is bowed now, his cheek grazing the side of Hob’s jaw. Hob’s hand still holding him.
When Hob speaks Dream feels his breath against his neck, curling around the collar of his coat. “‘M like a bad penny, me. Stuck with me.”
“I was unkind. Cruel. Just to hurt you.”
And Hob huffs a laugh right against his neck. “Unkind? Yeah. Cruel? To me? Never.” The hand clutched at Dream’s side now moves to soothe down his back, from sharp shoulder blade to the last crest of his ribs, then the reverse. “I’ve been unkind. Cruel. Thoughtless.”
“Not to me.”
“No. Never to you, stranger. But I’ve known the feelings. You had good reason to be unkind.”
“I did not.”
“Well I forgive you anyway, let’s say. ‘Cos you’ve also been my friend since before modern English, hm? You know that, right? You’re the only constant in my life save for the moon and the sun and the stars.” And Hob knows him far too well, has become too perceptive over the centuries, because all Dream does is feel a petal of warmth unfurl in his chest and Hob must sense it too because he gives him a squeeze and chuckles. “Which I s’pose you had something to do with, too?”
Dream does not answer.
“You can’t overestimate the value of a friendly face.”
That draws another strained laugh from Dream. “Few have ever described me such. But… yes. Yes, I have recently found that to be true.”
“I wish you hadn’t’ve had to.” He squeezes again, then draws back a fraction. “I am one of those faces, right?”
He is trying to get a rise out of Dream, trying to nudge another chuckle from him, and Dream allows it. “Yes. Vain creature.”
“Alright, good.” Hob ignores the slight. “And I’m like… top three?”
“Top two.”
“Oh now don’t say that, because that makes me very happy, and very sad. I’m not number one though, am I?”
“Two. Though that depends, I suppose, on how you define friends.”
“Dream.” It’s almost a groan. Plaintive. “Oh, Dream, I think that is a far longer conversation than we have time or energy for right now. Let’s table it?”
“Mm, let’s.” And Dream gives up the last of his strength, lets himself fall completely into Hob’s waiting hold. Presses his face further into Hob’s neck, and feels Hob’s chin on his shoulder in return. Hob’s hand continues making patterns across his back, and it is Hob this time who releases a heavy, shaky breath, laden with the threat of tears.
“I’m sorry, old friend.”
“For what?”
“For all of it. I know this, coming here, can’t have been easy for you.”
“It…was easier than I imagined.”
Hob just holds him tighter. His hand finally leaving his face to wrap around his back, nestling at the base of Dream’s neck, still keeping him cradled against Hob’s shoulder. “Thank you,” Hob whispers, a strained sound, laden with too much emotion, he almost sounds stuffy with it. “Thank you for coming. I’m glad you did.”
A distant, old, bruised part of Dream would have reeled back at that. Would have hissed I did not do it for you, would have railed I do not require your gladness. And he would not yet admit it out loud, but he is starting to be glad himself that he is growing ever distant from that part of himself. Has seen, has experienced, begrudgingly, the benefit of suffering some small indignity for the reward of comfort, kindness, compassion, acceptance. Friendship.
His hands, which had remained safely in his pockets, anxiously crawl forth and bury themselves into Hob’s jacket, curling into the fabric and holding fast. He had not sought this comfort. Had not even imagined it. He had only sought a brief respite from the tumult of his duties, his still damaged realm, the cavalcade of problems and difficulties that had fallen on him like an avalanche. A hundred years of it all held back, banked up until his return shook the weakened foundations and just like that he was caught in the maelstrom. There had been no second of peace in his homecoming. His comfort had been short lived. He was grateful to have returned, to be free once more. But the cracks in his realm he could now see had been there, splintering beneath the surface, for centuries, millennia even. He had been failing his duties long before he had been captured. And the truth of it was near impossible to bear. And Hob… Hob was the only one who was separate from it. Who knew him as stranger and friend long before now as Dream and Morpheus. Dream had thought of coming here only as stepping out of the raging stream for a moment. Perhaps he had sought some solace, but not this. Privately, beneath anything he would truly allow himself to acknowledge, he longed for such softness, though he knew he was undeserving of it.
He wants to cry, and presently finds that he is, properly and freely now. That Hob’s neck and collar are damp with his own silent tears. He digs his fists further into Hob’s jacket, his knuckles beginning to press into the soft firmness of Hob’s abdomen. And Hob clings tighter, too.
“‘M not going anywhere. Never. Stay…” he seems to say it without thinking, because Dream hears the hitch in his breath, feels the panicked swallow in the muscles pressed against his cheek, “...you can stay,” the words waver with so much fear, alongside hope.
Dream wants to tell him he can’t stay as long as either of them might like. That by nightfall he will have been away long enough to cause problems. That even if there is nothing more pressing than the constant unstable state of the Dreaming, Lucienne will know he has no mission nor task to be absent with, Matthew will start to get antsy, they will fret and attempt to seek him out, and the peace will be broken. And worse still, Hob will be drawn further into it all, and the blessed separation will start to unravel. One day that might be tolerable. One day he might even find that preferable. But not yet, not now. Right now he could not bear it. Could not take one more pillar falling into the ocean. He would crumble along with it.
But he does not say that, not any of it. He just holds tight and nods against Hob’s neck, and allows himself, in a moment of infinite selfishness, to be held, and to pretend that this moment is all there is.