Chapter Text
I survive on a second chance
I feel your love second-hand
It’s someone else’s flowers on the table
But I don’t mind
His stranger was here.
He was here, with a breath of a laugh at Hob’s greeting, smiling like he’d never seen before. More expression dancing around his refined features than the last 600 years combined.
“I’ve always heard it’s impolite to keep one’s friends waiting.”
Hob felt perfused and alight from the implication.
His friend – his friend – pulled out a chair and reclined into it without breaking his gaze.
Hob could only watch, transfixed. If asked to describe his friend’s demeanor, he’d say it was synonymous with stiff posture, stern shoulders. A cold, commanding bearing like the frigid taste of ice.
It wasn’t this – this warm curve of his lips, one long, spindle of a leg kicked out at a diagonal, a certain fondness to his blue-water eyes that Hob had caught only glimpses of before.
Something had happened. His friend was changed.
When his friend spoke, even his voice was milder, gentle as a drop of honey in warm tea. “How are you, my friend? How have you been keeping?” His mouth turned almost into a smirk, like he was having a private joke with himself.
Well, then. They were just going to act like everything was normal, or whatever passed as normal for them. That didn’t sit right with Hob, but he could leave it for now.
“I’m – I’m a professor now, at a nearby university. Medieval history.” He grinned on the last two words and was answered with the tiniest huff of laughter. “Makes me unbearably frustrated sometimes, the inaccuracies I come across with no way to prove the books wrong.”
He motions to the papers spread out underneath their hands. “I was grading tests before you arrived.”
“And are your students performing admirably? Do they meet your expectations?”
“Never,” Hob joked. “Huge disappointments, the lot of them.” He beamed and was rewarded with another small, sly smile.
The other man shifted forward, drawing his hands from his pocket to rest them on the table, mere inches from Hob’s own. The last time his stranger was even half as close was 1489. He always kept his hands on his lap, always stiff-backed in his seat. Hob’s heart tripped over its next beat.
“No,” Hob picked back up, tugging on the lobe of his ear like he wasn’t suddenly flustered from the proximity, like his chest wasn’t currently trying to turn itself inside out. “They’re good kids, I’m lucky to be teaching them.”
His friend smiled again, eyes full but offering nothing up. Before this, Hob could have counted his friend’s smiles on one hand. And now he was suddenly flooded with them.
What is happening? Hob turned the question over and over like he could shake out answers.
In the ensuing silence, Hob felt the sour end to their last meeting hanging claustrophobic over his head, as it had since 1889. He’d spent the last 133 years thinking about what he’d say if he ever saw his friend again. The words gnawed at him.
“I’m not sorry for what I said, last time,” Hob started, hesitant. “Because I meant it. But I am sorry for how I said it. I’ve never been a tactful man.” He smiled ruefully; it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m sorry I offended you.”
His stranger stared at him, completely still and unblinking. “I did not keep away of my own free will,” he finally said, voice brittle and short.
Hob stiffened. He tried and failed to imagine what could possibly detain his friend for 30 years even as relief threaded through him. He was certain his eyes swam with questions, because the other man’s lips pressed together like he was holding back answers. His stranger had never been forthcoming about himself.
“Whatever business you were attending to, I’m sure it was important,” Hob said with a short laugh, trying to smooth past the uncomfortable subject. "Certainly more important than a casual meeting with a friend." It seemed his friend didn’t want to talk about it, and Hob didn’t feel like pressing the tender event more than needed.
“It was no doing of my own,” his friend replied with a voice like cracked glass. His eyes dropped to the table, but not before Hob caught their dark glint and the first hint of red waterlines.
Hob swore the hair of his arms rose. Whatever happened to his friend, it was clearly painful to recount. He opened his mouth to speak, searching for some kind of condolence, but the other man unknowingly cut him off, his eyes fixed on the table.
“I thought of you,” he began, his voice so soft Hob could barely hear it over the din of the pub. But he could feel it, rumbling through the air between them, settling in Hob’s chest. “I regretted missing our meeting, knowing it might cause you pain.”
Hob scoffed weakly, out of habit. From the way his friend’s eyes narrowed, Hob could tell it wasn’t the slightest bit convincing. Fine then, naked honesty it was.
“I was hurt, my friend, deeply. But I never thought you missed our meeting because something bad happened to you. I didn’t even – if I’d had any idea, I’d…“
“You’d, what?” his friend broke in, voice hoarse. His hand tremored against the table for a second.
Hob leaned forward and lightly set his fore and middle fingers over the stranger’s own. The other man’s hand twitched underneath him, but he didn’t move away. His alabaster skin was unnaturally cold to the touch, like frozen silk. His bony fingers felt far too thin.
“I’d have helped you,” Hob answered, trying impress upon his friend the depths of his earnestness. “I would have helped you in any way I could, the second I was able, no questions asked.”
His friend’s eyes grew darker, something liquid shimmered deep within like the wash of an ocean wave at twilight.
The other man slowly turned his hand over and Hob worried he meant to draw it back. Hob had done it again – said too much, too honestly. He still couldn’t bring himself to be sorry.
Instead of reclaiming his hand, his friend slipped it further underneath until they were palm to palm. His chilly fingers curled over Hob’s, certain and firm despite their slightness. Hob’s breath caught in his throat.
“My name is Dream,” his friend said, stare unbreaking. His voice was no longer hoarse or strained, but smooth with trust and almost hypnotic.
The noise of the pub and its peripheral flurry of movement melted away.
“Dream of the Endless.”
At the moment, Hob didn’t even care about what that nonsense phrase meant. His stranger was no longer a stranger. He couldn’t help the wide grin that rushed to his face.
Dream’s answering smile, the look in his eyes, was his softest yet.
The AC hummed to life above them, rushing out of the vents in a tepid draft. Hob had been meaning to get that fixed for months.
Despite his thick coat buttoned nearly to the collar and the comfortable warmth of the day, Dream shivered.
Hob stroked his thumb along the inside of Dream’s wrist, the skin impossibly smooth. Hob thought maybe he imagined the way Dream seemed to flex his wrist up against the motion.
“How are you cold? It’s blazing warm out. And you’ve got that jacket on.”
Dream’s gaze dropped again. “Where I was…it was cold.”
It was the first real detail Dream had given Hob about his time away. Even with nothing else to paint a picture, he felt a twist of sorrow for whatever had happened.
“Were you…hurt, where you were? Injured?”
Dream took a sharp breath. “In a manner of speaking.”
Hob didn’t know what else to do or say, but he felt desperate to help, to do anything.
He gently tugged on Dream’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere warmer.” He scooted out of his seat and stood up.
Dream didn’t make any motion to release Hob’s hand and so he didn’t either, content to shove the tests into his leather messenger bag with one hand.
He slung it over his shoulder and looked towards the bar, nodding a goodbye to the bartender Luke, who offered Hob an awkward wave, clearly gawking at his companion. Luke nudged a waitress as she passed behind him. She turned and her mouth dropped open. They watched the pair with open fascination as Hob hurried to pull Dream along behind him, weaving between tables and patrons until they’d rounded the bar to the back room.
Hob felt the tips of his ears turn pink. He was certain he’d get a merciless interrogation from them the next day. Hob wasn’t one for public affection, ever. He never brought anyone home, not even casual flings.
He yanked open the door to the staircase, twisting around to make sure it didn’t hit Dream. The other man was gazing at Hob with clear amusement playing in his eyes, lips pressed together.
Hob spun back around and marched resolutely up the stairs. The hem of Dream’s coat brushed against the backs of his knees with each step.
“You’re blushing.” Dream’s voice came low and far closer over Hob’s shoulder than he expected.
God damn it to bloody hell. Hob was starting to regret this plan. He fumbled with the doorknob while he searched for a response. The stupid knob always stuck, another thing Hob had been meaning to fix.
This was – this was more than anything they’d ever done before. Hob leading Dream to his apartment after a drink, their hands clasped tight. It felt like – it felt like…
The knob abruptly gave way under his rough twisting and the door swung open, causing Hob to stumble inside.
He led Dream after him and they were greeted with the overheated, nearly stuffy air of his flat. Being over the bar and with only a few window AC units to cool the place, Hob’s apartment ran hot.
Dream’s hand absently slipped out of his own as he wandered further into the living room, his eyes sweeping every inch with clear interest.
Hob felt distantly embarrassed about the state of his apartment, papers and books stacked everywhere. An overflowing wall of bookshelves, an overflowing wall of curio cabinets; even his windowsills were full, crammed with plants spilling greenery and vines across anything they could reach.
More than one person had accused him of being a hoarder, one even calling him a magpie for his penchant of collecting anything curious and shiny. And after centuries, he’d built up quite a collection of sentimental items.
Dream didn’t seem to mind the mess, but Hob still found himself nervously rambling.
“Not my largest residence ever, obviously, but perhaps my favorite so far. All the energy from the pub, the students in and out– it keeps me feeling young. Between running this place – well, I’ll be honest, my manager really runs this place – and my classes, I keep myself more than busy.”
“You own The New Inn?” Surprise was clear in Dream’s voice.
Hob offered him a crooked smile. “Where else would we meet with The White Horse closed?”
Dream looked entirely caught off-guard, his frame listing to one side as he regarded Hob. “That would be your latest grand enterprise to share, then, at our missed meeting?”
Heat blazed on Hob’s cheeks and he busied himself by tossing his bag on the nearest armchair and toeing off his shoes. “I opened the pub in 1996,” he mumbled, stalking down a short hall into the kitchen and dining room to ignore the fresh flare of curiosity in Dream’s eyes. He’d always looked at Hob with far more interest than was healthy for his ego.
“I’m going to make us tea. Do you want tea?” He’d never actually seen Dream partake in food or drink over the centuries. He craned his neck to look back down the hall to the living room.
“I do not need human food or drink,” Dream answered, one finger brushing against a Satin Pothos leaf from a vine that crawled up a bookshelf. He drew his hand back and slid it into his coat pocket.
Hob made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat and he swore he saw Dream’s lips quirk up for one second. “Sure, but do you want tea?”
Dream had apparently satisfied his curiosity with Hob’s living room, drifting into the kitchen towards the bar Hob leaned over. “If you make tea, I will drink it.”
Hob squashed down a deep sigh. He’d forgotten how deeply frustrating his friend could be. “Fine then, tea it is. And biscuits.” His gaze traced Dream’s frame and he flushed again. “You look like you need some.”
Dream’s brows knit in shallow furrows as he regarded Hob.
“Well don’t just loom,” Hob chastised him with exasperated fondness. “Sit down.” He nodded towards a bar stool.
Dream pursed his lips, almost in a pout, but he slipped into a stool nonetheless, keeping his hands buried in his coat.
Hob wondered if the hand holding was a one-off and couldn’t help the disappointment that pooled in his stomach. At least Dream was shivering less. He distracted himself by parceling out some tea into a mesh ball for the tea pot.
“Your manner is far more…familiar than previous meetings.”
Hob tossed him a bright smile over his shoulder. “Yeah well, I know your name now. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?”
Dream tilted his head.
“You know that phrase?”
The other man shook his head, if it could be called that. Just a single, slow movement from one side to the other.
“It popped up late – hmmm - 17th century, I think? It means if you’re doing something part of the way you might as well not half-arse it. Give it a real go, hold nothing back, you know?”
Hob turned from the stove to let the kettle heat and leaned over the bar again, putting himself right into Dream’s space. The other man didn’t pull back, seemingly content to trace the planes of Hob’s face with his eyes.
Hob could smell Dream from this distance, which he’d never been able to do before. He smelled like a rainstorm and something vaguely earthy and vegetal, like walking through a lush garden in the spring. Hob sucked in a deep lungful before he could stop himself.
“Is that what you’re going to do, Hob Gadling?” Dream’s voice was low again, velvety. Hob thought of dark chocolate and wine and slipping into a warm slumber. “Hold nothing back?”
“Yes,” Hob said breathlessly. “I think I shall.”
Dream’s eyes dropped to Hob’s lips, long enough that he knew he was not imagining it. When his gaze dragged back up, his pupils were ever so slightly wider than before, the blue deeper. His mind scrambled to accommodate this new development, but his heart took it in perfect stride, speeding up as hot electricity zipped through his limbs.
Hob had given up feeling ashamed of his desires shortly after 1789. However, he would be embarrassed to say how many times he’d taken himself in hand, spilling over nothing but the memories of mere glances from his friend. The flick of Dream’s eyes after Johanna Constantine's ridiculous accusations. The coy smile when he told Hob he need not have come to his defense.
It was not like Hob to develop feelings over something so trivial, to feel such want over next to nothing. Immortality had made his desires much easier to manage. But then, Dream had always been an exception.
So, to say Hob was “losing his shit,” as his students would put it, was an understatement.
The scream of the kettle interrupted their stare and Hob was grateful for the excuse to turn around, to gather himself.
Rather than try to drag an answer out of Dream about how he likes his tea, Hob tossed in two cubes of raw cane sugar and a splash of milk, setting a single shortbread onto the saucer, and presented it to his friend.
He noticed Dream was now awkwardly angled away, pointedly not looking to his left, his hand up against his cheek casually, but it looked like a blinder. Hob followed his not-gaze to the wall.
There was nothing there but a large, antique mirror. The silver had long since tarnished, and the glass was slightly concave and smokey from exposure to a minor fire roughly two and a half centuries ago. Hob had kept it because he thought the damage made it interesting.
Dream wordlessly accepted the tea, curling his fingers around the hot porcelain. They shook, almost imperceptibly. His gaze was fixed to the counter, mouth tight.
Hob crossed to the wall and carefully removed the mirror, setting it on the ground with the reflection turned away.
He took the bar stool next to Dream, slid his own tea over, and took a placid sip. When he set his cup back down, Dream was staring at him with wide eyes, the rims lined red again, their color edging on a stormy blue.
This was not the man Hob remembered. What had happened to him, while he was away? Even his appearance was altered. Dream had always been thin, despite the endless layers of fashion from centuries past, but not this fragile, bony creature.
The cold, the mirror, his near-emaciated frame, the way he struggled to contain his emotions over small things – it all spoke of something deeply cruel and grotesque.
The need to ask Dream what happened clawed at him, but he knew it would be futile. Instead, he shot for a different question he thought had a slim chance of success.
“What does ‘of the Endless’ mean, exactly?”
Hob was pleased to see Dream drinking his tea. Well, not so much drinking it as holding it close, letting the steam curl around his face.
“I am the personification of the collective unconsciousness of all humanity.”
Hob had fallen off a building once. Four stories. The only thing on the way down was a sort of blank terror as his body struggled against the air. This felt a lot like that.
Dream wasn’t a cheeky nickname, then. It was literal.
“Your name is..apt, I suppose,” Hob said with a gulp, sliding a sideways glance at Dream, who had unfolded from his uneasy twist and relaxed against the bar again.
The memory of a silver-gold dust swirling around Constantine before she sank into a trance rose in his mind. Dust, like sand. A trance, like a dream.
“The Sandman,” Hob groaned. “I’m an idiot.”
Dream huffed out a laugh. “I hardly think one could blame you for missing so small a connection.”
Hob shoved an entire shortbread into his mouth, desperate for the feeling of something normal at the moment, tried to ground himself in its buttery flake. Every second he spent looking at Dream, talking to him, felt like flying off the face of the earth.
“Have you run out of questions?”
Hob followed the biscuit with a big gulp of tea, his laugh bordering on hysterical as he set the cup down. “Never. But I think I’ve reached my limit of new, mind-boggling information for today.”
633 years and this was the longest he’d spent in Dream’s presence and the most words he’d ever gotten out of the man. Hob felt drunk on it. He knew it couldn’t last.
As if the thought made it so, Dream swiftly rose to his feet, his eyes unfocused like he was peering through layers of reality. “I must attend to my realm.”
Hob stood up as well, tried to swallow down his plummeting mood, and offered up a tentative smile. “See you in 2089 then?”
Dream simply tipped his head back, gaze thoughtful. “Perhaps sooner, Hob Gadling.”
He was polite enough to use the door like a human, but disappeared from the landing in a swirl of dust and smoke.
Dream’s teacup and saucer sat perched on the edge of the kitchen bar, the only evidence he’d been there. The biscuit was untouched. The teacup was empty.