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They were on a stakeout in Soho. In late December.
“Stop drawing attention to us,” Johanna hissed through her chattering teeth, knocking Hob’s mittened hand away from where he was repeatedly rubbing at his nipples. “We have to get inside this building somehow. Don't you want to fuck up the last few of Burgess' followers, once and for all?”
“Of course I do, Jo. Sorry.”
“Well, you fondling yourself is not helping. Have you got tit lice or something?”
“That’s not even a thing,” Hob scoffed. “Is it?” He forlornly scratched his chest again, and sighed. “Anyway, it’s a long story.”
Johanna examined the impenetrable frontage of the cult’s headquarters for perhaps the five hundredth time. “Well, ‘til we figure out a way in to this den of demon-arselickers, you might as well regale me with your latest exploits with Eeyore.”
“Stop calling him that, Jo,” Hob scolded. “Else you won’t get to be our bridesmaid.”
“Ohpleaseno.Whatapunishment.Ireallywantto,” Johanna muttered sarcastically. She huddled further into Hob on the frozen park bench. “Now, just spill the bloody beans!”
So, Hob did.
Dream of the Endless appeared in the living room of their flat, and kissed Hob ‘til his Y-fronts became X-rated, and his earlobes would happily have tugged themselves.
Once he had been put back down on his feet, Hob fanned himself with a granny square. Dream’s erotic hello had scattered apart a long line of them that Hob had been trying to stitch together. There were a lot, but not quite enough for a winter scarf for a wyvern.
“I’ve missed you too, dove,” Hob panted, getting his breath back. “But this chainmail won’t link itself, now will it?” He click-clacked the pair of pliers he was holding in each hand like a manic robot lobster.
“Is this another sex game?” Dream asked. He stayed standing, because there was nowhere to sit down.
There were a lot of projects on the go in the modest space, and all of them had been begun since Dream had left for work that morning. Hob blinked around at the spinning wheel, all tangled up with trailing puffs of fleece, then at the semi-completed leatherwork, spread out on the coffee table like he'd just deboned a herd of deer. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of simmering jam coming from the kitchenette. Because it wasn’t so much simmering, as scorching.
“It could be, love, but not right now,” Hob said. “It’s Saturday, July the twelfth,” he added, brightly, as if this explained everything, and gestured at the craft supplies on every chair, beanbag and pouffe.
Dream waited.
“If I don’t start making my Christmas gifts now, see, I’ll get all stressed out.” Hob threw the pliers down and his hands started twitching, as if he didn’t know whether to grab a pile of fat quarters next, or arm himself with a hot glue gun.
“And…are you calm now?” Dream asked, scrunching up his face in doubt.
“Sure am,” Hob said. “After all, I’ve only got all of your really important family of superbeings to make things for this year, on top of my current students. Last year’s students. The faculty. The pub personnel. Neighbours. My friends, both domestic and overseas.” Hob tapped on his tragus with the end of a crochet hook, as if debating whether or not to stick it in, and yank out his poor, overwhelmed brain. “And all of their pets.”
“Is this a weaving loom, Hob?” Dream had wandered into their bedroom. “And a half-sheared goat?”
Hob allowed himself to briefly collapse onto the floor. With his knees bent over a sewing box.
“The problem is,” he said, to the herbs he’d picked in a hurry, and hung to dry over the rafters. At least he thought they were herbs. “I ought to have started all this in April.”
Hob was, in the way of peasants, bloody-minded, and he crafted his way, albeit in a scattershot manner, like a blunderbuss loaded with glitter and quilting pins, through July and August, mainly by snorting lines of uncut instant coffee, and by giving up altogether on sleep.
“I can do that when I’m dead,” he joked, somewhat hysterically, to Dream, who, although he pouted, just loomed unhappily but supportively about the almost uninhabitable flat, and did not complain even when Hob cut back on his consort’s duties, both social and conjugal, to devote more time to his projects.
“I’m sorry I’m so late, dove,” Hob mumbled, sometime in September, and collapsed next to Lord Morpheus at the banqueting High Table. The Palace dining room was extended into infinity. Dream-blossoms of unsurpassed beauty were arranged into exquisite centrepieces, and Taramis had evidently been to the Goblin Market and got a really good deal on fruit.
Hob, who hadn’t eaten properly for weeks, stuffed a handful of unpeck’d cherried into his gob. “I can’t get the sunflowers right on that tapestry of Van Goch’s Starry Night I’m doing for your mum,” he yawned, blearily. “Had to unpick three whole feet of it and start again.”
Dream frowned, and kissed Hob’s poor, cramping knuckles. “My love, if you recall, I did say that you need not attend this event if you are busy in the Waking, although your presence is always a blessed balm to me. My wish is that you complete these many tasks you have nobly set yourself, so that you may find the peace of mind which I fear has been eluding you of late. Also, my progenitors are entirely incorporeal, as I have mentioned, and would therefore not likely notice any irregularity in your handiwork.”
“Well, they say that’s the fantastic thing about homemade gifts, don’t they? That it’s the thought that counts?” Hob smiled, weakly, and wriggled a bit in his consort’s throne. It was actually a very important diplomatic function, and Hob had duly, but hastily donned his most formal court attire. He’d been too rushed to sprinkle on any baby powder, so the gold metal bikini ensemble irritated his arsecheeks a bit, but not nearly as much as his very soul was being eroded by the ghastly feeling that the seconds of eternity were inexorably passing him by.
“Why should time vex you so, Sir Robert? Egad! Are you...mortal?” the horse-headed deity to Hob’s left whinnied. “And what is this ‘bum rash’ of which you speak?”
Hob had accidentally been talking out loud to himself, which he seemed to be doing more and more often, as the number and complexity of Homemade Christmas Gift Projects grew, in inverse proportion to the amount of days he had left to complete them in.
“Neigh. I mean nay. I mean no,” Hob said, fumbling at the cross-stitch bookmarks he’d been hoping to work on between courses. “I’m not dying, me. Never. Only of humiliation, haha, if I can’t impress the in-laws, right? Only foaling, I mean fooling…”
The horse-god flared its nostrils in offence.
Dream turned his head sharply. “Hob? Did I hear you say that my Father is vexing you? If so, I shall tear apart his very…”
“No, no. Easy, tiger.” Hob slumped forwards. “Never met the bloke. And I’m sure when we do, we’ll get on like a universe on fire. Or would that effectively trigger Armageddon? Which isn’t a very Christmassy thing to do, is it? I mean, trying to learn clockmaking, so that I can make a fobwatch from scratch for the embodiment of primordial existence is a little vexing, I’ll be honest, but it is the thought that counts, so I’m sure he’ll forgive any minor horological errors…”
“My progenitors are entirely incorporeal, as I may have mentioned, and would therefore not likely notice any irregularity in your handiwork,” Dream said, again. He poured Hob a glass of water. “My love, are you quite well? Your eye is winking, and not in the familiar, come-hither way I love and instantly obey. You are also lying in a dish of pomegranates.”
“I’m fine,” Hob said, rearing up, face pimpled with pomegranate seeds, and attempted to chug down the water, only due to a repetitive beading injury, he managed to jerk it over his shoulder, where it splashed all over a nearby magma elemental.
“I’m not melting,” the elemental screamed.
Hob wafted the steam away from his bikini, in case it rusted. “Really? I feel a wee bit feverish, myself, as it goes." Hob swayed, giddily. "Maybe someone could open a window, balance my humours a bit? Maybe I’ve got a touch of bubonic plague coming on? Maybe it’s because I should be cobbling sixteen pairs of tiny boots for Despair’s pet rats right at this very moment, and then also work at my two regular two jobs, and do all my volunteer work, and in the evenings I’m studying for my fifth Professorship, and I said I’d take Rose and Jed to the pumpkin patch next month, because Merv won’t, for obvious reasons, and after that I have roughly three hundred and forty-one unique, hand-crafted Christmas gifts still left to make, mostly involving skills I may possess, but have kind of forgotten, as well as a load I haven’t got around to learning yet. But it should all be ok, because it’s the BLOODY THOUGHT THAT COUNTS…”
“This Brunch Is Over,” Dream boomed, and with the hand that wasn’t holding onto Hob, he blew sand in the general direction of his thousands of guests. All of them disappeared. The vaultings of the ethereal, vasty hall echoed with Hob’s heartbroken snivels. Then he clambered into Dream's lap, and wailed.
Hob woke up a few days later, in bed. The weaving loom had been dismantled by Destruction, judging by the wreckage that Dream was idly kicking with his Chanel boots, as he sat by Hob’s side. The goat was bleating out in the pub garden, getting pissed on fermented windfalls.
“Bleaugh?” Hob asked.
“Yes, my dearest, sweetest Hob, of course,” Dream replied, gently. “There is nothing I would like more than for you to ride me to our mutual completion immediately, but first, perhaps, you should sit up and have some tea?” Dream softly pressed Hob’s hand against his cheek for a moment, then kissed the palm, as if in worship, then replaced his face with Hob’s favourite mug full of an oversugared, far too milky brew.
Hob sipped. Sighed. Scratched his balls. Through the doorway he could see the living room had been tidied back to its usual level of comfy, cosy mess, instead of a catastrophic crafting bombsite. He wiped his nose on the candlewick bedspread. “I’m so sorry, dove,” he croaked. “I’ve cocked everything up.”
“Not at all.”
“Sucked off more than I could swallow, didn’t I?”
“You would never do that,” Dream disagreed. From experience. “I am only sorry that I did not understand sooner that you were struggling. You are so cheerful and capable always, that I failed to see that you were also overburdened.” He paused. “I missed such signs in my own little sister, and have always bitterly regretted that I did not see her distress until it was too late.”
Hob took Dream’s bony hand in his own. “I have a very gobby mouth, dove, and I like using it. I coulda said summat.”
“I feel that if I was a better partner, you would not have to.” Dream took a deep breath. “Indeed, it would please me to say that I will know better next time, that I will henceforth always love you as you should be loved. But the truth of it is that I may always be distrustful of my own instincts, fearful of either doing too much or too little, and so I would be grateful if you would please confide in me more, and tell me how you truly feel, always, for are we not good friends, as well as lovers?”
“We are that.” Hob kissed Dream’s knuckles. “And I will.”
“Because if I lost you, Hob, I do not know what would become of me.”
“Come here,” Hob said, and pulled Dream into the bed with him, boots and all. Hob kissed Dream’s knife-sharp cheekbones, and his marble brow. “The reason I got so obsessed, y’know, I think it’s because I just feel so sodding loved, lately. So chock full of happiness, like there’s been a bit missing from me for all these long centuries, and now I have it. I have you. I just wanted to pass some of that abundance of joy onto our mates, I guess?”
Dream’s lips parted, and he tried several times to speak, but seemed unable to do so. His eyelashes grew wet, but softly, as dew gently dampens a cobweb, and in the end, he simply undressed, and then lay his naked body next to Hob’s, and Hob held him, and they listened together to one another’s heartbeats, and the sounds of the wider world coming through the open window; the gear-crunching conversations of the passing cars, the birdsong, and the chainsaw sound of late-summer bees drowsing amid the pub’s hanging baskets.
Hob kissed Dream’s face again, but this time there was a rising heat in it, a wordless need, for although Hob was a gobby bastard, he could be reverent too, and he turned Dream over onto his back, and then fingered him, and wetted him, so that he could fuck him, solemnly, with Dream splayed out beneath him, trapped under Hob’s weight, and wide-eyed with the comfort of being taken that way, encompassed and filled by Hob’s strong, hot body. Hob pressed in hard, kept his own passion on a tight, trembling rein, and watched Dream’s mouth carefully, working his strokes accordingly, and making each one considered, and deliberate, deep or shallow as Dream needed it to be. And, as Dream's cries grew louder, and more desperate, Hob covered his lover in kisses, and in his sweat and smell, and made sure that Dream had to do nothing at all, in order to come, but simply receive the pleasure Hob gave him.
“I missed you, Hob,” Dream said, over and over, and when Hob had come too, Dream kept Hob in him, with their limbs tangled, and Hob kissed each of Dream’s fingertips. “I love you right back,” Hob said, to the lily-white pad of each one.
And in the end, Dream moved, because he’d been fucked in a puddle of cold, spilled tea. “I should also say that I have decided to complete your Christmas gift projects myself.”
Hob’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, no, dove. You mustn’t.”
“We are affianced, Hob,” Dream said. “Our lives are entwined as one. Our benefactions should also be a joint effort, should they not? You have done your part, now allow me to do mine, and finish what you have started.”
Hob let Dream go, and rubbed over his stubbly, sex-flushed cheeks. “Sweetpea, don’t you recall your courting gifts to me? Remember that romantic valley you created for me in the Dreaming, only the sides were too steep, and all the bloody sheep slipped into that ravine? And that genuinely horrifying river of mutated songbirds? Matthew had to have therapy after seeing it." Hob exhaled. "I have to say that gift-giving is not your best thing, love.”
Dream pointed to the dressing table. There was a huge stack of books there, do-it-yourself instruction manuals on how to knit, sew, and a host of other skills Lucienne must have thought Dream lacked.
“Rest easy, my Hob. I will limit myself to non-magical, non-Dreaming methods of manufacture, and follow that spreadsheet and timetable you have on your work computer.” Dream straddled Hob’s thighs. Hob’s filthy cock stirred, greedily. “As you have oftentimes said, before beginning an adventure...” Dream bent over Hob, licking his pink lips. “...What could possibly go sodding wrong?”
Like London itself, Hob had regained his chill as autumn turned to winter. Dream had not shown one single iota of perturbation regarding making all of the Christmas gifts, so it was left to Johanna to be buzzing slightly as friends and family crowded into the New Inn on the big day.
Lady Constantine knocked back a silver cup of mulled wine, in a very unladylike manner, as she sat in a state of mesmerised and horrified anticipation, like someone about to watch an hour-long compilation of skateboarding accidents.
“I can’t wait to see what a festive hash Eeyore’s made of this," she whispered to Hob. "Remember those fuck-ugly slippers he made for you, before he told you he fancied you?” She glanced down at Hob’s feet. “Which you’re, uh, still wearing…”
“Jo, I love these,” Hob said, somewhat frostily. “If I ever do die, I wanna be buried in ‘em.”
Death appeared at Hob’s shoulder. “Duly noted,” she said, and hugged him. She and Despair had received jars of jam, made by Dream out of foxglove flowers and deadly nightshade. “And thanks, to you and Dream, for this. Everyone always gets me apple-flavoured stuff, must be symbolic or something? So it’s nice to have a change.”
“And for you, my dear sibling…” Dream delved into the ramshackle pile of gifts, and handed Desire a plastic gallon jug of very gloopy, viscous liquid, in which floated about a hundred red chili peppers, looking like the pickled horns of some really small, incredibly evil unicorns.
Desire sneered. “Infused oil? Really? Dear brother, I am not about to slave over a hot stove, or dress a salad any time soon.”
“This is not to cook with,” Dream said, evenly. “It is a lubricant recipe I found on Lucifer’s ‘Tik-Tok’ channel.”
Desire actually looked surprised. “Oh. That’s…pleasantly wicked of you.” They spun and flashed their teeth at Hob. “I can see that your sense of fun is finally rubbing off on him.”
“Not just that, either,” Dream said, coolly, and Hob blushed.
There was a badly crocheted dog blanket for Barnabus. Dream had steeped bacon rinds and porcinis in vodka for Mad Hettie. “Full-English-Breakfast-flavoured home-made liqueur,” he told her. “It’s all about the umami, apparently.” She’d finished it before the last guest had departed.
The thing was, none of the gifts were perfect. Most of them were more than a bit wonky. Several were either toxic, hazardous, or unfinished. All of them looked completely amateurish, yet everyone went home charmed, or at least nobody had enough balls to complain within earshot, because Dream said at monotonously regular intervals ‘that it was the thought that counted’, a mantra he seemed to have understood meant he was entirely absolved from having to make anything properly.
“Well played,” Johanna said, to Dream, with a bow, at the pub doorway. Snow was falling, and the church bells had just struck midnight. Dream had made her some bespoke gunpowder for her favourite flintlock pistol, and had generously added a pinch of his own sand into the mixture, for added impact, so after she kissed Hob, she glared fondly at them both. “I suppose this was a sweetener? Because now you’re going to tell me that my bridesmaid’s dress is lime green chiffon?”
“At least you’ll stand out when you catch the bouquet,” Hob winked, and closed and bolted the door.
When they were upstairs, Dream laid Hob out by the fireplace, on a rug, next to the Christmas tree. Dream had pre-prepared the nightmare visions of sugar-plums that would be dancing in dreamer’s heads for the night, and so was very much off-duty, and wearing just the festive socks that Hob had bought for him.
“I tried,” Dream shrugged, in response to Hob’s wondering exactly how much effort Dream had put into it all. “That is the essence of such gifts, is it not?”
“Not really, you minx,” Hob said, and slapped Dream on the bare backside, because he was both salty and fruity from the eggnog. “You’re supposed to work a little blood, sweat, and tears into home crafted stuff? That’s the real point of them? Like, you broke a nail, tore your hair out, had to buy specialist equipment you didn’t know existed, just to make people mildly happy that probably would have been just as ok with a book token? See?"
"Lucienne was indeed happy with a book token," Dream said.
Hob tapped Dream on his pointy nose with a candy cane. “I can’t help but feel that you played the I’m-just-a-naïve-personificaton-that-does-not-understand-humanity’s-unwritten-rules card here just a smidge, love? And it bloody worked, you jammy sod.”
Dream neither confirmed nor denied the accusation, but reached behind the coal skuttle and pulled out a lumpy, bulky, and very badly-wrapped parcel.
“I did toil hard over one of the gifts,” he admitted. “And it is, verily, a true expression of my love. For have you not told me often that you admire knitting as a skill more than any other? And that it is the perfect blend of artistry and practicality?”
“You learned to knit? For me?” Hob’s eyes went softer than marshmallows made of memory foam.
“With mixed success. It is more difficult than it looks.” Dream handed Hob his knobbly present.
“What did you make. Summat for beginners? Like legwarmers? Not a whole jumper?”
Dream looked very proud of himself. “What is your favourite type of clothing, my love?”
Hob frowned. “Um. Well…I’d have to say…no…You couldn’t possibly have…well, it’s…lingerie, isn’t it? Frilly, strappy bras, and crotchless, lacy knickers? Thongs and suspender belts and corsets?”
Dream smiled, and held up a sprig of mistletoe.
“Merry Christmas, Hob,” he purred.
Johanna wiped away tears. “He knitted you a whole batch of sexy underwear? Is that even possible?”
“Well,” Hob said, “’knitted’, and ‘sexy’ are relative terms? I mean, he’s knotted together some wool in a vaguely underwearish way? Could charitably be called stitchwork, at a pinch? And I think some of it is meant to be lace? Although it could just be a load of dropped stitches to be honest.” Hob massaged his boobs, sighing at the relief from chafing it gave him for a moment or two. “I’m just putting my arms and legs through the biggest holes and hoping not to cut off the blood supply to my balls at this point.”
“So…not a seductive success, then?”
Hob closed his eyes for a moment, his expression indecent. “Are you kidding? Mate, him and me have been having the best sex we’ve ever had, and that’s saying something. He made this stuff for me, Jo. With his two pretty, incredibly flexible hands. I thought I couldn’t love him more, but turns out I can. Especially if I take a lot of vitamin supplements, and stay really hydrated.”
Johanna made a noise like a sabre-tooth tiger retching up a furball.
Hob pushed a hand down his jeans and rummaged around. “Worst thing is, turns out it’s a bugger to get bodily fluids out of angora? So the gusset's gone a bit matted and itchy..?”
“Excuse me?” A man with a goatee had approached them from the headquarters they were supposed to be looking for a way into. He was dressed as if he’d asked for, and got, a standard devil-worshipper cosplay outfit for Christmas. He took up Hob’s free hand and pecked an oily kiss onto the back of the mitten. “I couldn’t help but notice your uninhibited body language," he simpered. “Would you and your companion like to come inside my place, just over yonder, and warm up? A group of us are totally not about to conduct an orgiastic, end-of-year, raise-a-demon, drug-fuelled rite of any kind...”
"Yes. We would," Johanna said, quickly, trying not to look triumphant. She stood up, discreetly checked the guns, and hand-grenades, and state-of-the-art, holy-water water-pistols Hob had got her for Christmas, and followed the satanic shithead into the HQ.
“Consider this another gift from me to you, my Darling Dream," Hob muttered, grimly, to himself. "Nobody messes with my boyfriend and gets away with it." And so, Hob slipped on his knuckle dusters, and went off to commit a bit of well-deserved vengeance, adjusting his knitted G-string and garters as he went.